October 12, 2023 (Originally posted on Cohost)
Starfield Play Journal #12 - The Corporate Dream
Once again, it was Starfield time. Instead of becoming a pirate for now, I decided to actually work for the company I joined long ago on Planet Cyberpunk, which mainly consisted of running to a thing, crouching, activating the thing, and running back for the next mission. That's stealth, and also a sign of how terrible security is at a lot of these space companies, because somehow the offices are just open to the public to wander around without question, aside from random idle lines that do question that with no actual consequence. A bit later in the questline, things ended up getting a little... interesting? Or questionable really.
Some of these "stealth" quests mixed it up by adding another thing before the run-crouch-activate thing. One had me talk to some people to convince them of something, and another quest had me get someone's gun. I tried to do the latter diplomatically, but in the end I had their gun and their ship with their body still on board, and hopefully I haven't broken the save in the long run by swiping a ship for my collection, one that honestly wasn't too great compared to the Stargle or even my modified Frontier, but I guess it's a start for greater things later if I put points in the "skill" involving being able to buy more parts. A later on one was mainly another space bandit dungeon before the sneaky grab part, though of course having a good sniping gun and a decent stealth score helped.
The questline eventually ended up in actual stealth missions, as in the "go infiltrate this place with guards running around and maybe there's distractions or ways to turn off lights but you can also knock them out with this special gun that shoots electricity but doesn't light them on fire" kind. However the penalties for getting found aren't even high aside from now the guards shoot all over the place, though having a piece of armor that granted invisibility on holding still crouched didn't hurt, but I also just ran really fast through some areas.
Also, I got a weird mind control power from the questline. Except it's not from one of those space wizard artifacts, it's good old nano-augmentation, and also it's a high tree perk that's unlockable from the level up screen outside of the missions anyway, just that the questline gives that out eventually. The writing is aware of the unfortunate implications of mind control but also kinda just glosses over it and acts like it's more a weirdly strong "suggestion", at least with a lot of the characters in that faction. I guess it's the territory of working for a morally questionable/bankrupt company taking on likewise. All I was really able to do with random NPCs outside of some kinda scripted events was make them steal fire extinguishers sometimes, so there's not even the ability of starting massive fights in the streets remotely, unless that's just a separate or upgraded power since that kind of thing has been in some of their previous games.
Of course the implications are still horrible and I wouldn't let that fly in real life, and the game does try to drive that in with every Constellation follower (except Vasco the robot, who seems almost as ride-or-die as the Adoring Fan) being mad about it if there's no motion to push against that augment by the end of the questline, which can of course be done by using that exact power, but I guess we'll see if anything comes of it in the game later since I have my doubts that it will. Also I guess I don't seem to care much about this game's setting and I'm just looking for things that are interesting in random places. Often times that ends up being bugs when they do happen.
Anyway that was me powering through the Ryujin storyline, which also unlocked their version of Infinite Quests that I'm not really bothering with for any faction, so that leaves I think two other major factions with achievements that aren't the main one. And one is the pirates that I'm still intending to get to at some point.