The lack of a central design document really hurt Starfield, and I think that is why many systems seem to be competing with one another. The game is two games rolled into one (Space sim lite and BGS RPG) with each half cannibalising the other. Good example of this is a quest I played last night. I'll spoil it in case anyone cares, but it is side quest and nothing to do (as far as I know) with main quest or any of the factions:
I travelled to a planet, Porrima II, because I was doing a quest that required me to visit the main city on Porrima II, Paradiso. As I entered orbit of Porrima II, you get hailed from the planet and I believe it is the chief security officer tells you there is a strange ship orbiting Porrima II which he wants you to examine. I board the strange ship, and it turns out it is a bunch of human colonists from Earth who left Earth 200 years ago, but because they had slow tech it took them 200 years to reach Porrima II, but human groups who left later with more advanced tech managed to arrive at much before those colonists. As such there is a dilemma: the Captain is staking claim to ownership of the planet, and wants you to enforce those demands on the leaders of Paradiso/Porrima II. I went down to Paradiso, which is a hotel/resort planet ruled by a corporation, and met with the three board members. The CEO told me they own Porrima II, so there are three options:
- Destroy the ship so the problem is solved for Paradiso.
- I pay for a new grav drive for the colonists so they can go settle elsewhere.
- Let them land on Porrima II, but they'll be indentured servants (see: slaves) until they pay off their debt to the corporation.
None of these are good really. The only normally acceptable one is pay to get them a new grav drive, but why is there NO other option to resolve this? I went back to the Captain and tried to speak to her, to pass on what was said and find a solution, but she has no new dialogue. Went back to the board to discuss it, nothing, they ask you to choose one of the three options. I said I would pay for a new grav drive, which cost 40k credits (bartered down to 25k with the guy outfitting it) which was over 50% of all the credits I had because I haven't been spending them. Grav drive goes on ship, they go away, all done (unless I encounter them again in the future) but it was immensely unsatisfying. Where is the narrative choice? Kill people, enslave them or pay? There is no way to resolve this somehow else? No parties want to discuss options who have preferences, both parties wait and do what YOU, a stranger, want? That's bizarre and terrible. It's noninteractive and none of the parties care about anything, they just nod their heads and wait for you to finish the quest in the ways they offer without you giving any feedback.
But that isn't the bad part, that's just a summary of what happened and why it is narratively weak. The issue is Porrima II, and Paradiso, is EMPTY. You can land at Paradiso and within 30 seconds be out in the weeds, no buildings in site, yet there isn't room for the colonists? They're colonists, not refugees without means or something, they survived on the ship (without cryo) for 200 years, have food and resource systems (such as greenhouses) on the ship, so they won't be a drain on the resources of Paradiso. Even excluding the surrounding area of Paradiso, what about the other side of the planet? Oh that's right! This game has procgen tiles. So I went to the opposite side of the planet, generated a tile and landed, and........nothing! It was empty, endless dirt and plants. So the entire worldbuilding and stucture of this quest makes NO SENSE because there is so much empty SPACE in this game that it's the defining feature. But turn your brain off guys, it makes plenty of sense despite being able to run for ten minutes in each direction in vast emptiness that it's impossible that there would be any convincing argument that the corporation lets these people settle. The CEO character makes one offhand comment about this worldbuilding flaw when you ask him if you can settle them elsewhere on the planet, he says something to the effect of "We can't let them go build over there because what if they do weird landscaping!" What???? Le whacky zany millennial humor, the evil CEO is so worried about landscaping so that is a fair and normal and impassable reason you can't settle on the other side of the planet. It makes no sense and is fundamentally flawed in everyway. The BGS narrative experience is undermined by the space mechanics and gameplay, creating an irrational play experience.
Worse yet is the scope of the world makes little sense. Take the Freestar Collective for example, I'm not sure how many star systems they control but it is at least a few. They have twelve (12!) Freestar Rangers, which are high level agents who enforce law and order, solve problems, etc, for several star systems. How many humans are there, they only have 12 people to manage several planets? Think of the logistics. One of the quests has you go and help a farm that is being attacked, that's what they're sending one of 12 people light years away to manage. Is there less than 12 severe problems concurrently happening on tens of planets? What kind of scale is that? Is the population of space in Starfield ~1 million people? But look at this scale issue with the Porrima II quest mentioned above. Why can't the colonists settle on the otherside of the planet? Who is going to stop them? The Freestar Collective is bigger than the Paradiso organisation, is Paradiso going to be sending 12 people across the planet to fight colonists (who appear to have at least 12 people armed with weapons)? What is the logistics of such a military conflict, because there don't appear to be any infrastructure, based on the empty planet, to support and land based supply lines? Will they be flying ships up and over? Well that seems like it would waste as much money as they are trying to save by forcing you to pay, or directly impact their business operations more than some "weird landscaping" on the OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET.
It just makes little sense. If you want to turn your brain off and mindlessly do quests whatever, but this new IP 25 years in the making already makes little sense, no surprise since this is the BGS that made "Kid in a Fridge", didn't realise Jet was a post-war drug, and messed up Power Armor development timelines. They can't even get their new games to have a good narrative with options, let alone the quest itself by rational within the game they designed. The mechanics and core gameplay design do not mesh well with the narrative, quests, and so forth. It's a structural issue and one that nags you in most of what you do. This quest is just a perfect encapsulation of the game fighting itself, having an interesting idea that is immediately destroyed by the scope of the game, or the scope of the game being undermined by it trying to be bent in such a way it suits a narrative RPG.
