this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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The whole NASApunk thing is so funny. First off, it's the epitome of the modern corporate cyberpunk trend. So we have this trend of adding -punk to aesthetic styles without even thinking about punk. Then we have the trend of soulless companies unironically trying to produce cyberpunk content. So Bethesda is trying to create its own punk style that has zero punk. Very bizarre but also very expected.
So let's ignore this ridiculous "NASApunk" misnomer and just look at it as NASA aesthetics in science fiction. Well, we already have that in the form of retrofuturistic art from the 60s to 80s - oftentimes commissioned or made by NASA. If you want something to look like NASA, you paint it white with some black detailing. That is the classic NASA aesthetic. If you're borrowing from this period of NASA-inspired futurism, then your world should have rotating space habitats, moon bases, mass drivers, big spaceplanes, space-based solar, and obviously ROCKETS!! But from what I've seen so far, Starfield takes very little from these aesthetics. "NASApunk" is just bulky spacesuits and spaceships that aren't pristine transposed onto a generic scifi world where capitalism exists in the 24th century, there's dogfighting in outer space, and FTL and artificial gravity is trivial.
If you want to see SpacePunk that actually has some Punk in it check out the Indy warships in the 15 minute long FMV intro to 1998s Independence War/I-War
One of my favorite pieces of short-for Sci Fi even 25 years later
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij0NlMVd4Mw
This is the best quality I could find. It's an old game.
It's so fucking cool, though. It's a sim. Your ship, and every other ship because there's only two classes of warship iirc, all behave the same way. So you have to be a mean tricky SOB to win fights. You've got two particle cannons, missiles, and shields. You've got scanners. And you've got your repair teams. And that's it. That's your tool kit. Figure it out. Everything that happens in the FMV, including iirc handling FTL travel yourself, happens in game.
And the shape of the ships isn't arbitrary. Their shields and power systems are generated by a large ring, so the destroyers are flat pancakes with two wings to act as spars for the weapons, a huge cowling for shaping the engine exhaust, and a tiny command pod nailed to the front. They came up with a reason behind their spaceships so there's some in world justification for the cool ship. And they're really just an iconic look, very distinctive with their flat, aggressive profile and huge flaring engine cowling.
Did I mention it has Newtonian physics? IT HAS NEWTONIAN PHYSICS! Yeah, it's simplified, but you can fly in one direction, flip your nose around, and shoot at ships following you, or whatever other silly Newtonian Drift stuff you want to do.
Sounds pretty cool! Thanks for sharing