As I keep exploring the vastness of the Settled Systems (now after finishing the main quest and jumping to NG+), the main cities and bigger settlements of Starfield remain its most fascinating locations. I already discussed at length why I think Bethesda finally nailed what makes big towns and cities truly come to life, and now I’d like to focus on one specific part of New Atlantis – the capital of the United Colonies – which I believe every player should visit at least once to learn about Starfield‘s in-game history.
There are lots of interesting bits of history and pieces of world-building to learn about in Starfield. Bethesda has always excelled at creating compelling worlds from scratch, but it’s been a while since we jumped into an all-new universe from the veteran studio, and while the Settled Systems and the future presented by Starfield might not seem too far-fetched, much of the lore may fly over your head if you don’t pay enough attention to certain conversations. Luckily, there’s a perfect way to get brought up to speed, which is to make a quick visit to the UC Vanguard’s museum.
Related: Starfield Modders Have Fixed the Game’s Frustrating UI
Screenshot by The Escapist
The game does point you in the direction of the MAST building during the early beats of the main quest, but actually exploring its Orientation Hall, which is a history museum of sorts, is relatively easy to miss. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have learned of its existence had it not been for the friendly offer to join the UC Vanguard and bring peace to the Settled Systems through service that guarantees citizenship (big uh oh for those familiar with Starship Troopers).
Even if you’re not role-playing a “hoorah” kind of soldier/merc, I actually recommend going through the UC Vanguard training and the Orientation Hall; you’ll get to improve your piloting skills in a stress-free environment, and more importantly, the walk through the museum is quite valuable. At the end of the process you can ultimately choose not to join the Vanguard anyway, like in other factions’ early missions. I mean, they kind of sound like jerks, and some of the late-game story encounters with them aren’t exactly positive.
One of the biggest questions that has cropped up time and again for the last week or so is: What happened to Earth exactly? Well, Starfield‘s history lesson gets straight to the point in retelling the early history of interstellar space exploration. Long story short: in 2150, we learned that the planet’s magnetosphere would collapse, so space travel and colonization became priorities. But that’s just the beginning of the Settled Systems’ troubled history.
Related: Seeing Earth’s Fate in Starfield Broke My Heart
Screenshot by The Escapist
You can read this helpful article on the Colony War (which started in 2308) and the earlier post-Earth conflicts that happened in the century prior to the game’s events. Getting all this information from characters, books, and notes is totally possible, as special attention was paid to making the Settled Systems as lived-in as possible, yet having the option to quickly learn who’s who and what each major faction wants is something we don’t get most of the time in massive video games.
I generally enjoyed Final Fantasy XVI earlier this summer, but one of its narrative shortcomings was that it bombarded players with the names of Game of Thrones-esque figures, several nations, and plenty of convoluted magic nonsense as soon as it started. There’s a very specific artistry to bringing people into a massive universe with an even larger past (the original Star Wars remains the best example of this in modern fiction), and FFXVI simply didn’t have the patience to organically unveil its complex world to players.
However, there was one aspect of the grand narrative in FFXVI that I really enjoyed: the option to stop any cutscene to get detailed info about the on-screen characters and recent developments. Later on, this idea of actually helping players munch on the recurring exposition dumps develops into a character at the hideout who masterfully narrates Valisthea’s ongoing conflicts and the more immediate past that may be relevant to understand whatever Clive and company get themselves into. This doesn’t fix the confusion felt during the earlier hours though, and its elegance doesn’t neglect the fact you’re still reading through massive texts because the game isn’t too good at showing instead of telling.
Screenshot by The Escapist
On the other hand, the solution to chewing through decades of names and history that is presented by Starfield isn’t just breezier, but also way more entertaining and faithful to the overarching design philosophy that shaped the game into existence. Bethesda Game Studios’ RPG behemoths are all about interacting with your surroundings; nothing is a mere scenery on which stuff happens. Each corner tells a story, and you’re free to piece together unspoken tales if you pay attention to the environmental storytelling of every major location. In the case of the Vanguard museum, you’re on a ride of sorts, listening to what the game – through this faction’s political point of view – has to say about past events and relevant groups of people, yet control is never taken away from you.
I loved that I can learn about the violent history of the Settled Systems at my own pace, pressing buttons like I’d do while following an audio guide in a real-life trip, or actively skipping the parts I’m knowledgeable about. I can even get up close with the items on display and touch them or look for the perfect shot outside the marked boundaries.
Bethesda still refuses to embrace heavily scripted sequences with cinematic camera angles to make the crucial scenes in their games shine, but the upside of giving us all this freedom is that we can interact with every piece of content and information we come across however we want. There’s a version of Starfield somewhere in the multiverse that looks and behaves like a cinematic blockbuster, but I’m happier welcoming a triple-A game which constantly uses with the medium’s strengths.
