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Punished Ape posted:She was the head of some kind of UC exploration division during the Colony Wars which was 10 years prior to Starfield. I'd assume late 30s to mid 40s. 20 years prior, so late 40’s to mid 50’s, while being written as early thirties at the oldest.
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Jan 14, 2024 20:56
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Ugly In The Morning posted:20 years prior, so late 40’s to mid 50’s, while being written as early thirties at the oldest. It's hilarious how many things were seemingly written like the colony wars were supposed to be like a week ago and got changed to "20 years ago" very late in development
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Jan 14, 2024 21:05
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That's very Bethesda at least. Bombs fell decades ago but everywhere you go it looks like it has been less than a year.
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Jan 14, 2024 21:30
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:It's hilarious how many things were seemingly written like the colony wars were supposed to be like a week ago and got changed to "20 years ago" very late in development There's a whole bunch of dialogue options asking people how they feel about the armistice and how surprised you are that they're willing to work with the other side, etc., etc. and then in the actual game, no one at any point appears to have a problem with each other and are entirely willing to cooperate on basically everything without so much as a [Persuade]. There's a lot of allusion to conflict that literally does not exist in the game.
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Jan 14, 2024 21:44
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orcane posted:That's very Bethesda at least. Bombs fell decades ago but everywhere you go it looks like it has been less than a year. The bombs fell over 200 years ago.
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Jan 14, 2024 21:48
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:It's hilarious how many things were seemingly written like the colony wars were supposed to be like a week ago and got changed to "20 years ago" very late in development I still don’t understand what the UC and freestar were fighting over given that there’s so many wide open systems with tons of stuff
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Jan 14, 2024 21:48
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infernal machines posted:There's a whole bunch of dialogue options asking people how they feel about the armistice and how surprised you are that they're willing to work with the other side, etc., etc. and then in the actual game, no one at any point appears to have a problem with each other and are entirely willing to cooperate on basically everything without so much as a [Persuade]. It almost feels like they wanted to start with the story beat of "the UC and Freestar are still fighting", couldn't figure out how to do that in a way where the player could "align" with either guilt-free, so they jumped forward 20 years so that "yeah the governments did some Bad poo poo but all the Bad People are gone, the governments are all Good People now and are just a bit catty at each other" Ugly In The Morning posted:I still don’t understand what the UC and freestar were fighting over given that there’s so many wide open systems with tons of stuff As far as I can tell, the Canonical Reason For Fighting is because in the war prior to the colony war, they made an agreement with each other to only populate 3? systems apiece, and then someone in Freestar made a gas station in another system, UC said THAT'S ILLEGAL and started a war about it it sounds stupid but I'm pretty sure that's because it just is stupid
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Jan 14, 2024 21:53
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I still don’t understand what the UC and freestar were fighting over given that there’s so many wide open systems with tons of stuff Presumably spurious reasons out of concern over being out-competed through expansion, think the catalyst was Freestar settling a system that the UC had said was off-limits, despite having a charter saying "people can leave and settle elsewhere." At some point in development I suspect the idea was that the UC and Freestar were both rumbling at each other for paranoid, nationalistic reasons and the peace they had after agreeing to limit themselves to three colonies each was ultimately unsustainable. But Bethesda is very, very bad at building that sense of tone, and more than that they never really integrated that element into the story in a way that matters. It all seems a ridiculous conflict when the respective capitals for these 200-year-old interstellar polities are four skyscrapers for one, and a shanty town for the other.
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Jan 14, 2024 21:54
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:
Wait, I thought that agreement was why the colony war was fought. What was the war before the colony war fought over then? Freestar wanting avocado colored bathroom fixtures?
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Jan 14, 2024 21:55
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Wait, I thought that agreement was why the colony war was fought. What was the war before the colony war fought over then? Freestar wanting avocado colored bathroom fixtures? It was. The actual cause was Freestar settling a place the UC said they couldn't. It's stupid, but it's the kind of stupid I buy from a nationalistic society that doesn't like the idea of it no longer being the big force in this region of the cosmos.
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Jan 14, 2024 21:58
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The tone in the bizarre "Freestar and UC trying to defend one lab, (of hundreds, possibly thousands) from bad space people, matches the whole "just finished a war" narrative. and then they suck each others dicks for being so honourable. E: if you are thinking "that does not make sense": correct. Fricking double E: also, due to advanced medicine older people dont look so old : Sarah, apart from when they do; most everyone else like your parents, etc. triple E coming up: VVVVV c'mon, you know exactly why its a rediculous mess, time wise: its because BGS dgaf. their only metric that matters is 1:"a lot of people bought the game" = 2: "it is a perfect game because *see1" staberind fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Jan 14, 2024 |
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Jan 14, 2024 22:01
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Wait, I thought that agreement was why the colony war was fought. What was the war before the colony war fought over then? Freestar wanting avocado colored bathroom fixtures? The Narion war was a 20 year war, 100 years ago, over the UC making The Clinic The Colony war was a 3 year war, 20 years ago, over someone in Freestar making an outpost Given the quest text in-game disagrees about how long ago the most recent war was, "whether or not some quest text in-game conflates who did what in the 20-year-ago war vs. the 100-year-ago war" is a question that I don't know if I even want the answer to
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Jan 14, 2024 22:02
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It's an extremely bad copy-paste of The Expanse's backstory/plot that mangles and fails to follow through on a lot of the themes. e: also they clearly needed to work backwards from there being only 6 systems with cities on them. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Jan 14, 2024 |
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Jan 14, 2024 22:09
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Alchenar posted:It's an extremely bad copy-paste of The Expanse's backstory/plot that mangles and fails to follow through on a lot of the themes. The armistice was so obviously the way they would justify only making a few lovely cities but yeah, it’s incredibly stupid how much was copied and pasted from the expanse without understanding the factions there had a lot of tension built up over decades of arguing over limited resources bound by travel that had time/resource costs. The grav drives fundamentally break the setting and writing by being straight up multi-light year teleportation.
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Jan 14, 2024 22:23
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Flowing Thot posted:The bombs fell over 200 years ago.  I wanted to give Bethesda the benefit of the doubt without looking up the exact timeline of FO3 and beyond.
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Jan 14, 2024 22:27
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Alchenar posted:e: also they clearly needed to work backwards from there being only 6 systems with cities on them. "But then how come random people can build huge outposts and facilities in every single other system in the game and nobody cares, if one person building one outpost started a war because they had a Freestar decal on their ship?" "STOP ASKING QUESTIONS"
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Jan 14, 2024 22:32
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thanks, exactly, none of this makes any fricking sense, also, lets completely ignore the existence of LIST I mean, again, c'mon, we are giving this more thought than the creators of the game did.
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Jan 14, 2024 22:38
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The actual gamplay mechanics get even funnier when you consider that 1. The Two Major Factions have fought multiple wars over restricting each other to 4 systems apiece, in an extremely "mom said you can't do that" sort of way 2. Said wars have left the more powerful faction at canonical risk of having their entire remaining space navy knocked over by a pirate faction if said pirate faction manges to get their hands on the contents of one (1) armored bank 3. Pirate/merc factions explicitly have a larger presence across the galaxy than either of the two major factions, but it's fine because they're not running Major Faction Decals the more you think about it the more stupid it gets
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Jan 14, 2024 22:47
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Why were the Va’Ruun involved in the colony war armistice anyway? It feels like having ISIS mediate a war between the US and Canada.
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Jan 14, 2024 23:16
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Apparently at the time they were Another Big Faction and then they all....I guess simultaneously went space mad, with the literal sole exception of the one ambassador in the embassy? The fact that we explicitly don't know anything about them means it's a bit harder to say "that's stupid" but that's probably where the DLC is going to fill in something to actively say "that's pretty stupid" at, eventually
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Jan 14, 2024 23:23
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:Apparently at the time they were Another Big Faction and then they all....I guess simultaneously went space mad, with the literal sole exception of the one ambassador in the embassy? They weren’t a big faction though- they left and then came back and went all apeshit on exterminating the nonbelievers the first time anyone saw them. Then the UC and Freestar hosed them up til a new leader who wasn’t as hardline “kill everyone for not following our religion” took over. don’t understand how they’re a faction anyone would negotiate with, it’s like letting 1945 Nazi germany negotiate terms. They lost but are somehow a nation state player with places they did terror attacks against?
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Jan 14, 2024 23:34
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Everything about the Va’Ruun screams 'villain faction who discovered the truth behind the Unity but want to use for own malign purposes' except that got cut at some point in favour of the Starborn faction war thing. They're the Mythic Dawn/Aldmeri Dominion/Dragon Cult in space. "Oh you believe there's an ancient being that has the power to 'reset' the world and only the chosen will survive this reset?" Alchenar fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Jan 14, 2024 |
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Jan 14, 2024 23:35
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Its all very "poo poo guys, we need *Something* to make sense for the DLC with the absolute minimum retconning" snakes, dragons, breaks, all the same no?
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Jan 14, 2024 23:50
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I half wonder if the Va'run jihad might have been the big bad originally. It would make a LOT of sense and provide an actual reason for the player to be running around between the two great powers trying to get on everyone's good side as a prelude to brokering a peace and facing the greater thread. It would make sense if someone up the food chain said it sounded too political and axed it fairly late in the story boarding process.
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Jan 14, 2024 23:56
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I don’t think it was, just because the whole game has no greater stakes. Like, at all. It doesn’t even feel like there was a threat that was removed, it feels like they thought the hunter/emissary thing was a great plot even though from how the whole unity thing is written, you could just wait a few months and they’d both leave for another universe.
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Jan 15, 2024 00:01
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I think it's more that they were going to do the same main plot they always do, but Todd Howard instead fixated on the Unity and resetting the Galaxy concept. And I think it has to be that, because this is Todd Howard's passion project and the Unity is the only thing that is new and unique about Starfield. e: ^^ imagine a version of the story where going through the unity destroys the universe and everyone in it (basically the Unity through the prism of Va'ruun religion). Now the Va'ruun going 'oh gently caress we gotta get everyone together and get to the unity only we can't tell anyone why because that'll start the clock on the race' makes a lot of sense. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 15, 2024 00:02
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Cyrano4747 posted:I half wonder if the Va'run jihad might have been the big bad originally. It would make a LOT of sense and provide an actual reason for the player to be running around between the two great powers trying to get on everyone's good side as a prelude to brokering a peace and facing the greater thread. Ok, this is just basically fanfic and backseat game dev at this point, but if you did the Va'run kind of like the Reapers in ME it could have given a solid reason for the whole galaxy reset thing. You run around getting everyone together to fight the big awful fight, battles are fought, some of them are lost. Companions you have come to care about die. The first run through the game is basically hard-coded to have the "bad ending." Only alongside everything else you've been pumping up your Space Thu'um with Constellation. Maybe snek ISIS is also doing the same thing, so you're fighting them instead of Starborn while looking for temples. So they're burning their way across the galaxy and by the skin of your loving teeth you collect all the dragon balls before they do and grab the Unity. The universe is hosed, so the answer is NG+ that poo poo and, with the knowledge you've gained, do better this time. There's your NG+, NG++, etc hook. You're re-doing history over and over again to try and get better outcomes and stop the genocidal holy war. In NG+ maybe you already know the Big Deal Secret that you had to quest half of the first game to find out in order to bring together the Federation and the Space Cowboys (note: I legit can't remember their names at this point lol), so that gives you a jump and helps you avoid some early losses. Maybe you also know the Va'run's early objectives so you shank them and stall them out there. Maybe you can do a clean run where you "win" in NG+, maybe you need to get additional info and close additional loops to do it in NG++. Anyways, that would have been a fun game. Thank you for attending my
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Jan 15, 2024 00:06
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Yeah, but if you do that how do you silo off every single quest so that nothing influences anything else? Seriously I think some Bethesda higher ups were picky eaters as kids and carried that over to their design philosophy.
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Jan 15, 2024 00:34
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The Va'ruun are racing ahead to enter the Unity and if you gently caress around too much you'll spontaneously get a NG+ sequence while in the middle of your waterfall date with Sarah. But who's to say that's a bad thing, really.
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Jan 15, 2024 01:18
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:The actual gamplay mechanics get even funnier when you consider that The bank ship that needed a giant cargo hold to hold all the digital money, but you can download all that money onto a single usb drive. Also the bank ship was disabled by EM radiation of a gas giant trapping everyone there forever and you need a macguffin to get close enough to the ship to not die, also this digital money was completely unaffected by the EM that completely destroyed the electronics of the ship.
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Jan 15, 2024 01:26
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It’s not like they even need the snake people faction for DLC. Just add a new system off in the corner, and “oh no a previously unknown race of aliens is using this as a home base to attack our colonies! Better get everyone to unite and kill them off!”
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Jan 15, 2024 01:31
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webmeister posted:It’s not like they even need the snake people faction for DLC. Just add a new system off in the corner, and “oh no a previously unknown race of aliens is using this as a home base to attack our colonies! Better get everyone to unite and kill them off!” hmm sounds complicated
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Jan 15, 2024 01:33
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Flowing Thot posted:The bank ship that needed a giant cargo hold to hold all the digital money, but you can download all that money onto a single usb drive. Also the bank ship was disabled by EM radiation of a gas giant trapping everyone there forever and you need a macguffin to get close enough to the ship to not die, also this digital money was completely unaffected by the EM that completely destroyed the electronics of the ship. Which somehow was discovered by a prisoner in a jail where they couldn’t figure out heaters.
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Jan 15, 2024 01:33
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is it true that they only had a single credited writer on starfield
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Jan 15, 2024 01:37
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orcane posted:That's very Bethesda at least. Bombs fell decades ago but everywhere you go it looks like it has been less than a year. i seen a rant video about the fallout TV series and the author said the same thing for a world set 200 years after the NCR, they are not interested in a good story only a endlessly milkable theme park Palladium fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 15, 2024 01:45
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Herstory Begins Now posted:is it true that they only had a single credited writer on starfield That Alan Smithee really hosed this whole thing up.
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Jan 15, 2024 01:45
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Flowing Thot posted:The bank ship that needed a giant cargo hold to hold all the digital money, but you can download all that money onto a single usb drive. Also the bank ship was disabled by EM radiation of a gas giant trapping everyone there forever and you need a macguffin to get close enough to the ship to not die, also this digital money was completely unaffected by the EM that completely destroyed the electronics of the ship. I'm so, so incredibly pissed that they signposted that literally with an audio log of a dude explaining they had to steal the thing powering the EM protection on the money to protect the ship and then it just wasn't a thing, at all. I was fully expecting the old prisoner to have gotten trapped on the ship with a giant pile of scrambled chests and empty, scrambled credit sticks and died there, and the reason the bank didn't care about it in the first place is because they knew the storage was hosed and the lives of the people on it weren't worth the effort and then we'd go back to the pirate guy like "yeah the legend was true but it was worthless and a waste of time" and it'd be a lovely thing but everyone pulls together under the sysdef threat (or the pirate guy buckles under his shattered worldview and the 2IC just shoots him or something since it's bethesda writing pirates) and we fight anyways and win, and we don't have the money to just buy the biggest fleet in the universe but that's okay we're still pirates with the balls to challenge sysdef and win so the big money box doesn't matter in the long run But no, it was legitmate end to end and the bank and/or the recipients of the money just didn't care about losing a...giant ship full of enough credits to buy off every pirate and merc in the settled systems
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Jan 15, 2024 01:51
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webmeister posted:It’s not like they even need the snake people faction for DLC. Just add a new system off in the corner, and “oh no a previously unknown race of aliens is using this as a home base to attack our colonies! Better get everyone to unite and kill them off!” If they do have the the DLC focus on the snake people, they should make it clear that 100% the crazy snake cult people are right and there is a space snake god. Could then have one of their members jump and see a different animal god and have a schism in the church. War between competing space god factions might at least make things a bit more interesting. at the very least a bit more space mysticism couldn't hurt at this stage.
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Jan 15, 2024 01:53
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I just realised that “DLC plot” I posted earlier is literally the entire UC questline lol
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Jan 15, 2024 02:06
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Flowing Thot posted:The bank ship that needed a giant cargo hold to hold all the digital money, but you can download all that money onto a single usb drive. Also the bank ship was disabled by EM radiation of a gas giant trapping everyone there forever and you need a macguffin to get close enough to the ship to not die, also this digital money was completely unaffected by the EM that completely destroyed the electronics of the ship. If you find all the audio logs it's explained that the bank chests are engineered with stupidly overkill EM shielding, and that the crew hooked them all together to save the ship (allowing them to die of thirst instead). It's not clear why pulling the money out of the chests disables them so the ship can blow up, though.
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Jan 15, 2024 02:10
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