See for me I vehemently disagree with this for a few reasons. The scope of humanity feels quite shallow for a few reasons. First is the tile systems, everywhere is empty. Okay, of course not EVERY place has to be settled, but the issue extends beyond this. Akila City is tiny, you walk for 1m and you're out of the city, same thing for Paradiso, Neon is small, but contained due to it's location, but then again how is an important city on a planet so limited? New Atlantis appears bigger, but the tram masks some of the size. It doesn't take much longer than Akila City to get out to where the farms are, and the dreaded long empty flat ground. And the emptiness directly contrasts with the idea of humanity spreading, undermining it. So many times I've been in the middle of nowhere, then a colonist ship lands. So the world is so empty, but also settled, and a lot of places you go to you're never alone because random events make it alive, but they have no effect they're just flashing lights. Humanity spread across the galaxy...leaving behind abandoned robotics bases and no other infrastructure? It's just strange. It doesn't feel believeable to me. House Va'Ruun is another sore spot for me. I can only assume they were cut from the game because "they all left to another galaxy beyond here" seems so strange when all the planets are empty. Go to Baal on the far edge, empty. empty. empty. but they had to go out of the settled systems to find space? It's dissonant with the world you actually see, the setting doesn't fit with the scope of the game. The different religions and cultures feel like window dressing. Two issues with the scope I noticed: there are 12 Freestar Rangers. 12. For how many people? How many planets? That sounds like the police for a population of 10k-20k or so, but they're travelling light years to resolve disputes. Second issue is quest to do with Paradiso, which you can read
here (spoilers) which highlights the narrative issue with the quest and the broader problem for the game is belies. It feels so strange that all these factions exist, this diverse world, and you can simply join them all at once? I did the Ryujin questline, it was alright maybe 7 out of ten if I'm generous, but I didn't have any companions with me when I did it. Then I went back to Constellation and Barret is really hostile at me for my decisions. What?? I was an undercover operative and yet NOW my choices have an impact? I can go join the UC, Freestar, all after Ryujin, but Barrett is personally offended at espionage actions I took when he wasn't there with me? It's just weird. The different factions don't really feel like different factions, just different flavours of good guys. I didn't finish it FWIW, only 30h, so maybe it changes, but there wasn't any deep political struggle that made me feel like there was some spiritual-political conflict within humanity and our place in the stars. I know it might seem hypocritical to say I didn't like factions not reacting, and then companions did and it was a bad thing, but it's simply the inconsistency of my place in the world. I'm bad for my choices in one faction, to someone who wasn't even with me, but it's not a big deal to the UC when they're letting me transport top secret documents? It seemed at every step that there wasn't anything deep to make it real, it was all smoke and mirrors, and I don't think this was totally unsurprising in some ways. E.g. Mechs. They planned to have mechs, couldn't get them working, so retconned them into being illegal. But why don't Va'Ruun zealots use them? Pirates? Ecliptic Mercenaries? The game's world is undermined logically by their technical failings, and I'm sure this expands into all else, ie. my comments on the game design systems conflicting with the narrative of the Paradiso quest.This is why I don't think flying between planets would help. They're all shallow, it wouldn't change how you managed to get there. I don't think there is any way to salvage this as a BGS RPG, at best it's going to be a looter-shooter sandbox with some light roleplaying direction.