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.
I think the goal was to emphasize how you have become David Bowie’s Starman or something.
Another one of those weird moments for me when I realize that the entire galaxy should be quaking in their spacesuits that I exist.
Working through the Freestar Ranger questline, I stealth/sniped my way through First to Fight, First to Die, taking down the entire First and Paxton Hull with hardly a scratch to show for it. I mean, Hull’s complaining about the stand-down command during the war but if this is how they fought then it’s no wonder they had to stop. At level 26, with barely any skills beyond the first row or two, I’m already the most deadly weapon these worlds have ever seen. Something is off, but damn its fun being so OP.
So now I’m wondering, do I continue roaming the galaxy doing these questlines and random stuff or get going on the whole artifact thing? I’ve not done much of the main story, because it’s just not that interesting. I’ve only done the first basic Sarah mission, rescue Barrett, do the Sam Coe and Andreja stuff to get them on-board, but haven’t explored beyond that. I’ve read that I should focus more on the main story and then switch up to free-roaming after that.
What’s the verdict? This is how it seemed to go in all my past Bethesda games. When I switch and complete the main story, though, I stop playing and never, ever, play the game again. Skyrim is the only one I started a second time but it fizzled out fairly early. I’ve said it before but it’s that thread of a story that keeps me grounded in the world, but at the same time I’m worried that it’ll become dull just flying around planet to planet.
Like, I don’t know if I’ll be able to put up with the repetition. It’s especially bad when I finished off an abandoned factory one night and then the next day was playing on a different planet and came upon the exact same factory, right down to the placement of items inside. Even the special magazine that gave a bonus to something was the exact same one not giving a bonus this time. It was insane. I had to doublecheck that I hadn’t mistakenly gone to the same place but then remembered I just got the xp for discovering the place new. That sort of things is going to grate on me if I notice it too often. Lazy.
I’m at 124 hrs, about 30 hrs into NG+1 and NG+1 clarified where this game is going.
I was about level 42 when I got to the end of the first playthrough, had a decent outpost and I really wasn’t going to do a +1, but then I fired it up to see the deal and while you lose all your ships, money, bases and any relationships you had with your crewmates, you start with all the skills you had. The quite empty skill tree at the end of the first playthrough was demoralizing but now? Starting with all those intact? Nice. But progression is woefully slower because of the additional XP for each level now.
So I am doing NG +1, and ignoring all the questlines I had the first time through and instead am just doing some planet exploration quests and taking out all the structures I see on the planet and selling the weapon loot (I no longer collect resources because I’m not doing an outpost again) because I really like the fighting.
Now, the interesting thing is in 30hrs of play, I haven’t done a single repeat. I’ve done 10-15 structures and the were all different and I even got to one abandoned mining facility and instead of spacers or ecliptic, it was overrun with xeno creatures. It was pretty cool.
So, the story line is decent but you can replay it completely differently. Don’t try to do all the faction quests and all the crewmates questlines the first time through, spread them out on different playthroughs, that’s what I’m going to try.