this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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I'm curious, you mentioned the hostage scenario at Akila. Does talking down the Shaw gang give you a peaceful method of obtain the artifact near the end of that quest? I try not to save scum so when that whole ordeal went south I had to gun my way through everyone outside of the cavern, then of course only after half her people were dead did Shaw bother striking up a conversation. Not trying to be an ass here, I'm genuinely curious as to whether or not that would've actually changed with prior gameplay.
I tried a few side quests and none of them were at all compelling, though I'll admit I didn't bother going too deep with most of the factions. I don't know, each one I tried consisted of walking back and forth and listening to people talk about trees being too loud or some shit I couldn't care about. Maybe if I'd gone to Space Tokyo or signed up with the space pirates that would've been different. But following the main storyline and tooling around the first few planets was repetitive and just more Bethesda-style gun in, then take the shortcut out after getting the thing. I gave up on the game after around 20 hours of not enjoying the experience.
If you're liking the game then good for you but my experience was that none of the choices I made actually mattered and the world Bethesda built was bland and cliche. And the game mechanics themselves were nothing ground breaking at all, except maybe ship building but that took way too much effort to grok. I tried to like the game but couldn't.
I don't know. I didn't manage to talk them down on my first playthrough, so who knows, but I don't think so. But I also don't think every game or even every RPG needs to be designed with a complete pacifist route in mind. The Shaw Gang mission is also about the only one I can think of that actually fits completely with the "formula" you described, outside of maybe the tutorial.
Also, yeah, Space Pirates might actually be a quest for you, or rather being an undercover agent in the space pirates. You just get straight up thrown out of UC SysDef and have them as your enemy if you run and gun those missions, so you have to sneaky, use your persuasion and actually look around your environments if you want to stay with the good guy faction. The part on the cruise ship is especially good for this. Your choices there definitely matter in that regard.
Maybe it's just a game for people that are really into space in a specific way. Like, sometimes I'll just look at pictures of the surface of Venus or Mars and think about the fact that there's billions of these worlds just existing with no observer. Just rocks, dust, storms, rain, volcanoes, all types of things being there and happening, even though no one can see it.
Yeah, okay, between you and Dudewitbow I'm halfway convinced to give Ryujin and the Crimson Fleet a try.
Haven't done Ryujin yet myself, but I hear it's great. Supposedly lots of covert stealth stuff. I personally also enjoyed the Freestar Rangers quest. It's got more political intrigue than the others I've done. (Also leads you to the Porrima system, which has one of the more interesting and bigger sidequests in it.)
One compliment I will also give the factions as a whole is that you don't immediately become the leader or second in command. Hell, you stay a Deputy until the end of the Rangers quest and only then become a full ranger. It actually feels like an earned promotion.
Oh yeah you do not become Marshall. In fact I haven't became leader of any faction while completing it just "really important guy that accomplished a lot". Bethesda really learned from Skyrim here on just making you King of factions.
Fair enough, but the very first UC security quest has you go and talk directly with the man in charge of the UC's version of the CIA as a doofus who was moments ago hired off the street. So there's definitely still room for improvement.
Even if he's setting you up, you'd think he'd have someone lower level handling the whole thing.
Id like to think we are skipping years of grunt work because in the end "games are supposed to be fun". Unfortunate side effect is it gives off "chosen one syndrome".
The opposite end is America's Army where in order to play as a medic you literally sat in a class for an hour or so.
I’m not them, but yes you can talk you way through that encounter not firing a single shot and still get the artifact. Many quests are like that.