actually, post cancelled. someone leaked garbage juice from a compromised trash bag on the floor of my building's only elevator and didn't clean it up and now it reeks of dead fish in there. whatever's wrong with me, at least I know I could be much worse
Good news, everyone! The plush from Gimme Swag has released and is now available for purchase!
Just go to the link above to order your favorite yandere boy! Please be aware the current estimated shipping date is between December 30th and January 30th!
This campaign is in partnership with Gimme Swag, and it's only available for a limited time!
We know many of you were worried about missing the first pre-order, so this is your chance to finally bring Pierrot home and have him in your arms!
The campaign will only be available for 30 days. Once it ends, the plush will no longer be available for purchase, and there won't be any extra stock available.
So be sure to keep an eye on the campaign dates so you don't miss your chance!
i made a post like this before but I can't find it now. so. I'll just redo it.
What's the first "big news story" you remember from when you were a kid?
It's something I love to ask mixed-aged groups sometimes because I think it's really interesting to see the responses. I've gotten answers from the Olympics of [whatever year] to Watergate to more recent stuff from my niblings.
My first news thing I remember is the OJ Simpson trial. I vaguely remember watching the news with my grandparents before that, but that's the first story I remember, in part because my second grade teacher had us go play so she could watch the verdict 😂
So I was watching syzygyaltair and she was reading some academic paper and the paper used the word "starfield" so Starfield is an actual word. That was neat.
Spoilers below. First my experience with vanilla then I'll go over dlc and creations.
First hours
Character customization feels a bit odd. In Fallout 4 they let you modify your characters facial features more directly by hovering over the individual part and stretching/pulling/inflating/deflating. Starfield's physical customization allows you to pick from different presets for each feature, and then mix those presets to get what you want. It just feels sort of odd and like a step back. Maybe they felt FO4 was overwhelming and underused?
The player is also given some starting traits to pick from. They're always a tradeoff by design, but they also don't matter very much outside of the rare rp opportunity.
Once you finish making your character you will start a basically-on-rails setup. You're a rookie miner and are being assigned to retrieve an artifact from a digsite. You touch the shiny artifact and experience a vision. Then you go with your boss to meet your client who, it turns out, was being tracked by pirates. After defeating the pirates your boss demands this client help clean up the aftermath (it's clear they have some history), and so he gives you his ship and robot and sends you to his organization to deliver the artifact. Not the solution I would've went with, but I guess the writer's wanted to prioritize other things.
So, with a quick side excursion to wipe out some more pirates you make it to your first destination. And here we'll touch on some of the most prominent criticism Starfield earns. It feels very sterile. Culturally sterile. At first. Well, later on too, but less so. You land at the New Atlantis space port and see a really pretty city. But the city is so dominated by one individual skyscraper you almost don't notice anything else, and it all feels kinda boring and samey.
You travel through the city and get a few chances to get distracted, but the distractions feel... well, sterile and pg so they don't work. Like me you'll probably go straight to Constellation headquarters. The people you meet will not interest you yet. Well, Noel seems nice. Walter won me over eventually. But for the most part the interesting members aren't here right now, and those interesting members still aren't gonna be as interesting as Fallout New Vegas, or Baldur's Gate, or Fallout 4, or anything really.
You will then go on a fetch quest to find more *ੈ✩‧₊˚ shiny rock in dirt˚₊‧✩*ੈ.
-
Gameplay
Everything starts to pick up once you get away from the start of the game. You may stumble across some fun enemies like terrormorphs, or an area that happens to have a few high level npcs. Mostly the game shines when its easy though. When you have invested enough time and materials into a weapon that you start to one shot things, and couple it with Starfield's equivalent of Dragon Shouts- like, yeah it's pretty fun.
Actual piloting isn't very fun. It lets you play through orbital sections and there isn't too much to do. Some neat encounters like the grandmother.
There's base building. I didn't really go past building the extractors for tungsten and titanium. To be honest I feel like this is just not a good example of base building. It's not atrocious it just wasn't gone over smoothly. I have made several outposts but still have an activity in my quest log labeled "Start an outpost" so at some point I was probably supposed to finish a conversation with an NPC and given tasks to figure it out, but that sounds less fun than just figuring it out on my own anyway.
As mentioned earlier there are traits. I think the plan was, "if it's not overpowered the player is free to choose anything." Like, you can have parents ingame and you send 2% of your credits to them each in game week. An in game week is pretty long though and 2% of your credits isn't very much. I liked my game parents though and game-dad gave me a classic earth gun his retiree friend gave him when he was told game-me was in Constellation now.
The Alien DNA trait feels like it was intended as a default, but was turned into a trait at some point since they didn't want to get rid of it. For instance one of the best aid items is Alien Genetic Material which doesn't make sense without that perk- but it's always useful whether you have Alien DNA or not. I think they probably took this out since it would overlap with the main plot. Eh, I'm not getting stuck thinking about how to describe this - I'll probably go more into it when I talk about the plot.
-
Environments and Factions
The environments are tied to factions and planets so it's difficult to decouple them. I remember reading Bethesda describing Starfield's aesthetic as NASA-punk. This is basically true as space stations, and spaceships are clearly designed by NASA and Soviet spacecraft interiors. However there are also in-game factions which have their own direction.
The United Colonies (UC)
New Atlantis
The UC's general aesthetic is a combination of solarpunk and retro futurism. This faction is the direct descendant of Earth's governments. As is fitting it has a bad past and a concerning idea of what freedom and liberty look like. In-game the faction shows massive signs of weakness that have to be overcome by aesthetics and spinning history just enough to be seen in a favorable light while carefully including just enough honesty in it's narrative to not be called a lie. You can see this through the little museum of space history in the UC Vanguard quest and how they choose to present themselves on their own terms.
The United Colonies
The Well
The Well is the city underneath New Atlantis. It has literally been built directly on top of. Everything you need to know you can guess from the above image. They are the working class who have been left behind. Sometimes ignored, sometimes intentionally hidden. There are good and bad people down there. It's what it says on the tin - again, you can guess everything from your knowledge of tropes and the above image.
The United Colonies
Cydonia
This is an active mining settlement on Mars. There's some lore around it involving using aliens as weapons in war, and humanity leaving Earth and transitioning to the stars.
Overwhelmingly people feel stuck here. Many are grateful for the work that mining brings in, but the Sol system has little activity outside of Cydonia and the people here know it. It's mentioned to you multiple times to emphasize how much of a backwater our star system has become. Everyone feels tired, and like they've been tricked- somehow left holding the bag while everyone else got to live the high life in New Atlantis or just anywhere else. Through quests and certain npcs you can discover it wasn't always like this, and there are still some people proud of their Martian heritage.
-------------
The Freestar Collective (FC)
Akila City
This is the space cowboy aesthetic. Think Firefly without a charismatic leading man.
Really not that deep, but there is some fun characterization between the quest The Perfect Recipe, and Charity of the Wolf. These two quests are really all that's needed to get you to invest in a fictional community. They aren't amazing quests or incredibly fun. In fact they're pretty predictable and mechanically just fetch quests. But they're something, anything, that says these characters are a community and will do the hard work themselves if it means freedom. My imagination can fill in the rest.
Honorary subcategory: Freestar Rangers
While mechanically the equivalent of the UC Vanguard these guys have more history and color than the vanguard does.
Their questline is not as interesting as the Vanguard, but it does demonstrate a lot of autonomy intended for the Rangers which makes me register them as... something more than what the Vanguard is supposed to be.
The Freestar Collective
Hopetown
Hopetown is in reality one big building, and not a town. Since all Bethesda games are essentially homunculus worlds you can assume there is more to it than shown, but we can take away their meaning. It's a classic factory town where everything is done to keep the money in the hands of the owner. Through the Rangers quest line you'll learn this company isn't doing well and the owner has resorted to illegal means to keep afloat. It's a capitalist libertarian society left without controls and has started hurting people to try and limp along.
The Freestar Collective
Neon
This city is, from what I've been directly shown or told in game, only technically part of the FC. Neon sided with the FC to assure it's independence from the UC. Although there's little reason Neon has to leave the FC it also shares no real cultural bonds to the rest of the FC. Although Hopetown is a cautionary tale of unchecked capitalism the workers and even owner seem like true believers in the rugged individualism of the Akila City centered Collective.
Neon is not that. This city has multiple corporations with interests so far spread that they serve only themselves. This is the designated cyberpunk corner of the game. The people don't look to their neighbors for help like they do in Akila, or to a fictionalized version of their boss like Hopetown. They are looking over their shoulder and hustling as the situation demands.
---------
Unaligned or Tentatively Aligned
Ryujin
Ryujin is centered in Neon city. They dabble in everything, and start an interesting quest of high stakes corporate espionage. This is the thieves guild questline, basically.
If you haven't noticed they are red. And clean. And that functional pragmatic design elsewhere it set aside for status symbols. Not deep, but they don't need to be. My imagination can do the rest.
House Va'ruun
Okay, so these guys are more on par with the UC and FC, BUT vanilla doesn't show much of that. They've pulled back their forces to their own territory as an isolationist faction before the game starts. As such you only learn about them through their religion, the scattered zealots who refuse to stop fighting, and their lone ambassador who refused to give up on communications with the rest of humanity.
What you will learn about these guys in Vanilla is they are very religious, very isolationist, and very dark grey with shades of muted purple and dark red.
Crimson Fleet
This is a faction of space pirates who you may remember as those dicks you killed at the start. There's a lot of them and there's a pretty good lore reason as to why. The UC started up a massive prison world with two facilities. A terrestrial holding facility on an ice world, and an orbiting space station for processing and monitoring. A legendary criminal and space pirate managed to lead a massive prison riot, steal a ship, and then overtake the space station.
With the UC focused on the FC there was never a real opportunity to reassert control. And so a pirate organization was born, fortified, and grown. There are many shades of grey in the Crimson Fleet. Some people are basically good - maybe even born into the Fleet. Lots of people are nightmares in human skin. My take is the biggest moral drive in the fleet is pure self interest. Not good or bad just filling a niche and trying to make their lives better at any cost.
UC Sysdef
Not to be confused with the Vanguard or regular UC navy this is the primary force dealing with the Crimson Fleet. They're a smaller more focused operation with a wider range of operational autonomy. You can use this faction to be a double agent bringing the Crimson Fleet down from the inside. You'll hear this word a lot in discussions about Starfield, but they feel sterile.
Tracker's Alliance
Okay, a quick refresher of this makes me think I missed 90% of this faction. They're bounty hunters though. Lots of personality between the individual trackers you can talk to.
Spacers (Vanilla)
These are bandits. Lore-wise they are anything from the worst-of-the-worst to regular folks who are down on their luck. Now, the "worst of the worst" variety is the most common variety going off npc dialogue. And so I've taken the liberty to interpret them as killing machines addicted to the violence for the sake of violence. Banding together out of some deep instinct Possibly driven insane from tHe HoRrOrS. (There are some environmental storytelling moments suggesting it really is a mix of the two kinds.)
Constellation
Former horse girls and boys who's personality was sports but weren't good at sports. This is my first impression. Constellation's characterization and introduction is a big part of the sterile vibe of Starfield. Now, some of it's unfair but I'd say the most sensual character is Walter (the old man) who has some friendly banter with his wife. I mean there's a sexless pg universe and then there's a WEIRDLY sexless pg universe. What's that hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy quote?
“This Arthur Dent Starfield," comes the cry from the furthest reaches of the galaxy, and has even now been found inscribed on a mysterious deep space probe thought to originate from an alien galaxy at a distance too hideous to contemplate, "what is he, man or mouse? Is he interested in nothing more than tea and the wider issues of life? Has he no spirit? has he no passion? Does he not, to put it in a nutshell, fuck?” - Douglas Adams
Anyways, it had to be addressed. It's not that it needs to be a gooner game, like, please god no playing something like that from Bethesda would feel like watching a movie with your parents and then there's a sex scene, BUT DOES IT EVEN EXIST IN THIS UNIVERSE?! LOOK AT THE NEON DANCERS!!!
These are the guys from the HOTTEST STRIP CLUB ON NEON! ITS WEIRD! HUMANS FUCK THEY DO THEY DO FUCK! I'M NOT CRYING YOU'RE CRYING! *runs away with tears glimmering in the golden hour sunstarset*
Ahem, anyways, Constellation feels very church group.
Starborn
We're into the main plot. These guys are competing with you to collect the artifacts. The artifacts are the gateway to the next universe and they do this over and over and over again. Gaining power and knowledge each time. There are basically countless starborn. Some are tired with the competition and wait it out. Others grandstand and try to protect those uninvolved from the truth, while others are interested in only experiencing the Unity as many times as possible.
-
DLC
Shattered Space
This is the expansion on house Va'ruun. There's a pretty interesting space station segment, followed by a campaign on the Va'ruun homeworld. I liked the first two thirds much more than the ending.
Terran Armada
Killer ROBOTS from an evil army that wants to unify the galaxy by force. I think this is the DLC that added free lanes which introduced a bunch of new encounters. Like the Old Woman who may be the only sentient alien in the game.
There's also a spacer overhaul that I got with upgrading to the premium version since this fits more with, like, the way they're talked about.
--------
Bugs
Some instances of heads and forearms loading in before the npcs's bodies on New Atlantis. Two crashes. Some wobbly physics when someone dies in a weird spot. Uhhh, I think there may've been one time I needed to close out and reopen it to fix something but I can't remember what.
Inefficient
Plays animation for landing or taking off or sitting in your pilot seat EV.RY. TIME! Wish there was a board or something I could construct in my ship to sell and buy from all vendors in a settlement so I didn't have to go to each one.
Some way to sort through items more efficiently. Just wish it respected my time more, really.
-------
Closing thoughts for now
I clearly like the game. I played 140 something hours. If you like exploring worlds, and drawing your own conclusions there is something in there worth playing. It's much much better than Avowed which has a higher user score on metacritic which is INSANE, and I thought Avowed was okay. Starfield is good. Flawed as fuck with a flat intro and multiple instances of falsely presenting worlds as boring by putting the more awkward foot first. But the interesting worlds and factions are there, and if you want to you can have fun thinking about them and exploring them.
7/10 if you want your consciousness to leave this reality for a hundred hours
discoholicmusic
gracieabrams
romaincrisis
pixelskylines
stormborns
ellievsbear
prguitarman
izzy806
