Anyone else disappointed that they lightened the story?

Didn't play this game in Early access but if this was the old story I am so glad they changed it.

I'm tired af of the old edgy, gritty, "everyone's a monster the universe is dark" nonsense. This isn't 90's comics. Starbound has a light, cheerful atmosphere and even among the humans whose planet gets destroyed most people are hopeful or make small talk. I think that's great. The optimistic spirit also fits with the whole Protectorate mission of making the Universe safe for ppl.

Heck, even the crime lords in the game, the gangsters and smugglers... they're tiny penguins.

Big Ape as a Numi fanape is my new headcanon.

 

To be fair, I'm not sure how many people outside your personal entourage even know about The Ruin. ...then again, it would be pretty hard not to know after Earth got ripped apart, so I guess never mind that theory.

I think the reason it seems so much like Fallout's Enclave is because the Enclave were also based heavily on 1984.

That's kinda what I'm getting at. As of the full release...

The Apex are a lot more grey now. The Miniknog is actually implied to be not totally evil, just really oppressive and ruthless, and the Resistance is implied to be winning or at least doing really well, as opposed to the EA version where the Resistance was almost gone.

Kluex does still demand blood, but the sacrifices (at least those of willing participants) are not nearly as horrible. If you visit a Kluex village there are four codexes at the top of every sacrificial tower that describe the loving preparations given to sacrifices, where they're treated like royalty for a week and buried with honors... compare to EA, where the Stargazers actually expected their sacrifices to magically grow wings and fly into space, and refused to bury those that didn't. (ie. all of them)

The Hylotl have gone from being basically oceanic Nazis who want to genocide the Florans (albeit for understandable reasons, as they're one of the species that was almost wiped out by the Florans) to being space otakus who are "mildly racist" at worst. (Their dialog if your character is Floran is kind of dickish, and there's a poster for a romantic comedy all about hating Florans, but that's about it.)

Florans are still pretty brutal - just read the codexes from their mission where the last survivor of a race they annihilated describes them as being like demons... but at least they're showing signs of growing out of that brutality now.

I guess I should probably be happy that the races are more grey as it makes them more relatable... the main problem I have, like I said, is this idea of the hero who saves the world without changing it. I wish there was more of that "fixing the problems of the world" bit that they hinted at during Early Access.

(Also, if they'd left it as horrible as it was, people might have ended up rooting for The Ruin. Just sayin'.)

That's fair, I guess. Like I said, I'm mostly just annoyed at feeling like my character just exists to uphold the status quo.

 

Except... it's not a status quo? It's fighting a status quo.

Look, if you really want to delve into the lore of SB as I have seen it in the 2 or 3 weeks since release, the universe is pretty Terraria-ish.

And if you know/remember Terraria, it started out cute a fun with cheerful music and bright sunshine... until the night came. Or you walked into the Crimson, or dug too deeply. Then the veneer of lightheartedness was torn off and the world revealed itself to be a nightmare hellscape.

Starbound is similar. You have those lush and forest worlds that are fun, but you also have Scorched and Midnight planets which invariably bear the markings of worlds that have been inhabited... until something absolutely horrible happened. You have Deadbeats, which are basically mad Max apocalypse survivors, and the Shadow People, God only knows what happened to them. Dig deeply enough on any planet and you will find some kind of buried artificial structure on all of them, as if the place was swallowed up in an upheaval.

The game starts with a horrific alien monstrosity tearing apart the bastion of peace and tranquility.

That's the universe you're living in. I think the point of the game is more like beating it back. Pushing back against the intrinsic violence with optimism, creativity and teamwork. Re-creating the Protectorate to take care of your people, building colonies, etc.

 

Yeah, I can already see my character trying to talk some sense into the assembled rulers of each race.

Big Ape: Ah yes... *fingerquotes* The Ruin... We have dismissed that claim.
Preda: SAIL, cut the transmission.

 

Sadly, I really do feel like the devs rushed the story. I would have liked it to be a bit longer myself, and I feel like they should have given more attention to the characters who all come across kinda flat to me. My biggest disappointment was the Glitch mission.

The Baron is described as an eccentric hero who challenges visitors to his castles to high-stakes games of chance... I feel like his mission should have involved having to play against him, rather than the super-boring defense mission against a million waves of the same enemy over and over... and the Bone Dragon should have been his thing, not Asra Nox. That just felt arbitrary... like, at no point before that was she ever presented as having enough of a sense of humor to ride in on the head of a robot dragon. Also, why does he have a purchase brochure for it in his castle if the dragon is hers?

I'm of the opinion that fixing societal ills requires far more proactive measures. Being nice and creative and diplomatic is well and good, but... the fact of the matter is not only does violence solve problems, there are some problems that can't be solved any other way. I see the Protectorate as fluff and naivete. But that's just me.

Side note: I really hope they do more with the Shadow People. They're so mysterious!

And that would be awesome.

 

Not to give anything away, but I don't get the opinion big ape is "overthrown" after the apex mission.

The Resistance has certainly destroyed the perception of big ape being invincible, which is no doubt good news(since big ape's effectiveness is based on public image) but the fight against the miniknog doesn't seem over yet.

As for the OP, yeah I've always been of the sense that Starbound can do with at least a little dark in its story, that is what drew me to the human storyline, but not a grimdark so vast that it cannot get better.

 

Well, that's your opinion. I don't really feel like going deeper into the matter. I've stated my opinion.

Easy, there, Krall

 

Again, I wasn't here for the old lore, but the impression that I got from that mission is that

Big Ape is just an artificial dictator, like a face that miniknog made for themselves to encourage obedience. And at best, that's what you destroyed.

 

I got that impression too. Its something for the resistance to work with, but not total victory.

 

Well, I think, well, really I hope, that what we see is just the start of the story. "The Ruin" is just the first arc. It would make sense. You get a sense of each of the races (Well, other than human and novakid) and you defeat a big bad, while there is still another one who got away. The fact that Nox got away does implied that the story is going to be longer. What I would like to see is mission chains were we get to go more indepth with each of the cultures. Or the very least the Novakids. Come on chucklefish, give Novakids some love.

 

Heck, I even got to partialy fleshing out how main quest could be salvaged. First, all that "go to outpost, meet Esther, fix your ship" stuff, then your mission would be helping out some brilliant Novakid scientist/inventor (good place to introduce the cultists), then xe asks you to go around find some stuff for xim while xe designs a weapon to surpass Metal Gear take on Ruin (for instance, find Gread Pagoda Library and leaf through on any info about Ruin, go kill another Erchius Horror - or his angrier cousin? - to make a defence system out of its hull, search Grand Sovereign Temple for power source that is reportedly there which just might fit you), penultimate mission would be taking that stuff out for a test drive on Earth (ruined hellscape that must serve to prepare you for Ruin, and also to provide contrast between Earth in the prologue and Earth as it is now and ability to nib Protectorate decor) and finaly, Ruin itself. That's not even remotely the final draft, but hell, still better than hunting some brightly colored marbles across the universe.

 

I do wish we got the chance to visit Earth again, see what's become of it

 

I'm with Jonesy in that I would prefer to see them incorporate much of their unused story elements, while keeping their current story arc. I never liked the original, distopian story. But, I think they could strike a balance between that at the "love and puppies" story they have now. I'm hoping that future releases will see them expand on the story to do this and extend the play time and replay value. But, I'm not holding my breath.

Anyway, I find it hard to believe that there are already two pages of comments about how light the story is now and nobody has yet brought up the subject of the dropped "Agaran Menace" red herring? I'm shocked. The Agaran Menace theory discussion thread has 148 pages of comments, many of them very thoughtful and detailed.

 

Oh, though while we talking about lore, and someone brought up the Agaran Menace, which I thought I had on one of my characters despite it being removed before I started playing. I was looking through my codexes and read through a "Treatise on the Florans" which was a Hyolti codex. It was great.

 

:Warning: Reading, and a lot of opinions ahead :Warning:

Now I must add here that there is nothing wrong with liking your game as it is. I'm not trying to convert all of you to believing exactly what I believe. I just wan't to share my own thoughts.

The story in Starbound is a interesting topic to discuss about. Personally I enjoyed the old, gritty stories, because of the stark contrast between the upbeat nature of the rest of the game (e.g The puns littered all across the universe), and the dark, melancholic backstories of the races. I thought it showed the universe brilliantly in two different lights, one that our nowaday world perceives the universe as (i.e happy, upbeat and a place where wrongdoers get what's coming to them) and what the world* really is like.

But there is an argument against this. Since the races and their backstories are very Realistic, you could argue that they don't belong in the game, that is quite Ridiculous to be honest. I mean there is a race of medival robots, cowboy gas people, beauty obsessed fish, penguin mercenary's, carnivorous plants, monkeys who experiment on humans and bird people who cannot fly! So why should the races be realistic and gritty when the whole world around them is silly, quirky and weird? It feels out of place, and could ultimately do more harm for the game, than good.


I can understand why people didn't like the old codices, but I personally saw the games old codices (is that REALLY the plural for codex?? wow) as a clever way to portray the world*


Now why *I can't say "The universe" is because we as humans don't know what it's like, and that is, in my opinion, what Starbound captured very well; Our world, and the world of others that think like us, is full of "arrogance, greed, gluttony, lust, apathy, hate, and envy", but The Universe we live in is so mysterious that we can't find reason in it. Starbound does what "Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" did, that is to showcase what the universe is probably like, a completely different world to ours where nothing makes sense to us, and reason is out of the question. And both do this the same way; Using humor. I mean think about it, why should the universe make sense to us? We didn't create it so why should it abide to our rules, and if the universe could think it probably wouldn't care less about us, or our morals, our norms or our way of thinking. Heck maybe the universe can think, we just don't know, and that is why Starbound can get away with penguins operating flying spacecrafts.

So to wrap up, the point I'm trying to make is that the Humans, the Floran, the Avian, the Glitch, the Hylotl, the Apex and the Novakid are realistic, because they work much the same as we humans now. We can be brave, we can be good, but we also can be evil, lustrous, hateful and all sorts of other bad and good things. The races in Starbound are realistic, and in my opinion should be, because it brings us closer to the characters, as they are not good nor evil they are both!!!

.....But in the end it all comes down to preference and none of my opinions matter in the grande scheme of things. I would like to see the codex come back, but I don't really care, because the universe of Starbound in imprinted in my head in a way that, no one can change how I see this game, not even the developers, because in Starbound, like any other great game, we have our own interpretation of this wonderful world, and nothing can change that.

Happy times playing y'all!

 

I personally only agree in some points. Namely, I don't like how humans have gone near-flawless, and how destroying the Ruin is the main part of the plot. However, I do like how quite a few races have different depictions. For starters, Florans now are still agressive, but now there IS evidence in the lore that it is out of lack of a grasp on "fleshy" life. In the old lore, that wasn't shown at all, and it was easy to agree on the Hylotl wanting to commit genocide in them. In fact, they were easily the only race that could be targeted for genocide by the PC without playing a villain protagonist.
In the case of the Avians, I think they actually IMPROVED the lore. For starters, their Mesoamerican aesthetic now fits with a few parts of their behavior. For starters, they see being chosen as sacrifice as a privilege instead of doing so out of fear), and, overall, they aren't nearly completely evil anymore (Althrough that might also be because of their story NPC and the addition of Kluexian villages, which means that the Temple and Tomb guards aren't the only Kluexian avians seen in-game).

As for "bird people who cannot fly", that one isn't as weird. After all, not all birds can fly (For starters, Kiwi birds and ostriches).

 

The only race? You seem to be forgetting about the Agaran Menace. The way the old lore was, a player could kill Agarans without a 'villainous' reputation automatically being appropriate. At least, there was ample evidence to fear and/or despise them. Not so, any longer.

 

The Agarans only had a single Codex entry at all, and, for the most part, it was full of suspiciously specific denials, which implied that they weren't evil and that they were being targeted for study (Note how the Codex entry says that the writer is not associated with Thornwing or Big Ape even through it wasn't really hinted) and possible extermination.