Ya, it’s like someone played Dishonored 2 and thought that chapter was cool and wanted to put it into this game, but it was so darn confusing. I had to quit 1/2 way through and just get calmed down I was so furious with that level.
Not everyone’s cut out to be Starborn!
Something weird is how the third faction, the serpent guys, don’t have any active role in the game. I thought they would feature more at some point in the main quest, and their religion would be somehow related to the mystery of the main plot.
But no, my theory was wrong. Maybe they will feature more in an expansion?
I kept waiting for one of them to shout, “Tunnel Snakes rule!”
Yea this feels like some of that subtle world building Bethesda does, but is even half baked at that.
In Skyrim the “4th age” is a fallen empire and the rise of the high elves that’s stopped only temporarily. It’s implied the Thalmor (essentially high elf secret police) are manipulating the rebels to weaken Skyrim and the Empire for a future invasion and final conquest - essentially the player is doing a Half Life thing by being the right man in the wrong place. But the Thalmor in game hardly only have one or two plot points. It’s just all foreshadowing and world building.
It’s clear these guys are being set up for some kind of invasion by the serpent people. It’s apparently a trope / fear in Asian anime and games of the idea of an army going “over the horizon” into impure lands turning feral and coming back to attack its native land and that’s basically the story of the Tha’aruun. But it doesn’t… really go anywhere in Starfield. It doesn’t even really build them up as an unusual evil threat. They’re just some humans with guns. They don’t even really look that different.
They have exotic accents!
I mean I kind of respect it, they’re going for NASA-punk and there’s this limiting factor about not wanting things to be too over the top, as if the game is being constrained by “reality”, and in effect combat is between guys wearing 1970s space suits in space. Basically every other game makes those kinds of enemies, you know, wearing green capes with green armor firing green bullets that have poison attacks and they like hiss like snakes on comms ect. But… maybe just, you know, a bit more interesting than they have now.
Last night I completed the mission to “rescue” Barrett. Classic Bethesda plot scripting, as I roll up on Barrett just chilling with the Dread Pirate Mateo and his goons and we initiate a conversation. I decide to take a stab at Persuasion because I have 2 points in it and figure failure means fighting anyway, so why not? The first dialog option I choose, which was basically “Hey, you and Barrett seem to get along, why not just let us all leave?” results in Critical Success and just like that we’re free to go. Like, uh, dude, I just killed a dozen of your guys topside and you’re cool with letting us all walk, no ransom or anything, just 'cause I pointed out that you and Barrett had a vibe happening? Even better, Dread Pirate Mateo and his band of scary pirates just watched approvingly as I proceeded to loot everything of value in their little pirate den. “I’m leaving now, but you don’t mind if I take all these credits, these four guns, all this ammo and a couple of medpacks with me do you?”. Worst…pirates…ever. =)
On the subject of companions and crew…during the Barrett mission I picked up Lin and Heller and added them as crew during the mission (I couldn’t very well leave them stranded alone on their respective planets). It seems they both have skills that are specialized for outposts, so now I’m thinking it might be time to look into creating an outpost and playing around with that aspect of the game. Can I assign both of them to the same outpost, and would doing so increase the benefits more than simply assigning one of them? In other words, do Lin and Heller stack to provide even better outpost production?
I’ve loaded up on the resources some of the outpost building guides recommended you have, and I have watched a couple of the videos about how to find outpost locations that span 4+ resources. Anyone have any advice on a planet easily reachable from New Atlantis that has some of these unicorn resource zones I can plop down an outpost within?
So there’s this silly Enhance shop in every town which presumably offers everyone complete control of their appearance. So why does everyone have little moles and freckles and facial scars? It may be realistic in our world, but not the Enhance world.
snark mode engaged
- Lack of Space Instagram setting unrealistic beauty standards
- In a world where being flawlessly pretty is cheap and easy, having blemishes is the stronger fashion statement.
I mean, they charge you the equivalent of 4 fancy coffees for a full body reconstruction and sex reassignment surgery (top & bottom).
Same rate for a haircut and a shave, though.
snark mode off
Or maybe it’s just “Players sure liked being able to change their looks during the game, let’s make that more convenient.”
You folks probably would have complained if it was an option in the inventory menu, though, because “it clutters up the already terribly UI”.
Sometimes, a video game is just that. A video game, following video game logic. Three cheers to the Inexplicably Preserved Dungeon Meat and the Blatant Item Placement.
I’m just saying they went out of their way to design ugly NPCs…
I can’t recall anyone being exceptionally ugly except the random crowd NPCs.
Anyone particularly fugly you can name? Or is this one of those “What a lack of scantily-clad fanservice supermodels does to a man” things?
I wouldn’t use the term fugly, but the children I’ve met in this game are creepy cherubs.
Okay, I finished the Ryujin quest line a couple days ago and am now getting time to post something about it. So, I took the line that Ryujin should acquire Infinity LTD and continue development on the internal neuroamp. My character is a stealth and persuasion master so Ryujin quests fit their MO perfectly. And the neuroamp, while not something they need, fits into their world view. But the problem is my Constellation companions response to it. Across the board, everyone was lecturing me on how it’s an awful thing and all of them disliked my decision. Okay, I can live with that, even if Andreja is more like me than she cares to admit.
Problem is, why couldn’t I just use the neuroamp on them to manipulate them just like I did nearly the whole freakin’ board of Ryujin so that they all approved of it? I mean, I’d get it if it was extremely difficult because they held such firm beliefs or something, but the opportunity didn’t even present itself. I found that to be the strangest thing of it all.
I’m a little bit happy that I’m not getting close to any of these losers. I thought there might have been something there early on, but they are all the same side of a coin right now, and don’t seem to align with me, even if all I’ve been doing outside of Ryujin is pretty damn good stuff.
I ran into a similar problem with the UC quest. When it came time to figure out a solution to the terrormorph problem, I went with the apex predator solution rather than the microbe. And to a one, they all lectured me about how wrong I was. “Why didn’t you trust the science?” “The predators may take years to handle the terrormorphs, microbes would be working immediately!” And even if I responded that who knows what kind of mutations or adaptations a microbe might make over time, they all just went, “Yeah maybe. I still think it’s a good idea.” I guess you have to expect a little self-righteoudness from the Constellation crew now and then.
Different strokes for different folks. I had Andreja with me, and she approved of the Apex Predator solution. Seemed to like it a lot..
Wow, I really don’t like my new Starborn ship. Like, at all. It’s ugly and shiny and has zero toggle switches.
And you can’t sleep anywhere
Yeah, that too. It’s a really dumb move on Bethesda’s part who marketed this whole “NASA Punk” thing, or whatever it was, to just then give you the exact opposite at the end of the game. Why not just imbue some secret Starborn knowledge to the player to enhance an existing ship?
I got so lucky in that the first planet I visited, an ecliptic claymore ship landed and I took it over. Even before I boarded, I was like “that is a nice ship” and then I read up on it because it’s actually a very nice class C ship and ya, people search far and wide for this thing and I just landed near me. Easy upgrade.
