I worked hard to collect those 12 spaceships I’ve never used!
By Eric Frederiksen on March 2, 2024 at 6:00AM PST
When you’re a kid, playing outside in the summer as the sun starts to set, you know that the worst thing possible is going to happen: A parent is going to call you inside. You don’t want to leave the playground. Playing open-world games, especially those like Cyberpunk 2077 and the most recent Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, can sometimes feel like that–a playground that we don’t want to leave, while the developers are our parents, trying to look out for us.
These games always offer a campaign of some sort–a story to play through that takes you through the major features their game has to offer. Compelling stories, though, often bring meaningful changes to their protagonists and worlds, and herein lies the trouble. For many players, we want our game worlds to stay ripe with possibility so that we can explore them with the excitement of them always being there, always having something new to offer us, and these changes can cut us off from that possibility. This problem is most apparent at the ending of these games, but it reaches much further back, to these games’ opening moments.
Whilst some participants are undeniably engrossed in the main narrative tasks of these games, it’s not the main attraction for everyone. This assertion is relevant to story-centric games generally, but it is significantly more applicable to these immersive, open-world games. These games provide us with two main elements: a world to discover that is both more interesting and safer than reality, and the chance to fulfill a multitude of objectives.
The aim is to lose oneself in these virtual landscapes – to inspect every nook and cranny, interact with it, and ensure that our time spent there is significant. We want to communicate with the Non-Player Characters (NPCs), uncover each piece of treasure, and finish every quest. In reality, it can be quite challenging to obtain the desired feedback once a task is completed. A word of thanks is usually all you get. Games, however, offer us something more tangible: an entry in the quest log, a quirky hat or weapon, and (most importantly), a satisfying audio cue signifying the completion of the quest.
It can be a wake-up call when these games present an unalterable ending – one that brings closure to your character’s journey through death, resettlement, reincarnation, and so on. It emphasizes the fact that the settings we’ve been inhabiting – be it Night City, Whiterun or Megaton – are not real places. Instead, they resemble a wax museum or an amusement park where we are free to roam around, but ultimately, the experience is centered around us following a predetermined narrative. The world seems to lose its essence once we’ve finished the story, to the point where we can’t even observe how our potentially world-changing decisions have impacted the world.
For several of us, these games serve as collecting simulators as well. We want the ability to gather every single item and witness that we have collected every single thing – despite how exasperating it can be for the developers who have to devise systems that catalog all our items without causing the game to crash.
Our skills and the items we collect in the gaming world represent our journey and achievements in it. Although games do not facilitate intimate relationships with weapons, like some games such as Destiny do, having a diverse collection can demonstrate the progress we’ve made – a validation that the hours put into the game have been worthwhile. Despite this not being every gamer’s preference, it can be significant for enthusiasts of this genre.
One of the newest additions to this category is Starfield, which strikingly shows the gap between the necessities of the storyline and the desires of numerous players. This is particularly noticeable both at the beginning and end of its principal campaign, especially in relation to the player’s hunger for continuity. Beware of minor spoilers: As Starfield commences, your persona is disheveled and preparing for mining on a distant planet. You touch a stone that gives you an extraordinary vision, marking the start of your quest. Pursuing the main quest reveals another species called the Starborn in the early hours. The mystery of whether they are aliens, evolved humans, or gods becomes part of your objective. A few hours into the main quest rewards you with new abilities like slowing down time, altering gravity, and generating force blasts.
The ending of Starfield is arguably the most unique yet, continuing the pattern of not meeting many players’ expectations. Without spoiling it for those who have yet finished the game, it’s possible to discuss it vaguely. The game allows you to complete the ending, influential decisions inclusive, and the outcomes of your choices will be made clear to you in a manner that lets you explore and understand them in any desired sequence.
Following the end of the game, you can continue in a New Game Plus mode. While the world seems very similar, there will be key differences. One clear difference is that while your abilities and experiences carry forward, you must leave behind everything else – weapons, ships, armor, unfinished tasks, and the like.
It can take a fair amount of time, coupled with progressing through principal quests, to acquire the coveted space capabilities in Starfield, which brings its own set of challenges. This issue is reminiscent of a conundrum faced in the 2014 game, Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Upon the release of Dragon Age: Inquisition, a popular tip among the gaming community was to promptly exit the Hinterlands. Despite the game possessing various features that epitomized Dragon Age and open-world games as thrilling experiences, it was filled with an exhausting amount of supplementary tasks and collectible items, causing many to tire of the monotonous grind before they even exited the introductory zone of the world. Based on data from Xbox Achievement regarding Starfield, a mere 72% of its players advance to the space section, and only 53% affiliate with Constellation–the initial action of the key storyline. The statistics are marginally superior on Steam, standing at 89% and 79% respectively. It’s probable that this is due to Game Pass allowing players to sample the game, but it nonetheless suggests that a significant number of Starfield players are not commencing the central storyline of the game.
Main storylines have gained notoriety for impeding our interactions with the rest of the game; these narratives commonly present scenarios that drastically alter the game’s environment. Would siding with Skyrim’s Imperials exclude you from all the Stormcloak quests? Associating oneself with a specific faction should close the doors to alternative factions–this objective reflects the developers’ intent to create a plot that gives weight to our decisions, and presents a world that shifts in response to our actions. However, when developers insist on us playing their meticulously crafted primary storyline, many players respond with, “I’m busy gathering 150 potatoes.” Players are wary of losing access to secondary quests simply due to dabbling in the main storyline.
Although more video games are now offering clearer warnings when a player is about to cross a point of no return, there is still a general mistrust among players of receiving adequate alerts about these critical junctures. This often results in players eschewing the main storyline, due either to fear of missing out on possible game opportunities or a reluctance to be funneled into a plotline in a game they believe should revolve around free will.
Many players, including myself, often hesitate to delve into the main storyline of games, fearing that it could end our opportunities to explore the other side quests and stories. Even if game developers do their utmost to steer us towards the main story, many divert from the path, worried about losing potential game experiences. Early Starfield players often found that they had overlooked a significant mechanism of the game after hours of gameplay because the apprehension of losing possible opportunities kept them from following the “golden path” of the game. The player-created story often collides with the narrative designed by developers.
On the other hand, players who ventured into Starfield’s main questline and got excited about the New Game Plus, allowing carry-over of progress, often backed out when they found out they would lose all their acquired possessions. These include not just character skills and abilities, but also external items like there ships, guns that have become significant aspects of customization. It’s more enjoyable to flaunt the space suit earned from successful enemy encounters rather than looking at a statistics of “number of conversations had”. However, the rules of New Game Plus, with its regression of all money and possessions, can feel paradoxical to the game’s initial invitation to invest in your character.
Despite these, it’s crucial to remember that main questlines are optional. You can choose to ignore them and play the game in your style. A large number of people playing games like Call of Duty often skip the campaign mode to dabble in the other content. While developers can further mask the main quest or make it harder to dodge, it might lead to players feeling that they were tricked into it or forced to follow a specific route. Conversely, the absence of a main questline might render players’ actions meaningless.
A gentle conclusion, or rather, one that allows the continuance of game-play beyond the resolution, could be seen as a silver lining. However, it restricts possibilities of a tragic climax, and creating a world-altering conclusion could be a logistical nightmare, given how only a fraction of the players would go that far. Game developers like CD Projekt Red and Bethesda dedicate years into the development of these games and their efforts cannot be undermined. Whether it’s a game that offers over a hundred hours of game-play like Starfield, or one that is bustling with an array of intricate details like Cyberpunk, all these can tie a player down if the world of the game is up their alley.
However, it’s crucial for these developers to take into account why some players shun their narrative, perhaps by advocating open-endings or making it hard for them to miss out on the story. The alternative is risking the departure of players who potentially could be the ones to play their games the longest, purchase their special editions, add-ons, and modifications, and participate in online community discussions—their most loyal fan-base.
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