Starfield - Thoughts on the main quest?
I just finished the Starfield main quest! Everything else will be in the Spoilerbox text but if you haven't, consider yourself warned! I would try and go through the main quest as much as you can and maybe a couple of temples before you finish the main story if you havent.
Starfield spoilers!
What does everyone think about the Unity idea and the way it's integrated in New Game Plus? I loveeee the multiverse explaination and the little things they changed in New Game Plus, I imagine it'll be different every "loop". While I kinda wish you didn't lose everything, it was amazing to respawn in a new Starborn ship.I do feel bad for the people who invested a lot in base building though! I kinda wish they had a better solution for that, honestly I can see how it'd be discouraging to go through new game plus again. I kinda wish they could somehow make it a bit more clear that you'll lose everything and to not invest too much in the playthrough.
At the same time, I really do love the way the game makes me feel on a meta level. I'm usually a hoarder in these types of games, getting all that I can and dumping it all somewhere, but once I realized that nothing matters I found myself kinda letting go of that notion and just enjoying the game. I'm used to Bethesda jank so I just enjoyed it haha.
Overall probably some of the smarter writing Bethesda put out, and I'm really excited to see the rest of my loops!
I feel like the main quest was really uneven, tempo-wise. You get some slow build up quests, finding individual mcguffins, things get moving a bit faster as you learn more about what's going on, things move faster still as dramatic things happen... and then you spend a few real world hours warping to a planet, wandering around until you find a location, doing a minigame, getting a power, and then repeating 10 more times. And then you have the climactic mission. It feels like the process of getting the powers was really poorly planned out when it came to integrating the cool powers with the story. People are always a bit "gee whiz, that power was cool", but the story doesn't really engage with your growing powers in any sort of serious way, since by the time you get them you're narratively one foot out the door.
The powers are cool, but the intrusion of "magic" into the hard sci-fi future is never really addressed in any sort of satisfying way, at least not in anything I've encountered so far.
That said, I'm enjoying NG+ and I feel a sense of real alignment with my character. I'm not speedrunning the abandoned cryolab while my character is just being weirdly prescient about everything; we're blazing through it together because we both remember having been there before.
I agree with all your points for sure! I wish that they integrated grabbing the temples/powers more cleanly into the story too, it felt like a weird added thing that didn't work narratively, at least for the first loop. Maybe instead they could have made it at the end where you finish a few loops you have to do the "Power from Beyond" quests once you're used to it or whatever.
I really do like the New Game+ mechanic a lot, it really does make me feel more immersed in my actual character in a way that I don't think many games actually do. Even though the story isn't mindblowing, it gets a LOT of points for that meta-layer.
Yeah, I would have valued the powers more if I'd gotten one per loop or something like that. It would have made it possible to tie it into the narrative more especially if the first power was set, rather than them having to have a storyline that accepted that I could suddenly summon a bubble of air, short range teleport, go invisible, throw a fireball, force plants to grow, resurrect dead animals, slow time, see the future, pacify enemies, pull minerals out of the ground, and force push.
What even do you do with that on a narrative level? I can see why they didn't really try, but it makes for a rocky transition between the story and the game mechanics.
I think one interesting thing they could have done is introduced the Starborn loop thing earlier in the plot, and dispersed main missions across each loop instead of the way they do it now. I don't really know how it would work, narrative wise, but that might have helped make the powers a bit more integrated in a way? idk. Right now I only use Personal Environment to get through the running around while overencumbered thing sometimes, but it just doesn't "fit" with the character I decided to role play as (basically Lucy from Cyberpunk Edgerunners lol)
I also enjoyed the multiverse reveal and the entity inside the Unity. I love it when meta mechanics like NG+ have an in-universe explanation.
Though, I felt like shit leaving my romance interest behind.
Sarah reminds me a bit of Emilia Clarke so when I leave her behind it's kinda sad haha. But yeah for sure! I loved that one of the options was straight up, "Wait I don't sound like that" lol
Everything Everywhere All At Once Spoilers
My favorite movie is Everything Everywhere All at Once and I feel like this game has succeeded in making me kinda feel the way the characters in that movie do. When everything is happening at the same time, and you can loop through again, does anything actually matter? It's a weird feeling and I really love the utilization of the game's mechanics to kinda highlight that.
Seriously. I just married Sarah and had such a Sci Fi cheesy action movie moment with her when I left her behind.
Then when I met the different version and she didn't remember me I just felt dead inside lmao.
My Sarah died, and my heart melted a bit seeing her again. Then she was all "I'm not your Sarah, let's keep our distance for a bit..."
Got me right in the feels.
I find the idea fresh, especially subverting my expectations of a Bethesda game. Honestly I thought I would just carry over the ship, money, level, and get a free respec opportunity, then play through the whole story again, hard decisions and all. But no, it's a little more complex than that.
However, the repetition kinda sucks. I just wish there was more variation into the radiant Artifacts, more than raiding a pirate facility and digging it out.
I kinda wish there was more weird shit and alterations between universes.
It feels like it really only effects the main story and that's only accasionly (takes like tell your 5th loop I think).
I want more story reasons for replaying.
People change as well. This may be inconsequential, but named NPCs have been seen in different places/organizations.
People have had interesting variations as recent as the second loop.
I just finished "Entangled" and the funeral. The follower death in the main story hit like a truck. I'm about to wrap up the game at level 21/22, and will likely use NG+ to really get into the side stuff, but my goal was to explore the story first. I actually love that there's a reboot, of sorts, and I can't wait for NG+. I especially can't wait to get the weird starts later.
I agree that the pacing was a bit odd, wish the powers/artifacts were more necessary, but I also enjoy that it gives you this light airy feeling, reveals the stakes, and you're back to exploration, but with the weight the late middle game lends to it, at least if you lean into the story like I am.
Wow, you really blasted through the main story! I think I finished the story at around 35ish, though I did go through all the side quests that I possibly could too. Haha yeah I remember seeing some of the weird starts that I kinda wanna see, but so far at least my first couple of reboots don't have a noticable difference. Though I could just be missing something.
Honestly I was super surprised about the follower death idea, it felt like the characters actually had some sort of importance, I wish they leaned into that a bit more. I haven't played the other games recently but I don't remember if they ever killed off followers on purpose like that? The only one i can think of is Fallout 3 but that was a long time ago.
I played Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallouts 3, NV 4, and Skyrim within the last three years and there's nothing like the follower death unless you specifically choose to sacrifice a non-essential follower to Boethia in Skyrim, or burn a relationship with a related faction in FNV or FO4. I actually like the mechanic and how it hinges on who you're attached to and a counterpart so you can question yourself later. I hate that you get asked in such a loaded way, because the counterpart asked "Why me?" when the artifacts, not the followers, were a concern and I wasn't aware I was picking who lived or died, because in my experience that just has never been a thing in the Bethesda RPGs I played.
I've read the weird reboots kick off at like 5 or 6 on Reddit.
FWIW this has been 34 hours of play so far.
Yeah I've done 3, NV and Skyrim and I can't remember anything like that at all, I wish they did it more often, I just remember the original panic I felt when I realized that Sarah was in danger and honestly it was surpring that I actually felt something for the followers, usually they're just "there to carry my burdens" lol. At the same time it really attaches itself to the multiverse idea too, that I can allow one follower or another to die but overall in the grand scheme of things, does it matter because they're gonna be in the next loop still alive? Or does it matter a lot because they're still a "person" at the end of the day? I find myself kinda tired of poor implementations of multiverse narratives but I think Starfield did it very well.
I'll have to keep a lookout! honestly there's probably something in the main quests that change but I dunno how many times I wanna go through the main story lol.
I've done 75 hours so far but you're way more efficient than I am!
I started all these games with the MQ being the focus. I allow myself to get distracted for fun, of course, but I like seeing the central story first. My plan is to mess around with NG+ and get weird with it.
I don't like open worlds for their own sake, oddly, but Bethesda does a good enough job for me to want to stay for hundreds of hours
Storywise:
I enjoyed the main questline. I agree it is a bit slow at the start when you're just being sent to fetch artifacts, but even then there's some variety to those quests (Walter's quest comes to mind as one where you aren't just sent into a dungeon to kill everyone and loot the artifact). The second half where you visit NASA and learn the truth about what happened to Earth was also really cool (and was much more interesting and unexpected to me than the starborn stuff).
I liked the general idea of how the unity ties in with Constellation's general theme of 'going where no man has gone before', but the multiverse has kind of been done to death in the last few years (MCU, Spider-man, Everything everywhere all at once, etc). Maybe it was interesting when this game was plotted out 8 years ago, but nowadays it comes across as trite.
Mechanically:
I found fetching the powers from the temples to be super dull and repetitive (although I suppose it's optional). Having to play that mini game each time is just the cherry on top. If they were going to go down that route, couldn't they have made a unique challenge or puzzle for each temple?
The new game plus tweaks to the characters sound like a neat little bonus for anyone doing another playthrough. Personally I'm satisfied with just the one playthrough but I love the idea of leaving in these little surprises for returning players (without it feeling like you're missing out on something critical if you don't want to play again).
The NASA questline is probably one of my favorite ones in Bethesda's ever tbh, what a great reveal and storytelling.
It's interesting that everything has gone to multiverses for sure, I definitely enjoy some implementations (Everything Everywhere All at Once is my favorite movie) and I think this one does a good job integrating it into the game tbh.
The power temples are the most brainless part and half the time they don't even work LOL I hated them and don't look forwards to adding more later on.
There are some new game plus tweaks that I discovered that were super cool ideas that I kinda wish they integrated in the original playthroughs tbh lol. Maybe having 2 playthroughs in a main quest might make it more interesting, though idk how they'll be able to integrate that.
Spoilers for playthrough 3?
I got to a starting point where you go through the motions of going to the lodge and ran into a clone of myself! That was such a weird experience haha I didn't think that would happen. It didn't save or anything and I kinda wish it did but I wish they had more experiences like this.I'm level 51 and still haven't done the main quest. It's just been too fun to run off and do other things, I never got around to it.
I will say it's a bit bold to jump into a spoiler thread without actually doing the thing that the thread is talking about...
To each his own but I highly suggest doing more of the main quest whenever you can!
Well I finished the main quest and, honestly...
It was great! The multiverse reveal was genuinely surprising and quite interesting. The fact that you can find the hunter early in the game (in the red devils bar in cydonia i believe) and have no idea who he is and write him off as some old larper trying to act tough only to find out later who he really is was crazy to me.
It was pretty annoying doing the temple fetch quests, they got tedious after the first few but I think it was one of the better main quests in a Bethesda game.
I met the Hunter in the Viewport bar at New Atlantis. I thought he was a "six-star wanted bounty hunter" who I might have to face if all other forms of law enforcement failed.
@mycketforvirrad can we get a title change to something like "Starfield - Thoughts on the main quest?" I wanted to mostly keep it on discussion on the main story of Starfield
Switched it out for you. 👍