Starfield’s faction quest lines stand out from the rest

The city is awash with things that you can buy. Starfield — lots of curious little items that serve no other purpose than to decorate and delight. United Colonies’ scientists stack their research materials neatly in drawers and cabinets. Research binders line shelves along the walls. Down in The Well, in a restaurant called Kay’s House, everything’s a lot more dingy; empty bottles and dirtied plates sit idly waiting to be picked up. Pens are on desks and forgotten tools in corners. There’s also half-eaten sandwich left on the tables. Electricity is everywhere. Pick me up!

“I do.” I don’t like to steal — I crave the approval of my Starfield companions — but it’s so easy to grab things that it’s near impossible to resist the temptation. This is the story of how, dear readers, I ended up in United Colonies prison You can also find out more about us on our website.Early on in my Starfield journey, taken hostage by the government military in exchange for the theft of a literal piece of trash — a Styrofoam cup.

[Ed. note: This story contains minor spoilers for several of Starfield’s faction quests.]

Instead of being sent to a regular jail cell, I landed on the UC Vigilance, where I was interrogated and then coerced — by the threat of jail time — into an undercover operation to infiltrate the infamous CrimYou can also see our other articles.n Fleet band of pirates. Very quickly, things spiraled into a complex storyline that took me across several galaxies in order to gain the pirate captain’s trust: I led a heist aboard a luxury spaceship before uncovering the secrets of a legendary Crimson Fleet pirate, and even made a few friends along the way. It’s not easy to walk the line between space narc and actual pirate, and I’ve already had more than a few slips back into a life of crime.

This quest is called “Deep Cover,” and it’s the beginning of the Crimson Fleet storyline that progresses throughout eight quests in total. It stands out for the way it emphasizes discovery in an organic way, sending me to far-off planets for the sake of something meaningful — to build a relationship or steal a ship part, for instance — rather than the repetition of the artifact collection in the main quest. (There is repetition in the quest occasionally, too, but it’s easy to overlook.) There’s so much to balance within this nested story — friendship marred by deceit, tough decisions, and the allure of soMany credits. The decisions I make while following this quest not only impact my companions’ perception of me, but the future of one side or another, where I ultimately must choose between the United Colonies or the Crimson Fleet.

Best parts of Starfield are when I’m able to explore these nuanced relationships and make impactful decisions while being guided out to the depths of the game’s vastness. It’s both a compelling journey in and of itself, but also a catalyst for finding Starfield’s other interesting stories. The game’s best narratives, ironically, are within these grounded side quests rather than out there in Starfield’s emptier planets.

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon

While undercover as a Crimson Fleet pirate, I stumbled upon a kiosk that pulled up a job application for Neon’s big corporate entity, Ryujin. The application was filled in and I went my way. It wasn’t until I had been sent by Crimson Fleet to Neon that I remembered it. After being hammered into role-playing for a while as a police officer, I decided to try out a new job as an advertising spokesman. Similar to the Crimson Fleet story, the Ryujin line of missions means scaling the corporate ladder at a tech company with immense influence over Neon’s government. It stands out for the same reasons that the Crimson Fleet quests do — it weaves a diversity of objectives with a dynamic social system rife with espionage, murky morals, and lots of backstabbing. This allows you to be a more evil character than Bethesda has allowed in other parts of the game.

The stories behind these two quests are both worth finding The following are some examples of how to get started:The rewards you will receive for successfully completing the tasks. StarfieldYou can choose from a variety of factions. Can you imagine? join them all; you don’t have to pick and choose.

Starfield is at its best when it funnels you from exploration to discovery to moral complications to relationship-building and back to exploration. That loop doesn’t happen smoothly all the time, but when it does, it’s wonderful.