September 14, 2024 (Originally posted on Neocities)
Starfield Play Journal #21 – The Part Where Things Really Happen
Probably should mention to be clear this has big spoilers for the central climax of the main quest, serious stuff for those who take this stuff seriously. I admittedly kinda didn’t.
I was told to go up and fix the Eye, the Constellation satellite station thing that finds space castles. This was mainly just finding where people were and pressing the use key on a thing near to them. Sarah had to stay behind because the thing she was trying to fix broke. I then had to pair up with the space cowboy Sam to get another artifact from another personality, this one being a collector of all sorts of random things. I let him talk me onto the ship as a prospective seller, then I followed the guy to his vault where the artifact was. I couldn’t just buy it from him so I just swiped it and everyone went hostile, but then it turned out stabbing the guy a few times was enough for him to surrender with all of his guards and just let me loot the rest of the ship.
After that is when things got serious, as the Eye was attacked by the Hunter guy I’d encountered in a coffee shop or bar or something way back toward the start, but then he was also about to attack the Lodge, and I had the Big Moral Choice to either help whoever was on the Eye or defend the Lodge and get the actual things the Hunter wanted out of there. I ended up choosing the latter, with the space cowboy still with me alongside most of the other non-companion members as I blasted my way to the ship and managed to rack up an over 40000 credit bounty through collateral damage because I was using one of my war crime shotguns, but no big deal once again, just had to pay it off before I could meet back up at the Eye. The Hunter was also impressed with how much damage he took from my cluster missile disguised as a shotgun and gave me a weapon as a random gift.
Getting to the Eye, everyone was relatively fine, except Sarah who was the exact opposite of fine and in a giant pool of blood and already dead. My guess is that if I went up to the Eye instead I would have been saying “see you, space cowboy” afterward. This was the big dramatic moment of the story and it also meant I’d have one fewer crew member on the ship until I put points into whatever skill that is. I eventually ended up having Sam on the ship crew instead, and I noticed he also somehow helps add more cargo space with his skills, but only while I’m actually on the ship, otherwise I’m stuck with the same cargo limit I already had.
I also had to move the artifacts out of the city, and I had the choice to either put them on my ship and get into spaceship battles more often, or drop them at some remote outpost and not worry about anything. Given I end up in spaceship battles at random anyway, I figured the latter would work best.
The religious guy of the group hung onto the word “Unity” that the Hunter kept mentioning, and directed me to talk to the space priest of the space church nearby, who then directed me to talk to the space atheist in the Well and the snake enthusiast in prison to get different stories about this Unity Pilgrim. Those put together became a coded message to find a location on a planet for more answers. Following that message into a bunker of sorts I got another message to visit another planet, and after visiting the spot on that one I got a final destination with no foxes or items.
Then things got weird and a lot of exposition was dumped, as I arrived at another weird alien ship and was allowed to dock for a meeting. First, it turned out that Unity is not an engine but some kind of multiverse gate. Second, this other Emissary character was an alternate Sarah from a universe where my character died during the attack. Third, somehow the Hunter was an evil copy of the space priest I talked to earlier. Fourth, apparently the goal of all the Starborn, including these two, is to collect all the plot devices and open Unity to get more powerful, or I guess end up becoming a Starborn if not already one. Fifth, I couldn’t pull out my gun just to see what would happen if I started blasting. No severed prophecy threads here. Sixth, I feel like they played all their hands at once with the plot since now we know what the artifacts are for so the stakes are largely just “get all the things and win” now, not so much the mystery of it all.
So after all that, I was also told to visit Earth’s Moon, which I’ll get around to later, since I’d visited before anyway. A bunch of quests opened up and the first thing I did was go to the Lodge to start the next round of hunting down artifacts, but also get a location on another space castle. This time the Starborn at the castle kinda fell into a wall or something before I could blow them up so I just ended up leaving. Then I started finding the artifacts once again. The first was a very typical find at the exact same kind of moon base layout I’d been to several times, this time with peaceful pirates and another fairly easy grab. Being a space pirate myself does have its benefits to not catch me into fights constantly. The second was not typical and spawned a new mission that should hopefully be interesting.
Also, I think I may have managed to upgrade the Stargle to a degree where I could fly out to that Charybdis distress signal I was trying to get to earlier at this point, but I can’t be spending too long in unknown corners of the galaxy because I have a date to attend a funeral within a number of standard time days. And I should take care of this main quest distress signal that I’m at first.