Character Name: Edgewater Class: Soldier Playthrough: 1st

Uhm… we just got attacked by the Starborn. <See spoiler...> is dead. The Starborn Hunter attacked The Eye first, then came into The Lodge. We had to run away with the artifacts. The Hunter actually decided to let us go. We used the opportunity to try and help everyone at The Eye. Everyone survived except <See spoiler...>. I kinda feel like its my fault.

I should have stopped going on all those missions to get those artifacts. At first, I could get the artifacts with no opposition. But eventually, a Starborn would show up right in front of an artifact to try and fight us. A Starborn also started showing up after getting powers from those temples. I started feeling uneasy about going after more artifacts, but I also believe that was the only way to draw them out. Well, we did draw them out, and they hit us hard and now <See spoiler...> is dead.

I wonder if me deciding to defend The Lodge and the artifacts, instead of flying to The Eye to help them, is what got <See spoiler...> killed. I should have decided to defend The Eye isntead. We didn't do much defending of The Lodge anyway. All we did was run away and get people killed. And now a part of New Atlantis is destroyed in the process.

Flying to The Eye after the attack on New Atlantis...

On my next playthrough, I'm definitely going to The Eye to try and save <See spoiler...>

This has actually affected me more than I thought it would. I was trying to distance myself from <See spoiler...> because things were getting a little too cozy, and that character was starting to rely on me heavily. Turns out, that was the game developer's way of foreshadowing; something was going to happen to that companion, which explains the behavior. Anyway, now I definitely need to know what the Starborn are, what they are after, why they are doing what they are doing, and how to fight back. Can't lose any more people to them.

I went to the UC Security Office to talk to the Va'ruun prisoner to help find out more about this Unity thing. I ended up talking to Sergeant Yumi. Not sure if I wasn't supposed to, but this guy pretty much gave me no choice but to go with him.

Then I get interrogated by this Commander Ikande because “I committed some crimes”. This guy wants me to go undercover in the Crimson Fleet. Why? They didn't even tell me what crimes I've committed. I'm trying to find out more about the Starborn and Unity to stop other people in Constellation from getting killed, and here comes this commander who can't get his job done on his own, tries to blackmail me into going undercover so he can take the Crimson Fleet down. I refused because I was being coerced, as opposed to being asked for help. And I still don't know what crimes I committed to justify them blackmailing me like that.

So refusing this commander's offer got me sent to a prison in Cydonia. Apparently I spent 5 days in prison and lost 500XP. I also am now an enemy of UC SysDef?! Like what the eff! I refused the offer because I didn't want to do it. How did that instantly make me an enemy of the UC SysDef department? It's crazy. If that's the case, I might as well join the Crimson Fleet if the UC SysDef is going to hunt me down.

So after getting out of jail, I go back to New Atlantis to talk to the Va'ruun prisoner. Sergeant Yumi is still there. I talk to him to ask if I can talk to the prisoner, but no such option exists. And the guy acts like he's never seen me at all. Freaking forgot he made me follow him without giving me any choice. This part of the game is broken.

Then I try to see how to talk to prisoner. There is a hallway that says “Security Staff Only”. Since no one was talking to me about the prisoner, I thought I'd walk in there, but I was fully expecting the security personel to get mad, because I am not “Security Staff”. But no, no one pays attention and I was able to walk by myself into the prison without anyone batting an eye. This part of the game seems broken too.

Tags: #GameLog #Starfield

Every few months, I see a post online (usually on YouTube or Reddit), about someone who has “spent hundreds of hours playing Skyrim.” They talk about the freedom, the exploration, the endless quests, and the world that never seems to run out of surprises. And they can't get enough of it.

I tried to be one of those people. I really did. But it just doesn't work out for me. For one reason or another, I find myself switching to a different game and never really feeling the urge to get back to Skyrim.

I can see what makes it special to other people, but it just doesn't have the same hold on me.

A few days ago, after reinstalling Starfield yet again — this time to focus on leveling up my piloting skills so I can finally fly Class B and C ships — I realized something: what Skyrim is to so many gamers, Starfield is to me.

If my save file is to be believed, I've spent over 300 hours playing Starfield. And that's on the same character I started the game with. There's no other game in my library that I've spent this much time on.

I know a lot of gamers hate Starfield. I'm not sure if its because it launched as an Xbox/PC exclusive. Or if its because of the many flaws that the game has (and it has many). But every few months, I also run into posts that say Starfield is dead. And yet, here I am, loading up the game for the nth time, ready to take another crack at these Crimson Fleet pirates.

I might be in the minority here, but I think Starfield is a great game. And I just wanted to share that. I hope more people give it a try.

Tags: #Starfield #Reflection

Level 18 now in Starfield. I had to reload a save to avoid getting the Rank 2 Weapon Engineering skill. I initially got it because I wanted to be able to craft suppressor mods for my weapons. However, after unlocking it, I found that I still needed to do more Research Projects before I can actually craft a suppressor. On top of that, I was missing materials for the Research Projects. So I unlocked the skill, but couldn’t make use of it right away. In hindsight, I don’t think it was worth it getting it at this point in the game.

So yeah, I reloaded an older save file, and this time I decided to max out my Ballistics weapon skill. The difference here is that this skill upgrade takes effect immediately.

I then decided to roam around outside the Lodge and didn’t realize how much I was missing. I found a store called Centaurion Arsenal that sells really nice modified weapons. I found an Assassin’s Beowulf, which means a Beowulf rifle that already has a suppressor and a medium scope on it. This was what I wanted to be able craft via the weapon engineering skill. But in this case, I could simply buy the weapon and use it right away. I don't even have to worry about finding materials for my research projects and all that tedious stuff.

So what I’m realizing is, early on in the game, you’ll most likely benefit from taking skills that have an immediate effec (ie. Combat/Weapon skills), as opposed to one that requires more hoops to jump through before you can actually make use of it. Also, enemies always drop weapons. If none of the enemies drop the kind of modified weapon you’re looking for, then you will most likely be able to find it at a vendor.

Assassin's Beowulf

I’m loving the Assassin's Beowulf. It is now my preferred sniper rifle in the game. I previously used a Suppressed Lawgiver as my sniper rifle, but the Assassin's Beowulf is superior in a number of ways:

• The mag capacity is bigger. This means you can take a lot more shots before needing to reload. The Lawgiver is limited to just 6 shots before needing a reload.
• Because you can take more shots before reloading, it is easier to take down a moving target.
• The base damage is slightly higher on the Beowulf vs the Lawgiver.
• The Beowulf uses 7.77mm ammo, which seems to be the most readily available ammo in the game.
• Aside from a bigger mag capacity, you also get the benefit of a faster fire rate. Again this makes taking down moving targets a lot easier.

Tags: #GameLog #Starfield

Just had an encounter with Spacers (basically space pirates) while traveling to a different planet. At first, they were happy at having someone to bully. But after realizing that I was flying the Razorleaf, the ship that belonged to The Mantis, they apologized and grav-jumped away LOL. This surprised me as I didn't know that would happen when flying the Razorleaf.

The Razorleaf...

The Razorleaf is a starship that was piloted by The Mantis, a space vigilante. If you finish the quest line for The Mantis, one of the rewards you get is the Razorleaf. You also get the Mantis armor set, which is one of the best armor sets in the game IMO.

The Razorleaf in its stock form (you can customize/modify ships in this game), is arguably better than the Frontier (the first ship you get in the game). It has more interior space (has 2 levels) for your crew to move around in. And if I remember correctly, it could haul a bit more cargo and had slightly better engine and weapons. That said, I still like the looks of the Frontier inside and out.

While I don't have an interior shot of the Razorleaf, this is what the Frontier looks like from the inside.

You can see above how my companions have nice dedicated seats to help with flying the ship. In the Razorleaf, your companions have a small cramped seat, kinda like the ones flight stewards sit on in a big airplane.

Must be noted that the second floor of the Razorleaf starship has some weapon racks you could put weapons on. So, I placed my best unused weapons on there. After going into Magnar to retrieve an artifact, I get back to the Razorleaf and my weapons are gone :(

^ This was a bug in the game that if I'm not mistaken, has already been patched. That said, I would save my game before putting weapons on the weapon racks, just to be sure.

Starting to get really addicted to Starfield. As you level up in the game, you gain more skills and powers. This opens up the game, giving you more combat options, more dialogue options, more ways to tackle quests. The game is slowly getting better and better.

I’m also enjoying the quests. They seem to be a new experience for me.

I also like the random encounters in space.

• One time I ran into a class on a field trip out in space. Their ship was damaged and needed repairs. Talked to the teacher via comms and laughed as the students made their own funny remarks in the background. Anyway, provided them the ship parts they needed for repairs and they were able to get back home.
• There was also this one time when I answered a distress call from a scientific outpost. That one turned into a long running mission. I didn’t mind it though. I was enjoying trying to strategically take out the bad guys.

Tags: #GameLog #Starfield

To finish the “Check out your ship's inventory” mini quest in Starfield, you need to find the Cargo Hold in your ship and intentionally take out an item from the Cargo Hold. It is not enough to just browse the contents of the Cargo Hold.

This is Neon, the 2nd or 3rd big city I visited in the game. From the outside it looks like some big fish market out in the middle of an ocean. But from the inside...

...from the inside you will see that it's actually a cyber punk inspired city. Reminds me of the cities in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

The Astral Lounge in Neon has people you can hire as crew for your ship or outposts.

I ran into a bounty hunter guy hanging out by the side of a door. So I'm guessing this city has a place where you can sign up to be a bounty hunter. Cool!

Note that there are some minor spoilers listed below...

For the mission with Walter Stroud that was to take place in the Astral Lounge, I managed to get security on our side. I also managed to gain control of the security doors in the meeting room. Getting security on your side only gets you one security officer though. I thought I would get like a team LOL.

Anyway, I didn't have to use the security officer option, nor did I need to use the security door option, because I managed to convince the seller to accept our trade for the artifact.

However, after getting out of the meeting room, we were confronted by a Slayton agent who wanted the artifact back. The dialogue in this confrontation gave me the option to actually have security handle the Slayton agent. But I didn't use it because I was hoping to de-escalate the situation. I ended up failing to persuade the Slayton agent to back down. He started shooting at me, so I started shooting back, the security officer started shooting, Andreja started shooting and the Slayton agent died pretty quickly. On my next play-through, I'll make use of the security officer option just because I'm curious what would happen if I do.

Tags: #GameLog #Starfield

Character Name: Edgewater Playthrough: 1st

Still playing Starfield and the initial excitement I think has worn off a little. Below are a couple of my thoughts on the game.

Persuasion System/Minigame

The dialogue Persuasion system/minigame seems unfinished, or clunky, or at times broken. Some of the conversations end up with unrealistic results. At one point the person you're talking to is adamant about pushing their point of view, then you say something very minor, then all of a sudden they have a huge change of heart and now they're agreeing with you. It seems very unrealistic to me.

I had one such conversation with a gang leader, whose gang was holding up a bank and had hostages. I used the Persuasion system to try to get them to back down and release the hostages. My initial dialogue choice was a hard stance, basically saying something to the effect of, “Hey man, no one is going to bail you out, you might as well release the hostages because the Marshal is not going to agree with your demands.” To this statement the gang leader responded with something like, “You want to be a hardass? I can be a hardass too. You either cater to our demands or we'll kill the hostages.” At this point, I was convinced there was no way to persuade the gang leader to release the hostages.

I do not remember if I had more turns in the Persuasion system/minigame at this point, but I remember shifting the conversation to asking about their demands. The gang leader said that they wanted a ship and that they'll fly out into space with the hostages, then release them somewhere safe, and any attempt at stopping them will result with the hostages getting killed.

So, then I tried to stall and said it was going to take awhile to get a ship. The gang leader was smart and said there are a lot of ships in and around the city, which was true. Then I said that the Marshal was simply not going to let them get away with a ship, but the gang leader didn't want to hear any of it. So, again I was convinced that there's no persuading this gang leader to just give up the hostages.

Finally, the conversation shifted to me saying something like, “Hey man, I'm your only ticket out of here, your bank robbery charge is going to turn into a murder charge if hostages are going to get killed.” After hearing this, the gang leader went from a hardass to a softie. He then said that they screwed up and didn't intend to end up having hostages, and that yes, I was right, they'll give up and go to jail instead.

What?!?! You've gotta be kidding me. There's just no way.

I didn't know whether to laugh or be disgusted with how that turned out. There's no way that hardass gang leader would have a change of heart like that, considering how aggressive his responses were to me earlier. That whole quest dialogue/conversation to me was just broken.

Ship Combat

The ship combat in space is, I'm not sure how to say it, confusing. It also feels lacking. There is no radar in the game that tells you where the enemy spaceship is. Actually, there is a circle in the middle of the screen, kind of like a compass, that has arrows that point to where the enemy could be. But it doesn't tell you if they are in front of you or behind you. Worse, it doesn't show you how close an enemy spaceship is in relation to your spaceship. It leads to a lot of turning, and turning, and turning until you see the bad guy. It doesn't allow you to perform maneuvers like you would do with fighter jets, because you don't exactly know where the enemy spaceship is. So what you end up doing is just to follow the arrows. The problem with following the arrows, is that it can and usually brings you into the crosshairs of other enemy ships. It's a mess in my opinion.

In the screenshot above, you can see what the UI looks like when piloting a ship in cockpit view. The ring in the center is your radar/compass. The red arrows are the enemy ships. There's nothing on the ships dashboard that gives you any more information.

This same problem exists when you're on the defensive end. You see on the screen it says, enemy missiles locked on, but you cannot know for certain where the attack is coming from. You see red arrows on the screen, that shows where the enemy ships are, but where or which one is the bad guy targeting you? Who knows. And without knowing whether they are above or below you, or in front or behind you, it's hard to determine what kind of evasive maneuver you can do. So, all I'm left with is to use the Boost feature to try and break the missile lock, then turn around and follow the arrow. By the time I get my target in the center of my screen, the rest of the enemy ships are already shooting at me. It's total chaos. And while that might be the case in a real space battle, the game's UI just doesn't have enough to help you out here.

It leads to some very frustrating loses in ship combat, as well as some very questionable wins. Like those ship battles where I won against three enemy Spacers. I have no clue if I won because I was a good pilot, or if my ship was just superior to the enemy ships. It's just... lacking. I feel like they could have done better.

Gunplay

As far as the gunplay goes, I miss VATS. Yes, I know this is not a Fallout game, but without it, the gunplay is just well average gunplay. Playing on the console, there is the occasional hard to aim moments because you're playing with a controller. VATS alleviated this for Fallout 4 and added an element of excitement to gunplay. There's no such thing here. So, you just shoot the bad guys until they are dead. And because everyone is wearing armored spacesuits, there is a level of sponginess to the enemies. You have to keep shooting and shooting and shooting.

I also hoped they would have added aim-assist for console players, but I don't think they did.

Also, the enemies are all able to use cover, but your character cannot seem to do the same. You're just standing out there or crouching behind cover, but you're not really making use of cover. I wished they would have implemented a cover system similar to The Division, where you can get into cover, shoot from cover, and have aim-assist if your crosshairs are near the enemy. But they did not and it makes the gunplay to me just average.

Tags: #Starfield #GameLog #FirstImpressions

...loving the Photo Mode in this game!

Tags: #Starfield #GameScreenshots

My character's name is Edgewater. He used to be a Soldier before deciding he wanted to try living life as a regular citizen. He heard of a mining expedition in the planet Vectera and decided to join the crew. And this is where the game starts...

One of the earliest scenes in the game. My character was about to head out into a mine with Supervisor Lin and Heller.

Headed down into the mines. You can play Starfield in first person view or third person view.

So between here and the next paragraphs below, my character went from the game's introduction, to being in a new Earth-like city. I totally blanked out and didn't take any screenshots or write down any notes. So the next paragraph is the first set of notes/journal entries I have about the game.

Note that you will most likely run into spoilers starting from here on out. I'll try my best to minimize them, but I cannot guarantee this post will be spoiler free.

Early on in the game, you are given access to a ship, which allows you to travel to different planets in the game. This is one such planet. I cannot recall if this is New Atlantis or some other planet.

There is a “Research Project” system in the game. This is how you unlock access to weapon mods, spacesuit mods, outpost building, etc... Researching projects requires you to have the resources to complete the project.

I found resources I needed for research projects in the UC Distribution Center that is located in the Commerical District of New Atlantis.

New Atlantis is the first major city you'll visit in the game. It looks like a high end luxurious place to live in. Below is a couple of screenshots of what it looks like.

Picked up lung damage and a resulting cough when I visited Procyon III. The aid item that can cure those ailments is called a Boosted Injector. I found it while exploring an occupied cave that is full of dead miners...

^ While exploring planets, you are subject to environmental damage, depending on what kind of environment exist on that given planet. Your suit can protect you only for a short moment of time, before you start suffering the effects of environment damage. This is the beep that you hear when you're out exploring a planet. It will start beeping faster and faster as your spacesuit starts losing the ability to protect you from environment damage.

For some reason, the first place where I landed in Procyon III, wouldn't show me an anomaly on my scanner. I went back to the ship, pulled up the quest/mission tab again and set course for the “Scanner Anomaly” location again. This time though, when I landed, I got an extra XP for discovering a location, so maybe I was in the wrong location in the first place.

Anyway, I was able to find the distortion on the scanner by moving it around in a circle, scanning the horizon until I notice the scanner ring flicker. I kept moving in the direction where it kept flickering, until I found a temple. I found a huge artifact in that temple and it gave me powers.

^ These “powers” can be thought of like the different shouts you unlock in Skyrim.

After a slow start, the game is now starting to become interesting to me.

Tags: #GameLog #Starfield