Fan Uncovers Starfield’s Full Skill Trees Ahead Of Release

As the next Big Game™ on the near horizon, you might have a lot of questions about Starfield. We know that the game will have an enormous amount of explorable planets, but other specifics are still somewhat of an unknown—until now, that is. One fan has spent hundreds of hours compiling all known information about Starfield’s character skill system, and the results are yours to peruse.

As a Bethesda-style RPG, Starfield will feature a set of skills you can invest in on top of its exploration and combat. If you’ve played Skyrim or recent Fallout games, you’ll likely know what to expect. But for a game generating as much interest as Starfield, there’s still so much more to learn ahead of its September 6 release. In an attempt to help on that front, one Redditor has compiled what appears to be the game’s entire set of player-earnable skills. Keep in mind however, that while impressive, this information has been pulled from pre-release footage, and so may not be entirely representative of the final game. Still, this is an impressive feat of aggregation, and taking a peek is a decent way to pass the time until the game finally launches.

Pre-order Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop 

In a Reddit thread titled “After almost 200 hours of research, here is the complete skill system used in Starfield,” user asd8dhd shows off their impressive body of work in a 44-page document.

While it bears repeating that this is all based on pre-release footage and some specifics are expected to differ in the final build of the game, the document reveals that Starfield is likely to break up its skills into the following categories:

  • Physical Skills (such as boosts to damage resistance, increases in health, resistance to infection and addiction, and melee combat)
  • Social Skills (such as persuasion, diplomacy, and bargaining)
  • Combat Skills (seems specific to certain weapon types like lasers, pistols, shotguns, rifles, etc.)
  • Science Skills (features different schools of study like geology, medicine, xenobiology, and astrophysics among others)
  • Tech Skills (focuses on robotics, ship piloting, and ship weaponry)

The document outlines five different skill trees across Novice, Advanced, Expert, and Master. And while certain skills might not be present in the final game, it stands to reason that the final version of Starfield will hew very closely to what’s in this document. You can view all the screenshots the information was pulled from here.

Oh, and if you’re interested in checking out all the star systems that’ve been seen in trailers thus far, check out this page by yet another intrepid pre-release Starfield investigator.

This research is an impressive effort, having taken literally hundreds of hours. It puts my failed attempt to review every chicken parm sandwich in my area to shame.

Xbox Game Pass Core Reveals All 36 Games Ahead Of Launch

The full list of 36 games for Xbox Live Gold’s replacement, Game Pass Core, has been revealed a day ahead of its launch. And they’re…they’re really good.

18 years of Microsoft’s Xbox Live Gold comes to an end tomorrow, September 14, when it will be taken out behind the company’s Redmond, Washington headquarters and shot dead. An anachronistic hangover of the pre-Game Pass era, Gold and its Games with Gold monthly downloads have recently been limping into obscurity, and at this point it’s a kindness to let it go. In its place will arrive the bouncing new-born puppy, Game Pass Core.

Core, essentially an equivalent to Sony’s PlayStation Plus Essential service, is to be the budget incarnation of Game Pass, lacking access to the service’s full library of hundreds of games, but instead offering a curated selection of 36 titles, along with the somehow still toll-gated access to online gaming. But here’s the thing: they’re 36 really decent games.

We previously learned what 25 of the games would be, but Microsoft kept Goldmembers waiting until the last second to learn the full details of what their accounts would be converting to. Stand-out new titles include Stardew Valley, Vampire Survivors, Among Us, Firewatch, and Dead Cells. Joining the likes of AAA titles such as Dishonored 2, Doom Eternal, and Forza Horizon 4, it’s an eclectic collection that really doesn’t feel like the pile of leftovers a cynical person might have expected. (Hello.)

Core will be priced the same as Gold, at $10 a month, and current customers will be automagically converted over. It’s a confusing price-point, given the fuller version of Game Pass is just a dollar more, and includes all the same games plus literally hundreds more. However, you can also pick up a full year’s worth of Core for $60, which would halve the price, while no such discounts appear to exist for the higher tiers. And honestly, as much as I’d love to gripe, $60 for 36 properly good games is rather good. Meanwhile, Game Pass Ultimate recently upped its price a couple of bucks a month to $16.99.

The catch is, games will only be added to Core two or three times a year, rather than Gold’s system of offering two different games each month. However, as we mentioned, it’s a fine list of games. Here’s the lot:

  • Among Us
  • Astroneer
  • Celeste
  • Dead Cells
  • Descenders
  • Dishonored 2
  • Doom Eternal Standard Edition
  • Fable Anniversary
  • Fallout 4
  • Fallout 76
  • Firewatch
  • Forza Horizon 4 Standard Edition
  • Gang Beasts
  • Gears 5 Game of the Year Edition
  • Golf with your Friends
  • Grounded
  • Halo 5: Guardians
  • Halo Wars 2
  • Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
  • Human Fall Flat
  • Inside
  • Limbo
  • Ori & the Will of the Wisps
  • Overcooked! 2
  • Payday 2: Crimewave Edition
  • Powerwash Simulator
  • Psychonauts 2
  • Slay the Spire
  • Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition
  • Stardew Valley
  • State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition
  • Superliminal
  • The Elder Scrolls Online
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge
  • Unpacking
  • Vampire Survivors

Keen games players will likely have already picked up most of these that interest them in the last couple of years, but then this service really isn’t aimed at you. Think of Core as the version of Game Pass you get your aunt when you buy her her first console, a taster menu of the possibilities of gaming. Heck, just Powerwash Simulator and Fallout 4 would keep most people’s evenings busy for the first year.

Meanwhile, it still sucks beyond comprehension that consoles are still somehow charging monthly tithes for online access. Over at PC Land, it’s all free!

Unity Bosses Sold Stocks Ahead Of Scummy Dev Fees Announcement

Yesterday, the cross-platform game engine company Unity announced a controversial new Runtime Fee, which would charge developers per installation for games built with the Unity engine after those games reached a certain threshold. Everyone disliked that, and Unity’s stock prices took a pretty significant dip shortly after its contentious announcement. It’s since been reported that several Unity executives sold thousands of shares of the company’s stock in recent weeks.

According to Guru Focus, Unity CEO John Riccitiello, one of the highest-paid bosses in gaming, sold 2,000 Unity shares on September 6, a week prior to its September 12 announcement. Guru Focus notes that this follows a trend, reporting that Riccitiello has sold a total of 50,610 shares this year, and purchased none.

Kotaku reached out to a Unity spokesperson for comment.

Read More: Devs React To Unity’s Newly Announced Fee For Game Installs: ‘Not To Be Trusted’

Riccitiello isn’t the only executive at Unity to sell a bunch of stock the week before the company’s Runtime Fee announcement. According to Unity’s market activity on the Nasdaq, several other Unity board members sold significant numbers of shares leading up to its “plan pricing and packaging updates.” Chief among them being Tomer Bar-Zeev, Unity’s president of growth, who sold 37,500 shares on September 1 for roughly $1,406,250, and board director Shlomo Dovrat, who sold 68,454 shares on August 30 for around $2,576,608.

The last time Riccitiello’s name was in the news in a prominent way was when he said mobile game developers who don’t utilize Unity’s suite of ad technology are “fucking idiots.” Riccitiello would later issue an apology saying, “I am listening and I will do better.”

Meanwhile, since yesterday multiple developers have declared their intention to stop using Unity as a result of these changes, citing the unpredictability and vagueness of the company’s intention to charge a per-installation fee after a certain number of sales. Cult of the Lamb developer Massive Monster has gone as far as to announce its intention to stop sales of that game come January 1, when the change is supposed to come in.

   

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