lynxwinters

LXW-68K TV Game System

The distant present of virtual entertainment.


lynxwinters
@lynxwinters

so I got starfield this weekend and I want to make a series of chosts about my thoughts as I go, because man I've had some thoughts about this software. I'm not streaming the game for many reasons, but I do want to have ideas publicly about it when I have time

but man this thing is like a B- game at best, just a very shiny and toothless B- instead of the usual "tried something but didn't stick the landing" B- like I normally play


lynxwinters
@lynxwinters

Some of my memories of this are a little vague because I didn't do the questline all at once. Please bear with me.


While I was zooping around in space I found a big weird ship that only communicated in beeps and boops and static. No markings, no windows, but I could dock with it, so I decided to go aboard and see what's up. Turns out, this space boat is the ECS Constant, a generation ship that left Earth to colonize a new world before FTL travel was viable. By the time they got to their destination, another group of space travelers got there first and turned the planet into a resort hotel. The Constant couldn't communicate because a) their comm systems were too old, and b) the resort executives didn't want to spook the guests so they just tried to cover it up and ignore it until they could find a way to exploit it.

FTL travel leapfrogging pre-FTL ships is a sci-fi story beat I've seen before and it's a perfectly fine way to set up territorial tensions and culture shock in a spacefaring setting. The tabletop RPG Lancer has this in a couple of places and does it really well. Starfield, being what it is and who it's made by, sets up this situation just fine I guess, if you don't pay attention to any of the details.

I did pay attention and just, man. The interior of a ship made 200 years ago shouldn't look the same as one I built yesterday. My companion commented that she's amazed anything was still working but it looked exactly the same as the research outpost I just cleared a bunch of pirates out of. It looks exactly the same as our team's space station. It looks shiny and clean and like nothing has ever broke or been replaced.

There's also a lot of accents on that ancient boat. I'm no linguist, but I feel like 200 years isolated from greater society is enough to, at the very least, maybe develop your own sort of space creole or different slang or something. I'd imagine everyone would have mostly the same accent after three or four generations, but not here. We got London English, we got New York Jewish English (at least this one gets explained a little), we got American Broadcast Standard English, we got at least two or three others in there. If Bethesda wants to make a case for current accents existing in other planets because of people taking their cultures to far-off pockets of space, sure, no problem, but this is a unique tin can blasting through the void for two centuries. Make it different, make it feel unique in more ways than just everyone wearing uniforms I haven't seen before.

Back to the story of this plotline, the captain of the generation ship asks you to be a liaison for the Constant, because you're a 3rd party with the means to travel between the ship and the planet. You go to the planet and talk to the board at the resort, and they give you three options: the people of the Constant can become indentured servants for the resort in exchange for food and living space, you can get them an FTL drive so they can look for another planet, or you can make them "just disappear." The option to tell the resort to pack up is not presented, or at least I didn't see one.

I decided that the new jump drive option was the only thing close to morally acceptable. I went to tell the Constant's captain what happened but she weirdly had nothing to say about it. The game didn't even give me the option. 200 years of tootling along through space to find the paradise their ancestors talked about was taken by capitalism, and the lady in charge has absolutely no opinion on being told to get off their lawn.

At this point I made a new save to see what would happen if I just went back and shot the board members in the face with all my cool space guns. turns out, the head guy you talk to just can't be killed. Blast him full in the face with a rifle that's killed about a hundred pirates and mercenaries, he just falls to his knees for a minute before standing up and plinking at you with his baby pistol. I don't think he's even critical to the quest at this point, I've never needed to talk to him again. So, Todd Howard is a Todd Coward and I reload my save.

The rest of the quest is kinda boring. I found a guy with an old FLT drive they could retrofit to the Constant, it was expensive but money isn't real in Starfield so who cares. I helped the engineer of the Constant install the drive, people thank me, and they zoop on outta there. There's a couple followups I haven't done yet, including I guess the only person that's ever wanted to leave the ship now that they know other people exist in space.


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @lynxwinters's post: