September 16, 2024 (Originally posted on Neocities)
Starfield Play Journal #22 – This reminds me of that one game people like.
Continuing on from that distress signal I got, this led into one of the more interesting missions of the main story. So of course spoilers for that mission follow.
When I got to the lab that was sitting on top of some kinda mesa or something (get it, like what if the Mesa was Black), they said they didn’t send out any distress signal. But they let me in anyway to see their boss. Of course things went wrong and I kept going between timelines, the other one being where the lab had blown up andwas overrun with monsters. This ended up being more of an annoyance than anything to the people in the timeline where everyone but this one guy lived. As it turned out that one guy was the lone survivor in the other timeline, and he mentioned something to do with what he did when the lab was about to explode, whether it did or didn’t.
Eventually after switching timelines at predetermined points several more times along the way and getting further on the staff’s nerves, I ended up at a room where this scientist held a device that made the teleport points visible, looking like those things that have to be collected to get new space wizard powers, and this gave me the ability to switch at those specific points. Not quite the mid-jump high action timeline switching in Titanfall 2, but they did at least copy a few things like having to deal with enemies in both worlds simultaneously, though there weren’t any other odd effects like what would have happened if one of these was set in the past.
The goal was to shut off the machine in either timeline, making that one the prime one and dooming either the one guy or everyone else, but I poked around a bit and found a lab computer with options to mess with the equipment, like “degaussing” switches. I took that to mean turning things off and on again like a usual IT maneuver, and then I had to align frequencies by looking around for another note on what one to pick in both timelines in order for things to stabilize.
Somehow getting everything aligned managed to keep the lab that wasn’t blown up but also send over the survivor in the blown up timeline, alive but looking over his own corpse from the not-exploded timeline. They decided to just give me the artifact they were shooting lasers at and not mess with universes anymore. Also the survivor became a potential crew member.
After selling two dungeons’ worth of loot and upgrading other ships to get progress toward unlocking better parts for the Stargle, I went out for more space castles before following up on the secret moon base thing. One of the places I landed on had a local hour equivalent to more than a couple days of the standard clock, and for whatever reason sleeping only works in local hours, so in theory I could have slept for months easily, however I still had that funeral date to attend so I couldn’t do much power napping until I got back to the Lodge for that.
As far as the funeral itself, it was probably Bethesda’s most attempt at sad emotional dialogue, and some voice actors were giving their all in the scene. And then right after that, leaving and coming back to return to the new usual Lodge, I ended up with a mission from Barrett to get him a special space wizard power, which meant he was present while I got the power, so that meant we both got it. The power turned out to be summoning an alternate version of himself, and he found out just how different another universe can be, mainly the other him had a happy family but at the cost of Vasco having been blown up (he said they’re making another but really don’t let things happen to the kinda cute token robot, even if he sometimes gets stuck in the line of fire of my AOE shotguns) and also the war between the UC and the Space Cowboys still ongoing which probably means lots of cool mech action. Also a random Starborn showed up as usual, just with more delay and a ship arrival as well, and I guess this was meant to be showing off the new double Barrett power, but I just flew up and explosive shotgunned the enemy like usual. The ship went missing after this though so I couldn’t swipe it.
I then tried the power myself, but couldn’t talk to/seduce my other self, so I just shot my other self to see what would happen and the other me immediately disappeared. Not as fun as I’d thought, but I still think the most useful power at the moment is the infinite air thing given how much I’m running around over carry capacity. It’s the power I actually use for that reason.
After a few more ship upgrades to get a better reactor fitting a further-reaching grav drive, and encountering Space Grandma again as well as a shanty singer, plus some fake pirates I fairly easily blew up, I finally checked out the distress signal in Charybdis. Turns out it came from a weird colony filled with clones of historical figures somehow, including ones where I’m not even sure they’d be able to get DNA for them, unless there was some weird Futurama head-in-a-jar element here. The distress signal was just to retrieve a crapload of copper, but really I had to discuss a plan on what to do with the automated systems that were keeping them there. Some wanted to leave like Genghis Khan, others wanted to stay like FDR, and others wanted to “finish the mission” whatever that meant like this desert queen that wasn’t Cleopatra. I thought it meant that they would leave and become conquerors or something so I figured I’d try helping with that. Also Wyatt Earp told me he was really H.H. Holmes and I decided to keep his secret for now.
After going through a distant base that was apparently where previous clone iterations stayed before it was overrun with monsters, including ridiculously overleveled bullet sponges for whatever reason, I had to give the info to the chosen faction on how to get past a locked computer, which the key was located on an even more distant ship out by some system.
Then things fell apart once I returned with the key, as the factions wanted to discuss something, mainly that Genghis Khan’s faction wanted to leave. That was what I thought I was doing so I just ended up going with his side, which somehow meant I had to blast both leaders of the other factions. At least I got their clothes for the trouble.
After another fight through the lower parts of the base from earlier, I gave Genghis Khan super admin access so he could install Windows XP Gold or whatever, and the remaining clones could go free to conquer the galaxy I guess. Of course, when I returned to tell him this, everyone suddenly attacked me, which turned out was a bug. So after reloading I was able to successfully tell him that he was the super admin and also recruit a clone of Amelia Earhart to the crew as well.
And then everyone suddenly became hostile soon after that. Quality game. At least after clearing out all the hostile clones, the named ones were still left, so mission complete. In fact the first one I saw still alive was H.H. Holmes so I thought it was funny that the sole survivor was the murderer clone, but then I saw the rest of the named survivors wandering around. And I never had enough copper to meet the initial requirement I got called out there for in the first place, but they’re leaving anyway.