Starfield Questlines: Worst to Best

 Some stories aren't worth hearing

With Starfield now upon us I'm sure many were very happy to learn that Bethesda returned back to their old ways of creating evolved quest lines for all the major game's factions- and even though there's quite a lot of perfunctory 'consequence' tied to each of these narratives, the very act of sitting down and immersing yourself as an member of some spacer faction is exactly the sort of fantasy many wanted out of Cyberpunk or any any of those other modern open world RPGs that have been trying to muscle into Bethesda's territory. And I'm glad to say that most of them are pretty decent with quality quests, memorable characters and worthwhile rewards (sometimes) usually given at the very end. Picking the best from the worst has not been as unanimous as one might usually expect with Bethesda titles, and so I thought it might be quite fun to have a go at some heavily opinionated ranking. Criteria, uncertain: we're winging this one!

Worst:

Ryujin Industries

I know what you're thinking and I have to agree, I really like the premise for this questline as being a sort of corporate fixer; as though we actually got to play the intro of the Corpo lifepath in 2077. Ryujin serves as kind of the 'Arasaka' of Neon City, leading the development of Neuroamps across the Settled Systems and proving competent in Weapons, Ship Building and making sleek corporate suits fashionable. Their questline is heavily themed around stealth and espionage as you sneak into competitor's abodes, steal damaging data, plant evidence and ultimate go on one Deux-Ex style heist at the finale. As a lover of all things Stealth this should be right up my street, right? Well there's a little bit of a hang-up with Ryujin... none of it's quests employ stealth! Remember the Thieves Guild questline from Skyrim and how it presented several large stealth-focused heists that were high security and threatening? Bethesda apparently doesn't, because in every mission of this questline apart from the Ryujin building Infiltration and the finale the player is tasked with breaking into publicly accessible locations and accessing largely unguarded terminals or access points or chests. It's quickly becomes boring in your first playthrough and becomes torturous in follow-ups. I literally thought the game had glitched out, or that Bethesda couldn't figure out how to make Restricted Sections in the Starfield engine, only to then come across both stealth and Restricted areas later in the questline proving that they could pull it off, they just chose not to. Easily the worst of the bunch

Freestar Rangers

Second we have the Freestar Rangers, markedly better for at least being a functional questline with actual missions to undertake beyond glorified fetch quests. The Freestar Collective are basically the cowboys of the universe and the Rangers are their police force; working for them means tracking and dismantling a criminal syndicate with designs on Collective space that seem to become less interesting the further you uncover them. The 'conspiracy' angle of the narrative is poorly handled and the major threat is surprisingly one dimensional, but in pure gameplay potential the Rangers have everything you're looking for. Space battles, scripted tracking scenes, a few less-than-memorable set pieces. It's a lukewarm questline that feels like it was once more elaborate before being stripped back into being basically functional. At the very least the post-questline comes with a half-decent radiant set of quests about bounty hunting. Although I have to deduct points for the fact that the 'radiant' system seems to pick the same two or three locations already used in the main quest to hide it's targets. (Might need a patch or two.)

Crimson Fleet/ Sys Def

I'm sure there are many who would call this Questline the best and I can certainly see why- it's certainly sells it's premise the best. Go undercover for the System Defence Force inside of the Crimson Fleet, the Settled System's most notorious pirate clan, as they search for a lost treasure with the potential to rebalance the scales of galactic power. Sounds a little more interesting in paper but there is genuine adventure and a dash of intrigue within this 'undercover' questline that really stands out compared to it's contemporaries. As befitting raider characters in Bethesda written titles, their personalities are the most interesting, their hijinks pack the most varied bunch of missions with quite a couple set piece moments scatted in there- and there's a genuine feeling of impact in the mandatory choice-moment near the end of the questline. I was utterly appalled to learn that the reward for siding with either faction is identical, however, as it totally killed all purpose for siding with the bad guys- but that's just the Bethesda-brand method of self sabotage. Additionally, the Crimson Fleet Mission Board is largely dependent on piracy missions that simply cannot be completed without amassing a stupidly big, largely unworkable, bounty... good for a Pirate-focused Playthrough, but those who wanted to try their hand at literally anything else? Too bad, I guess. 

Best:

UC corps

Indeed my favourite Questline within all of Starfield is the UC Corps track wherein you join the peacekeeping units who keep the United Colonies safe from threats within and without. Those who scour the skies searching for criminals and delivering justice unto them. And this questline fulfils absolutely none of those fantasies. Instead the narrative becomes almost immediately side-tracked by an exploration into the 'Terramorphs', this game's answer to 'Deathclaws'. These ugly looking monsters seem to pop up across the Galaxy and uncovering that mystery leads to a hunt that brings you to some of the highest echelons of society and the most godforsaken hellholes the galaxy has to offer. There are big unexpected set-piece action moments, and one really cool final charge mission which nailed the feeling of being a rat in a maze full of predators. I only wish more resources were put into making that final mission longer honestly, because I found the whole journey, and the people you meet along the way, worlds more interesting than the main quest and it's cast. And unlike the Legion Questline for Skyrim, when you're done the mission board is fully available to those who want to just be space cops like the job listing implied.

Starfield did a good job moving away from Fallout 4's lamentably centralised faction questlines (which worked better when the games were smaller) in favour of the kind of major full evolved narratives one could feasibly centre an entire playthrough around. I think this approach is one of the strengths of a Bethesda open world, in which the typical player can get totally and utterly lost playing the role of their place in the universe. Even some of the smaller non-faction quest-threads try to simulate these moments, such as the repeatable small-time drug runner mission or just general bounty hunting. Perhaps if Starfield focused a bit more on development of these various branches, maybe treating each like side ways progression paths, Starfield might have done a better job differentiating itself from the Bethesda franchises of the past.

But at the end of the day I think the biggest problem holding most of these questlines back from being something truly special is the lack of meaningful decision making. I know it's Bethesda's signature to allow every player to experience everything the game has to offer, and I don't begrudge the majority of content for being open to the wayward explorer in the slightest. I just feel like the otherwise vacuum environments of the Faction Questlines would have been a perfect place to insert some choices and branches and tactile rewards and punishments- to make replayability a bit more rich at the very least. The 'Two Choice' finales rarely amount to much of anything and feel per-functionary rather than focused development and narrative objectives. I just want to make this more my story.

I think that's the golden ticket which has evaded Bethesda all these years, infuriatingly so considering it's a sentiment their entire expanded modding community really cements. We like living our unique adventure, then starting up a new save and living a totally different adventure the next go around! Bethesda at it's best didn't develop games that never ended, they developed games that felt worthy of exploring again and again in slightly different skins and circumstances. Starfield in particular leaned heavily in the other direction, and made some quite brave narrative choices to support the decision, but I think we all know the Bethesda we loved had a closer connection to what the fans adored about them. Maybe when the inevitable 'Snake Cult' questline comes in the DLC we'll see some of this impassioned feedback come into play, and then the true face of what Starfield can be will start to form.