If you’re a regular reader, you might’ve noticed that my reviews for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 came to an abrupt halt this summer. Truth be told, I haven’t even finished watching the season – a season of television that I was pretty excited for earlier in the year. That’s not because Strange New Worlds was in any way bad or unenjoyable; Season 1 was fantastic and the first half of Season 2 definitely had some fun and interesting stories in the mix. But honestly… I just feel burned out on the franchise as a whole right now.
When Star Trek was on the air in the 1990s and early 2000s, we’d regularly get two episodes a week here in the UK for much of the year. When brand-new episodes weren’t airing, there’d often be re-runs of older ones in the same timeslot. I missed a few episodes when they were new in the ’90s and early 2000s – but not that many. And I re-watched a bunch of episodes on VHS before later buying the entire Star Trek franchise on DVD. I don’t recall feeling burned out on Star Trek in the way I do now, even though there were several shows and films running for basically an entire decade.
A Radio Times listing for Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1996.
It was only in 2001, when Enterprise premiered, that I took a step back. And that wasn’t burnout as such – I just wasn’t particularly interested in Enterprise’s premise and 22nd Century setting. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I was wrong about that! Enterprise is a great show and a welcome addition to the Star Trek franchise, something I wish I’d realised at the time. But again, even as I stepped away from what was Star Trek’s newest incarnation, I still considered myself a fan. In the mid-2000s I must’ve watched my Star Trek DVDs dozens of times.
So why can’t I muster up the enthusiasm or effort to watch the rest of Strange New Worlds right now? Or even start Lower Decks’ fourth season?
It’s not that I don’t think I’d enjoy them. With the possible exception of Strange New Worlds’ musical episode (as I’m not a big fan of non-animated musicals) I’m sure I’d enjoy at least some of what’s on offer. But whenever I think about sitting down to watch the next episode… I just feel like I’ve lost interest.
Subspace Rhapsody is a musical episode.
I run a Star Trek fansite. Sure, I talk about other topics, but the Star Trek franchise accounts for around two-thirds of the articles, reviews, and columns that I’ve written here over the past few years. “Trek” is literally in the website’s name! I’m no hater of “nu-Trek,” either, and even though I haven’t been wild about every storytelling decision in Picard or Discovery, for example, I still consider myself a fan and supporter of those shows. When I’ve been critical of Star Trek – and of the corporation that owns and manages it, Paramount Global – that criticism is intended to be constructive and comes from a place of love.
So why do I find myself so uninterested in Star Trek right now?
I’ve been wrestling with this question for months. At first I thought I could write it off as simply being distracted. I played through video games like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Baldur’s Gate 3, and I was eagerly awaiting Starfield. I watched a couple of other shows, like Silo on Apple TV+, and films like The Last Voyage of the Demeter. But I wasn’t avoiding Star Trek because I was too busy. That might’ve felt like a convenient excuse in the moment, but it isn’t the real answer.
Have you read my review of Baldur’s Gate 3 yet?
The simple truth is that I feel burned out on Star Trek. The franchise’s return to the small screen has snowballed over the past couple of years, going from a single show to five shows – all of which have been on the air in the past eighteen months or so with very few breaks. That should be great, and it should feel like a return to form for a franchise that aired The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager alongside one another for much of the ’90s. But somehow… it doesn’t.
I warned about the dangers of “franchise fatigue” and burnout just after New Year when I took a look at Star Trek’s highs and lows of 2022. I said then that running five different shows might just be too much to keep up with – and I meant it. I could feel the early stages of burnout beginning even last year, and that’s partly why I stopped reviewing episodes of Lower Decks and ended up taking a break from writing anything here on the website at all.
Mining the Mind’s Mines was the last Lower Decks episode that I reviewed.
A lot has changed since Star Trek’s ’90s heyday. To fit in with modern trends, most stories are serialised and seasons now run to ten episodes instead of twenty-two or more. The franchise’s shows all occupy different time periods instead of sticking to a single, unified setting. And the five different shows that have been on the air of late are all dabbling in very different genres and styles. Where it felt relatively smooth and easy to hop from an episode of The Next Generation to Deep Space Nine or from DS9 to Voyager, it’s less easy to jump from Lower Decks to Picard or Discovery to Prodigy. Perhaps that’s part of it.
But there’s another factor here: me. When I was enjoying those early episodes of The Next Generation in 1991, I was a kid. Star Trek was a big deal for me as a lonely, awkward adolescent trying to navigate school and social life in the ’90s… but maybe I overestimated how big of a deal it still is for me thirty years later. I’ve changed since then, too… so I can’t place all of the blame on Star Trek.
The Royale, from Season 2 of The Next Generation, is the earliest Star Trek episode that I can remember watching.
I’ve spoken before about building this website, and how I hoped to create for myself a space where I could talk about the subjects that interest me at my own pace. I wanted a little piece of the internet where I could write without fear of word limits, and without being reduced to a mere comment on someone else’s work. Moreover, I wanted the freedom to talk about what interests me – whether that’s Star Trek or some other film, game, or series. Or even topics unrelated to entertainment.
But as the website has developed, I found myself writing Star Trek theories, Star Trek episode reviews, and much more about the franchise. As several of those pieces seemed to pick up a lot of interest and attention, being clicked on tens of thousands of times in some cases, I felt a kind of pressure to keep up. Last year, I said I felt I’d been writing reviews of Lower Decks less out of enjoyment than a sense of obligation… and this summer I started to feel the same way about Strange New Worlds. While I still enjoy the process of writing here on the website, I felt trapped in a sense by having made a commitment to review all of these episodes within a couple of days of their broadcast.
Spock in Strange New Worlds Season 2.
So perhaps, somewhat ironically given my intentions, writing here on the website has become another factor. If I sit down to watch the next episode of Strange New Worlds I’ll feel guilty if I don’t take notes for my review, capture still frames to use, and write something that runs to at least a couple of thousand words – if not more. So is the burnout I feel less to do with Star Trek and more to do with writing?
That doesn’t seem right, either; this isn’t a case of writer’s block. I recently reviewed Baldur’s Gate 3 – a title that I adored and would recommend to any fan of role-playing games. And I’ve talked a lot about Starfield over the past couple of months, too… so when I find a subject that interests me and where I feel I have something to say I can still get the words to flow. But for Star Trek? The interest has faded, at least temporarily.
I’ve found a lot to say about Starfield over the past couple of months.
And it probably is temporary. I’ve taken breaks from Star Trek before; there might’ve been a year or more where I didn’t watch a single episode or film in the 2000s and/or the 2010s. I’ve never been someone who can settle on just one “thing;” I tend to dabble in different hobbies and experiences – or in this case, entertainment properties. Sometimes I’ll be fixated on one thing for a time before moving on and leaving it behind entirely.
But that’s always been the case, and even when I found myself taking breaks from Star Trek unintentionally, I wouldn’t have described myself as feeling burned out. So we still haven’t zeroed in on what’s changed.
Even though I wasn’t wild about Enterprise during its original run, I didn’t feel the same kind of burnout as I do today.
With Star Trek feeling like its on decidedly shaky ground amidst strikes, the “streaming wars,” and Paramount’s failing leadership, I feel a strong sense of obligation to support the franchise. I don’t want to see Star Trek disappear again – and in the current media landscape, who knows when or even if another revival would be possible if that were to happen? But at the same time, there’s no fun or enjoyment in writing out of obligation. I might as well go back to my old job working in marketing; writing meaningless, uninspired fluff to meet arbitrary deadlines.
Perhaps the answer is a combination of factors, as is often the case. Paramount has hit the accelerator too hard and Star Trek has become oversaturated. Franchise fatigue has begun to set in, and hopefully the lesson the corporation will learn before it’s too late is that it needs to slow down and refocus. At the same time, I’ve changed over the years, and Star Trek no longer occupies the same place in my life as it did during my adolescence. Having this website as a project has been great for me – but it’s also created made-up obligations that are teaming up with my anxiety. Retreating from Star Trek is the way my brain has responded to that sense of being overwhelmed, and once I “missed” a deadline or two, re-starting feels all the more difficult.
The Enterprise-D at DS9.
Although this has been a rather introspective look at things, I’m absolutely certain that I won’t be the only one feeling a sense of burnout. Trying to create a broad and varied franchise is an admirable goal, and pitching different shows at different audiences and demographics is, in theory, not a bad idea. But Paramount’s execution of this has been poor, and the corporation needs to wake up to a simple reality: there are limits to how far a single franchise can be pushed. Star Trek can’t bear the weight of carrying Paramount Plus on its own, and audiences have their limits.
But it would be remiss to ignore my personal circumstances, as this sense of burnout isn’t entirely the fault of franchise fatigue and oversaturation. I have to find a way to rediscover my passion for Star Trek – but I also have to acknowledge that I’m not a kid or a teenager any more, and that my relationship with the franchise has evolved over the years. Even as Paramount tries desperately to play the nostalgia card, what existed back then can never truly be recreated.
I’ll get back to watching and reviewing Star Trek sooner or later. Just don’t ask me when, because I honestly couldn’t tell you right now.
The Star Trek franchise – including all properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. Most Star Trek films and shows can be streamed on Paramount Plus in countries and territories where the platform is available. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are minor spoilers ahead for the titles on this list.
Happy Spooktober!
To celebrate the arrival of the spookiest, scariest, most terrifying month of the year, I thought it could be fun to pick out five films from the horror genre to take a look at!
When I was a kid, the nerdy friendship groups that I moved in seemed to see horror films as a kind of rite of passage – and being able to boast about having seen a particularly frightening one would score you major bragging rights! In those days we were limited to what was on sale on Betamax and VHS, as well as the meagre horror selection at the local video rental place. How times change, eh?
I’ll have to talk more about this on another occasion, but I have some very pleasant memories of Halloween as a youngster. When I was growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, the “Americanised” version of Halloween was just starting to take root here in the UK, and a local kids’ club that I attended threw a kind of Halloween-themed disco at that time of year. I remember it being great fun, getting dressed up in a silly costume and wearing a mask made either of horrible sharp plastic that would scratch your face when it cracked or a paper one that would tear and get soggy! I’m sure I’m over-romanticising those memories, but even as someone who isn’t a big fan of horror and scary things, Halloween has always had a positive association for me.
The kind of Halloween discos I remember as a kid had snacks like this!
So yes, you read that right: I’m not the world’s biggest fan of horror. In fact, at any other time of year I’d almost never choose a horror title for movie night at home! I scare easily, and jump-scares in particular almost always manage to get me – even when I know they’re coming! I’ve heard folks talk about the adrenaline rush that horror films give them being a major factor in why they like them, but that’s just not my jam! I’m more of a “cowering behind the sofa with my eyes shut” type of horror viewer!
That being said, I’ve watched a lot of horror films over the years, and there have been some great ones. Even if I wouldn’t necessarily watch them eleven months out of the year… well, it’s Spooktober!
So let’s jump into the list and take a look at the films I’ve chosen this year.
Film #1: Dog Soldiers (2002)
A British cult classic!
I have fond memories of watching Dog Soldiers with a friend who was absolutely obsessed with the film! He bought it on video as soon as it was available and insisted I watch it right away. While I wasn’t as taken with it as he was, I found its premise interesting and its execution surprisingly solid. The film follows a squad of British soldiers who come under attack by werewolves!
Of all the classic monsters that made their way from folklore to popular culture, werewolves feel under-represented! Compared with vampires, zombies, witches, or even mummies, there are relatively few films in which werewolves are the main focus, and perhaps that’s part of why Dog Soldiers stands out; it’s something a little different in a genre that often returns to the same places.
There are some moments of absolutely gut-wrenching gore that hold up well, but on returning to the film twenty years later, I’m not so sure that all of the practical special effects – particularly those used for the werewolves themselves – have stood the test of time.
Film #2: Jaws (1975)
On the hunt for a monster…
Jaws is an absolute classic; a groundbreaking work of cinema that should be on everyone’s must-see list! It’s also a masterclass in how to build tension, with the monstrous shark being scarcely glimpsed for much of the film’s two-hour runtime. Jaws is also a surprisingly relatable human story – of people who ignore warnings and prioritise money and politicking over safety. Some things never change, eh?
Jaws also did a lot to unfairly demonise sharks, the great white in particular. Sharks are nowhere near as deadly as the film suggests, and many species actually need our protection to keep them safe from over-fishing and habitat destruction. One of Jaws’ most unfortunate legacies is the way in which many people came to fear and hate sharks.
I’ve heard some younger folks call Jaws “tame,” and I guess it might be by today’s standards. But it’s a transformative, groundbreaking film – and one I firmly believe everyone should watch at least once!
Film #3: 1408 (2007)
Something’s not right at this hotel…
Based on a Stephen King story, 1408 is about a haunted hotel room. It’s a bit of a twist on the typical “haunted house” concept, but where 1408 really shines is in the characterisation of its protagonist. Actor John Cusack really gives a great performance here, bringing the character to life in a relatable and understandable way.
I didn’t realise this until doing a bit of research, but 1408 actually has several different endings – so if you have the film on DVD or Blu-ray you might be able to have a completely different experience of its final act. Deleted scenes aren’t uncommon, of course, but 1408 actually has very different endings depending on whether you watch the director’s cut or the original theatrical version. As a rule of thumb: always go for the director’s cut of any film!
For me, 1408 hits the kind of supernatural horror that I find most frightening – but it does it remarkably well.
Film #4: Phineas and Ferb: Night of the Living Pharmacists (2014)
They’re horrible!
There’s got to be room for one kid-friendly entry on any Halloween list, and this time I’m picking the Phineas and Ferb special episode Night of the Living Pharmacists. The extended episode is a fun, gentle parody of zombie films like Night of the Living Dead, and even features legendary director George A. Romero in a cameo role.
I love Phineas and Ferb, and the show has several other Halloween-themed episodes that are well worth checking out. Night of the Living Pharmacists is silly in places – but that’s part of the fun. The story shakes up the typical formula of the show by pairing up the titular kids with antagonist Dr Doofenshmirtz as one of his experiments gets out of control.
Halloween is, at the end of the day, a holiday for the little ones. Night of the Living Pharmacists is spooky and atmospheric – perfect for any Halloween party or sleepover!
Film #5: The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
An iconic portrayal.
This adaptation of Thomas Harris’ novel has become a modern classic. There are relatively few out-and-out “scary” moments in The Silence of the Lambs, as the film doesn’t rely on jump-scares and the like. But there’s a real sense of horror in the air as junior FBI agent Clarice Starling races against time to catch a serial killer.
The Silence of the Lambs features Anthony Hopkins’ iconic portrayal of Dr Hannibal Lecter, one of the most infamous villains in modern cinematic history. Lecter is so cold, calculated, and ruthless that he has a totally unique fear factor; he’s a single human being, not a demon or monster, and yet he’s capable of such gratuitous acts of violence. Hiding under a polite facade, pulling the strings, Dr Lecter has rightly become one of the big screen’s most terrifying serial killers.
Though The Silence of the Lambs is arguably as much thriller as horror, I still think it’s worth including here.
So that’s it!
Looks like fun…
We’ve picked out five spooky films to start Spooktober and the spooky season with a bang! I hope this has been a bit of fun at least, and maybe that you’ve got some inspiration for what to watch as Halloween gets closer.
Although I’m much more a fan of Christmas than Halloween, I unapologetically love this time of year. Autumn is almost certainly my favourite season, and as Halloween approaches I love seeing the wonderful and creative decorations, crafts, and costumes that people make to celebrate the spooky season! Some people really go all-out to make Halloween a massive celebration, and even though I’m not the biggest fan of horror or of being frightened, I’m absolutely there for the holiday!
There may be more spookiness to come before the 31st, so stay tuned here on Trekking with Dennis. If you dare…
All titles listed above are the copyright of their respective studio, broadcaster, distributor, and/or corporation. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Back in 2021, I watched and generally enjoyed Amazon Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time adaptation. I’d read the first couple of books in the series, and although it was a long time ago and I couldn’t remember many of the details of the story, I was still interested to see what a studio with Amazon’s means could bring to the fantasy realm. In the aftermath of the success of Game of Thrones, many studios were scrounging around for fantasy properties to adapt! I was pleased with the result in 2021.
The Wheel of Time has just returned to our screens after a break of almost two years – and it’s this scheduling that I want to talk a bit about today. The Wheel of Time’s first season ran to a scant eight episodes, which isn’t out of the norm for streaming shows these days, but is still a lot shorter than a typical television show from years gone by. But a short run of episodes combined with a very long break in between seasons has meant that I’ve basically forgotten all of what happened last time – and I almost missed The Wheel of Time’s return entirely. It was only when I saw an advertising banner splashed across Amazon’s homepage that I even remembered the series existed.
Promo poster for The Wheel of Time Season 2.
This is far from an isolated example. Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power also ran for eight episodes in its first season – and also looks set to take a break of at least eighteen months before its second season will be ready. The same is true of shows like The Witcher and Stranger Things on Netflix or Paramount+’s Halo adaptation. These long breaks, when combined with short seasons, are actually doing a lot of harm to these shows – and I’m surprised that none of the big streaming companies have caught on yet.
The pandemic was a major disruptive force across the entertainment industry, shutting down or prolonging many productions. And I get that – I really do. The knock-on effects of that disruption are still being felt, and while that partially explains some of these long breaks, that’s not the whole story. Made-for-streaming shows like The Wheel of Time just aren’t interested in deadlines and schedules any more, and I think that’s to their detriment.
Still waiting on that second season of Halo…
Most viewers of any series are not hard-core fans. The vast majority of a show’s audience are casual viewers, folks who tune in while the show is running but don’t spend too much time thinking about it after the credits have rolled on the season finale. Those people basically pay for a production and determine whether or not it will be a success, so keeping them engaged is vitally important. It’s great when a show can be “made for the fans,” but the reality is that most viewers will never be in that hard-core category.
When a series disappears for almost two years, the way The Wheel of Time did, it makes it so much harder to retain the kind of casual audience that it relies on. I would generally consider myself to be someone who likes fantasy, and I ranked The Wheel of Time as being one of my favourite shows of 2021… but even I’m struggling to remember who’s who and what happened last time. It’s just been so long, and I’ve had other things to watch since. Sure, my ageing, addled brain isn’t as switched-on as some people’s might be… but that’s beside the point!
Who’s this again?
With shorter seasons of ten, eight, or even six episodes becoming increasingly common, it’s more important than ever for shows to not wait too long in between seasons. It’s also worthwhile, in my opinion, for streaming platforms to release shows at roughly the same time of year – at least the same season. There’s no need for rigid schedules on a streaming platform in the way there used to be on broadcast television, but if people get used to watching a particular show in the spring or the autumn, sticking with that for future seasons makes a lot of sense to me.
This must sound like a very long-winded way of saying “oops, I forgot that The Wheel of Time was a thing!” But this phenomenon goes beyond one single series or even one single streaming platform. There are perfectly understandable reasons for productions to be disrupted – whether we’re talking about the pandemic, the recent writers’ and actors’ strikes, or something else – and I’m not trying to single out Amazon or The Wheel of Time unfairly. I just really feel that these long breaks are to the detriment of practically every series and make it much harder to retain viewers.
SAG-AFTRA and WGA members on strike in 2023.
One of the benefits of the “streaming wars” over the past few years has been a glut of high-quality, big-budget entertainment on the small screen. Now I’ll be the first to tell you that not all of these shows were enjoyable, but some have been outstanding. With advancements in technology meeting a corporate need to drive and retain subscribers, the past few years have seen some of the best-looking television shows ever made. And that’s fantastic.
But when these shows disappear for years at a time – after only running to a handful of episodes – it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up. There’s a lot of choice of what to watch right now, even in genres that used to be considered small niches like fantasy. Studios like Amazon have to do better at keeping production and post-production schedules tight so that these kinds of long breaks can be avoided, especially if they only want to produce eight episodes in a season.
The Wheel of Time is produced by Amazon Studios.
So The Wheel of Time is back – and it’s already been renewed for a third season, so I guess we shouldn’t worry about the series being abandoned! But I hope Season 3 will be able to premiere in 2024, not 2025 or 2026. I’m only just beginning to figure out who’s who and what’s what all over again, and the last thing I need is for the series to disappear for nigh-on two years again!
As the streaming wars continue to rage, the studios that manage to get a grip on this situation will do well. Rigid schedules may no longer be necessary, and the flexibility that streaming allows for is, I would argue, a net positive for television production overall. But scheduling still matters, and taking two years to produce a single eight-episode season feels excessive. Worse than that, I fear it will prove harmful to any show’s prospects. Streaming services don’t only need to be concerned with signing up new subscribers, they need to worry about retaining current subscribers – and making sure that the shows people are watching don’t vanish for long periods of time is going to be part of that.
This was a bit of a whine; I’m sorry about that! And The Wheel of Time isn’t the only offender, it just happened to be the best recent example of this phenomenon. I do enjoy the series… I just hope I won’t have to wait so long for the next season. Time’s marching on, after all!
The Wheel of Time is available to stream now on Amazon Prime Video. Season 1 is also available for purchase on DVD/Blu-ray. The Wheel of Time is the copyright of Amazon Studios and Amazon Prime Video. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the Mass Effect trilogy (including Legendary Edition).
It’s been a while since we last talked about the next entry in the Mass Effect series, but to celebrate my dedicated Mass Effect webpage finally going live here on the website, I thought it could be interesting to consider a handful of big questions that the team at BioWare will need to answer before a new story can be written. If you missed it, I now have a brand-new webpage dedicated to the Mass Effect series, and you can find all of my Mass Effect commentary, theories, and articles there. You can find this page by using the drop-down menu at the top of every page or post here on the website – or you can click or tap here to head there directly!
There hasn’t been much by way of news about the next Mass Effect game for a couple of years. BioWare released a brief CGI teaser all the way back in December 2020 confirming that the game is in pre-production, but since then, updates have been few and far between. BioWare provided a brief update in November 2022, saying that pre-production is “proceeding very well,” which sounded positive. In August 2023, however, BioWare announced that there were going to be job losses at the company. With production currently focused on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, and with these cuts taking place, the next Mass Effect game is unlikely to see the light of day before 2026 or 2027 at the earliest.
Commander Shepard in the Normandy’s cockpit.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things to talk about! We may not see the game I’m tentatively calling Mass Effect 4 for a long time, but the studio will have already taken a number of big decisions about the game, its setting, its characters, and its key storylines. Today, I’m giving my two cents on what some of those decisions may be – and there are some absolutely massive ones that have serious implications for the state of the Mass Effect galaxy.
As I’ve said before, there are questions about the Mass Effect galaxy that BioWare simply can’t ignore forever. Maybe a single game with a focused story could sidestep one or two of these questions, but if Mass Effect is to survive long-term with new games (and perhaps even a TV series) being produced… sooner or later answers will have to come. What that means is that some of the biggest decisions open to players in the original Mass Effect trilogy will need to be given a canon outcome, one that Mass Effect 4 can build upon. To players who were adamantly opposed to playing the game a certain way, that could lead to hurt feelings and disappointment – but I see no way around it. Some of these points are too big, and the implications too diverse, for a new story to be written that could take so many different outcomes into account.
Bypassing a locked door in Mass Effect 3.
Some Commander Shepards died at the end of Mass Effect 2. That game’s suicide mission could, under the right (or should that be wrong?) circumstances lead to Shepard’s death, and that meant that players had to either restart from an earlier save or start a new campaign in order to play Mass Effect 3. The third entry in the trilogy was able to take into account a lot of decisions from earlier games – but Shepard’s death was a bridge too far.
I bring this up because the Mass Effect series has taken big decisions like this in the past. Mass Effect 3 couldn’t happen without Shepard being alive, meaning players whose characters died at the end of Mass Effect 2 didn’t get to see their decisions carried forward. The same will have to happen in Mass Effect 4 – albeit on a grander scale.
So let’s try to look ahead to Mass Effect 4, and – assuming the game will be the sequel we’re all hoping for – pick out some of the biggest questions that will need to be answered.
Question #1: What colour were the explosions?
An exploding Mass Relay.
This is a deliberately facetious way of asking the biggest question that any sequel to Mass Effect 3 cannot ignore: which ending was chosen? It simply isn’t going to be possible for the game to try to account for all three possibilities; the differences between them are too vast for a single story to encompass wildly divergent states of the galaxy. So one ending will have to be declared “official” – and if I had to place a bet, I’d say that the “destroy” ending is going to be the one that’s picked.
All of the endings of Mass Effect 3 have points in their favour from a narrative standpoint, but “destroy” was the one that Shepard had been working towards across the entire trilogy. Not only that, but it’s the only ending in which it’s even remotely possible – based on what we saw on screen – that Shepard could have survived. “Destroy” is, according to stats about Mass Effect: Legendary Edition that were released by BioWare, also the most popular choice that players made. So there are a lot of points in favour of making “destroy” the canonical ending to Mass Effect 3.
The damaged Citadel in orbit of Earth.
The state of the galaxy is going to be profoundly altered by whichever ending to Mass Effect 3 was chosen, and I just don’t see how a new game could possibly take that diversity and variety into account. Mass Effect 4 would essentially need to be three games in one in order to accomplish that – and that just doesn’t seem likely. If Mass Effect 4 is to continue the series, perhaps laying the groundwork for a new trilogy or series of games, that divergence will only grow over the course of its story. So there has to be a single starting point chosen – even if that means disappointing some players who were particularly attached to one of the other ending variants.
I felt that Mass Effect 3′s final chapter was trying to present “synthesis” as the better option. That was the one that was hardest to unlock, and in the epilogue, EDI seems to suggest that “synthesis” led to a kind of technological paradise, with the galaxy’s races living in harmony… but I always took umbrage with that idea. Not only was it literally the goal of the Reapers as stated by the AI that controls them, it was a completely different outcome to what Shepard had been fighting for. It was also not Shepard’s place to inflict such a radical change on the entire galaxy without anyone’s consent – and without even listening to a single other opinion on the matter! But more than that, “synthesis” doesn’t seem like it would lead to an interesting or relatable narrative. With human characters merged with AI, and with everyone living in a utopia… how could we as the audience get invested in the people or the world?
Question #2: Did Shepard side with the Geth or the Quarians – or find a route to make peace?
Tali, Shepard, and Legion in Mass Effect 2.
The Geth-Quarian conflict was one of the most interesting in Mass Effect, and the way in which it came to a head in the final chapter was incredible. It was disappointing, however, that after the mission to Rannoch, the Geth and Quarians weren’t really mentioned much, and that all of the hard work involved in getting one or both of them to join the war effort was relegated to a couple of JPEG images in the war assets menu! But enough about the rushed end to Mass Effect 3!
There are galactic repercussions that will reverberate from the Geth-Quarian conflict, and how it was resolved will have a huge impact on the state of the galaxy in Mass Effect 4. If Shepard chose to side with the Geth, then chose the “destroy” ending… both races could be extinct. Or if Shepard found the pathway to peace and then chose either “synthesis” or “control,” both races could still be around and working together. Whichever outcome it is, whether the Geth, Quarians, or both are present in the galaxy is going to be a big deal.
Quarians in the Mass Effect 3 epilogue.
Here’s my pet theory: one way or another, BioWare will include both the Geth and Quarians in Mass Effect 4 – even if that means ignoring one of the consequences of the “destroy” ending. Depending on how much time may have passed in-universe, the new game could claim that the Quarians rebuilt the Geth after they were destroyed – or perhaps the Catalyst either lied about the Crucible destroying all synthetic life or simply got it wrong.
I think that given the popularity of both the Quarians and Geth – thanks in large part to their squadmate representatives, Tali and Legion – BioWare won’t want to throw either away. If we stick to a literal interpretation of the Catalyst’s warning in Mass Effect 3 and assume that “destroy” will be chosen as the canon ending, then perhaps the Geth will be absent. But I wouldn’t bet on that, and I think a technobabble explanation for their survival or resurrection is plausible and could be made to fit.
Question #3: Did Shepard survive?
Does this moment represent Shepard’s survival?
This is the big one! While not as galaxy-altering as the way in which the Crucible was used or the literal survival of entire races… from a character point of view, Commander Shepard is the player’s avatar in the Mass Effect world. If there’s even a slim chance that they might’ve survived, at the very least we should find out!
I can’t decide right now whether Mass Effect 4 will go down the route of making Shepard the player character once again. After the disappointment of Andromeda, there will surely be a temptation to “stick with what works” in the Mass Effect universe – and Shepard is clearly a big part of that. That being said, I think there’s absolutely scope to create a new player character and to expand Mass Effect beyond Shepard and the crew of the Normandy. If the franchise is to continue long-term, that will have to happen sooner or later.
A male Commander Shepard aboard the Normandy.
But regardless, news of Shepard’s fate should reach us at some point during the game – even if it’s only to confirm that they died centuries earlier. One thing that a lot of folks found frustrating about Andromeda was that the outcome of the Reaper War was left entirely unresolved, and I don’t think that the next Mass Effect game could get away with repeating that mistake.
After everything Shepard went through to defeat the Reapers, they have definitely earned their retirement! But if the galaxy is in danger once more – and surely, somehow, it will be – they could be the person that has to step up once again and lead a new fight.
Question #4: What became of the Rachni?
The Rachni in one possible epilogue scene.
Depending on choices made in both Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 3, it’s possible that the Rachni may have survived. The Rachni were an insectoid race that threatened to overwhelm the galaxy centuries before the events of the games – and were believed to be extinct. Shepard was given the option to save the last known Rachni queen on two occasions – and the presence or absence of the Rachni could have wider implications for the state of the galaxy.
If the Rachni queen was saved, Rachni workers join up with Admiral Hackett’s fleet and contribute to the Crucible project. Given the scale of the Crucible, I don’t think the Rachni’s survival could be hidden in the aftermath of the war, so any hope for a return to hiding away on an obscure planet seems to be out of the question.
The last surviving Rachni queen.
But not everyone would be thrilled about the Rachni’s return. The Krogan still view the Rachni as a kind of ancient ancestral enemy, and there may be Krogan and Asari who still remember the aftermath of the Rachni Wars. Even if the Rachni’s contribution to the success of the Crucible was public knowledge, there are many in the galaxy who would be wary – and some who might view them as a threat. Could an attack on the Rachni be the first sign of the Reaper War alliances breaking down?
Alternatively, it’s possible that the Rachni were never saved by Shepard and thus went extinct with the defeat of the Reapers. This would preclude their presence in the story as either a friend or foe – unless they could be revived, once again, by technobabble!
Question #5: Did the Leviathans join the war effort?
The Leviathans were eventually tracked to their base.
Another pet theory of mine is that the Leviathans – who were originally DLC for Mass Effect 3 – will return as the “big bad” in a new story, seeking to reclaim a galaxy that they view as “theirs.” You can read more on that by clicking or tapping here, by the way. But for our purposes today, the question is whether they joined the war at all – or whether they were able to remain hidden.
Following the Leviathan story to its conclusion is not an essential part of Mass Effect 3, but it’s one that has far-reaching implications. The discovery of the Leviathans explains the origin of the Reapers, but it also introduces us to a very alien race – one that ruled the galaxy and enthralled other races aeons ago. Despite their defeat at the hands of the Reapers and the passage of tens of millions of years, the Leviathans seem to have lost none of their arrogant sense of superiority – so how they could possibly be integrated into a multi-racial galaxy is an open question.
Commander Shepard inspecting a Leviathan cave painting.
Regardless of whether they end up as the new game’s villains, though, I don’t think Mass Effect 4 could just ignore the Leviathans. Their numbers may be small, but with the Reaper threat gone it’s not inconceivable that the Leviathans would want to expand, leaving behind their watery planet. The consequences of this for the rest of the galaxy could be extreme – or not! But either way, the Leviathans will be a presence.
Players will want to know what happened after the Reaper War – and realistically Mass Effect 4 will have to at least pay lip service to all of the races and factions that were involved, telling us what became of them… or where they were last spotted. The Leviathans also have a lot to answer for, in a way, as the original creators of the Reapers!
Question #6: Which of Shepard’s companions survived?
Concept art featuring Shepard’s crew from Mass Effect 2.
Across the Mass Effect trilogy, Shepard teamed up with nineteen main crewmates – and there were also a handful of others who served in that role on a temporary basis. Even if Mass Effect 4 doesn’t feature all of them, it would still be nice to get news of their fates. During the final battle of the Reaper War, it’s possible that not all of them would have survived, and Shepard had the opportunity to say goodbye to many of them before the final act of Mass Effect 3 got underway.
As of right now, we can safely assume that Liara survived! She was shown in the CGI teaser for Mass Effect 4 back in 2020, so it seems all but certain that she’ll make an appearance – somehow – in the new game. That doesn’t mean she’ll be a squadmate or playable character, but she could play a significant role. She could even be a kind of narrator for the game.
Liara as glimpsed in the 2020 teaser trailer.
Characters who were aboard the Normandy at the end of Mass Effect 3 seem to survive the end of the game – or at least most of them do, depending on the choices players made and how strong their war assets were going into the final clash. We can safely assume that the likes of Joker, Garrus, and Javik survived the immediate aftermath of the war, at least.
But that still leaves us with most of the folks from Mass Effect 2 – characters like Miranda, Samara, and Jack. All of them could have died before the endgame, but assuming they were alive going into the final fight… we don’t know what happened to them. If Mass Effect 4 is set many years later, discovering their fates could be spread across the game, and players could learn what happened to them without necessarily having them all make an appearance.
Question #7: Was the Genophage cured?
A vision of Tuchanka if the Genophage cure was sabotaged.
Commander Shepard has the opportunity in Mass Effect 3 to cure the Genophage – or sabotage the cure. The Genophage was an artificial sterility plague that had been inflicted upon the Krogan by the Turians and Salarians, and there will be galactic-scale consequences depending on Shepard’s actions here.
One day we’ll have to talk about this storyline in more detail – because I find it one of the most interesting and morally dubious storylines in the entire Mass Effect trilogy! But for today, suffice to say that curing the Genophage, or refusing to cure it, will have major ramifications for the whole galaxy.
Happy Krogan families – if the Genophage was cured.
If the Genophage was cured, there will be a lot more Krogan around – but they should be friendly, right? I mean, Shepard cured the Krogan people, and if Wrex and Eve survived to lead the Krogan, that knowledge will be passed down and celebrated. But there are some potential issues here! Even Wrex seemed to suggest that Krogan expansion was on the agenda – and centuries ago, Krogan expansionism led to war.
On the other hand, if the Genophage cure was sabotaged, the remaining Krogan will likely feel betrayed and could launch a new rebellion. At the very least, Krogan will be hostile and unfriendly if the Genophage wasn’t cured. Having spent a lot of time with Krogan characters across the trilogy, I think it would be hard to pull off turning them into villains next time around, even if there’s a narrative pathway that makes sense in-universe. But a story could be crafted in which, no matter what decision Shepard made, the cure was ultimately sabotaged and doomed to failure.
Question #8: Who gets to be on the Council?
The Council in Mass Effect 1.
More broadly, we can even ask whether there’s a Council at all in the aftermath of the Reaper War – but somehow, I suspect there will be. In the Mass Effect trilogy, humanity’s rapid ascent from newly-encountered species to full Council membership was a contentious issue with some of the other races, and after everything that happened with the Reapers, a shake-up of the galactic order could be on the agenda.
From our own history, we can point to how World War II led to the creation of the United Nations, and how the pre-war order was transformed in the aftermath of the conflict. Something similar could happen in the Mass Effect galaxy, with races like the Krogan, Quarians, Batarians, or even the Rachni and Geth all being potential members of a broader, more diverse and democratic Council.
A Vorcha, Salarian, and Volus served on the Council… in the movie Blasto!
If several races were invited to join, those who were snubbed might feel particularly stung! And others, like the Leviathans, for example, may not wish to join a power-sharing arrangement – they might prefer to seek conquest and total power for themselves. But there are many who’d happily join the Council.
The pre-war order of the Salarians, Turians, and Asari being the dominant forces in galactic politics could be at an end – but will they be okay with that? Will the Salarians genuinely listen to Krogan input, and will the Asari really be willing to see the Quarians as equals? Will there be arguments about how to direct the resources necessary to rebuild? There could be a lot of points of tension!
So that’s it!
Shepard, Javik, and Tali.
We’ve looked at a few questions that the next Mass Effect game – or a future sequel to Mass Effect 3 if that game turns out to be something different – will have to address. Some of these points could be bigger and more important than others depending on what kind of story the new game aims to tell, but sooner or later there are big questions about the state of the galaxy that will have to be tackled.
Andromeda tried to sidestep these questions and do its own thing – which was probably not a bad idea in 2017, coming so soon after the trilogy had wrapped up. But there were other problems with Andromeda that meant the game didn’t stick the landing – and when it was already feeling like an overblown side-quest, some fans were left disappointed when it didn’t address any of the big questions facing the Mass Effect galaxy.
Take cover!
There’s an opportunity for the next game in the series to not only answer some of these big questions, but to use the answers to set the stage for a brand-new adventure. Taking what happened with the Leviathans, for example, and expanding on that story to create a new villain is one possibility that I think is worth keeping an eye on!
So I hope this has been a bit of fun, or at least interesting. There are definitely other story points that a new game could address that I didn’t include here; it’s by no means an exhaustive list. And we may return to some of these questions and ideas in the future to talk more about them or give them a longer write-up. I had fun thinking about where the next Mass Effect game could go, at any rate!
Earlier this summer I replayed the Mass Effect trilogy, and that was part of what prompted me to create a proper webpage for the franchise here on the website. Although I don’t talk about Mass Effect all the time, it’s a series I’ve enjoyed and I am certainly looking forward to seeing what comes next.
The next Mass Effect game is in early development and most likely won’t be released for several years. Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is out now for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X. The Mass Effect series – including all properties mentioned above – is the copyright of BioWare and Electronic Arts. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Minor spoilers may also be present for parts of the Star Wars franchise.
It’s been a while since I shared my first impressions of Jedi: Survivor here on the website. I’ve since returned to the game, despite its performance issues, and beaten the main story, so I’m now in a position where I can put metaphorical pen to paper and share my full thoughts with you. Sorry that it took so long!
For some context, I adored Jedi: Fallen Order. I documented my first playthrough of that game here on the website back in 2020, and I was thrilled to see Lucasfilm and Electronic Arts recognising the strength of feeling in the Star Wars fan community for a linear single-player game. Jedi: Fallen Order had a high budget, but it proved definitively – as if any such proof were really needed – that single-player games can still be profitable, and that players still long for those kinds of experiences. Moreover, at a time when both The Rise of Skywalker and The Mandalorian had been disappointing, Jedi: Fallen Order came along and showed me that I hadn’t entirely fallen out of love with Star Wars.
I definitely felt optimistic about Jedi: Survivor.
I was genuinely thrilled at the prospect of a sequel to one of my favourite Star Wars games of all-time, and to see what would come next for Cal Kestis and the crew of the Stinger Mantis – and that was how I felt in the weeks leading up to the launch of Jedi: Survivor. If things went well, I believed that it might’ve been in contention for my “game of the year” award come December.
But things did not go well.
The Jedi: Survivor story is an all-too-familiar one: Electronic Arts forced the game to be released too early, despite knowing that there were serious technical issues. The game is a “release now, fix later” title, replete with bugs, performance issues, and other such problems. Although these issues afflicted the game and harmed players’ enjoyment across all platforms, as is often the case it seems that the PC version of the game was in the worst shape. Unfortunately, as I don’t own a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series console, PC was where I played Jedi: Survivor.
One of many bugs that I encountered. Nightsister Merrin crouching in an out-of-bounds area.
I actually thought I’d been smart. Having read the reviews of the game when it launched and having seen performance reports from players and professional critics, I shelved my plans to buy Jedi: Survivor. I waited a couple of months and kept my eye on the game as patches were rolled out, and mistakenly believed that six patches later, things would have improved. Spurred on by having inadvertently come across a couple of story spoilers, I picked up the game at the end of June.
Unfortunately, however, the performance issues hadn’t been fixed – and in spite of another patch having been rolled out since then, those issues are still present on PC at time of writing. I described Jedi: Survivor as a “release now, fix later” game… but the fix still hasn’t been made, and the game remains in a poor state even five months after its troubled launch. In fact, having returned to the game to grab a few screenshots, I felt that its performance was worse in September than it had been in June and July.
A levitating Stormtrooper.
The blame for this lies with Electronic Arts, and the company has transformed what should have been a guaranteed hit into a game surrounded by controversy thanks to pathetically poor decision-making at the highest levels. Developers Respawn Entertainment were placed in an impossible position, and while I have no doubt that talented, passionate folks did their absolute best to get Jedi: Survivor as ready for launch as possible, they were screwed over by EA. It’s a tale as old as time in the games industry: a greedy publisher shits all over the hard work of talented developers, then seeks to blame them for the game’s poor condition and lower-than-expected sales.
My first few hours with Jedi: Survivor were spent messing about with settings rather than actually playing the game. Every time I thought I’d improved things, the stuttering and frame-drops would inevitably return – and they were far from the only problems. I encountered dozens of bugs across my playthrough, with Cal and other characters getting stuck in the environment or clipping through solid objects, as well as items not rendering properly or even disappearing. These issues didn’t just affect gameplay, but were also prevalent during cut-scenes – something I hadn’t seen in a supposedly “complete” game in a very long time.
And I have no doubt that Jedi: Survivor’s performance problems have tainted my view of the game as a whole.
Clipping through and getting stuck in the environment was a recurring problem throughout Jedi: Survivor.
When I sit down to play a game like Jedi: Survivor, it’s because I want to be immersed in a story. I want the game to transport me to a galaxy far, far away, and lose myself for a few hours in the life of a Jedi Knight on the run from the Empire. The occasional bug or glitch would be tolerable, but when a game is in such shockingly poor shape, dogged by performance issues, stuttering, broken animations, and bugs galore… it rips the immersion away. I struggled to really get into Jedi: Survivor and its story, and even its better moments were spoiled or diminished by the unacceptable state that it was released in.
But that’s enough about bugs for now, because there are other issues with the game that we need to talk about.
I have two major gripes with Jedi: Survivor aside from the bugs. One is mechanical; a choice that was made in terms of the way the game was designed and its levels were crafted. And the second is with parts of the story itself, as well as with the way in which certain new and returning characters were handled. We’ll look at each of these points in turn.
Optimising game files and compiling shaders appears to make fuck all difference.
Firstly, an open world (or semi-open world) did not suit Jedi: Survivor. The game’s story was hamstrung by this decision, and crafting a couple of open stages that actually felt condensed and small really damaged that sense of immersion that I was talking about. On the main planet of Koboh, the village of Rambler’s Reach was a few dozen metres away from the base of a massive gang of pirate-raiders and also a few dozen metres away from two Imperial outposts. Hardly the out-of-sight hiding place that it was presented as in-game.
One day we’ll have to talk more about the open-world trend, and how it simply isn’t the right choice for every game. Jedi: Survivor, to me, stands as perhaps one of the best recent examples of that. The design of both Koboh and Jedha was hampered by this attempt to move in an open-world direction, and the game would have benefitted from tighter, more curated levels, as well as areas of the map that had more distance between them. By all means, have raiders and Imperials on Koboh if that’s necessary for the story – but why not have Cal travel to the other side of the planet in a cut-scene before encountering them? The design of those parts of the map could have been similar, but breaking them off from the Rambler’s Reach hub would have improved the game from a narrative and immersion standpoint.
The saloon in Rambler’s Reach.
I also felt that the move to broader, more expansive levels should have been accompanied by more cosmetic items and loot. It became frustrating to explore a whole area, climbing onto hidden ledges, wading through rivers, and so on only to find… absolutely fuck all. There are more cosmetics in Jedi: Survivor than there were in Jedi: Fallen Order – and that’s great. I had fun customising Cal and unlocking some of these options. But this was something that felt unbalanced.
I’d explore a whole section of the map, kill dozens of enemies, and find nothing. No in-game currency, no cosmetics, no chest with an item… just nothing at all. And to me, that reinforces what we were talking about with Jedi: Survivor’s open-world style: it just doesn’t fit the game. It didn’t fit the story and it didn’t fit the amount of content that had been created, either. A good game strikes a balance, making exploration feel fun and worthwhile. There were moments of that in Jedi: Survivor, but they were too few and far between.
Battling battle droids.
Jedi: Survivor bills itself as a “souls-like” game; i.e. a “difficult-for-the-sake-of-it” title. But to its credit, the game offers an easier mode to play on – something I took full advantage of. However, even on the easiest difficulty there were some particularly finicky and challenging moments. While I found the game’s combat to be okay, there were some moments where Jedi: Survivor required frame-perfect button presses that I found near-impossible. Because I suffer from arthritis that affects my hands and fingers, some rapid button combos are nigh-on impossible for me to perform. At several points in the game, I was almost entirely locked out from progressing because I couldn’t complete a particularly intensive button combo.
On one occasion it took me almost forty tries to navigate just a single section of the map on Jedha – a particularly convoluted wall-run, jump, and swing combination that my hands and fingers just couldn’t manage. The game offered no help with these things, no accessibility options, and no way to skip ahead to bypass these moments. This is poor, and while I will give Jedi: Survivor some well-earned praise for offering a story mode, more accessibility features need to be present, and developers need to be aware that easier combat isn’t the only thing that players are looking for. Many games offer the option to skip ahead if players can’t make it past a certain puzzle or area of the map; these things are not that difficult to implement.
Cal on Jedha.
Stories are incredibly subjective. What works for you might not work for me, and vice versa, so everything I’m going to say about Jedi: Survivor’s narrative choices have to be taken in that way. Nothing about this is “objective” at all!
Where I’d felt gripped by Jedi: Fallen Order’s story, Jedi: Survivor came up short. Cal felt listless, rushing from place to place at the behest of the plot but not in a particularly understandable way, and there were moments of sheer randomness in the story – particularly at the beginning – that really detracted from the adventure.
A customised Cal.
In Jedi: Fallen Order, Cal was being hunted by the Imperial Inquisition after he used his Force powers, but was rescued by Cere. She already had a mission of her own: to open the holocron. Cal slotted into that story perfectly, and at every stage it felt like it unfolded naturally as Cal visited different worlds to unlock the holocron’s mysteries.
Jedi: Survivor begins with Cal falling into a hole that leads to a random cave – entirely by accident. It just so happened that Greez built his Cantina on top of some ancient Jedi ruins, and Cal stumbled into those ruins completely by mistake. That mistake kicked off a convoluted plot about a planet lost in an impenetrable nebula, a fallen Jedi who’d been sealed in a bacta tank for hundreds of years, and an Imperial spy who was so obvious that he might as well have had the words “secret bad guy” tattooed across his forehead.
Yup.
I admit that the performance issues and bugs in Jedi: Survivor made it harder to fully get into the story, as did the open-world mechanics described above. And those two things have undoubtedly impacted the way I view certain character decisions and the game’s narrative path. But even keeping that in mind, and doing my best to separate my thoughts about the state of the game and its design choices from its narrative… I still find it to be a weaker and less engaging story than its predecessor.
Any Star Wars story set during the reign of the Empire has a tightrope to walk – and for me, Jedi: Survivor created narrative issues for itself as a result of a couple of key decisions. Bringing back Master Eno Cordova for what was, unfortunately, an underwhelming and unimpressive role seriously challenges the idea of Cal as the game’s protagonist and leading figure in any kind of Jedi restoration. Cere had appointed herself as a kind of librarian or preserver of Jedi knowledge, but Cordova – a Jedi Master, lest we forget – should have been in a strong position to play a leading role in the preservation and restoration of the Jedi Order.
Master Cordova’s role was unimpressive.
Instead, Cordova’s role was a disappointment. He hand-waved away Cal’s destruction of the holocron that he’d gone to such extreme lengths to protect in the first game, then just stood around doing fuck all. He didn’t help, he didn’t offer guidance, he didn’t do… well, anything. And then he died remarkably easily at the climax of the game’s “twist” – a twist so thoroughly telegraphed that it might as well have been lit up in neon. Ever since the “no, I am your father” moment back in 1980, Star Wars has been obsessed with putting these kinds of twists into its stories. As I said once, recapturing that magic moment isn’t gonna happen, and Jedi: Survivor was made worse by trying to pull off something like this – and doing it so unsuccessfully.
When the dust settled, I also felt that Bode’s reason for his betrayal of Cal was paper-thin and didn’t make a lot of sense. Did Bode really plan to take his child to an uninhabited, uncharted planet and stay there – completely alone? What were they gonna eat? Without access to technology, what were they gonna do? Sure, they’d be “safe” from the Empire, and Bode would be wiped off the Empire’s list, but there doesn’t seem to have been any real planning on his part for the long-term.
Bode didn’t make for a particularly compelling villain.
In a “linear, story-driven” game – tags that Jedi: Survivor’s publishers love to draw attention to – the story is more important, in many ways, than the gameplay. Jedi: Survivor’s third-person exploration, parkour, and lightsaber combat could be fantastic… but if they’re let down by a poor story or one that feels convoluted, there’s no salvaging the game. And while I wouldn’t say anything in Jedi: Survivor was as bad, narratively speaking, as something like The Rise of Skywalker… that’s an incredibly low bar.
There were some genuinely tense, thrilling, or otherwise fun moments scattered throughout the story, as well as callbacks to the first game and references to other parts of the Star Wars franchise that I appreciated. So it wasn’t a total narrative collapse or anything like that; Cal’s story, while built on weak foundations, was still worth following to its conclusion. Even though I saw Bode’s betrayal coming from a mile away, Cal’s raw emotional reaction to it definitely hit the notes it was aiming for. While Master Cordova’s death felt like a waste, Cere’s demise at the hands of Darth Vader not only took her story full-circle after the events of Jedi: Fallen Order, but it was a heartbreaking moment that was handled well.
Cere was hunted down by Darth Vader.
The weakest part of the story of Jedi: Fallen Order was one that I hoped its sequel might address. The Haxion Brood storyline – in which Greez and Cal were pursued by a gaggle of unimpressive bounty hunters – was left unresolved by the time the credits rolled on the first game, and I had hoped to see a resolution in Jedi: Survivor. There was a bounty hunter side-story in the game, with several different bounty hunters to defeat that served as kind of mini-bosses. The ending of this questline was neat, but here’s my gripe: it didn’t resolve the Haxion Brood storyline!
As of the end of the game, Cal and Greez are still wanted by the bounty hunters, and the faction’s leader, who we met in the first game and who seemed like the kind of arrogant dick that it would be so satisfying to kill, wasn’t even mentioned this time. Again, this storyline just feels half-baked, and I had hoped that Respawn might’ve taken that feedback on board after the way the bounty hunter story just fizzled out in the first game.
Bounty hunter Caij Vanda offered what amounted to side-missions.
I liked that there were more cosmetic options in Jedi: Survivor, and I had fun playing with Cal’s appearance, BD-1’s appearance, and Cal’s lightsaber. I wasn’t wild about the way these cosmetics were unlocked, however, as I felt the game was particularly stingy with its currencies and lootable containers. That being said, I was able to unlock most of the items that I had my eye on, and by the time I was halfway through the campaign (or thereabouts) I’d got Cal, BD-1, and Cal’s weapons looking the way I wanted them to.
The expansion of lightsaber styles from Jedi: Fallen Order was nice – but these felt a little restrictive. I loved the way the crossguard lightsaber looked, but the incredibly slow and cumbersome fighting style that accompanied it basically rendered it non-viable for me. It would have been nice if there were options to mix and match fighting stances with cosmetics – in my case allowing Cal to use a crossguard lightsaber in a different way, but this could also open up double-bladed and dual-wielding stances to other styles of play.
Cal with a crossguard lightsaber.
Jedi: Survivor retains the Dark Souls-inspired “checkpoint” save system, instead of allowing players to freely save. This is a particularly irritating trend that many “souls-like” games (or should that be “souls-wannabes?”) implement, and it just feels annoying and outdated in 2023. Having to re-do chunks of a level because of the lack of a proper save system is just silly, it doesn’t increase the difficulty nor add anything to a game, and with Jedi: Survivor’s meditation spots not exactly being ubiquitous, I felt this choice got in the way of the fun.
One thing I did appreciate was that Cal’s Force powers carried over from Jedi: Fallen Order. Given the way in which that game weaved Cal’s connection to the Force into its narrative, it would have felt strange if he’d begun the sequel having to re-learn those same skills, and I will give credit to the writers for keeping Cal’s growth going instead of going for the typical video game sequel “reset” of his powers.
Customising BD-1.
I expected better from Jedi: Survivor, at the end of the day. The follow-up to one of my favourite games of the last few years was a title that I genuinely expected to compete for the coveted “game of the year” title come December, but instead it’s going to go down as one of the biggest disappointments of 2023 for me personally. The unacceptably poor state that Jedi: Survivor was in at launch – and remains in more than five months later – is a big part of that. But even if those performance issues and bugs had been kept to a minimum, the game itself feels like a poor relation to its illustrious predecessor.
Narratively, Jedi: Survivor built a weak, convoluted, and random story that split up the first game’s crew and saw Cal team up with an incredibly obvious turncoat. And mechanically, the game was forced into an open-world mould that simply didn’t suit it. It was hard enough to get invested in the story because of the poor shape that the game was in, but every time I got close, either the bland open-world formula would trip it up or I’d find myself annoyed by a story that was so much weaker than that of the first game.
Improperly rendered low-res textures.
So that was my experience with Jedi: Survivor. It’s hard to recommend it right now, given the performance issues and bugs that remain present. Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment have massively slowed the rollout of patches and fixes since the game launched, and I fear that Jedi: Survivor is being quietly abandoned and may never reach the level of basic playability and mechanical competence that should have been present at launch. This is already a huge disappointment and should be enough to put off all but the most ardent Star Wars fans.
Your mileage may vary when it comes to the game’s story, though, and my take is clearly not shared by all players. I’ve seen plenty of comments hailing the story as one of the best that the Star Wars franchise has to offer, and while that’s certainly not my opinion, it’s worth keeping in mind that these things are subjective. As I said earlier, I have no doubt that my overall impressions of Jedi: Survivor have been coloured by its bugs and performance issues.
I have no plans to return to Jedi: Survivor right now, and having stepped back into the game to capture a few screenshots for this piece, I’ll probably be uninstalling it. If a huge patch is released, or the game receives significant DLC that could add to its story, I might consider going around again. But unfortunately I must report that Jedi: Survivor was not the fun and engaging Star Wars adventure that I wanted it to be.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is out now for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S/X. Jedi: Survivor is the copyright of Electronic Arts, Lucasfilm Games, and Respawn Entertainment. The Star Wars franchise is the copyright of Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company. Some promo artwork and images used above courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers are present for some early missions in Starfield.
A strange feeling hit me yesterday. I’d taken a break from Starfield for a few days after writing up my first impressions of the game, but I booted it up again to give it another shot at getting me immersed in its sci-fi world. This was, after all, a game I’d been excited to play and had been looking forward to. But while I was playing Starfield and feeling underwhelmed by some of its basic quests and unimpressive exploration… I realised that I’d rather be playing Baldur’s Gate 3. I was planning out character ideas in my head, thinking about how to approach some early-game quests and encounters that I was unprepared for the first time around, and I even found myself more interested in writing about that game than I was in actually playing Starfield.
This got me thinking about Bethesda, and in particular the way in which the company’s game design and creation feels… well, stagnant. Starfield, while an impressive technical achievement in many ways, also feels like a game whose core mechanics and systems haven’t really improved or moved on in more than two decades – and while that’s clearly sitting right with a lot of Bethesda fans and giving them a ton of enjoyment, it feels disappointing to me.
An empty captain’s chair.
Starfield is a Bethesda game. It’s “Skyrim in space.” And those two expressions simultaneously encompass everything Starfield fans love about the game… and everything that critics dislike about it. For the first time since I played Morrowind more than twenty years ago, I find myself wrangling with a difficult question: do I actually like Bethesda games? Or to be more accurate: are Bethesda games still enjoyable twenty years later when the formula, designs, and core gameplay mechanics haven’t really changed?
See, Starfield isn’t just “Skyrim in space.” It’s also “Oblivion in space,” “Fallout 3 in space,” and even “Morrowind in space.” Although more than twenty years have passed since we were first sitting down to play Morrowind, not a lot has changed in terms of the way a Bethesda game feels. And that’s a double-edged sword, because that familiarity is clearly something that fans adore. That style of gameplay has its audience – and it’s a big one. How else do we explain Skyrim still being popular almost twelve years later?
Morrowind was released on PC and Xbox in 2002.
But that familiarity is, at least for me, the beginning of Starfield’s undoing. The structure of a Bethesda game – with an optional main quest and plenty of side-missions to get stuck into – felt incredibly innovative in 2002, but doesn’t any more. And when many of those quests are incredibly basic, offering little if any choice of how to approach them, again it feels like Bethesda’s game design has become stagnant. Quests in Starfield operate in functionally the same way as quests did in Morrowind – and every other mainline Bethesda game since. You have two basic variants: go to place, press button to collect/interact with item, the end. Or: go to place full of enemies, kill enemies, the end.
During an early-game mission in Starfield, I found myself at a facility teeming with nameless “spacers.” This base felt no different from the dozen or so other bases I’d cleared out earlier in my playthrough, and even though it was a named quest location, it felt incredibly samey in terms of its design and its loot. Stealth was an option – but not an especially good one, as taking down one enemy would alert all the others in the vicinity. There were no real puzzles to solve, aside from picking a couple of locks, and after exploring the entire place, listening to a couple of audio logs, and talking to one NPC, I’d claimed my prize and was blasting off to the next place.
Fighting pirates in Starfield.
As I explored the facility that I was infiltrating (alright, attacking) I kept encountering interesting-looking items that I just couldn’t interact with at all. Computers that couldn’t be powered on. Gauges and switches that couldn’t be spun or flicked. Buttons that couldn’t be pressed. There was no environmental storytelling nor any way to use the environment to my advantage. I couldn’t, for example, hack into the base’s computers and set turrets to target the spacers. I couldn’t vent toxic gas into a room to knock them out. There wasn’t an alternate route to the clearly-marked destination that I could have used to sneak past the guards. In short: it was a Bethesda quest from a Bethesda game.
And I remember this exact criticism from the Morrowind days. “You’ll come across a fishing rod that you can’t use to fish,” said one reviewer at the time, using that example as a way to call out the superficial world that Morrowind offered. Because I got so hooked in by the story, the characters, the lore, and the world-building… I always felt such criticisms were silly. The world was rich and deep in story terms, even if mechanically and in terms of gameplay it wasn’t. That was good enough for me in 2002 – but it doesn’t feel good enough any more in 2023.
This computer setup (which is duplicated in many bases and locations across Starfield’s galaxy) is set dressing. It can’t be touched or interacted with in any way.
A lot of folks are playing and loving Starfield. A friend of mine, who was even more hyped for the game than I was, seems to be having a whale of a time – and I’m genuinely thrilled for them and for everyone else who’s enjoying it. But I feel like I’m watching a New Year’s Eve party through the window while standing on the cold street outside; everyone else is having fun, but I’m not.
I keep waiting for Starfield to “click.” I keep waiting for that moment where I’ll think “oh, I get it now,” and the fun can actually begin. But almost twenty-five hours in, it hasn’t. There are whole games that are shorter than that, games that get going from the very first moment and tell a wonderful story in a relatively short span of time. My pick for 2021’s game of the year was Kena: Bridge of Spirits, an indie title that was visually beautiful, emotional, and a ton of fun to play. But my playthrough of that game lasted barely twelve hours, and in that time I explored the game world, fell in love with its characters, and dragged it out as much as possible because I just didn’t want the experience to end.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits was 2021’s game of the year.
I’ve heard other critics and commentators say that Starfield doesn’t “get good” until around the six-hour mark, the twelve-hour mark, or even beyond that. But… if it takes that long for the game to get going, I don’t really consider that to be a selling-point. It’s often true that a game gets more interesting to play as the campaign goes on; your character levels up and gains more skills and abilities, giving you more options in some cases. But the basic gameplay still has to be balanced and enjoyable during those first few hours! That’s crucial to player retention. If the reason I’m not enjoying Starfield after twenty-five hours and bringing my character up to level 18 is because the game “doesn’t get good” until later… well, how much longer am I going to have to wait to have a good time?
I don’t really think that’s the issue, though. Levelling up my character and doing those basic looting and fetching activities just don’t hold the appeal they once did. The real reason for that, I fear, is that game design has moved beyond what Bethesda and its Creation Engine are capable of.
Standing on a random planet with a spaceship landing to my left and an enemy base to my right.
The world of Starfield feels regressive and, to me, more akin to Morrowind than Fallout 4 or Skyrim. Shops never close, even when it’s the middle of the night, and their NPC proprietors stand or sit behind their counters 24/7. When I aim the first-person camera down to the ground, I can’t see my character’s feet or body; I’m just a floating camera orb. Enemies and NPCs don’t feel reactive – you can run away from them and they’ll just forget you existed two minutes later, even if you’ve murdered all their companions and shot them in the face.
And the bugs. Oh god, the bugs. Starfield probably is Bethesda’s “least-buggy release ever,” as has been repeatedly claimed. But “least-buggy” doesn’t mean “there are zero bugs,” and claiming to be the least-buggy Bethesda game is like claiming to be the sewer with the fewest turds. I’ve seen dozens of bugs across my playthrough, including enemies able to shoot through doors and walls, NPCs clipping through solid objects, characters levitating, and items disappearing through the environment or floating away. There’s one particularly annoying bug where I’ll be piloting my spaceship but every crew member on board will repeatedly spout the same handful of lines of dialogue – as if the game thinks I just walked up to them.
Just one of many bugs I’ve encountered. Not game-breaking, but certainly immersion-breaking.
Every time Starfield has a chance at getting me to feel a crumb of immersion in its sci-fi future, something comes along that rips it away again. Maybe it’s walking into a cabin on my ship to see one of my crew members clipping through a box. Maybe it’s realising that a shopkeeper doesn’t have a life outside of the few seconds I spend in his always-open shop. Maybe it’s landing on a supposedly “unexplored” planet or moon only to find two spacer bases, a mining outpost, and another spaceship landing right next to me. But I can’t go more than a few minutes without something in Starfield reminding me that I’m playing a video game – and a video game that feels years out of date.
After taking part in yet another quest that didn’t seem to be any different from any of the others I’ve tried, I kind of felt myself hit the wall. Should I keep pressing on, following one uninspiring story after another in an empty world that I couldn’t give a shit about? Should I keep trying to pretend that these last-gen, waxy-skinned Madame Tussauds rejects are “people,” even as their dead eyes and ridiculous faces break what little immersion I can find? Should I keep waiting for Starfield to “get good?”
A pair of NPCs.
Setting my own feelings aside, I wonder what lessons can be learned from Starfield from Bethesda’s point of view. As the company begins to develop new entries in The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series, as well as potential DLC for Starfield, what should the key takeaways be? As I asked at the beginning: where does Bethesda go from here?
Despite how I feel – and how you may feel, too, if you happen to agree with me – Starfield has been well-received by Bethesda fans. The game had six million players shortly after launch, making it the biggest Bethesda release ever. And it’s racked up decent reviews on platforms like Steam and Metacritic, with the positive reviews outweighing the negative ones from both professional critics and players alike. There’s a market for this kind of game, then… so Bethesda doesn’t need to change anything. Right?
Starfield’s ratings on Metacritic as of mid-September 2023.
I look at Starfield – and by extension, Bethesda games in general – the same way I’ve looked at Nintendo games since the mid-2000s. Nintendo threw in the towel and gave up on trying to compete with PlayStation and Xbox on power and graphics, focusing instead on carving out its own niche. Nintendo games rarely if ever compete with other studios in terms of things like visuals or scale, and yet it’s found success with 2D games, retro games, kids’ games, smaller and more simplistic games, and so on. The company has gone from strength to strength with the Wii and the Switch – with a bit of a blip during the short-lived Wii U era!
Bethesda may just be going down a similar path. Instead of trying to keep up with open-world developers like Rockstar or role-playing studios like Larian, Bethesda is sticking to what’s worked in the past. Instead of developing new technologies and innovating, the company is doubling- and tripling-down on its existing technology, knowing that its fanbase will forgive a degree of bugginess and jankiness. Instead of learning from what other companies have done with tech like procedural generation, Bethesda is content to muddle through and do things its own way.
Shops in Starfield never close, and shopkeepers never leave their posts.
And who am I to say that’s a bad thing? I don’t like every Nintendo game that comes out, but their heavy-hitters are still worth turning up for. Whether it’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Super Mario Odyssey, or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Nintendo knows what its fans want and serves them just enough of it to keep them coming back. Are those games innovative masterpieces that push boundaries and drive gaming forward? No… but do they need to be?
Did Starfield need to be?
I bought into too much of the excitement for Starfield and internalised too much of the hype. That one’s on me, and after playing games for more than thirty years I should’ve known better than to place any new release on such a pedestal. But there’s also a lesson here for Bethesda – one that the company should have learned already from similar experiences in the past! Over-hyping a game and being frightened of telling players “no” can lead to excessively high expectations and ultimately disappointment. That’s part of the Starfield problem. The Starfield showcase earlier this year was great, but what came after it should have shut down speculation, explained clearly the boundaries that would be present, and done more to lower sky-high expectations. Over-selling a game might lead to a temporary boost in sales, but it’s almost never worth it in the long-run.
Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard.
Beyond just marketing, though, there are questions for Bethesda in terms of the fundamentals of development and game design. Does the company have both the ability and the desire to keep up with its competitors? If so… why didn’t we see that in Starfield?
Procedural generation has been able to create massive, expansive worlds for a long time. So why are Starfield’s planets restricted to tiny, non-contiguous landing zones? Minecraft generated massive worlds with varied biomes more than a decade ago, and No Man’s Sky took procedural generation to space all the way back in 2016. The same for spaceflight: why can’t I fly my ship from one planet to the next in the same solar system?
My customised spaceship.
Look at open-world games like Grand Theft Auto V – which is now a decade old. That game’s linear missions at least offered some variety in terms of the way they played. Why does every quest in Starfield feel functionally the same? Where’s the diversity of items to at least make the looting side of the game feel worthwhile?
When I explore a city in Starfield that’s supposedly the capital of humanity’s extrasolar colonies, why does it feel so lifeless and empty? For all its problems – and my god were there problems – Cyberpunk 2077 at least managed to create the feel of a bustling city, replete with skyscrapers, traffic, and countless individual NPCs.
New Atlantis – the biggest city ever made for a Bethesda game – feels small and empty.
These are just some of the areas where Starfield feels deficient. And my question isn’t “how will Bethesda fix them?” but rather… does Bethesda even consider these things problems that need to be fixed? Or is the company content to take this formula and repeat it yet again in its next title? If so, will that be good enough for Bethesda fans when The Elder Scrolls VI rolls around in 2028? Or when Fallout 5 graces our screens in the 2030s?
The answer is a solid “maybe.”
So where does Bethesda go from here? The way I see it, there are two paths open to the company. One sees it continuing to double-down on its existing technology and design philosophy, becoming “the Nintendo of role-playing games,” where graphical fidelity, quest design, characters, and more are all a couple of generations behind. Abandoning innovation in this way will probably lead to The Elder Scrolls VI being referred to as “Starfield in a fantasy setting,” whenever that game is ready!
Another bug that I encountered during my playthrough.
Alternatively, Bethesda could recognise the deficiencies in its technologies and processes, look around at what other games in the action/adventure, open-world, and role-playing spaces have been doing over the past few years, and try to catch up. Realistically this almost certainly means dumping the Creation Engine in order to create or license something more powerful that can really stand up to the rigours of modern game development.
After trying to give Starfield a fair shot but finding it came up short, I know what I’d rather see. But given Starfield’s critical and commercial success, perhaps I’m in the minority here. It seems that millions of players are absolutely fine with playing “just another Bethesda game” in a different setting, and if that’s the case in 2023, who’s to say it will change by the time the next Bethesda title is ready? Like Nintendo, the company clearly has a dedicated fanbase who are willing to overlook and even embrace its flaws. I thought I was one of those fans… but Starfield has shown me that I’m not.
Starfield is out now for PC and Xbox Series S & X consoles. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. Some promo images and screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Baldur’s Gate 3 – including its ending.
This piece is a follow-up to my spoiler-free review of Baldur’s Gate 3. If you haven’t read that, it provides a bit of background to some of the things we’re going to talk about here, and also goes into detail about some of the mechanics of Baldur’s Gate 3 and what I enjoyed about it from a gameplay perspective. It should also go without saying that we’re going to talk about some specific story points today, including the ending of the game and several character questlines. If you haven’t completed the game and don’t want to see spoilers, this is your opportunity to nope out!
Baldur’s Gate 3 had a strong story that roped me in almost from the first moment. It also told a story with plenty of variety, with companion questlines that went in interesting and unexpected directions, and side-quests that were just as engaging and impactful as the main quest. I adore the experience that I had, and I can’t wait to jump in for a second run and try to do some things differently – so everything we’re going to discuss today has to be seen through that lens. So to repeat: I thoroughly enjoyed the story of Baldur’s Gate 3!
You know there has to be a “but” coming after that, though… right?
Box art of Baldur’s Gate 3.
But I have some notes! Firstly, Baldur’s Gate 3 makes no apologies for being a dense story, and for really throwing players in the deep end from the very first moment. The wall of content that you experience upon booting up the game for the first time – in which I’m including the intro cinematic, the opening level, and the character creator – throws a lot at you all at once. For someone who didn’t play the original Baldur’s Gate and who’s unfamiliar with Dungeons and Dragons… it can be a lot to take in.
I made a lot of mistakes during my first few hours with Baldur’s Gate 3, and the game doesn’t hold players’ hands. For some folks, that’s a huge positive! But for me, I have mixed feelings. I’m no stranger to this phenomenon – I cut my teeth playing games in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when games didn’t have more than a manual in the box to help you out. But there’s a reason why most modern games offer more by way of tutorials and do more to ease players into the story! Baldur’s Gate 3 begins by throwing up a metaphorical brick wall that has no obvious way around or over it – and it’s up to you as a player to either muddle through or hop online to find a strategy guide.
Creating a custom character.
My unfamiliarity with Dungeons and Dragons was a hurdle – one that I have no doubt impacted my experience with the game. It’s to the writers’ credit, more so than anything else, that I continued to play the game and kept coming back to it when I ran into something I didn’t understand or a problem I wasn’t sure how to solve. Although the story has huge stakes, particularly as it gets into its second and third acts and talk turns to the “Dead Three” and their chosen, at its core in those early moments it’s a story of survival. One person – the player character – is infected by a parasite and has to find a cure. That’s the driving force, and that’s what leads you to your allies and companions, and sets the stage for this story.
That character-centred story, with high personal stakes, is what roped me in during those crucial first moments. Even as I had no clue what mind-flayers, githyanki, or nautiloids were, there was a sense of urgency and a basic, innate survival instinct at the heart of the story that begged me to keep going. The writing to bring this to life and to get me instantly invested in this vast, dense world when I had no real frame of reference is truly world-class – there’s no other way to describe it. When people say that video games can be just as engaging, entertaining, and emotional as books or films, it’s stories like Baldur’s Gate 3 that they can point to!
The adventure begins…
Despite what you may have heard, Baldur’s Gate 3 does not have “17,000 endings.” There are a few basic ending options, which can be modified depending on player choice – and random dice rolls throughout the game. If a companion died, for example, or was never recruited, they don’t show up at the end. Likewise for allies – if an ally was never recruited, they aren’t available in the endgame. This adds variety, and means that it’s worth making multiple runs through the game to see different things and experience some of these different ending options. But I feel that the “17,000” claim is rather overstating what’s actually on offer. Don’t get me wrong: there’s far more variety and more ending options than in something like Mass Effect 3! But just not perhaps as much variety as has been claimed.
The ending I experienced during my first playthrough felt like the “best” possibility based on the way I’d played the game and which characters I had on my side. But other players might find that other options or pathways could have led to an even better outcome, which is absolutely part of the fun!
One of the citizens of Baldur’s Gate takes down a mind-flayer.
One thing that I liked about Baldur’s Gate 3 was the feeling of “impossible” choices. There are multiple points at which the road forks and you have to choose between one ally and another – betraying one in order to side with someone else. I kind of “cheesed” part of this by placing a companion on the back burner and largely ignoring her, allowing me to more easily side with one ally over another when doing so threatened to tread on the toes of her storyline. But it wasn’t the easiest thing to do – showing, I think, just how much the story had grabbed me and how much I’d come to care about these characters. I never like upsetting an NPC in a video game, but the friends and allies I’d made in Baldur’s Gate 3 felt like real people, so the idea of going against their wishes or even betraying them… I couldn’t do it!
Obviously Baldur’s Gate 3 is a sequel – so I expected some callbacks to earlier games. But I was surprised at how heavily Baldur’s Gate 3 seemed to lean on those two older titles, especially as the second and third acts of the game rolled around. I’m not familiar with those stories having never played the games, but there was enough exposition dumped to make it clear that some characters and storylines were basically direct continuations of the events of those games. That’s a creative decision, and one that fans of Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 will surely have appreciated. For me, I could have done without that, and at a few points this sequel-itis felt quite in-your-face.
The character of Vicona DeVir is one of several who return from earlier games.
Let’s talk a bit about companions. There are ten potential companions in Baldur’s Gate 3 – two of whom appear to be mutually-exclusive, meaning you have to choose one over the other for a maximum of nine potential companions per playthrough. There are also hirelings who can be purchased to round out the party if you feel you’re missing a particular class or skill – but these characters are less interactive, have few if any unique dialogue options, and I personally felt didn’t serve a lot of purpose. You’re limited to four characters in your party at any one time – your main character plus three others – and hirelings count toward that limit. So unless there’s a problem with your main companions, the need for hirelings feels quite diminished.
In terms of variety, replayability, and player choice, I felt that the game offered a lot of pathways to bringing your party together – but many of these pathways led to the same end point. You could choose in what order to recruit party members – even if, at the time of my first playthrough, I wasn’t aware that I was doing so(!) – but for the most part, even if you deliberately shun a character that the game deems to be important, one way or another they’ll find their way back to you. In my case, the character of Wyll literally showed up at my camp toward the end of Act 1.
Wyll confronted Karlach at my campsite.
I’d seen Wyll briefly during one of the first fights in the game, but after that encounter I lost track of him and didn’t recruit him. I could’ve gone through the entire game not even realising I’d missed a prospective companion, but Wyll later showed up at my camp to confront Karlach – before being talked into joining the party. It kind of felt like this interaction was less organic and natural than others, and that Wyll was almost forced upon me, with Baldur’s Gate 3′s developers insisting that I take him along for the journey.
I’m not upset about the outcome – Wyll’s story was one of the most interesting in the game in more ways than one, and having him in the party led to some incredible moments in all three of the game’s main acts. But this is very much a case of the ends justifying the means, with a rare misstep in the way the game’s narrative came close to breaking the fourth wall leading to better and more engaging story beats later on.
Wyll proved to be a great companion character across the rest of the game.
I recently saw a spoiler-y video online, unfortunately, which confirms that the same thing also happens with the companion character Shadowheart. Players have to go a bit more out of their way to avoid Shadowheart, actively pushing her away and insisting she doesn’t join the party, but even if this path is chosen, Shadowheart makes her way back to the party partway through Act 1. And from what I saw in the video – which, admittedly, was not the entire storyline or sequence – it also felt like a very forceful way that the game pushed her into the party.
I’m not sure how true this is of all the other companions, but the main “tadpoled” characters of Astarion, Karlach, and Gale could well fall into this category too, showing up uninvited even if rebuffed by the player. And having played and enjoyed all of their arcs across the game, I think it’s not unfair to say that players would be missing out if they chose not to engage with these characters at least once. But in a game that sells itself in part on the fact that it offers players endless choices, the way some of these characters are basically forced into the party leads to a strange kind of disconnect between the game’s ambition on that front and the way it actually plays.
If ignored or rebuffed earlier in the game, Shadowheart shows up at the goblins’ camp in Act 1.
Some elements of Baldur’s Gate 3′s role-playing felt a little constrained by the mechanics of the game. To give one example from my own playthrough: I wanted my character to wield a flail – you know, the medieval weapon that’s basically a spiky ball attached to a chain. There wasn’t any real reason for this other than that I thought it looked neat on my character, a drow druid. But through my entire playthrough, I didn’t encounter any decent flails for my character to use.
There were swords aplenty, as well as axes, bows, and even staffs and clubs. But if I’d chosen to equip my character with a flail – after specifically choosing to make them proficient with that weapon type – I would have sacrificed a lot. Not only were there no unique or enchanted flails, offering additional bonuses like fire or ice damage, but the only ones I came across were pretty weak. They were easily outmatched by even the most basic swords and rapiers, leaving me with little choice but to equip a weapon I wasn’t wild about just to get the best stats. That’s part of gaming, in a way, but I would have liked to have seen more options on the weapon front. Baldur’s Gate 3 has plenty of weapon types on the surface, and uses that as part of its “play the game however you want” selling-point. But if some of these weapons are basically non-viable, especially later in the game when coming up against higher-level enemies, it kind of renders the whole thing redundant.
A flail.
That’s a specific complaint because I couldn’t find a flail that was as good (or almost as good) as many of the swords and other weapons that I encountered. But I will give the game credit for offering a variety of unique weapons, and for making it so that most characters can experiment with different ranged and melee weapon types. My druid, for example, was able to gain proficiencies with swords and crossbows at a relatively early point in the campaign, and it completely transformed them from a pure spellcaster into a much more well-rounded character who had multiple options when engaged in combat.
I didn’t choose to re-spec my character during my playthrough, nor change my class. I just didn’t feel that was necessary – but again, it’s nice that the game offers that option. I could absolutely see a scenario in which changing class would be worthwhile, and actually for a druid – which was my class – perhaps that’s even more relevant! Of the ten companions you can recruit, two are druids – so I can see a situation in which some players might want to change class to avoid having too many of the same character types in their party.
Talking to Withers at camp allows you to change your class, if desired.
Let’s talk about romance, because I feel this was one area where Baldur’s Gate 3 strayed from being a deeply engaging story into one that was very – for want of a better term – “video-gamey.” The basic problem is this: no matter who you are, what choices you made, what your background is, or what actions you take… everyone falls in love with you. That includes members of your party as well as important allies – and it just felt too easy to go down these romantic paths. It got to a point where I felt I had to basically avoid interacting with some characters after accidentally ending up in a romantic entanglement, and I just felt that this side of the story was clumsily handled.
It’s great that Baldur’s Gate 3 offers so many romantic options, don’t get me wrong, and that there are options for players to be gay, bi, straight, and so on. But it’s also a bit odd that every character so easily falls for the player – even if they take actions that they claim to disapprove of, or even after the player is already in a committed relationship with another NPC. I also find it a little odd that every NPC is able to be romanced regardless of whether the player character is male, female, or non-binary. Is everyone in Faerûn pansexual? Doing what games like Mass Effect do and restricting some romantic encounters by gender wouldn’t be a bad thing necessarily – if it was right for the character in question.
Some companions fall in love with the player character a little too easily!
Jumping ahead to the end of the game, while I had a fantastic time with the story and the way it brought together different characters that I’d encountered across my many hours of playtime, there are a couple of things to say.
Firstly, the fact that so many characters can be present as allies in the endgame is fantastic – and I absolutely love this kind of “everyone pitching in to save the day” story. It felt great, it was emotional, and I was genuinely surprised to see some characters turning up to offer their aid as Baldur’s Gate was besieged by the mind-flayers!
But – and you knew there was another “but” coming – the way this happens completely reframes many of these character encounters earlier in the game. Instead of helping little Arabella because it’s the right thing to do or because it feels like something your character would do, on a repeat playthrough you’re going to be acutely aware that saving her has a positive outcome in the endgame. Likewise the owlbear cub, Councillor Florrick, or Inspector Valeria. There are at least a dozen characters who can play a role here – and that knowledge completely changes how I’d approach their encounters and quests on a second playthrough.
Saving Arabella in Act 1 (and helping her again in Acts 2 and 3) has positive repercussions as the climactic battle rages.
This is kind of a trend you’ll see with Baldur’s Gate 3: while there are, in theory, many options for how to progress through the game, and the game is very adaptable if an NPC or even party member is killed, there are clearly some choices that lead to better outcomes, especially as the story reaches its climax. If you killed a bunch of NPCs, failed to save others, or just straight-up ignored whole questlines – which is easy to do, as some encounters have quite specific requirements – you’ll have fewer allies for the final fight against the Elder Brain, potentially giving you a tougher fight or a less-enjoyable time.
If your desire is to play as an “evil” character, I think this would affect you the most. Baldur’s Gate 3 tries to offset some of this, to its credit, by giving the “evil” options some positive endgame outcomes and alliances – such as if you betray Nightsong and turn her over to Lorroakan. But even then, I think you’re going to be left with fewer allies for the final fight. Maybe that’s okay – and narratively, if it makes sense for your character and your play style, that’s fine. But it may mean that, in terms of the mechanics of how the game works, you’ll end up having a worse or harder time.
Choosing to help the strange ox – which I did for no other reason than it seemed like a bit of silly fun – ended up making a difference.
Sticking with the ending of the game, after a beautiful coming-together of friends and allies – which, in spite of the criticisms above, felt amazing on that first playthrough – and the climactic battle against the Elder Brain, things just sort of… ended. There was a brief epilogue showing some of the surviving party members, but they soon went their separate ways. Depending on choices you may have made, the macguffin at the heart of the story – the Crown of Karsus – may be lost in the sea off the coast of Baldur’s Gate. And depending on promises you may have made to certain characters… it feels like the story didn’t actually end at that point, in spite of the credits rolling!
For me, I’d chosen to pledge the Crown of Karsus to Gale, who in turn planned to return it to the goddess Mystra. As my character and Gale stared wistfully out to sea, I couldn’t help but feel that another chapter of the story was yet to be told. Maybe that will be Baldur’s Gate 4… but I’m not so sure of that!
Gale at the end of the game. His story didn’t feel complete.
The same feeling hit me with Wyll and Karlach. Karlach’s questline involved getting her infernal mechanical heart back into working order, but she learned toward the end of that story that the only long-term solution that could save her life involved returning to Avernus. Karlach seemed ready to die – and everything I’ve read about this quest says that there’s no “happy ending” for her, unfortunately. That’s a creative choice that I respect, and being with Karlach as she went out on her terms was a fitting, if bittersweet, end to her story.
At the last second, though, Wyll intervened and promised to stay with her in Avernus, saving her life but condemning both of them to one of the nine hells. This moment could have worked better if more time had been dedicated to it; it felt rushed, and because it was such a twist on what the game seemed to have been building up to with Karlach, I don’t think it worked as well as it could have. We also didn’t get to see Wyll and Karlach depart – the sequence just came to an abrupt end.
Karlach’s story seemed to come to an abrupt end.
Although my character got a moment during the epilogue with their romantic partner, other characters were either only seen briefly or were notable by their absence. The Emperor (who I chose to save instead of freeing Orpheus) very quickly shuffled off-screen, as did Lae’zel and Shadowheart. Jaheira, Minsc, and Halsin didn’t have much to say during the epilogue, despite being party members and surviving the fight. Other allies who fought alongside me during the climactic battle were entirely absent.
I get that making an overly-long epilogue could be offputting for some people, but this is the end point of what was, for me, a story that had lasted more than eighty-five hours over the span of an entire month, so getting a few extra minutes to see what happened to some of my companions and friends would have felt great. Even just a picture and a block of text explaining where they went next would have been something; it didn’t need to be a fully-animated and voiced sequence if that was prohibitively expensive.
Halsin at the end of the game.
I mentioned earlier that I chose to play as a drow (dark elf) druid during my playthrough, and based on that I have a few thoughts about how well races, backgrounds, and classes are implemented in the game. During my spoiler-free review I mentioned this, so forgive me for repeating myself! But I didn’t feel that there were very many places in the game where being either a drow or a druid actually made much difference in terms of role-playing and conversations. And backgrounds were all but forgotten; I had to go back and check which one I even picked, because I don’t think it ever came up.
Obviously classes matter in Baldur’s Gate 3 – they matter a great deal, as they impact what kind of spells you can cast, what weapons you’re able to proficiently wield, how easy things like picking locks or sneaking will be, and some even give you advantages in conversations or when trying to persuade NPCs. All of that has a profound impact on the way Baldur’s Gate 3 plays – and one of the reasons why I’m so keen to start a second run through the game is to pick a different class and try things differently.
Perhaps I should play as a halfling monk next time?
But in terms of the game world and characters therein, I didn’t feel that my choices (at the character creation stage) made much of a difference. A few characters remarked on my being a drow when I first met them, but immediately moved on and it was never mentioned again. I think I saw about half a dozen drow conversation prompts during my playthrough, most of which related to darkness, seeing in the dark, or visiting the underdark (which I now know is where drows live!) And half a dozen lines of unique dialogue isn’t bad per se… but in a playthrough that lasted eighty-five hours, it’s not like I felt that being a drow was affecting every conversation or having a big impact on how most people saw my character.
The same was true of being a druid. A handful of lines of dialogue about nature or the natural world were available, and especially toward the beginning of the game in the druids’ grove I felt optimistic that my choice was going to have a bigger impact on the way my character engaged with NPCs. But as the game wore on, it became clear that the grove was a bit of an outlier, and that the number of these unique dialogue options were few and far between.
One of the druids near the beginning of the game.
There was no point at which I felt, as a druid, a unique pathway opened up for me to engage with a character, resolve a situation, or perhaps even start a quest that other classes wouldn’t have access to. Baldur’s Gate 3 seems to go out of its way to make sure that all races and classes have access to all of the quests and missions – which is a double-edged sword, really. On the positive side, it means that everyone can enjoy what’s on offer, but on the negative side… it kind of detracts from that wonderful character creation process, and leaves some of those choices feeling less important or just flat-out unimportant.
This is a bad example, as the missions in question were piss-poor and incredibly basic, but it’s the only one that springs to mind right now so it’ll have to do! But in Cyberpunk 2077, each of the three life paths (i.e. backgrounds) that were on offer led to a unique prologue and one unique in-game mission. Although in Cyberpunk these missions were lacklustre, at least there was an attempt to add to the role-playing experience by throwing a bone to players, making those early choices feel a bit more special and impactful. It also goes without saying that unique missions for each class or background add to any game’s replayability.
The choice of background doesn’t seem to matter.
Even if class-locked quests were off the table, it would still have been nice to see unique ways to progress through different parts of the game that were only available to certain classes or character types. To draw on another example, in the Omega DLC for Mass Effect 3, players who chose the “engineer” class get a class-exclusive opportunity that really impacts the mission and that makes perfect narrative sense. I didn’t see any of this in Baldur’s Gate 3. Maybe other classes or backgrounds have moments like this – but drow druids don’t, at least not from what I saw.
Every single combat encounter is going to be different depending on both the player’s class and the combination of classes of party members – be they the in-game companions or other people if playing co-operatively. And that’s great – it means that there’s a real strategic element to the game when it comes to deciding who to bring along and how to approach different moments. Getting a good combination of ranged, melee, and magical characters is a good starting point – but some encounters may need more heavy hitters, a healer, or a stealthy character, just to give three basic examples.
A combat encounter.
And that variety is a huge part of the fun. The different challenges posed by Baldur’s Gate 3′s huge variety of enemies makes practically every encounter feel unique. Even when facing off against the same basic enemy faction – goblins, for instance – there can still be this variety. A single boss goblin feels very different from a small group, and the strategies for defeating the small group are completely different from those needed to defeat a whole horde! I loved this aspect of the game, as it wasn’t possible to just pick a favourite party and stick with it the whole time; Baldur’s Gate 3 goes out of its way to encourage party-swapping and companion variety.
Exploration also feels like it has some of this variety. Having a character who’s adept at lockpicking in the party is a good rule of thumb, but characters who are perceptive or who have other bonuses also come in handy!
Some characters have an easier time than others when it comes to lockpicking, among other activities.
I just felt that, again, the way I created my custom character didn’t offer as much of that outside of combat. As either a drow or a druid, I didn’t find any unique ways to complete quests, any unique character encounters, or really any conversations or questlines that felt like they were really taking my character’s unique attributes into account. By the time I’d got stuck into the game and buffed up my character’s martial skills, giving me a mix of magic and weapon abilities, I felt that I had different ways to approach many encounters – but none of that felt like it was truly unique to who my character was.
There were also a few parts of the game that I felt were either not well-integrated or easy to overlook. For example, I didn’t create a single potion during my entire run. I didn’t even know potion-making was an option until I was well into Act 1, and I found that I was easily able to acquire enough health potions out in the wild such that making my own just never seemed like something I needed to do.
I didn’t actually do any alchemy.
Perhaps it’s more to do with the way I played the game, but I felt that potions and scrolls were less useful than spells and weapons – and I only used a handful across my run. Maybe there are things I missed out on because of that, and when I jump back in for a second playthrough I’d love to take more advantage of alchemy and scrolls. I’ll have to see whether and to what extent that makes a difference! But in my first run, I felt that neither were essential and both were easily overlooked.
While I feel you’d almost have to go out of your way to get into potion-making in Baldur’s Gate 3, and I feel the feature would benefit from an in-game introduction and tutorial, I like that it’s an option for players who want to role-play that kind of magical character. Potions are a big deal in fantasy settings, and it would feel like something’s missing if potion-making wasn’t present at all. I just feel it could be made more prominent in the game as things stand.
An armoured owlbear, ready for battle!
There’s one specific quest that I want to single out for criticism, and I’m picking on it not because I didn’t enjoy it – I think it’s one of the best and most interesting in the entire game – but because of how weirdly finicky it was to play, and how it had some very exacting requirements. For someone just playing the game, as I was, without a guide, it feels too easy to accidentally encounter this quest and then have it pretty significantly and negatively impact much of Act 3. I’m talking about the quest that involves rescuing the hostages from the Iron Throne – an underwater prison.
I first stumbled upon this quest by picking a lock in the city of Baldur’s Gate, then exploring what seemed to be a random warehouse. In the depths of the warehouse was a submarine that could ferry my party to this prison – but starting this quest before talking to other characters, including Gortash, Orin, one of the gnomes at the Steel Watch facility, and Wyll’s devil patron Mizora causes problems. Doing this in the “wrong” order leads to the quest having a much worse outcome, with Wyll’s father dead and the gnome rebellion at the Steel Watch not triggering properly. For a game that prides itself on letting players loose to freely explore, and on offering multiple branching paths… the way in which this particular quest was handled didn’t feel great, and it sticks up as an outlier. Despite that, when I managed to play it the “right” way, it ended up being one of my favourites in the game. It’s just a shame that it’s so exacting in its requirements, and that there aren’t any real ways around that.
This quest was very convoluted if you wanted to do it properly.
So I think we’d better wrap things up!
As I said last time, Baldur’s Gate 3 is the best game I’ve played so far this year. I adored the time I spent in Faerûn – my first ever venture into this particular fantasy realm – and I’m already chomping at the bit to start a second run through the game! I’m trying to restrain myself, as I feel jumping back in so soon after beating the game for the first time would diminish the experience, and I want to get as much out of my next go around as possible. But I daren’t wait too long, and I suspect I’ll give in and start that second playthrough before Christmas.
Though there were a few places where things could’ve been improved, and some quests that felt very particular with their requirements, overall I had a wonderful time with Baldur’s Gate 3. From the very first moment I felt gripped by what was simultaneously a small-scale, personal story and one that had world-ending repercussions. That’s in spite of having essentially zero background knowledge about the world of Dungeons and Dragons. The writing and gameplay were both outstanding, and kept me coming back for more.
Withers addressing the Dead Three.
I hope this has been interesting. There are bound to be many different perspectives on Baldur’s Gate 3, as it’s a game that encourages players to take different paths through its story. I already know that I haven’t seen all that the game has to offer – including an entire area of the map, many NPCs, one companion character, and I have no doubt multiple questlines, too. Now that I know what to expect, I’ll make a few changes to the way I play next time in order to check off some of those missing experiences! But I’ll try to save a few for another run, too.
Although I’ve found a few things to pick on in terms of Baldur’s Gate 3′s narrative and role-playing, none of those things prevented me from thoroughly enjoying a game that’s sure to be, for many folks, the game of the year. Baldur’s Gate 3 came out of nowhere this year – it hadn’t been on my radar at all. Both in terms of story and gameplay, I was stunned. I had an amazing time, and I can’t wait to go around again.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is out now for PC and PlayStation 5, and will be released on Xbox Series consoles in 2024. Baldur’s Gate 3 is the copyright of Larian Studios, and is based on Dungeons and Dragons which is owned by Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro. Some screenshots and promo art used above courtesy of Larian Studios and/or IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: While there are no major story spoilers for Starfield, minor spoilers for the main quest and a handful of side-quests are present.
I promised that I’d share my first impressions of Starfield as soon as possible, and with the game finally launching for us plebs who didn’t fork over £100 to get “early” access, I’ve belatedly had the chance to jump in and try it for myself. I’m basing my impressions of the game on approximately twenty hours of playtime, in which I’ve started but not completed the main quest, created a character, worked on my spaceship, undertaken a handful of side-missions and fetch quests, and landed on about twenty different planets. There’s no way I can reasonably “review” a game as large and long as Starfield without beating a single questline, so I’m calling this piece my “first impressions” of the game.
Starfield’s showcase earlier this summer was fantastic, and the game rocketed up the list to become my most-anticipated launch of the year. The idea of playing an open-galaxy adventure with all of the fantastic writing and quest design of a Bethesda game combined with spaceflight, spaceship building, and exploration, and set in a new fictional universe with designs that drew inspiration from NASA… it all seemed too good to be true. A friend of mine suggested to me a couple of months ago that Starfield “might be the best game that either of us will ever play.” Try as I might to avoid the hype, there’s no denying how excited I was for Starfield.
Promo poster for Starfield.
Hype can be detrimental to any game if not properly handled, something I commented on shortly before the release of 2020’s Cyberpunk 2077. I said then that games publishers and their marketing teams need to do a better job at reining in speculation, and that there are ways to let players down gently, redirecting the conversation, if necessary, away from features that won’t be part of a game. The hype train for Starfield definitely got unwieldy, and I fear that Bethesda ended up over-promising.
Let’s get the headline out of the way right now: Starfield is undeniably a good game… but it doesn’t always make good on some of its loftier promises and ambitions. It brings a lot to the table, but several of its key features and systems feel barebones and underdone, especially when compared to other titles in a similar space, meaning that there’s not a lot to offer in terms of longer-term play or replayability. Thus far, the game’s main story has failed to grab me following what I felt was a pretty rushed beginning, and customisation options for both the player character and their spaceship aren’t at the level I was hoping for. There are also some notable bugs that slipped through, in spite of promises that Starfield would be Bethesda’s “least-buggy release ever,” and graphics that feel outdated in some areas.
The city of New Atlantis.
That being said, Starfield gets a lot right. The game’s art style and overall aesthetic is exactly what I was looking for, drawing on real-world space agencies like NASA and retro sci-fi properties from the ’70s and ’80s that I grew up with. There’s some genuinely enjoyable gunplay – a first for a Bethesda title. Voice acting is solid across the board. And while I don’t feel that the game has really managed to suck me in – at least, not yet – it still manages to evoke at least some of those feelings of being a space captain in a sci-fi world that it was aiming for.
I think the best thing to do at this point is to break this article into segments. Each segment will tackle one aspect of Starfield’s gameplay, and then we’ll bring it all together at the end for a conclusion. I’ll try to avoid major plot spoilers – though I’m yet to complete the main quest or any faction questline, so there shouldn’t be anything massive in the mix.
Exploration:
Landing on a planet’s surface.
Exploring in Starfield is not what I expected it would be. After landing on the surface of a planet, you’re restricted to a “landing zone” that takes about ten to twelve minutes to reach the boundary of while traversing on foot. No, despite what you may have heard, a landing zone is not “the same size as Skyrim!” For the most part, I don’t think the size of a landing zone is a particular problem, and I’d wager that most players – though by no means all – won’t bother to trek as far as the invisible wall. But that in itself is saying something – because there’s not a lot to do in a lot of these places, and much of what is on offer gets repetitive very quickly.
As an aside about invisible walls: this could have been handled better. An in-game explanation could have been found, allowing Starfield to technobabble its way to an excuse for why it isn’t possible to roam too far from where your ship landed. Something about “needing to stay in communications range,” or words to that effect, for example. Instead, the first time you hit an invisible wall it’s pretty jarring – you’re simply told that “you cannot go that way,” much like you were as far back as Oblivion.
This looks familiar.
In the roughly twenty hours I’ve spent with Starfield, I’ve encountered absolutely identical locations and buildings on different planets on multiple occasions. Within each “abandoned mine,” enemies spawn in the same place, much of the loot is identical, and the layout of the structure is the same. These so-called “points of interest” on the surface of planets are copied-and-pasted from one to the next, and I’m already bored of that after just a few hours.
Imagine if you visited three identical dungeons in Skyrim, and knew that the fourth one would also have the same enemies in the same places and the same basic loot to grab. You’d start to lose interest pretty quickly, right? Maybe I’ve been particularly unlucky, and maybe there are many more of these randomised locations that I’m yet to encounter. I hope so, but even if that’s the case, the fact that these structures – and everything within – can be repeated at all isn’t exactly a good look.
This was one of my big fears about Starfield from the moment Bethesda began talking of planets being made up of “tiles,” and I’m disappointed to see it come to pass.
Discovering another “deserted biotics lab” soon feels repetitive.
One of the early main quest missions is even set at one of these copy-and-paste locations. That actually shocked me when I realised it, because I’d already explored not one but two identical “abandoned mines” on other planets prior to playing this main quest mission. I would have expected at the very least to see locations connected to main quests and faction quests being wholly unique, and again this feels like a disappointment.
One of the things that appealed to me about Starfield was the idea of being able to go “where no man has gone before,” and setting foot on an uncharted world for the first time. But I can’t do that – at least not from what I’ve seen so far. Every single landing zone I’ve touched down at has at least two of these copy-and-paste structures, and no matter how many times I take off again and pick a different spot… they’re always there. Also, every single time I land on a planet, another ship lands a few metres away from mine moments later. There’s no opportunity to feel like a bona fide explorer – the first person to set foot in this strange alien landscape. No matter where you go, someone else has beaten you to it.
A structure on a random planet.
Feeling like I’m at the forefront of this mission of exploration like a Starfleet officer was one of the things I was most keen to experience in Starfield, and the way that the game has handled this hasn’t been great. I literally tried landing at more than fifteen different sites on a single planet, just trying to find one that didn’t have any pre-built structures or spaceship landing sites. But alas.
That’s not to say that there’d be much point in landing at such a site. Starfield is incredibly stingy with its planetary resources, with only a handful of minerals to collect that are scattered across a wide area. With most resources not being worth many credits, any kind of mining or resource-gathering is pretty much out of the question as an in-game career. It’s easier and more efficient to kill random enemies and loot their bases rather than trying to mine or collect minerals and resources.
Mining iron doesn’t yield much profit.
Much was made at the showcase about gravity, and how different planets will have different levels of gravity. As far as I can see, gravity in Starfield affects one thing: how high you can jump. How fast you can walk or run seems entirely unaffected by gravity, as are shooting and carrying capacity. I haven’t encountered any zero-G sections of gameplay yet, though, so those could spice things up a bit.
Different planets can have different environmental hazards: radiation, heat, and even things like scalding rain or toxic gases. For the most part, the spacesuit and helmet that I’ve had equipped for the bulk of my playthrough thus far seem to be adequate, though my character picked up a couple of environmental injuries early on. I’m not sure if there’s more to this, but I’ve landed on frozen icy planets and even the surface of Venus using the same equipment and I’ve really not noticed a difference.
The map.
Having a usable map has become an essential feature in any game with large levels – but Starfield bucks this trend. The available map is good enough on the surface of random planets, but utterly useless for navigating cities and settlements.
The map highlights points of interest, and it’s possible to fast travel to any that have been discovered. But god forbid you try to find a particular shop or building in New Atlantis! The map doesn’t have that level of detail for some inexplicable reason.
Spaceflight:
A custom spaceship takes to the skies!
This ought to be nice and short: there isn’t any. There’s functionally no spaceflight in this game whatsoever. Remember being told “if you can see it, you can go there?” Well, you don’t get to actually fly your ship to your destination. You can’t take off from wherever you landed and manually fly to the moon or to the next planet over. No. The only way to travel from one location to the next is to fast-travel from either the map or mission menu.
I fully expected that travelling from one solar system to another would work this way. Who wants to sit around for ages flying through interstellar space, right? But within a single system – and especially to fly from a planet to its moon or from a space station to the planet it’s orbiting – I genuinely expected that I’d be able to take my customised spaceship and actually, y’know… fly it.
Flying near a planet doesn’t mean you can fly to a planet.
Instead, Starfield drops you and your ship in a little pocket of space, a little bubble. You can fly around within that bubble, talk to any nearby ships, dock with space stations, and the like. But you can’t do anything else, and you’re trapped within that bubble until you open the map menu and select another destination. There’s no option to fly from one planet or moon to a neighbouring one, which is just a disappointment.
What’s the point of building a custom spaceship if you can’t actually get to pilot it for any significant length of time? Sure, there are some combat encounters in space that are tense, and it’s a bit of fun the first few times you get scanned for contraband, hail a friendly ship, or dock with someone. But there’s not a lot of longevity in most of those activities, and the decision to basically offer no actual spaceflight in a space game… it’s an odd one to say the least!
The view from the cockpit.
Some missions operate the same way. After choosing an assignment from a “mission board” located near a spaceport, you’ll be tasked with some relatively mundane job in exchange for credits. One that I chose involved delivering a shipment of jewellery from one planet to another. But to call these “missions” is massively overstating it!
After selecting the task I wanted from the mission board, the quest was available in the menu. But I didn’t have to go anywhere to collect the cargo; it magically appeared on my ship instantaneously. All I had to do was board my ship, select the destination planet from the map screen, and away I went. I mistakenly assumed that I’d have to talk to someone or at the very least interact with a screen in order to transfer the cargo and complete the assignment – but no! The mission was automatically marked as complete the very second my ship touched down. I didn’t even need to get out of my seat, and the entire thing took less than a minute from choosing the task to marking it as complete and receiving my reward. Hardly an interactive experience – and while such tasks may be useful for making a bunch of credits in short order, it wasn’t fun and it wasn’t immersive.
The view from the cockpit.
Maybe this is more of a personal taste thing, but I really dislike the way Starfield presents its heads-up display while piloting a spaceship. I found the HUD to be incredibly cumbersome, especially in first-person mode, and it got in the way of the immersion of being a space captain or space pilot. Displaying these little transparent boxes on top of in-game computer screens and monitors really detracts from the piloting experience.
Even in third-person mode, the HUD is still obtrusive and takes up a lot of real estate on the screen. I’d have loved to see Starfield make actual use of those screens and displays in the cockpit, as that would make for a much more engaging and interactive experience. Offering players a choice, at least, with a simplified HUD or smaller HUD as options would have been nice, too.
Graphics:
Parts of Starfield can look decent.
If Starfield had been released on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, I’d have said it looked great. And some of its backdrops and vistas look pretty. Seeing a planet from space or seeing a landscape stretching off into the distance are genuinely great moments, and they’re rendered well. But when you start looking at things up close, a lot of Starfield’s next-gen trappings fall away.
The main area of complaint here is the characters’ faces. Eyes are dead and faces flip-flop from being totally blank and expressionless to having almost comically exaggerated movements, then back again. Every character, regardless of race or age, looks to be about twenty-five years old, with smooth skin and perfect teeth. Practically all characters are the same height, and most are the same build, too.
Starfield vs. Baldur’s Gate 3.
The image above is one I believe offers a fair comparison. On the left we have the character of Sam Coe from Starfield, and on the right, Gale from Baldur’s Gate 3 – wearing a similar hat to make comparing them easier and fairer! I picked these two characters because they have a similar look, and are both major NPCs and companion characters in their respective games. You can tell at a glance which looks better and more lifelike, and that’s without even seeing them moving or being animated. In short, Bethesda has fallen a long way behind when it comes to faces – and this comparison proves it.
“But graphics don’t matter!” goes the frequently-heard retort. And I agree to an extent – many games deliberately employ art direction that isn’t intended to be realistic, going down a “retro” route of pixels and polygons or choosing a cartoony aesthetic, just to give two examples. But Starfield is trying to be realistic – and at least in terms of faces and character models, it misses the mark by a country mile. Games in the same role-playing space by other developers look so much better than Starfield, which is, at best, a polished and shinier version of Fallout 4.
Story:
Sarah Morgan, head of the Constellation organisation.
Thus far, I don’t feel particularly engaged with either Starfield’s main story or the world that the game is trying to build. In true Bethesda style, the player character is some kind of “chosen one,” able to see visions when interacting with mysterious artefacts. But the game’s opening act felt pretty rushed, with my nameless miner picking up an artefact and then being whisked away by Constellation mere minutes later. I get that Bethesda needs to make this section of the game as curtailed as possible so it doesn’t drag too much on repeat playthroughs, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there wasn’t much explanation provided for why my character was essentially given a free spaceship and shoved off into the cosmos.
The artefacts themselves are pretty bland to look at, and the visions, while certainly mysterious, don’t really offer much else. I don’t feel compelled to keep pushing to figure out what the artefacts are or where they’ve come from, and while a decent ending or a good explanation could certainly reframe this aspect of the game’s story and make it more interesting, that hasn’t happened for me yet.
One of the artefacts that are at the core of the main story.
In terms of storytelling, the side-missions I’ve played so far didn’t feel especially interactive or player-led. On one occasion I stumbled upon a farmstead that was under attack by spacers, and as the mission unfolded I had to recruit other local families to join in the defence of their system from these raiders. But at every stage, the mission felt like it was being organised and led by the very people I was supposedly helping. They discovered the locations I needed to attack, they planned the mission, and it was at their direction that I did, well, everything. I didn’t even have the basic choice to try to do the mission through stealth; a full-frontal attack was literally the only option.
What this meant, when the dust settled and the questline was complete, is that I didn’t really feel like I’d done anything different. Attacking this group of spacers, killing them, and looting their base scarcely felt any different from attacking, killing, and looting random bases on other worlds, and I felt that my character really didn’t engage much with the quest-giver beyond listening to his plan and following orders. As the questline wrapped up and the quest-giver showered my character with praise for defeating the spacers… the whole thing just felt rather hollow.
Scale:
New Atlantis, the bustling metropolis at the heart of the United Colonies.
Before Starfield launched, I wrote a piece here on the website about my concerns surrounding the sense of scale that a game like this needs to have. I zeroed in on two factors: the amount of content relative to the size of the map, and the way other games manage to convey the feeling that players are taking part in a story that only scratches the surface of a much larger world, one that exists beyond the confines of the playable area.
Parts of Starfield feel… small. Exploring New Atlantis – supposedly the biggest city that Bethesda has ever created – feels akin to walking around a small town, not the capital city of a futuristic humanity. There’s no sense of scale, no ambience, and the city doesn’t feel believable. Parts of it are literally deserted, and the handful of people who are milling around are more often than not nameless “citizens” with nothing to say.
A citizen. He’s busy at the moment.
The aforementioned lack of spaceflight also cuts into this sense of scale. Because Starfield allows you to hop from one planet to the next by opening a menu, there’s no feeling that you’ve actually travelled, or that the destination you’ve reached is far away from the spaceport that you departed from. What should be a vast, open galaxy feels small as a result.
Doubling-down on this feeling are the copy-and-paste locations present on planet surfaces outside of the main settlements. I truly can’t believe how many repeat locations I’ve encountered in such a short span of time, and this is again something that really drags Starfield down.
Customisation Part 1: Character Creation:
The character creation screen.
The character creator in Starfield has left me with mixed feelings. Firstly, there seems to be a pretty big difference between the way your character looks when initially creating them and how they actually appear during gameplay. Maybe this is due to lighting or other effects, but I felt my character looked noticeably worse after exiting the character creator. And having spent ages working on them… that didn’t feel great.
There are some great options within the character creator to represent different body types – but this isn’t as extensive as it could be. You can choose whether to be thin, muscular, or fat, for example, or any combination of those three things, but not your character’s height. There are plenty of options for various skin types, including things like vitiligo, freckles, and wrinkles, but very few hair and facial hair options. When it comes to reflecting diverse hair types… that’s poor.
There aren’t a lot of hairstyles, facial hair styles, or eye colours.
Eye colour is likewise very limited. Baldur’s Gate 3, which was released last month, and even 2020’s Cyberpunk 2077 offer far richer and more detailed character creators, and I think it’s a shame that Bethesda hasn’t really made much progress here since Fallout 4. And speaking of Fallout 4: several of the hairstyles seem to be lifted directly from that game, retaining their ’50s-inspired look that doesn’t particularly suit Starfield’s retro-sci-fi future.
As a quick comparison, Cyberpunk 2077 has 35 hair colours and more than 50 hairstyles to Starfield’s 23 hair colours and 40 hairstyles – an absolutely massive difference considering it’s almost three years old and was released on last-generation hardware. And Baldur’s Gate 3 has well over 100 colours and more than 85 styles to choose from, showing what a modern game is really capable of in that department.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has far more hairstyle, hair colour, and eye colour options.
What’s the point in Starfield offering 100 ways to reshape your nose or cheekbones – things that are barely perceptible in-game – while only offering a handful of eye colours and hairstyles? These things go a long way to making a character feel personalised and unique, and when there are so few options, within a matter of minutes you’re likely to be running into NPCs who share some part of your character’s appearance or who look alike. Given the aforementioned issues with the way the game renders faces, the fact that many NPCs look similar to one another is verging on immersion-breaking.
The Starfield showcase really played up the various backgrounds and traits that are available during character creation. And to the game’s credit, these traits and backgrounds are varied and interesting. However, I would say that in my twenty hours with the game, the only place where my character’s background has even been mentioned so far was in the intro/tutorial sequence right at the beginning. Now, there are likely to be more opportunities for random lines of dialogue to appear, but so far I haven’t seen very many.
Backgrounds don’t seem to have much of an impact on gameplay.
I picked the “Raised Enlightened” trait, one of three potential religious affiliations. Partly I did so because in-game text promised access to a chest in New Atlantis, of which there seems to be one for each religion, and I figured that the chest may contain items that could prove useful in the early game. This chest was a complete nothing-burger, offering a handful of health packs and four “books” – which are a couple of pages long at most.
Another trait I chose was “UC Native,” meaning that my character was born in the United Colonies, one of two major factions in the game. While this has some bonuses when completing missions, it doesn’t really come with a lot of perks. For instance, I was told early on that I’m not actually a “citizen” of the United Colonies – presumably so I can have access to the same questline to become a citizen as players who didn’t choose this option. But then… what was the point of choosing this trait? It doesn’t seem to have affected my character in a meaningful way.
Customisation Part 2: Spaceships:
An example of a customised spaceship.
Spaceship building was one of the parts of Starfield that I was most excited about. I’ve loved the idea of creating my very own spaceship ever since I played the likes of Star Trek: Starship Creator in the late ’90s, and being able to not only build my own ship, but pilot it, take it into combat, and get out of my chair and freely walk around the interior are all aspects that held huge appeal.
The ship creator is fun – but it requires a significant investment of credits to get started with, and is a bit more finicky than I’d hoped to see. Some components are incompatible with one another, there are limitations on where some parts can be placed and what they can connect to, and the way weapons have to be manually “assigned” is cumbersome and annoying.
Assigning weapons to a spaceship.
That being said, building my own ship is about as much fun as I realistically expected to have. It isn’t perfect, and in an ideal world there’s a lot I’d add (and a few things I’d remove) to make the experience even more enjoyable. But there are plenty of colour options, and the fact that ships can be assembled in a range of configurations is great. I’d like to see more components and modules – but I don’t think I’ve seen or unlocked all that the game has to offer, so it’s conceivable that I’ll come across more options as I progress.
As I said a few times before Starfield launched, if spaceship interiors could be customised, Bethesda would have said so. While I was still crossing my fingers, this didn’t feel like a realistic prospect as the game edged closer to launch. Even though I’d resigned myself to this reality… it’s still disappointing, especially considering that Starfield does allow for interior designing and decorating in outposts and houses. Would it have really been much more complicated to add this already-present feature to spaceships, too?
Spaceship interiors can’t be repainted or customised.
My spaceship doesn’t feel like “mine.” There’s a half-eaten sandwich on a table that my character didn’t bite. There are notes on the whiteboard in my “captain’s cabin” that I didn’t write (and have no idea what they mean). Although my spaceship is a fetching shade of pink on the outside, the walls inside are a generic white colour. I can’t even repaint hatches and doors, nor choose the colour of the furniture.
While it is possible to drop items aboard the ship and have them remain where they fall, this particular mechanic has literally not been improved since Morrowind. It’s not possible to precisely position items, meaning I can’t even set the table for dinner with a knife and fork. For me, these things are all part of the immersion – and when they aren’t present, my ship just feels bland and generic, and not personal at all.
I hope you weren’t planning on giving your ship a long name!
A spaceship can be renamed at will, which is great, but names are limited to a scant fourteen characters. “Enterprise-D” fits, but “Millennium Falcon” doesn’t. I’ve no idea why Bethesda has been so stingy with the character limit here, as it cuts off a good deal of ship naming possibilities.
And while we’re on the subject of names: remember Todd Howard telling you that Vasco, the robot companion, could say your name and the name of your ship? Well, that hasn’t happened for me yet, despite taking Vasco all over the galaxy and having him accompany me on a number of missions. Not sure if there’s some hidden requirement to unlock this, but if there is, I haven’t found it yet. I didn’t give my character some kind of horribly obscure name, and I was looking forward to hearing this robotic voice say it; it’s another addition to the immersion. Considering what’s possible with text-to-speech nowadays, there’s no reason why Vasco should be limited to a handful of pre-recorded names.
Customisation Part 3: Outfits and Loot:
Six spacesuits available to purchase from a vendor.
I miss the days when you could mix and match outfits. Clothing in Starfield comes by way of whole costumes, with no option to change shoes, pants, shirts, and the like. There are hats that can be equipped individually, but that’s it. I find this to not only be disappointing, as it seriously cuts into the customisation and role-playing aspect of the game, but also a pretty big regressive step.
As far back as Morrowind, Bethesda games let you choose individual pieces of clothing. Shoes, trousers, tops, and even individual pieces of armour were all separate and could be mixed and matched at will. Even though that game is more than twenty years old, it seems like it had more customisation options when it comes to apparel.
Some defeated enemies don’t drop much loot.
In addition, Starfield doesn’t appear to have a huge array of clothing options to choose from. I think I’ve seen a couple of dozen different outfits, maybe, across my playthrough so far – including from several different vendors. And while looting outposts and enemies, I keep picking up the same ones over and over again. At one point I literally had 20 of the same spacesuit.
And this is true of other items, too. Even if you’re lucky enough to come across a building or base that you haven’t seen before – i.e. one that may not be a total copy-and-paste job – the items in it are remarkably samey. You’ll soon be able to identify which items are valuable and which to leave behind… because there really aren’t that many different ones.
A helmet, a couple of lootable items, and a few items that can’t be picked up.
Looting a base can be a frustrating experience at points. Some items that look like they should be collectable aren’t, they’re just part of the scenery and can’t be picked up or interacted with in any way. And the items that can be collected soon feel repetitive. Sure, these items are, to some extent, a means to an end. You’re looting the base or scavenging in order to sell the items for credits to spend on things like ship upgrades or building a base.
But it begins to harm the sense of immersion to constantly be picking up the same handful of items over and over again at different places across the galaxy.
Combat:
Firing a laser rifle.
Combat in Starfield is solid. First-person combat with both guns and melee weapons is probably on par with similar titles in the action-RPG space like Cyberpunk 2077 – though with admittedly fewer options and less variety. But for Bethesda, this is a massive improvement! We’re not reaching the levels of a dedicated FPS like Doom Eternal, and enemies can feel a bit over-armoured and bullet-spongey. But considering how mediocre gunplay was in Fallout 76 (or Bethesda’s other Fallout games when you take VATS out of the equation) I must say I’m impressed.
I had some genuinely fun and tense moments fighting pirates and spacers, and gunplay felt fast-paced and exciting. Different weapon types behave differently and can apply different effects to a target, and there are some “rare” or “legendary” weapons that I’ve come across that have additional bonuses. I think crafting and modifying weapons is also an option here. The only drawback, at least in the first few hours of the game, is that there isn’t all that much variety. I might’ve come across a dozen different guns in total – but when you break that down into lasers, rifles, pistols, and shotguns… well, that’s literally three of each. I hope there’s more that I haven’t discovered yet.
Battling a spacer.
Space combat is likewise fun, though perhaps I’d call it the lesser of Starfield’s two ways to fight. Where gunplay on the ground felt a bit more strategic, with a need to take cover, aim, and generally plan how to win a fight, space battles seem to mostly consist of mashing the buttons over and over again. There is targetted aiming, which is how you can try to disable an enemy ship for boarding, but this is inexplicably locked behind a skill point and can’t be accessed right off the bat.
That being said, I’ve had some exciting space combat encounters in my time with Starfield so far. On one occasion I was overwhelmed by a force of spacers and had to grav-jump to safety, and waiting for my grav-drive to power up with my shields down and enemy ships raining a hail of missiles down on me was a genuinely tense and thrilling moment.
Polish and Bugs:
An enemy clipping (and firing their weapon) through a locked door.
Before the game was released, there was a particularly audacious claim by Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, that Starfield would have “the fewest bugs of any Bethesda game ever shipped,” and I said at the time that he would absolutely be held to account for that! I haven’t encountered any game-breaking bugs, unfinishable missions, or hard crashes while playing Starfield, and unlike many PC games over the last couple of years, the game seems to run well out of the gate. The frame-rate feels decent, there hasn’t been any stuttering, screen-tearing, or frame-drops, and overall the performance feels solid.
I have noticed that my GPU – an Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti – seems to run hotter than usual and with its fans spinning faster than usual while playing Starfield, but I wouldn’t call that a cause for concern at this stage – and it’s something that could be patched or perhaps modded somewhere down the line to improve things.
Pretty sure you’re supposed to sit on a chair…
However, some bugs have slipped through the cracks, despite Starfield’s long and exhaustive QA process. And many of these bugs feel like your typical Bethesda/Creation Engine fare: characters clipping through walls or doors, being able to shoot through doors, levitating, or making random movements. At one point a character I was in conversation with was facing the wrong way. Characters and items will occasionally “slide” as if on a polished or icy surface.
None of the bugs I encountered stopped me from completing a quest – though a handful of times an item or piece of loot would float away, leaving me unable to retrieve it. The bugs feel akin to those found in other Bethesda titles at launch, which some people claim to find endearing. I don’t – and given the promises attached to Starfield on the bug front, it’s disappointing to have seen so many bugs and glitches within just a few hours of playtime.
Conclusion:
Starfield has landed…
Starfield isn’t as much fun as I’d hoped it would be. It’s a game that brings together systems and mechanics that have been done before – and done better – in other titles, some of which are several years old. What it does offer is all of those things in one package, in the framework of a Bethesda RPG. If Bethesda and Xbox had done a better job of setting expectations, and had been more willing to say “no” and shut down wild speculation when it started to get out of hand, perhaps some of that disappointment could have been avoided.
That being said, Starfield isn’t a bad game by any means. I fully intend to spend more time with it, and it’s not inconceivable that my opinion will shift if the story picks up and I begin to find more items to loot and things to do. I just don’t feel especially engaged with Starfield right now, and the story hasn’t grabbed me in the way I’d have hoped. If it had, perhaps things like limited landing zones or spaceflight consisting more of fast travel menus than anything else wouldn’t feel like such a let-down.
Notes and drawings aboard a custom spaceship.
If there’s one takeaway I have from Starfield it’s this: the Creation Engine has got to go. It’s clearly no longer up to scratch, and practically every element of Starfield that I’ve singled out for criticism today is being held back by outdated software. Let Starfield be the final game to use this piece of kit, and when Bethesda shifts its focus to The Elder Scrolls VI, let’s hope that they finally retire this engine in favour of creating or licensing something more modern, and something that can really stand up to the rigours of modern game development.
Look at what other games in the RPG and action/adventure spaces are doing, and in so many ways, Starfield is being let down by its reliance on the Creation Engine. From character creation and procedural generation to graphics and bugs, the Creation Engine is showing its age and its flaws – and it’s got to go. Obviously Starfield has been made and released now, and we’ll have to deal with it as it is. But in future, Bethesda would be well-served by ending its reliance on this outdated technology.
You cannot go that way.
But that’s really a question for another time! Starfield is good but not great, a game with ambitious scope that brings together a lot of different gameplay ideas – but doesn’t always make them work as well as they do elsewhere. Want more exciting space combat? Pick up Star Wars Squadrons or Elite Dangerous. Want a better, more in-depth RPG? Try Baldur’s Gate 3. Outpost building in a sci-fi setting? Something like Frostpunk or Subnautica might be up your alley. Looking for a first-person adventure? Cyberpunk 2077 or even The Outer Worlds are no less enjoyable.
This is both Starfield’s selling-point and its biggest flaw: it brings together so many different concepts that it can’t possibly deliver a suitably in-depth experience with any of them. The role-playing side of the game is let down by incredibly basic quest design that’s akin to making a few clicks on a menu. Spaceflight is let down by… not actually being able to fly anywhere in space. Shipbuilding is let down by a lack of customisation options. Exploration is let down by incredibly repetitive environments and loot as well as the feeling that you’re never the first person to go somewhere. And so on. If you find something you like in Starfield, chances are it won’t last all that long before you see how shallow it is, and how little longevity or replayability it has to offer.
Touching down on the surface of a planet.
I will give Starfield credit, at least in its launch version at time of writing, for not being excessively-monetised. I feel that the “premium edition” was over-sold, and that paying £35 for five days of early access was poor, but within the game itself there aren’t any microtransactions, lootboxes, premium currencies, paid mods, or any of the other AAA trappings that too many titles include these days. Maybe that’s a low bar, but it’s one Starfield happily clears. I sincerely hope that such nonsense won’t be added later on.
Starfield is a game I’d recommend, at least to some folks. If you have Game Pass it’s a no-brainer – you might as well give it a shot to see how you get on with it. And if you’ve played and enjoyed any Bethesda game in the past, chances are you’ll find something to like in Starfield, too, as the game feels very similar; the DNA of titles like Morrowind is clearly noticeable. I don’t think the “premium edition” is worth £100, though!
On the surface of a planet, ready for exploration.
Bethesda certainly over-promised with Starfield, and lessons need to be learned on the marketing side of things to ensure the company does a better job at reining in out-of-control hype. But part of the problem lies with me – I internalised too much of the hype and excitement, and feel let down because Starfield is “just” another Bethesda open-world role-playing adventure and not the once-in-a-lifetime genre-buster that I’d hoped for. Part of that is on me, and while I have some critical thoughts about Starfield and the way it implements some of its systems and mechanics, at its core I think it’s still a decent game.
I will continue playing in the days and weeks ahead – though perhaps not every day nor with unshakable enthusiasm! If I find that I have more to say after beating the main quest or unlocking more of the game, I’ll be sure to write up my thoughts and impressions later in the year. For now, I hope this has been informative if you’re considering picking up Starfield for yourself, or at least an interesting perspective to consider. For the record, I don’t hate Starfield. I just feel a bit let down that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Starfield is out now for PC and Xbox Series S & X consoles. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. Some promo images and screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers may be present for Baldur’s Gate 3.
As Baldur’s Gate 3 has taken the gaming world by storm, an age-old monster has awoken from its slumber. No, not the mind-flayers – I’m talking about the practice of “save-scumming!” There have been more than enough hot takes on the subject over the past couple of months… but hey, what’s the harm in one more?
Save-scumming, if you’re unfamiliar with the term, is the practice of creating a save just before an important dice roll or event, then re-loading the save to try again if something doesn’t go to plan. Though ubiquitous across gaming, save-scumming was controversial in the ’90s with games like Fallout and of course the original Baldur’s Gate.
The original Baldur’s Gate was where many folks first heard about “save-scumming.”
For as long as games have existed, gamers have looked for ways to cheat and get around the system. Before save files were commonplace, writing down passcodes to unlock levels was one way of doing it, and of course cheat codes have been a part of the gaming landscape for decades. But save-scumming seems to hit a sore spot for some fans of role-playing games like Baldur’s Gate 3, and the success of the game has reinvigorated the debate in 2023.
I’m a big advocate of accessibility in gaming, and I include in that category cheat codes, god modes, save-scumming, and everything else. If someone wants to play a game but finds it too difficult to the point of being frustrating or offputting, why shouldn’t they find a way to make it easier and get some enjoyment out of the game? Maybe you like to play games for the challenge and to “git gud,” but not everyone does. Difficulty and accessibility will have to be the topic of a future article, though, because we’re dangerously close to veering off-topic!
What’s your take on save-scumming, Lae’zel?
I support save-scumming in single-player and co-op games, and in my own playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3, I did it. So not only do I not care if you do it, I think it’s weird if you care that I do it!
In a single-player game, save-scumming doesn’t impact anyone except the person playing the game. If I choose to re-load an earlier save and try again, that’s nobody’s business but mine. You can shout at me till you’re blue in the face that it “goes against the spirit of Dungeons and Dragons!” and maybe you’re right about that. But I couldn’t give less of a shit if I tried.
A party of save-scummers.
And you know what? Practically everyone criticising save-scumming in Baldur’s Gate 3 is a hypocrite. Are you telling me you’ve never loaded a save game after dying? Not even in titles like Dark Souls or Elden Ring? If you choose to start a new game from the beginning every single time you die in a game or get a bad outcome… well, good for you, I guess. That’s certainly one way to play. But practically everyone loads their most recent save after dying against a hard boss or accidentally choosing the wrong dialogue option. That’s why games let you save your progress!
Baldur’s Gate 3 is an especially odd case for the anti-save-scumming crowd to pick on because I’d argue very strongly that the game goes out of its way to encourage the practice. How many other games can you think of that let you freely save during cut-scenes, dialogue, lockpicking, or even in the middle of a combat encounter? Baldur’s Gate 3 does – it even lets you create a save file right on the dice roll screen. Why would the developers do that if not because they know that many players want to play that way?
You can literally save on this screen for quick and easy re-loading.
A game as long as Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t one you can just pick up and play every day. It takes hours upon hours to progress through a single campaign – my own playthrough took more than 85 hours from beginning to end. And it’s a wonderful experience packed with unique encounters, well-written characters, and so much more. If my favourite companion is killed, or if I miss an important dice roll that means I can’t start a particular quest or get a valuable piece of loot… why should I have to progress through the rest of the game having a worse and less enjoyable experience? Why would I intentionally make the game less fun for myself just to preserve the nonexistent “integrity” of the digital dice? It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me!
That being said, if you’re adamantly opposed to ever save-scumming, or if you’re playing with friends who don’t approve… well, you do you, friend. It’s none of my business how you choose to play a single-player or co-op multiplayer game that I have absolutely no role in, so I would never say to anyone that they “have to” engage in save-scumming. Part of me respects someone who intentionally plays the game that way, knowing that they may well end up with a worse outcome and less-enjoyable experience.
Cheers!
At the end of the day, we’re talking about playing games for different reasons and from different points of view. I play games because I like the enjoyment, the story, and the adventure. I like to feel in control of the experience I’m having, and part of that means going back a step if I didn’t get the outcome I was hoping for. But if someone else plays games for the challenge, or enjoys the randomness and unpredictability that dice rolls bring, that’s totally fine! Just because it’s not how I choose to play doesn’t mean it’s bad, weird, stupid, or “objectively” worse.
Gaming is supposed to be fun, and there are different ways to approach it. My idea of fun may not be the same as yours – and I’m okay with that. I’ll defend save-scumming because, for me, it’s something that improves my experience of games like Baldur’s Gate 3. I think it’s silly to judge the way someone else chooses to play a single-player or co-op title, and there’s certainly a degree of snobbishness or even arrogance from some critics of save-scumming as they seem to look down their noses at people who play the game “the wrong way.” That’s a bit sad, to be honest, because how I choose to enjoy Baldur’s Gate 3 has no impact whatsoever on anyone else.
So save-scum all the way to Faerûn and back, friends! Or don’t, if you don’t want to. But if you only have time for one playthrough and you miss out on an interesting character, an exciting questline, or even just a fun piece of loot… I hope it’s worth it!
Baldur’s Gate 3 is out now for PC and PlayStation 5, and will be released on Xbox Series consoles in 2024. Baldur’s Gate 3 is the copyright of Larian Studios, and is based on Dungeons and Dragons which is owned by Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro. Some screenshots and promo art used above courtesy of Larian Studios and/or IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Here’s an unanswerable question to kick things off: does a critic or reviewer need to play through the entire game before publishing their review? The reason I ask is that Baldur’s Gate 3 is a massive game, and a lot of reviews that were published on release day or shortly after state up-front that they’re based on an incomplete experience.
That could be the topic of an entire article one day – and perhaps it should be! But for now, suffice to say that the reason my review is being published a month after Baldur’s Gate 3 launched on PC is because I took the time to complete the main campaign. As a result, I have a few things to say that I feel some early reviews glossed over or didn’t make mention of. The middle and latter parts of the game are a little different – and in some ways may feel slightly less polished than its opening act.
Promo screenshot of Baldur’s Gate 3.
But let’s take a step back! I recently completed a single playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 – and there’s a case to be made that even a playthrough that lasted more than 85 hours and took in as much exploration and as many side-quests as possible still isn’t thorough. I definitely haven’t seen or experienced everything the game has to offer! That’s a great thing, in my opinion, as any game that offers that kind of replayability is fantastic.
As things stand right now, in early September, Baldur’s Gate 3 is the best game I’ve played this year – and there’s no competition. This game hadn’t even been on my radar until a few weeks ago, so from my perspective it basically came out of nowhere! As someone who’s been playing games for well over three decades, getting that kind of experience is an increasingly rare phenomenon. I’m in love with Baldur’s Gate 3, and even at its most frustrating or difficult moments, I found myself inexorably drawn to the game. Finishing the story and seeing the credits roll was bittersweet! Coming to the end of such an amazing adventure left me feeling simultaneously thrilled at what I’d experienced and devastated that I couldn’t experience more of it!
A trio of adventurers in silly hats!
In the ’90s, I missed out on the original Baldur’s Gate games. I wasn’t into Dungeons and Dragons, and I felt that turn-based CRPGs were less exciting and less fun than “Doom clones” (as we used to call first-person shooters), action-adventures, and even real-time strategy games like Command and Conquer or Age of Empires. So while I was dimly aware of Baldur’s Gate and its sequel, they were never titles that I felt any interest in trying for myself at the time.
I came to Baldur’s Gate 3 with basically no expectations. Sure, there had been some good reviews, and developer Larian Studios had received praise for Divinity: Original Sin and its sequel, but I really didn’t know what I was getting into. I don’t know the first thing about Dungeons and Dragons or its lore, and having never played the original Baldur’s Gate I was completely unfamiliar with the world I was about to experience.
The original Baldur’s Gate looked like this…
Baldur’s Gate 3 catapulted me right into the story! The game’s introduction was dense and heavy, with a huge array of options in the character creator and an explosive opening chapter to the story to contend with. For someone brand-new to this world, it was a lot to take in all at once. I felt overwhelmed more than once in those first moments – and that feeling came back multiple times during the first few hours. Baldur’s Gate 3 didn’t hold my hand – and while it may feel much more accessible than CRPGs did in the ’90s, players coming to the game having played modern action/RPGs like Cyberpunk 2077 or Skyrim might find the sheer density and wall of content to be offputting.
That’s not to say that Baldur’s Gate 3 is “too hard,” not by any means. Some combat encounters are challenging, and at higher difficulty levels you’re in for a tough fight! But figuring out how to effectively use the right combination of spells and weapons, as well as how to solve puzzles and complete quests was, for me at least, all part of the fun. There were some frustrating moments where I felt I’d come up against an impossible challenge – but I soon found that I could usually figure out where I was going wrong and, at the second or perhaps third time of asking, make progress.
A combat encounter.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has been praised for its polish – and rightly so, for the most part. But I would be remiss not to mention that I encountered a few bugs and glitches during my playthrough, as well as some dodgy enemy and ally AI that could be frustrating. Although most of these were occasional or one-off issues, here are the ones that spring to mind:
Being able to pick up “null items” that didn’t exist,
Enemies repeatedly trying to open locked doors over and over,
Subtitles not showing during dialogue,
Characters getting stuck or being unable to navigate an open doorway,
Parts of a character’s skin/costume going missing,
Enemies and allies both charging head-first into fire or other environmental hazards,
Characters seeming to “freeze” and take no actions in combat when it was their turn,
The camera pointing in the wrong direction (or at nothing at all) during cut-scenes,
A quest marker that pointed to the wrong place on the map,
A mission-critical character in the latter part of the game who was randomly dead during a quest.
While I didn’t encounter any hard crashes – not a single one in over eighty-five hours of playing – nor any bugged or broken quests, I’m treating Baldur’s Gate 3 a bit more harshly on the bug front than I otherwise would, and that’s for one primary reason: this is a game that spent more than three years in early access. There was ample time to polish the experience and to take on board feedback from players. Some of these bugs occurred during the first part of the game, which is the part that was available to play during early access, so I really don’t give Larian a lot of leeway here when it comes to bugs.
Are bugs inevitable in games? Sure. Is Baldur’s Gate 3 one of the least-buggy titles so far this year? Absolutely… but that’s a low bar. Given how long the game has been in development, and especially given how long it spent in early access, the fact that basic things like subtitles or character models could be problematic isn’t great. While there are some mitigating circumstances – such as the game’s launch being pushed forward by over a month – I still think more could have been done to mitigate these issues.
This isn’t an item you’re supposed to be able to collect!
While we’re on this subject, let’s talk a little more about AI. Some of the characters in the game – and I’m including allies, companions, enemies, and occasionally the player character in this – could behave absolutely stupidly on occasion. Pathfinding when in turn-based mode could be particularly poor, and this is significant because character movement is strictly limited in combat and turn-based mode. Taking an unnecessarily long or winding route to a spot on the map or an objective can be the difference between being able to do something that turn or having to wait. Perhaps some of this could be explained by “user error” – but not all of it!
Then there were occasions where characters would damage their own allies, either by firing a weapon or casting a spell that impacted everyone around them. If I, as the player, chose to do something like that because I weighed that the benefits outweighed the cost, that’s my decision. But for the AI to make a move that crippled or killed some of its own characters… it just didn’t make a lot of sense to me, not when there were clearly other options available.
Promo screenshot featuring a combat encounter.
There were also a few let-downs when it came to the choices I made, and this is something that I definitely felt more of as the game progressed. Despite an impressive character creator offering backgrounds, races, classes, and more… I didn’t really feel that much beyond the class actually mattered. The way other characters in the world reacted to my character generally didn’t take my character’s race or background into account, and class primarily affected combat and stealth encounters. Considering the game’s lofty promises… only seeing a few lines of unique dialogue across eighty-five hours wasn’t as impressive as it could’ve been.
I chose to play as a dark elf/drow druid. And there were a few places where, as a druid, I got a line or two about nature… but the conversation would immediately return to other matters. As a drow, I didn’t feel that the way anyone in the world reacted to me was any different or would have been any different if I’d chosen to play as a human or a halfling. More could have been made of this, in my opinion, to really make these custom characters feel unique and part of the world.
I chose to play as a drow druid.
The same was true of character relationships. Without giving too much away, none of them felt particularly reactive – either to the character I chose to play as or to my actions. Occasionally a pop-up would display informing me that so-and-so “approved” or “disapproved” of a certain action or dialogue choice. But at no point did any of this approval or disapproval matter. You might get a different line of dialogue when next interacting with them, but after that they’d again go right back to the way they were.
We’ll have to get into more detail about some of these decisions later – I’ll be writing a second part of this review in the days ahead in which I’ll talk more about specific character moments and story beats and get into spoiler territory. But for now, I think I’ve made my point about the lack of reaction from some of the characters and the overall generic feel to the player-created custom character. Maybe choosing to play as one of the pre-made characters would negate this feeling, but for me – and I’d wager, for a lot of other folks too – part of the fun of a role-playing game is creating a character, either to represent ourselves or as an opportunity to become someone completely different.
An example of a custom character.
But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a truly compelling game that sucked me in and kept me in suspense practically the entire time. No sooner had I finished one complex mission than another would present itself, and the incredible thing was just how natural and organic the whole adventure and story felt. Exploring an area away from where the main quest seemed to be leading would see me encounter an interesting character who would have an entire hour-long mission of their own to send me on. Or diving into a dungeon would lead to uncovering a secret item that would have a massive impact on one of the characters in the group, again kicking off a quest or even a whole line of quests. Baldur’s Gate 3 certainly found a way to make exploring its beautifully-crafted world feel rewarding.
Levels and regions in Baldur’s Gate 3 feel balanced – not too big and not too small. There are just the right amount of items and loot to make exploring feel worthwhile without being unnecessarily time-consuming. And there’s a beautiful diversity of environments – from dark, rat-infested dungeons to beautiful beaches and hills. Unlike some open-world games, which can feel too big, directionless, or bland, everything about the world of Baldur’s Gate 3 was fantastic; a masterclass in level design.
The map screen.
How many games have you played where enemy types would soon feel repetitive and boring? I can practically guarantee you that won’t be the case in Baldur’s Gate 3! The sheer diversity of enemy types was fantastic, with practically every combat encounter offering something different. There are many named enemies and mini-bosses to go along with the bigger, badder bosses, too – and again, each of these feels unique and different from one another. There are factions that oppose you along your quest – but even when fighting the same group, the sheer array of characters, and the differing combinations in which enemy groups can be deployed, really worked to make each fight feel different from the last.
This diversity extends to friendly and neutral NPCs, too. There are so many different characters to meet, and practically all of them feel like they have a place in the fantasy world of Faerûn. Even background characters, like nameless villagers or soldiers, still manage to feel like they have a role to play – and perhaps a story all their own that we just didn’t see. These characters go a long way to building up a world that feels lived-in and real – and one in which the player character’s decisions do genuinely matter.
One of the game’s many non-player characters.
There’s also a decent amount of variety in terms of loot and items. Maybe this says more about the way I play these games – your mileage may vary – but I found I’d amassed a huge collection of everything from random junk to potions and scrolls by the time the campaign was into its final stretch. The ability to send items to camp instantaneously instead of having to sell them or leave them behind when over-encumbered is a life-saver – and a feature more games should take advantage of!
There are a couple of downsides here, though. Inventory management isn’t great, and when storing items in a chest at camp there’s no way to sort by category, meaning it can be a pain to find a specific item. Secondly, while there’s a huge number of individual items to find in the game, there wasn’t such a broad variety of cosmetic items to choose from, particularly in the armour department. Being able to recolour items with dye certainly helped, but a bit more cosmetic variety wouldn’t go amiss in a game like this – and I’d happily sacrifice a dozen or more of the random pieces of junk to get even one or two additional pairs of boots or suits of armour.
Inventory management could be easier sometimes.
I chose to play Baldur’s Gate 3 using a control pad, not mouse and keyboard. That’s my preferred way to play, and I found the game’s “radial menus” to be a little cumbersome, but ultimately perfectly usable. The fact that combat is turn-based means you aren’t having to panic trying to hit buttons in short order, and there’s time to open each menu and find exactly the right spell, attack, or action that you need!
When the game launches on PlayStation 5 later this week, I would imagine the controls will be similar. Controller support on PC was good, and everything from moving and exploring the world to those turn-based actions worked well. I doubt PlayStation players, or PC players like myself using a control pad, will have any major issues.
An early-game vista.
Let’s briefly talk about dice and randomness! Many events in Baldur’s Gate 3, from conversations to lockpicking and exploration to combat, rely on rolls of the digital dice. Some of these rolls are obvious and interactive – others are passive and happen in the background, though you’ll be informed of the outcome. A lot of games use “random number generation” to determine the outcome of all manner of things, but it’s obvious and even in-your-face in Baldur’s Gate 3. You can, of course “save-scum” to get around this – Baldur’s Gate 3 practically encourages save-scumming by implementing a free save system that allows you to save while in combat, right before a dice roll, and basically at any point.
Save-scumming will have to be the subject of an article of its own one day, but suffice to say I support the practice. It’s your game, and you should play it the way you want! If you get a once-in-a-single-playthrough encounter, with a positive or negative outcome literally hanging on the roll of a dice… why not go back and redo it if you want to get the “right” outcome? There were relatively few points where I felt I absolutely needed to get a specific outcome, and the game is incredibly adaptable in that regard. But it also definitely allows for easy re-dos thanks to the aforementioned free save system – and some generous in-game dice modifiers and boosters!
Get used to rolling dice!
I picked up Baldur’s Gate 3 almost on a whim – I was looking for something to play while waiting for Starfield. I really didn’t know what to expect beyond a game that had been picking up some positive buzz, but I’m absolutely blown away by how much fun I had. It’s been an amazing ride, and in a way the fact that it was so unexpected only adds to that! Baldur’s Gate 3 hadn’t been on my radar at all in 2023, but it’s now a serious candidate for my “game of the year.” Check back in December, by the way, to see if it makes the cut!
I think I’ve said all I can without getting into the story too deeply. But I do have some thoughts on the details of the plot, so I hope you’ll join me in the days ahead for that. Or just swing by after you’ve beaten the game! Going in blind, as I did, is definitely recommended the first time around! The experience was much more enjoyable for me as I toddled and blundered my way through those opening hours of the game!
I don’t like to put a number score or a star rating on games when I review them. Check Metacritic if you want to get a mark out of ten! But if you want to know if I recommend Baldur’s Gate 3, the answer is an emphatic “yes.” This is the best game I’ve played in 2023 so far, and it’s not even close. There are some deep and complex systems that may seem offputting, and it’s a long game that requires a significant time commitment to make it all the way through. But even with those caveats – or rather, because of those selling-points – I can’t recommend it highly enough! You don’t need to be a Dungeons and Dragons player and you don’t need to have played a lot of CRPGs to get stuck into this game and have a fun time.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is out now for PC, will be released on PlayStation 5 on the 6th of September, and will be released on Xbox Series consoles in 2024. Baldur’s Gate 3 is the copyright of Larian Studios, and is based on Dungeons and Dragons which is owned by Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro. Some screenshots and promo art used above courtesy of Larian Studios and/or IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
It probably won’t shock you to learn that I wasn’t given a pre-release review copy of Starfield by Bethesda. Unlike some of the bigger Star Trek fan sites, I’ve also never been given pre-broadcast access to any episode or film by Paramount Global. I wonder why? But just because I like to style myself as “an independent media critic,” I have no entitlement to that access. Would it be nice? Sure! I’d appreciate it, I’d do my best to make good use of it, and I’d try to create a review or preview that my audience would find informative and useful. But I have no expectation of access – I’m one person running a tiny website on a small corner of the internet (and I don’t always review things in a timely manner), so who am I to demand access to any game, film, or television show?
Some outlets, however, seem to have an air of entitlement to pre-release access. When that presumed access is not granted, and review copies aren’t sent out, they proceed to get upset and write rather passive-aggressive articles and social media posts.
Some reviewers whine and sulk when they don’t get what they feel entitled to.
If you’ve been following the latest updates about Starfield, you’ll know which publication I’m referring to – but this article isn’t really about one game or one publication. The discussion around Eurogamer, Bethesda, and Starfield is just an opportunity to look at this interesting topic – and the answer isn’t as black-or-white as some folks seem to think.
To get this out of the way up-front: I used to know one of the editors at Eurogamer. We haven’t spoken in over a decade now, but we were on friendly terms once upon a time. It shouldn’t be relevant to the discussion, but because Eurogamer’s rather sour and sulky article prompted this piece, I thought it was important to let you know that I once had that friendship.
An excerpt from Eurogamer’s piece that prompted this article.
Onwards, then, to the minefield that is early access for critics and reviewers!
On the one hand, it’s entirely within a company’s purview to decide which publications are granted early access. Early access is not a right, it’s a privilege that a company chooses to bestow – and they can choose whether to share their content with massive publications like the New York Times, small-time YouTube channels with a few hundred followers, or anyone in between. They’re even welcome to send a review copy to Trekking with Dennis!
If a company doesn’t feel a publication’s review is worth their time, that’s up to them. They don’t have to share their content, whether we’re talking about films, games or television shows. And some publications, having gotten used to privileged access that the rest of us plebs don’t get, seem to have developed an attitude of entitlement. What makes a Eurogamer review “better” or more useful than a review published elsewhere? Absolutely fucking nothing. As the internet and social media have democratised media criticism, the importance of big publications – be they legacy media like newspapers or websites like Eurogamer that were once considered upstarts – is decreasing by the hour.
Remember when websites like Eurogamer were the young upstarts, challenging the “media establishment?”
But that’s obviously not all there is to say.
While a company isn’t obligated, either legally or ethically speaking, to provide pre-release access to critics, journalists, and publications… why wouldn’t they? If a company has confidence in its product, surely they’d want to ensure it received as many positive reviews as possible across as broad an array of publications as possible; doing so should mean that as many consumers as possible would see the positive buzz. Trying to conceal any product from reviewers is a bad look, and doing so makes it feel like the company lacks confidence in their game, film, or series.
Trying to prevent critics and reviewers from accessing a piece of media prior to release has been a fairly common scheme across the world of entertainment, and it’s usually meant only one thing: the work in question is not going to be held in high esteem. If a company feels that its product is going to receive negative reviews, ensuring as few people as possible see that feedback before making a purchase decision has a kind of unethical logic to it. In cases such as these, denying any kind of pre-release access is a way for companies to shield their product from criticism long enough to inflate sales numbers or viewing figures. It’s shady, it’s immoral, and it shouldn’t happen… but it happens all the time.
Corporations are going to look after their interests… by whatever means necessary.
To be honest, I don’t mind one bit when I see a smug publication or critic knocked down a rung or two by being denied pre-release access. As I said, there are some publications, websites, and social media “influencers” who have become arrogant, assuming that their relatively small audience means they’re entitled to receive things early, and that their review should be the gold standard. In a bloody-minded sort of way, it’s satisfying to see someone’s ego punctured as they realise they’re not entitled to any kind of special treatment.
But that’s a raw emotional response to the situation – one that I guess all of us should try to rise above! I haven’t, as you can tell, but maybe you can do better than me in that regard! Trying to reframe things and think less emotionally and more rationally, though, leads us back to the same conclusion: trying to shield a product from criticism, regardless of who the critic may be and whether or not they “deserve” to be taken down a peg, feels shady and even unethical. When a company knowingly and wilfully makes that decision, they’re making the assumption that the potential bad PR from shunning a publication or critic is worth the hit – presumably because they’ve pre-judged that their product will be torn to shreds in any review.
Denying pre-release review access can be a way for a corporation/publisher to shield a broken game from criticism until it’s too late. Pictured: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (2023)
This is one of those cases where it feels like corporations are skirting the spirit of the rules and getting away with it on a technicality. Yes, technically no games publisher, broadcaster, or film studio is obligated to submit their work to critics and reviewers prior to release. There’s no legal requirement and no way to force them to comply. And in an age of democratised criticism online and on social media, there’s an unanswerable question about where the “cut-off point” should be. Who counts as a “critic” when any old idiot can set up a website or a social media account devoted to talking about media? If companies were obligated to send out pre-release copies to everyone in that category… well, there’d be no one left!
But at the same time, deliberately denying access to certain critics and reviewers feels wrong, and hand-picking who is “allowed” to review something and who isn’t… that raises some pretty big ethical questions. Any company that has confidence in its product should be willing to subject it to review, and to ensure that reviews are available prior to release. The only way to make that happen is to provide critics with access and give them enough time to work.
Reviewers and critics need time to work.
In the case of video games, and especially large open-world video games, this realistically means that critics and reviewers need access several weeks ahead of time. A critic can watch a film in a couple of hours and make enough notes from two or three viewings to piece something together – but a video game can take a hundred hours or more just to play through once. If critics are to have any chance of publishing a review before launch day, that early access is essential.
There are too many instances of “big” publications in the video games realm working closely with publishers. And in recent years I’ve found that reviews from smaller outlets and individuals – as well as the general consensus from review aggregators like Metacritic – are far more valuable than anything churned out by a big publication. The relationships these publications develop with certain companies and publishers renders too many reviews impotent and unhelpful.
Metacritic’s page for Gran Turismo 7.
So this is a huge topic, one that we’ve really only scratched the surface of today. And while I absolutely come down on the side that says “companies need to provide more pre-release review access,” I won’t lie: there’s a part of me that loves to see big publications and arrogant, cocky “influencers” taken down a peg. No single publication or reviewer is that important, at the end of the day!
But as someone who dips their toes in the world of online media criticism, I think it’s important to talk about these issues as openly and honestly as possible. I’d rather see a hundred reviews and decide for myself which ones are worth my time instead of seeing ten curated reviews that a company or publisher hand-picked. If pre-release review access is only given to selected publications and critics, it raises a very important question: why were they chosen ahead of everyone else? What did the company hope to gain by choosing those critics and ignoring others? The answer, I fear, is simple: positive, glowing reviews.
This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
The console wars have taken yet another toxic turn in recent weeks, after the Starfield showcase started getting fans hyped up. Xbox and PC players are eagerly awaiting Starfield’s launch… but not everyone is happy about that. A handful of loud PlayStation fanatics have promised to review-bomb the game regardless of how good it may turn out to be, as they appear to feel a mix of helpless frustration at not being able to play Starfield and pent-up anger for which the internet, Twitter, and the world of video games are the easiest available outlet.
I’m on record as defending review-bombing – at least in some cases. If a game is bad, broken, buggy, or overly-monetised, it deserves to be called out and criticised, and review-bombing on platforms like Steam and Metacritic are valid ways for players to register their disapproval. Review-bombing doesn’t need to stop at the mechanical level, either. If players hate a game’s narrative choices, feel that the company behind it has misbehaved or mis-sold the game, detest that developers were put under too much pressure and “crunched,” or even want to register their disgust at corporations like Ubisoft and Activision – both of which have been embroiled in scandals involving toxic behaviour and abuse – then review-bombing is again an acceptable outlet.
I think we can all agree that Diablo Immortal deserved its user score…
There may be some PlayStation fans who want to register their disapproval at Starfield being unavailable on their platform of choice, and this is something that feels like a fair or at least understandable point of criticism. Although I would caveat that statement by saying that I pointed out that this would happen as soon as Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda was announced – and before many people had been able to get their hands on a current-gen PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series console!
Although console exclusivity has been a part of the gaming landscape for as long as there has been a gaming landscape, it’s never exactly fun to feel like you’ve been locked out of what seems to be a great experience that other players are having. In the Morrowind days, circa 2002-03, I had a friend who’d regularly come over on the weekends or after work to play the game, because he had a PS2 and I had an Xbox. Yes, even in those days, Bethesda and Microsoft had an exclusivity arrangement!
I had a friend in the Morrowind days who’d spend hours at my place playing the game on my Xbox console!
As excited as I am to play Starfield, I’m not just going to blindly declare it to be “game of the year” before I’ve had a look at it for myself! In fact, if you check out some of my other pieces about Starfield here on the website, you’ll note that I’ve said time and again that I consider the game to be firmly in the “wait for the reviews” column thanks to Bethesda’s reputation, the poor launch of games like Fallout 76 and Redfall, and the overall unfinished state of too many games in 2023. So while I’m happy to defend Starfield in cases such as this, I’m also going to share my honest opinions on the game when it launches – and if it’s full of microtransactions or bugs, I’ll be scathing about that in my first impressions and review of the game.
But on the flip side, I don’t see why someone would be so anti-Starfield – a game that won’t even be released for another couple of weeks – that they’re already planning their review-bombing campaign. If the game is broken and unplayable, excessively-monetised, or just unenjoyable to play, then by all means – go for it. Leave a bad review, encourage others to join in, and chances are if you swing by Trekking with Dennis you’ll see the game get a bad write-up from me as well. But why pre-judge Starfield before it’s even out? Is PlayStation that important? Do some people actually take the console wars seriously?
Have some folks tied their entire identities to this piece of shiny white plastic?
Humans are, by nature, a tribal lot. You see it in sport, in politics, in regionalism and nationalism… so I guess it shouldn’t be a huge shock that gaming, too, has come with its own dividing lines. But it just feels so petty, so stupid, and so small to be tying one’s identity so strongly to a gaming brand that attacking a game on another platform for no good reason is in any way part of the conversation. Thankfully we’re dealing with a small number of people, but even so. It would be better if no one thought or behaved this way!
Growing up in the UK in the ’80s and ’90s, I saw a lot of football hooliganism. English teams were even banned from European competition for several years, in part due to hooliganism, and it was something that I just didn’t understand. I was a football fan as a kid, sure, but the idea of getting into a fight or even just disliking someone else simply because of a sports team that they support… I couldn’t wrap my head around it. And when it comes to today’s console war, I see echoes of that kind of tribalism all over again.
Hooliganism at football matches was common when I was younger. Pictured: A fire caused by hooligans at Odsal Stadium, September 1986.
I’m not naïve enough to believe that I’ll change anyone’s mind by writing this piece. The handful of aggressive PlayStation fanatics who plan to review-bomb the game are unlikely to be dissuaded in that endeavour by a plea to their better nature nor an appeal to their common sense. Those ships, I fear, have long since sailed. But I want to register my disappointment – and above all my disbelief that this kind of toxic behaviour and militant console wars fanaticism still persists in 2023.
While there are Xbox, Nintendo, PC, and mobile players who are, I’m sure, just as angry and as aggressive when attacking other platforms, I want to draw a comparison. PlayStation has done phenomenally well in recent years with exclusive titles. Ghost of Tsushima, The Last Of Us, God of War, and Horizon Forbidden West all spring to mind, and PlayStation fans are about to receive another highly-rated game that won’t be available on Xbox for a while: Baldur’s Gate 3.
Baldur’s Gate 3 will be released on PlayStation 5 the same week as Starfield is on Xbox and PC.
I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with Baldur’s Gate 3 thus far, and I highly recommend the game to all PlayStation players when it arrives in a couple of weeks’ time. Stay tuned for a review, by the way! But here’s something for PlayStation fans to chew on as they make their sockpuppet accounts and prepare to review-bomb Starfield: there’s no comparable campaign from Xbox fans to target Baldur’s Gate 3. There were no review-bombing campaigns from crying Xbox fans targeting any of the PlayStation exclusives we were just discussing… and while there may have been a few wayward negative reviews or social media comments, by and large this isn’t something that Xbox or PC players have done to PlayStation games.
Although I don’t own a PlayStation 5, it makes me happy to see great games on that platform. Part of me hopes that the likes of Ghost of Tsushima will make it to PC one day, and I’d even consider buying a PS5 if the right game came along and I had the financial means. But above all, good games are good for gaming, no matter what platform they launch on. As someone who supports gaming as a hobby, and who believes that games can be just as good – better, in some cases – than films or television shows, I support good games wherever they appear. Yes, even mobile games!
Good games are good for all players – they raise standards across the industry, push boundaries, and innovate.
In a perfect world, all games would be available on all platforms. And I get that it must hurt to see a popular game that looks great and is getting people hyped up… and know you won’t be able to play it. I’ve been there – we all have. But some PlayStation fans – a small minority, thankfully – seem to have developed an attitude of entitlement born of being spoiled in recent years. There have been relatively few Xbox exclusives for a full decade now, going back to the launch of the Xbox One in 2013 – and even fewer that were any good! PlayStation players, in contrast, have enjoyed a number of fantastic exclusive titles… and that has unfortunately led a handful of fans to begin acting like spoiled toddlers when they see anyone else having a good time or being the centre of attention.
If Starfield sucks, or if it’s a microtransaction hell-hole, I’ll be saying so in my review. But if it’s great, good, or even if it’s just okay… why bother picking on it and singling it out for a review-bombing campaign? I just don’t see the point, the attraction, or what anyone would gain by doing so.
It’s my hope that platforms like Metacritic will be aware of what’s going on, and will step in, if necessary, to hide or even delete reviews that are clearly not about Starfield itself. Such things have happened in the past, so the review-bombers could find that this whole thing is a massive waste of time in the end! Perhaps that would be the least bad outcome.
Starfield will be released on the 6th of September 2023 for PC and Xbox Series S/X consoles. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. Some promo images and screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I don’t usually “do drama,” especially not when that drama involves YouTubers and “influencers,” but the monumental shitstorm engulfing Linus Tech Tips has been all over my social media feeds this week and I feel compelled to add my two cents.
If you’ve missed the news somehow, popular tech-entertainment channel Linus Tech Tips – and its parent company, Linus Media Group – has been embroiled in controversy. What started with a video from another tech review channel, Gamers Nexus, has ballooned into accusations of ethical issues with LMG’s reviews, conflicts of interest, mistreatment of a small company and their prototype product, and even reports from at least one former employee of a work environment so toxic that she resulted to self-harm before being forced out.
You may have seen this video among your YouTube recommendations this week. Image: Gamers Nexus
For some background, I’ve been a long-time viewer of Linus Tech Tips. I’ve been a nerd since, well, forever, and when I first started really getting into YouTube, visiting the platform more regularly and doing more than just looking up occasional how-to videos, Linus Tech Tips was one of the first channels that I subscribed to and would regularly tune in to watch. The hosts – Linus included – usually do a good job at making tech and computing topics accessible to the layperson, and while some of the humour isn’t my cup of tea and veers into being cringeworthy for its own sake, more often than not I’d find myself cracking a smile.
When I decided I was going to build my own PC for the first time, Linus Tech Tips was one of the main resources I consulted. I purchased at least one component for my PC – a CPU cooler, which we’ll discuss in more detail in a moment – entirely because it was highly recommended by Linus. I felt the channel and its hosts were trustworthy – and as someone who doesn’t have a ton of knowledge about tech, components, and the like, I don’t really have the ability of an organisation like Gamers Nexus when it comes to fact-checking the content that Linus Media Group has been putting out.
The Noctua NH-D15 as seen in a recent LTT video.
We’ve talked before about ethics among reviewers, and I’ve made clear that I don’t believe there can ever be such a thing as a “paid review.” There are reviews, in which a reviewer shares their thoughts and opinions on a product as best they can, and there are advertisements. Anything paid for is an ad, regardless of the terminology used, and Linus Media Group has, in the past, come close to skirting that line in my opinion. Taking paid sponsorships or selling ad space in a video is one thing, but dedicating an entire video to selling (sorry, “showcasing”) a product on a channel that also does supposedly-independent reviews… that kind of thing has felt uncomfortable for a long time, and is certainly absolutely useless from a consumer standpoint.
But at least those videos are flagged up as such, and even if I just skimmed a title or clicked without really paying attention, it’s usually obvious within a minute or two that a product “showcase” is, in fact, little more than an overly-long advertisement.
What’s been surprising to learn, at least for me, over the past week or so, is the extent to which LMG has become tied up with multiple big tech companies – companies whose products they subsequently review, and whose competitors products they also review.
An example of one of LTT’s sponsored “showcase” videos.
There is, as others have pointed out, a clear conflict of interest here. If Linus Tech Tips didn’t pretend to offer “reviews,” but rather stuck to product showcases, entertainment videos, and the kind of general mucking about that viewers have come to expect… I guess that would be okay. The deals between LMG and big companies like Intel and Noctua should still be stated up-front and not hidden, but at least there’d be less of an ethical minefield.
But Linus and co. seem to want to have it all.
In a small way, this has actually affected me. The PC cooler I mentioned, the one recommended so highly by Linus on his various channels, is manufactured by Noctua – a company that LMG has a financial relationship with. Now, I will state up-front that I’m not disappointed by the cooler’s performance in the PC that I built, but it’s made me stop to think. Would I have purchased that model, or even a model by that company, were it not for the strong recommendation from a tech influencer that I felt I could trust? And was Linus’ glowing praise for the Noctua cooler influenced in some way by his company’s financial ties to its manufacturer?
The Noctua cooler that I purchased was featured in a Linus Tech Tips video earlier this year.
To be clear (and because Linus himself has been quick to accuse critics of “libel” in the past) I’m not suggesting that Linus, LTT, or LMG deliberately misled me, nor that they fraudulently or dishonestly recommended me a product. I’m responsible for my own purchasing decisions, and it’s on me to seek out multiple reviews and do my own due diligence before making a financial commitment. But what I am saying is that, when there’s any semblance of a conflict of interest or any reason for a reviewer to look more kindly on a product… that’s a serious problem.
Here on my website, I mostly review films, games, television shows, and episodes of Star Trek. But if I were approached by, say, Paramount Global, and entered into a financial arrangement with that company, there’d be some degree of pressure – real, implied, or just purely imaginary – to keep that relationship going and to, for want of a better term, placate Paramount by glossing over the negatives and accentuating the positives in any future “review.” My reviews of Paramount’s films and TV shows would become suspect as a result – and even if I wasn’t making a conscious choice to look upon their content more positively, there’s a strong chance it would happen anyway.
“Shut up and take my money!” said multiple companies to Linus Media Group…
This is, for me, the crux of the Linus Tech Tips problem, and it’s one that LMG may find very difficult to overcome. Sure, the fact that some of their reviews were badly done or incompetently handled is a bad look – but that’s something that can be corrected, over time, with better quality control, enhanced video production procedures, and the like. And other tech channels, like Gamers Nexus, will be watching and will be ready to jump in and hold Linus’ feet to the fire if those kinds of mistakes and slip-ups happen again.
But the issue of trust is a much trickier and more nebulous one to resolve. Trust has been strained to breaking-point between Linus Tech Tips and many folks in its audience, and revelations of close partnerships and financial ties to big tech companies isn’t something that can be hand-waved away nor fixed in short order by internal changes at LMG. This is something that cuts to the very core of Linus Tech Tips’ content: can viewers trust what Linus and his co-hosts are saying about, well, anything?
Linus in a recent apology/explanation video.
No review is ever “entirely objective,” because that’s not how reviews work. There’s always a certain amount of one’s own thoughts, impressions, and biases present, even in reviews that promote stats and data above all else. So I don’t want to come across as asking for the impossible, because I know from my own experience that there simply isn’t such a thing as an “objective” review.
What makes a review valuable is the trust audiences have with the reviewer. I like to think that folks who come to Trekking with Dennis to read my film reviews or Star Trek episode reviews trust me to share my honest thoughts on what I’m seeing or playing, and trust that I have enough basic knowledge of the subject matter at hand to write something that’s at least worth their while. I also state in many of my pieces all over the website that I have no “insider information” or special access, and that I’m sharing my thoughts as openly as I can. That’s not to say I’m in any way free from bias, but I am independent. I don’t have financial ties to any of the companies whose films, games, or TV shows I review.
I like to think that my audience can trust my reviews of shows like Star Trek.
Linus Tech Tips can’t make that claim – and whether the hosts are “reviewing” a product from a company they work with or a product from one of that company’s competitors… there’s a very real danger of unconscious bias seeping into their content, making their reviews functionally worthless to consumers. If viewers are tuning in to watch Linus goof about, that’s fine and I guess no real harm was done. But for someone in the position I was in last year, looking for genuine product recommendations… there’s a pretty massive red flag being waved.
Linus Media Group can and should take on board the feedback provided by Gamers Nexus and their community. Slowing down their output, prioritising quality over quantity, and being willing to go back and edit videos or even re-film whole segments if mistakes were made are all pretty easy fixes; low-hanging fruit that should see significant improvements to the quality and accuracy of their videos going forward. For a company of LMG’s size and financial means, if making those kinds of commitments means either reducing their output or hiring additional staff, that won’t be an issue. The company is, quite remarkably for a YouTube outfit, worth tens of millions of dollars, in case you didn’t know.
Terren Tong, Chief Executive Officer at Linus Media Group.
But those changes are surface-level at best. The real issue of trust, and whether viewers can have faith in a review published by a company with such significant investments all over the tech space… that’s a whole different matter. And there’s no easy fix here – LMG has to decide what kind of company it wants to be and what kind of content it intends to create. If they’re going to stick to geeking out and mucking around, doing little more than playing with some of the fancy pieces of kit that they spend vast sums of money on, then I think they’ll be okay. But if they want to play at being reviewers and journalists, offering honest advice to consumers… the changes required to win back that kind of trust are much greater, and the will to make them simply may not be present.
How Linus Media Group responds to these criticisms in the days ahead will be telling, and I think it’s not unfair to say that Linus’ initial reaction to Gamers Nexus was poor – so catastrophically poor, in fact, that it fuelled the fire and made the situation noticeably worse. For me, this isn’t an issue of a simple inaccuracy, a mistake, waiting too long to correct a misstatement, or even that LMG is clearly running too hot and with the wrong priorities. My biggest takeaway from this whole sorry saga is that, at its core, LMG is too heavily involved with too many of the companies in the tech space whose products it purports to review. Whether intentional or not, those relationships are going to lead to bias, to conflicts of interest, and to making a review from LTT worthless.
An example of a graph produced for a Linus Tech Tips product review.
It goes without saying that a company should treat its employees with dignity and respect at a bare minimum, and I don’t want to ignore nor make light of the very serious accusations levelled at LMG by at least one former member of staff. Those accusations are, at time of writing, being looked into, and if they prove even close to true… LMG is going to be in for another huge wave of trouble to say the least. We’ve all had the misfortune of working for a toxic manager or boss at one time or another, and I extend my sympathies to the ex-employee in question.
Linus’ on-screen persona seems a million miles away from the accusations of sexism, ableism, and toxicity that have been levelled at managers within LMG… but if those accusations are borne out, quite frankly it could be a far worse situation for the company. Other famous YouTubers have been “cancelled” for comparably toxic behaviour, so no one, no matter how big of a fish they may be in their small pond, should consider themselves to be immune from consequences. These allegations from a former employee could prove far worse than anything Gamers Nexus presented and any of the trust issues I’ve been discussing above.
What comes next for Linus Tech Tips?
So that’s about all I have to say, really. This is a disappointing situation, but one that, if I’m being honest, I should’ve seen coming. There have been so many “showcases” and sponsored segments in LTT videos over the years that of course the company must have those deep relationships and financial entanglements. It’s on me that I didn’t really put two and two together until now.
Going forward, I’m not sure what I plan to do. Linus Tech Tips has given me a lot of enjoyment over the last few years, and even if there are conflicts of interest and financial arrangements that now make me question the usefulness of LTT’s reviews on a practical level, some of the channel’s other content – the videos focused more on entertainment and fun – may still be worth watching. However, I will be keeping my ear to the ground to see what comes of the investigation into the complaints raised by at least one ex-employee of LMG. If the accusations levied at LMG are even close to true, then I think I’ll be unsubscribing. There’s no place for such awful treatment of a fellow human being, no matter how “big” and untouchable you think you are.
This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers may be present for Starfield.
Today we’re continuing our look ahead to Starfield! Bethesda’s upcoming open-galaxy sci-fi role-playing game is my most-anticipated game right now… but that doesn’t mean I don’t have questions and concerns. We’ve taken a look at several already, but today I want to zero in on one very specific question that I have about Starfield: will the game truly be able to create the sense of scale that it’s clearly aiming for?
We can break down this question into a couple of big pieces. Firstly, we have the size of the game’s open galaxy – or rather, the amount of actual content relative to the size of the map. Will there be enough characters to interact with, enough settlements to visit, and enough of a world to get stuck into in a map that contains 1,000 explorable planets?
Is there a danger that Starfield might feel too… empty?
Secondly, we have the open nature of the game world itself. Although not strictly a true “open world” in the sense that Starfield’s “open galaxy” will be split up into star systems and planets, a hallmark of Bethesda titles going all the way back to the 1990s is that every square inch of the map is accessible and can be explored. In a game that takes place in a single province of a larger world, there’s still a sense of scale – that the world of Morrowind, Skyrim or Fallout exists beyond the confines of the game map. Starfield won’t have that – it can’t have it by design. That could be an issue, and it’s where my concern begins.
Take, for example, a game like Mass Effect 2 or Jedi: Fallen Order. Or in the open-world sphere, take a game like Red Dead Redemption II or The Witcher 3. All of these games manage to convey a sense of scale – of deep, persistent worlds that continue to exist beyond the confines of their playable maps, populated by, in some cases, literally trillions of individual people. One of the reasons that these games feel so much fun to play, and their stories so engaging, is precisely because as players, we know we’re only scratching the surface.
The story of Red Dead Redemption II feels like it takes place in one small corner of a vast world.
Even older Bethesda games managed to nail this feeling. Playing Morrowind, we knew that there was a whole continent beyond the confines of Vvardenfell, and in Fallout 4 it was clear that the Commonwealth was only one small patch of a much larger wasteland. These areas still felt lived-in, but part of the reason for that is because we knew that there were people and settlements beyond our reach, making the game world feel real.
By design, Starfield can’t have that. Opening up the entirety of the Settled Systems to players, including the capital cities of both major colonial factions, means that the idea of an expansive, populated world beyond the borders of the game’s map can’t exist. And that absolutely could be okay, but if Starfield’s open galaxy has a population comparable to that of a small town… I fear that an important part of the immersion will be lost before the game can even get going.
New Atlantis – the capital city of the United Colonies.
Every game has a limited number of non-player characters – it’s unavoidable. Even massive online games or expansive open-world titles have, at the very most, a few hundred or perhaps a thousand NPCs to engage with. But in most cases – and especially in games that succeed at creating that sense of expansiveness and immersion – there’s always the sensation that, despite the limited number of people available in the game, there are untold numbers of others just beyond the invisible wall dividing the game’s map from the rest of its world.
In Mass Effect 3, for example, it’s possible to walk across parts of the Citadel and really feel the scale of the massive space station. Sure, there are only a few dozen people to engage with, some of whom only have a single line of dialogue, but a combination of the game’s lore, art design, sound effects, narrative, and more all come together to make you feel that there’s so much more just out of sight.
The Silversun Strip on the Citadel in Mass Effect 3.
For me, the experience of playing a game that takes place in a small part of a much larger world is something I hadn’t really considered before Starfield. It was only when I began to truly consider the implications of an open-galaxy map with 1,000 planets to explore that I really zeroed in on one of the absolutely essential ways that so many games create that sense of immersion and scale.
And it’s not something exclusive to gaming by any means. Watch an episode or two of Star Trek, and you’ll soon get the sense that there’s far, far more going on in the galaxy beyond the adventures of a few officers aboard a single starship! Star Wars, too, has a densely-populated galaxy filled with alien races, criminal gangs, and so much more. As I’ve argued more than once, it seems positively criminal that Disney and Lucasfilm have insisted on revisiting the same handful of characters time and again when the setting is so vast and potentially interesting!
Cal Kestis in Jedi: Survivor.
As Starfield opens up its entire map to players, will there be enough content – and especially enough content relative to the size of the map – to really nail that sense of scale? If we can interact with everyone in the entirety of the Settled Systems… how long will it take before we realise that there isn’t anything more to this world? Enough to sustain a playthrough of the game, I hope… but is that enough?
Bethesda has recorded more dialogue for Starfield than it did for Skyrim and Fallout 4 combined. There could easily be well over 2,000 NPCs in the game, some of whom will have in-depth conversations with the player character. On the one hand, that’s a lot of chatter! But on the other, in a fully open map that supposedly depicts humanity’s expansion to colonies beyond the stars… 2,000 people seems like a minuscule number. It’s barely the population of a small town. When you add into the mix that these characters are going to be spread across four major settlements, space stations, spaceships, and perhaps small settlements and other locations too… I’m just worried that the sense of scale that a game like Starfield relies on will be lost.
Akila City in the Freestar Collective.
Despite its difficult launch and gameplay issues, Cyberpunk 2077 is a game that manages to really succeed at conveying a sense of scale. From almost the first moment, players are aware that they’re only one person in a vast world; a dense cityscape populated by thousands of people. Although it isn’t possible to travel far beyond the confines of the city, there’s still that sense that the world beyond Night City is vast – and that within the city itself, there are people going about their lives blissfully unaware of the protagonist’s story.
Sometimes, being “the chosen one” can also get in the way of this sense of scale. If the fate of the entire galaxy hinges on the player character and the actions they take, it’s much harder in a role-playing game to see oneself as just one character among many in a vast world. Bethesda does love its “chosen one” archetypes, though, so I wouldn’t be shocked to see it appear in Starfield in some form. If so, I hope it’s handled carefully – and perhaps buried deeply in the main quest, so players who don’t want to go down that road will have the opportunity to avoid it altogether!
Making the player character “the chosen one” (as in games like Morrowind) could add to the sense of Starfield being small in scale.
What makes a fictional world feel lived-in and real? I would argue very strongly that one very important factor is the notion that there’s more to that world than I as a player (or a reader, viewer, etc.) can see. No matter how large Starfield may be, no matter how expansive its map is, no matter how much of it I could take in in a single playthrough, and no matter whether the game has 2,000 or 10,000 NPCs to interact with, there’s a very real danger that it will feel limited, and dare I say even small. The idea that the story we’re taking part in is only one small part of the world of Starfield won’t exist, it can’t exist by design. The notion that there’s more, that Starfield is bigger than the available map and characters, cannot exist.
I hope that there will be so much to get stuck into that that sense won’t be overwhelming, and that Bethesda’s world-building will be better than ever to such an extent that I don’t notice. But part of the appeal of a game like Starfield is that I as a player am going to be whisked away to another world, a world in which I can get lost in the role-playing experience. Part of that, though I could never put it into words nor even really conceptualise it before thinking about Starfield, is because the worlds I’ve sought out feel bigger than the stories told in them. I’m not sure how Starfield can recreate that feeling based on what we know of the game – and there’s a genuine danger, I fear, that trying to pretend half the known galaxy is populated by a few thousand people is going to feel catastrophically unbalanced.
We’re pondering a big question about Starfield…
I said a couple of weeks ago that, if the “United Colonies” turns out to be a mere two cities, and if the Freestar Collective is likewise a “collective” consisting of just a couple of settlements, something will feel amiss. And this is what I meant by that. The concept of an expansive world that exists beyond the confines of a single story or the playable area of a game’s map is something that, based on everything we know at this stage, Bethesda has deliberately chosen not to create. It almost feels like we’re heading into uncharted territory – the game will be large, sure, but can it possibly be large enough to overcome that deficit? Will the number of settlements, the number of characters, the number of factions, and the overall amount of content relative to the size of the game world feel so unbalanced and out of whack that it will detract from the experience? If so… will those things prove fatal to the Starfield experience?
Thus far, my biggest concerns about Starfield have been on the practical side. Will the game be released in a polished state? Will it be overburdened with microtransactions? Will Xbox and Bethesda consider a last-second delay if further bug fixes and tweaks are needed? But this question of scale… it’s probably my single biggest gameplay concern right now. And this isn’t just a fear of a repeat of Fallout 76′s “big empty world,” a game map that had no NPCs to interact with and precious little to do. It’s deeper than that – it cuts to the very sense of immersion and believability that should be present in Starfield’s galaxy.
The crew of the Frontier.
Games like Red Dead Redemption II, Cyberpunk 2077, or the Mass Effect trilogy succeed, in part, because they get me to believe that a bigger world exists beyond the confines of the game map. And in a more general sense, whether we’re talking about novels, films, television shows, or video games, getting an audience not only to believe that a world exists but to care about it and feel a sense of investment in it is a key part of the pathway to suspension of disbelief and to enjoyment. Starfield may well succeed at creating an interesting, engaging world that I care about and want to see more of – but if that world feels like it’s limited to only the characters and locales present in the game, part of the immersion could be lost.
Conversely, this is set to be the biggest world that Bethesda has ever created, populated by more NPCs than in any single-player game that the studio has ever built. So perhaps the idea here is that players will be so overwhelmed with content – be that quests, factions, points of interest, or characters to chat with – that the game world will feel full to the point of being overstuffed. That could go some way to negating the fact that, well, we’ll be able to explore the entirety of the settled systems, visit every colony, land on every settled planet, and meet every single human who exists at that moment in Starfield’s future.
I really hope it won’t be an issue. I hope I’ll look back on this article in a month’s time and think how silly it was to be worried! But as the buildup to Starfield’s launch continues, it’s definitely something that’s weighing on my mind.
Starfield will be released on the 6th of September 2023 for PC and Xbox Series S/X consoles. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. Some promo images and screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers may be present for Baldur’s Gate 3 and Starfield.
I’ll get into this in more detail in my review of Baldur’s Gate 3 – which is currently a work in progress – but I came to Larian’s Dungeons and Dragons CRPG with basically no expectations at all. The game wasn’t one that had been on my radar, I don’t know the first thing about Dungeons and Dragons, and the primary reason I picked it up is because it happened to be well-timed, releasing just as the hype train for Starfield has been building. I was looking for a new game to play, and Baldur’s Gate 3 reared its head, backed up by plenty of positive reviews. It felt like the right game at the right time – but little more than a way to kill some time while waiting for the real prize: Starfield.
Suffice to say, I undervalued Baldur’s Gate 3 in a pretty big way! The game is fantastic, as you’ve no doubt heard from other reviewers, and although I can’t call it “perfect,” it’s certainly the best game I’ve played in 2023 so far. It will absolutely rival Starfield for the coveted “Trekking with Dennis Award” come December, and if Starfield should falter… well, maybe it’ll even pip it to the post and scoop the prize. I wouldn’t have expected that even just a couple of weeks ago.
A promo screenshot of Baldur’s Gate 3.
There are two things that Baldur’s Gate 3 has done well that Bethesda needs to consider when it comes to Starfield. The first is microtransactions. There aren’t any in Baldur’s Gate 3, and that’s in spite of comparable titles like Diablo IV positively drowning in them. As I’ve noted more than once, we haven’t yet had confirmation from Bethesda that Starfield will be free from microtransactions, season passes, lootboxes, premium currencies, and other shit-smeared trappings of the modern video games industry.
Secondly, while I have encountered a few glitches and bugs in my thirty-plus hours with Baldur’s Gate 3, the game is complete and pretty polished. The main quest is complete, side missions and character quests are all unique and interesting, and the state of the game overall is pretty darn good. The main mechanics and systems it employs, from magic and spellcasting to combat and exploration, all work well, and there are plenty of choices that genuinely have an impact on the game world.
A relatively minor visual bug that I encountered in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Bethesda has acquired a reputation over the years, and it’s well-deserved. Major Bethesda releases, from Oblivion to Fallout 76, have all arrived with bugs and glitches to varying degrees. Bethesda’s publishing arm is also responsible for the likes of Redfall, a title ridiculed for its broken state earlier this year. While Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t entirely bug-free, it’s on a completely different scale from any of Bethesda’s launches.
The microtransaction issue is already one that I’ve been sceptical about when it comes to Starfield. Well before the game has even launched, Bethesda has already been touting the first piece of story DLC, an expensive £25 add-on. Expansion packs are no bad thing, don’t get me wrong, but it’s disappointing to see Bethesda leaning into add-ons and DLC so early in Starfield’s life. In contrast, Baldur’s Gate 3 may not have any DLC at all, with Larian potentially moving on to their next project instead, regarding the game and its story as complete.
Diablo IV has an awful and aggressive in-game monetisation scheme. Let’s hope Starfield follows the Baldur’s Gate 3 model…
The games are very different from one another. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a CRPG – a throwback, in many ways, to a style of game that has fallen out of fashion over the past twenty years or so. It employs turn-based combat, a third-person or isometric camera, and a game world broken up into several large regions (or levels) to accompany its three-act narrative.
Starfield, in contrast, is very much an action-RPG or even an RPG/shooter, with real-time combat inspired by the likes of id Software’s recent Doom and Doom Eternal titles. Although a third-person view is available, Bethesda has stated that the game is intended to primarily be played from a first-person perspective, and the game’s “open galaxy” map, while broken up into star systems and planets, isn’t split into sections or levels in the way that the map is in Baldur’s Gate 3. Starfield is also a sci-fi title to Baldur’s Gate 3′s fantasy setting.
Starfield will be a different kind of game – but with comparable features.
But there are plenty of similarities, too. Both games are role-playing experiences, both have skills to unlock, character progression, and both aim to tell expansive single-player stories complete with engaging characters, main and secondary quests to follow, and more. Though the comparison is not a direct one between two games with identical styles… it’s close enough that many Baldur’s Gate 3 players may be intending to play Starfield. In fact, Larian Studios deliberately moved up the release date of Baldur’s Gate 3 by more than a month to avoid a clash with Starfield.
So when I say that Baldur’s Gate 3 has set a high bar, I mean it. Coming just a few weeks apart, comparisons between the two games will be inevitable – and if Starfield should suffer a bumpy launch for any reason, those comparisons may not be favourable. Baldur’s Gate 3 will also be launching on PlayStation 5 the same week as Starfield arrives on PC and Xbox, so there’ll be a flood of new players joining the party. PlayStation fans may feel less bad at missing out on Starfield if Baldur’s Gate 3 is being heralded as the “better” title.
Baldur’s Gate 3 promo screenshot featuring a dragonborn warrior.
But we mustn’t get too far ahead of ourselves! It’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that players can enjoy one or both games on their own merit, without needing to “pick a side” or say which one is somehow “objectively better.” I want Starfield to be a fun experience – at least as much fun as Baldur’s Gate 3 has been for me over the past couple of weeks. But I recognise that, with the games releasing so close to one another, my impressions of Starfield – particularly insofar as how complete and polished it feels – will be coloured by my experience of Baldur’s Gate 3.
So… here’s the difficult part. In 2022, I praised Xbox and Bethesda for delaying Starfield. If the game needed more attention, more work, and more time to squash bugs and polish the experience, then a delay was unquestionably the right call. With a scant two weeks to go before Starfield’s pre-order exclusive early release, and with reviewers and publications eagerly awaiting their review copies… well, this is basically the last possible opportunity to delay the game. If Starfield should release with a level of bugs and glitches comparable in any way to the likes of Redfall or Fallout 76, not only will we lament this missed opportunity, but we’ll have those comparisons with Baldur’s Gate 3 to chew on.
Starfield was originally targeting a November 2022 release.
Whether you’ve played and enjoyed Baldur’s Gate 3 or not, and regardless of whether it’s “your thing” or not, it’s undeniable that the game has raised the stakes for Starfield, and has set a high bar indeed for other single-player role-playing games to strive for. I hope Starfield can hit it. Heck, I hope Starfield smashes through it and sets a new, even higher bar! It’s rare to get a title as fun and as consumer-friendly as Baldur’s Gate 3, so to get two in a row would be beyond fantastic. You know what they say: you wait ages for something and then two come along at once!
Where I see the biggest potential comparison is with one of my biggest concerns about Starfield: monetisation. We’re so close to Starfield’s launch, and yet Bethesda and Xbox have still failed to clarify what kind of monetisation we can expect to see in the game. Unless the answer is “none at all,” as Larian repeatedly assured players in the run-up to the launch of Baldur’s Gate 3, that will already be a disappointment. Should that monetisation extend beyond large-scale expansion packs to include things like premium currencies or lootboxes… that could spell disaster.
Bethesda and Xbox have yet to comment on microtransactions in Starfield.
What Larian has done with Baldur’s Gate 3 is something that other AAA studios should strive for. Of course it’s true that not every game can be as expansive and feature-rich as Baldur’s Gate 3… but every game should be able to take inspiration from it in different areas. Single-player games shouldn’t need in-game monetisation to turn a profit. AAA studios should be launching complete games, not broken, “release now, fix later” messes, nor games with incomplete stories and promises of “roadmaps” to more content. Larian has also shown a willingness to listen to feedback from players through an extensive early access period, and while I’m generally sceptical about big studios using early access, and of long early access periods in general, in this case it seems to have worked as intended for once.
The fact is that Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t anything new, nor even particularly innovative. In many ways it’s actually a throwback to an older style of game that was prominent in the 1990s and early 2000s. As that kind of gameplay has fallen by the wayside in the push to open worlds, always-online experiences, and microtransactions… it feels different in 2023.
But that’s just a really sad commentary on the sorry state of the video games industry. A consumer-friendly game, one that doesn’t chase every trend going nor try to extort its players for extra cash, finds itself becoming headline news.
The titular city of Baldur’s Gate.
When I looked ahead to the games I was most interested to play in 2023, titles like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Lord of the Rings: Gollum, Redfall, Forspoken, and of course Starfield were all contenders. After several of those proved to be disappointing or underwhelming, it’s been a genuinely cathartic experience to pick up a new game and just… really enjoy playing it. That Baldur’s Gate 3 wasn’t on my radar and was thus an unexpected surprise just adds to that.
There has been chatter online and on social media about Baldur’s Gate 3 being a unique project that shouldn’t become the “industry standard” that players expect to see going forward. And there’s an element of truth to that: most games won’t be old-school CRPGs with hundreds of hours of content. But in terms of adopting consumer-friendly practices, abandoning trends when they don’t fit with the story a game is telling, and focusing on delivering a quality product… those are things that players can and should expect. Some of us never stopped asking the video games industry and its biggest corporations to deliver those things. Maybe the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 – coupled with some spectacular failures over the past few years – will finally be the catalyst that makes these corporations sit up and listen.
And as for Starfield… the bar has been well and truly raised. I can only hope that Xbox and Bethesda have done enough to reach it.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is out now for PC, will be released on PlayStation 5 on the 6th of September, and will be released on Xbox Series consoles in 2024. Starfield will be released on PC and Xbox Series consoles on the 6th of September. Baldur’s Gate 3 is the copyright of Larian Studios, and is based on Dungeons and Dragons which is owned by Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Strange New Worlds Seasons 1 and 2. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Original Series, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise and Discovery.
Charades was an episode of two halves. One of these halves worked well, and the other… well, let’s just say that the other was not to my taste. It was undeniably a Star Trek episode to its very core, bringing to the fore concepts that the franchise has used going all the way back to The Original Series. We also got an interesting exploration of a previously unseen aspect of Vulcan culture, character development for both Spock and Nurse Chapel, and some comedic moments that stuck the landing.
On the other hand, Charades relied far too heavily on the kind of “cringe humour” that defined sitcoms like Friends, with parts of the “Spock must pretend to be Vulcan” storyline evoking the same kind of feelings as watching Robin Williams’ character try to be in two places at once in Mrs Doubtfire. That kind of situational humour really isn’t my cup of tea… and while I can tolerate it in small doses and for a one-off story, it means that Charades is unlikely to be an episode I’ll choose to revisit very often in future.
I watched most of the episode with this kind of expression on my face…
It was a treat to welcome back Mia Kirshner as Spock’s mother, Amanda. Kirshner reprised her role from Seasons 1 and 2 of Discovery, where she was seen alongside both Spock and Michael Burnham. Burnham wasn’t mentioned on this occasion, which I suppose is an interesting omission given that the story called back to Spock’s childhood and had a focus on the divide between humans and Vulcans. But Amanda’s presence was more than enough to carry this storyline – and I found it to be the most interesting and certainly the most impactful part of Charades.
It was hinted at, even as far back as The Original Series, that being a human married to a Vulcan could be difficult. Enterprise greatly expanded our knowledge of human-Vulcan relations, and showed how Vulcans could take an almost sneering view of a species they regarded as not as sophisticated or developed. Through Amanda’s story in Charades, we get to see how that manifests on an individual level, and how Vulcans can discriminate against humans – or even show revulsion and hate.
Charades was an unexpectedly strong episode for Spock’s mother, Amanda.
This ended up being a particularly powerful storyline. Amanda, as Spock came to realise, had to endure a great deal of hardship as a human living on Vulcan. Even as Vulcans came to accept him as one of their own, Amanda remains a perpetual outsider, constantly subject to being talked down to, shunned, disregarded, and treated differently because of who she is. The cool intellectual and logical nature of Vulcans means that this discrimination manifests differently – but it’s there nevertheless, and we come out of Charades with a much stronger appreciation for Amanda and her strengths after having seen what she continues to experience.
This idea that Vulcans’ aloofness and intellectual prowess can easily slide into a sense of superiority is nothing new in Star Trek; it was front-and-centre in depictions of the Vulcans in Enterprise in particular. But this very personal, individual exploration of that – and the impact it can have on non-Vulcans who have to endure it – is something different and interesting. Strange New Worlds has found a new way to build upon the lore of Star Trek, expanding our understanding of one of the franchise’s most iconic races – and their flaws.
Through T’Pring’s mother we saw some of the flaws that Vulcans can fall victim to.
Star Trek has done the “character transformed” idea in multiple ways on multiple occasions, from Jadzia Dax’s friends embodying her Trill symbiont’s past hosts in Deep Space Nine through B’Elanna Torres being split into human and Klingon personalities in Voyager. So in that sense, Charades’ “Spock gets turned into a human” premise isn’t entirely original. But for a character who’s been struggling with his human and Vulcan sides, it was an interesting move.
However, I’d argue that Season 1’s The Serene Squall had already done much of the heavy lifting on Spock and his internal conflict. That episode reframed the idea as a kind of analogy for gender identity, and made a great deal of progress for Spock in terms of his character arc in this series – an arc that has to take him from the more emotional presentation seen in Discovery and get him much closer to the way he was in The Original Series. We also got Spock Amok in Season 1, which focused on Spock’s relationship with T’Pring and the stresses that his role in Starfleet and his half-human side was taking. On its own merit what Charades did in that regard was interesting – but given that The Serene Squall was a mere eight episodes ago… its impact is, I would argue, lessened.
Spock and T’Pring.
And I think that speaks to a broader concern about Strange New Worlds as a whole: its focus on legacy characters and their characterisations. Out of fifteen episodes that have been broadcast so far, we’ve had two that focused primarily on Spock and his relationship with T’Pring, and two more in which Spock and Nurse Chapel’s relationship was a major plot point. Season 2 has also spent a disproportionate amount of time so far on legacy characters, with Una, Nurse Chapel, Dr M’Benga, Spock, Captain Kirk, Uhura and latterly Captain Pike all getting moments in the spotlight. This is starting to come at the expense of other characters.
Pelia, the Enterprise’s new chief engineer, was mentioned by name in Charades but hasn’t been seen on screen for a couple of episodes now. And while La’an and Ortegas both had lines of dialogue this week, they were swept along by a narrative current outside of their control. I’m all for learning more about Spock’s background, don’t get me wrong. As a Trekkie, and as someone who’s firmly invested in this world, I like the idea. But Strange New Worlds has a limited amount of time at its disposal; the show runs ten-episode seasons, and after this, only one more season is guaranteed to be produced. As fascinating as it is to spend time with Spock, given that this episode’s core story felt more than a little derivative of what we got in two episodes of Season 1, its main story is one that could have been reduced – if not skipped outright – in favour of stories focusing on some of the show’s new characters.
La’an had a minor role this week.
Charades’ style of “cringe humour,” something often seen in American sitcoms, really isn’t my thing. I found a few moments in the episode damn near painful to watch, particularly when jokes and gags were made at Spock’s expense. That is, however, purely a matter of personal taste, and as far as I can see, the episode’s sense of humour stuck the landing and achieved what it was aiming for… even if it isn’t something I personally enjoyed. There were absolutely some laugh-out-loud moments, moments where I had to pause Charades for fear of missing what would come next as I was laughing so hard. The premise of the episode is inherently silly: Spock being transformed into a human right before an important dinner with his fiancée. And as one of Strange New Worlds’ more lighthearted offerings, that side of the story worked as intended.
There is a slightly uncomfortable edge to some of this humour, though – and while I have no doubt that this was unintentional on the part of the writers and producers, it’s still worth acknowledging. Going all the way back to The Original Series, the character of Spock has stood apart from his crewmates. Though mental health, autism, and neurodivergence were never stated explicitly in Star Trek, Spock has, for the longest time, been someone that folks who are autistic or neurodivergent have related to. Charades stripped away part of this presentation, and did so largely for comedic purposes. That wasn’t always the most comfortable thing to watch, especially with the aforementioned “cringe” aspect to the episode’s humour. I don’t think we need to zero in on this, nor spend too long criticising Charades here, but it’s absolutely worth acknowledging this aspect of the story.
Charades seemed to poke more than its share of fun at Spock.
Conversely, and to be fair to Charades, it showed us a different side to Spock – but one that was equally rooted in many of the same neurodivergent aspects of his character. The episode’s script compared Spock’s handling of emotions to that of an adolescent, but if we continue our analogy for Spock being autistic or an “outsider” to the world of human emotion, what we see is someone experiencing these emotions in their strongest, most raw form. Just as many neurodivergent folks struggle to understand emotion, others feel them intensely, and this intensity was something new for Spock – but something no less interesting to see.
Again, the way this was played was largely for comedic effect, as Spock’s over-exaggeration of some of his feelings and emotions was part of this “cringe humour” thing that Charades had going on. But if we can look past that, I think there’s a case to be made that we saw a different side to Spock, one that flipped his logic and cool, usually emotionless presentation on its head – but it was a presentation of Spock that was no less relevant or relatable than it has been in the past.
We got a very different presentation of Spock this week.
There was a comment made before the season aired by one of the show’s executive producers (a comment I’ve now lost so I can’t find to quote from directly) that said something along the lines of “Strange New Worlds will push the boundaries of canon.” That alarmed me somewhat, because the series has to fit into a long-established world, and sometimes what producers and writers call “pushing the boundaries” can actually mean “ignoring and/or erasing.” And I think in Charades’ development of Nurse Chapel’s relationship with Spock, we get to see an example of this pushing of the boundaries.
The Original Series implied on several occasions that Chapel had feelings for – or at least a crush on – Spock. But it never went beyond that; the two characters, when they interacted, maintained a level of professionalism and perhaps friendship… but never anything more. There was no hint at a background of having once been lovers or ex-partners, and while nothing in The Original Series should explicitly rule out the kind of relationship that we see the two seemingly ready to embark upon in Charades, it’s certainly something that takes these two long-established characters and pushes them in a new direction.
What will become of the relationship between Spock and Chapel?
In the context of Strange New Worlds itself, this relationship works well. Pairing up Spock and Nurse Chapel succeeded in Season 1, and their relationship has only deepened since then. In a way, we could argue that this adds to our understanding of the characters and where they were in The Original Series – and as they interacted so infrequently in Star Trek’s first incarnation, it’s perfectly fine to bring them together in this way. It’s also not the only change made to either character from their original appearances.
That being said, putting Spock and Nurse Chapel into this kind of romantic (or at least physical) relationship is something that works best when taking Strange New Worlds in isolation. As new characters on a new show, they absolutely have the potential to do this. But for both characters, Strange New Worlds is a prequel, and it’s unclear how this relationship will work for either of them – nor how it will move either character closer to their TOS presentation.
Spock and Chapel share a kiss.
In terms of visual effects, Charades excelled. The mysterious anomaly on the surface of the moon was interesting, and its pale blue hue made it look different from other similar anomalies seen elsewhere in Star Trek. Within the anomaly itself, where Uhura, Ortegas, and Chapel ended up, I felt the “interdimensional space” set was perhaps a little small, but nevertheless succeeded at feeling sufficiently otherworldly. When compared to similar VFX sets, especially the Trill memory world from Discovery’s third season, there’s no contest, and it’s great to see that Paramount has massively improved its animation work.
There might’ve been a little of Season 1’s Children of the Comet in the set design used for the Kerkhovian interdimensional realm, but for most viewers I daresay that would pass unnoticed. Overall, it was an excellent and suitably “alien” space, both in terms of its appearance as an anomaly in space and when the away team arrived there in person.
The shuttle and the anomaly – a great CGI creation.
With a return to Vulcan and a focus on Spock’s family, there was the potential to bring back Sarek as well as Amanda. James Frain played the role of Sarek remarkably well in Discovery, and it would have been interesting to have seen more of the Spock-Sarek feud that was alluded to in The Original Series. Spock made the barest of references to their estrangement in Charades, but there might’ve been scope to do more had the episode retained a tighter focus on Vulcan and Spock’s family.
While T’Pring’s mother certainly leaned into the Enterprise style of aloof and arrogant Vulcans, I wasn’t really sure what to make of her father. T’Pring’s father seemed to be the archetypal “henpecked” husband, doing little more than agreeing with her and backing up her opinions. This kind of stock character has very little personality, and while it was intended to be lighthearted, I’m not sure how well it works in-universe when we think about how Vulcans tend to act. Is his behaviour logical?
T’Pring’s father.
Despite the inherent silliness of Spock’s sci-fi ailment, I was impressed by Nurse Chapel’s dedication to her patient. This side of the story took on a much more serious tone, and if we set aside the relationship drama angle for a moment, we got to see a great example of two dedicated medical professionals working against the clock to help a sick patient. Star Trek can do medical drama well, and while this wasn’t the main focus of Charades, it’s still a good example of how well medical stories can work in the franchise.
For Nurse Chapel we also got to see a bit more of her professional life – the “archaeological medicine” fellowship that she hoped to work with. This was interesting, as it seems to harken back to something we learned about Chapel in The Original Series: her engagement to a Federation archaeologist. The episode What Are Little Girls Made Of? introduced this relationship, and it’ll be interesting to see what – if anything – comes of it in Strange New Worlds, especially given Chapel’s newfound relationship with Spock. Will she break things off with Spock to pursue another partner? If so, what impact will that have on Spock? Maybe we’ll find out later this season… or in Season 3!
Nurse Chapel and Dr M’Benga in sickbay.
So I think I’ve said all I can about Charades for now. Its use of cringe humour means it ranks quite low on my list of Strange New Worlds episodes… but that isn’t to say it was out-and-out “bad.” It did its own thing and did it well, at least as far as I can tell. That style of humour simply isn’t to my taste, and it’s for that reason more than any other that I found it to be a less enjoyable experience than other episodes that the series has offered.
It took me a while to get around to this review, and I’m still getting caught up on Strange New Worlds after a longer-than-expected break. Thanks for bearing with me, and I promise to get around to full reviews of the remaining episodes of the season in due course!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2 are available to stream now on Paramount Plus in countries and territories where the service is available. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4.
As you may know by now, the upcoming fifth season of Star Trek: Discovery, which is due to be broadcast early next year, is going to be the show’s final outing. Paramount broke this news back in March – and true to form, did so in a poor way and with shockingly bad timing, though I suppose that’s somewhat beside the point. Discovery hasn’t always been everyone’s favourite Star Trek show, and I get that. But I think the one thing that Trekkies and viewers should be able to agree on is this: Discovery’s fans deserve to see a decent and conclusive ending.
Whatever you may have thought of the show, its characters, and its storylines, a creditable final season capped off with a solid ending could reframe how we view the show, and could even bring in some new fans. And every show, especially serialised ones like Discovery, should see their main character arcs and narrative threads tied up by the time the curtain falls for the last time.
“It’s my hope that Discovery’s writers will have known the end was coming well enough in advance to have planned out a conclusive ending for the series and its characters […] If this recently-announced news had been known to the producers and creative team, hopefully they will have been able to put together an ending worthy of the show and its great cast of characters.”
When a creative team knows that their production is coming to an end, they can find ways to wrap up storylines and pay off character development, bringing things to a conclusive end for at least some of the characters in the show. That’s what I hoped would happen for Discovery.
Captain Burnham exploring a ruin in the Season 5 trailer.
But unfortunately, we’ve recently learned that a conclusive end to Discovery was never written. In fact, it sounds like the show’s finale was a rushed affair comprised of last-second rewrites and pick-up shots – because in true Paramount style, the corporation has no idea what it’s doing with the flagship series for one of its biggest brands.
Star Trek legend Jonathan Frakes directed the first half of Discovery’s fifth season finale – the episode that will now serve as the series finale. And he recently had this to say about it:
“When we did it [filmed the Season 5 finale] we didn’t know it was the end. And then Olatunde Osunsanmi had to go back up and do two or three days of new stuff to actually make the finale the finale.”
Jonathan Frakes with Saru actor Doug Jones during production on Season 3.
I don’t want to cast aspersions on the work of Olatunde Osunsanmi, who has directed some fantastic Discovery episodes – including Season 4’s Coming Home, which I regard as the high-water mark of the entire series. But Frakes’ comments sound incredibly ominous, and I have a bad feeling about Discovery’s finale right now.
In what Frakes recalls as being “two or three days,” additional work was done on the finale to wrap things up. Considering that a normal episode takes far longer than that to produce… I just don’t see how enough can have been done, even with a good director and a team who were ready to go. That’s on top of the emotional toll that would have been taken on the cast and crew as they learned – apparently at the last moment – that the series was to be cancelled.
Mary Wiseman as Tilly in the Season 5 trailer.
Although Starfleet Academy may serve as a spin-off of sorts, continuing Discovery’s 32nd Century setting for another season or two, I doubt we’ll get much more of a follow-up. Discovery isn’t The Next Generation – there won’t be a fan campaign to bring it back, nor is there likely to be a Picard-style resurrection in a few years’ time. This is it for Discovery, and as a series with such a strong serialised focus, that means a definitive and conclusive ending is necessary. It just isn’t possible to write something like that on short notice, let alone film it in a couple of days.
After working on a series for five seasons across more than seven years, the cast and crew had to have known that there were almost certainly fewer days ahead than there were behind. But even so, the manner of Discovery’s cancellation feels all the more brutal in light of Frakes’ comments, and I really feel for everyone involved in the production. Apparently Season 5’s original ending would have at least left the door open for a potential sixth season, and with filming having been completed, that was then ripped away from the cast and crew at the last possible moment. Not for the first time, we’re talking about a lack of professionalism, management, and just basic decency at the upper echelons of Paramount.
Tom Ryan, CEO of streaming at Paramount Global.
Paramount Plus is failing. Discovery’s cancellation is one consequence of that, Prodigy’s equally abrupt end is another, and there are other examples we can point to beyond the Star Trek franchise. As Paramount’s executives continue to flop around, unable to get to grips with a streaming market that they have no clue about – and continue not to understand – desperate decisions like these will keep being taken. With writers’ and actors’ strikes on top of that, the future of Star Trek beyond 2024 feels very uncertain indeed.
If there was any evidence of a coherent plan behind the cancellations of Discovery and Prodigy, maybe it wouldn’t feel that way. Slowing down the Star Trek franchise, refocusing on fewer productions that might all share a single timeline, and prioritising quality over quantity are all good things – and if that’s what Paramount was doing, I’d actually be supportive of it.
But that’s just not what’s happening.
The USS Discovery in Season 4.
The seemingly chaotic way in which Discovery was cancelled, after its entire fifth season had been written and filmed, speaks to that. There’s no plan here, no direction. Paramount saw the losses mounting for its streaming platform and has hit the panic button. There may well be serious narrative consequences for Discovery as a result.
No one expected Discovery to last forever, and after several cancellation scares and rumours in years past, as well as being an expensive series to produce that arguably never quite managed to make good on that initial investment… the writing has arguably been on the wall. But as a fan of Star Trek, and as someone who has supported Discovery as best I can across its run, I want to see the show get a decent ending. Whether or not you think Discovery as a series deserves that… surely you can agree that its fans and supporters do.
Sonequa Martin-Green during production on Season 5.
Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the chaotic and haphazard way in which the overall Star Trek franchise is being handled, that its flagship series was cancelled without a plan and without an ending written. Paramount is incompetent at every level, so nothing about this situation shocks or surprises me any more. But that doesn’t make it any less disappointing – or any less worrying.
Seasons 3 and 4 both had their issues. Pacing, structure, overused tropes, forced drama, and boring relationship nonsense all dragged down what could have been stronger and more interesting stories. But there was also a sense that Discovery was rediscovering some of that Star Trek magic, and especially in the fourth season finale, things seemed to be improving. I wouldn’t have chosen to cancel Discovery if I were in charge.
Coming Home set the stage for what should be a great fifth season.
But if there was a threat of cancellation in the air – and after more than seven years in production, with five seasons having been created in that time, it’s inevitable that those conversations would have been happening behind the scenes – then a timeframe for that decision needed to be in place. If cancellation were a realistic outcome, a story with a definitive ending needed to be written – not one that had to be rewritten at the last moment.
There’s a very real danger, I fear, that Discovery’s finale will be a disappointment. Moreover, depending on when these additional scenes and sequences may have been filmed, there’s also the prospect that they’ll be incredibly obvious and that it’ll be painfully clear which scenes were part of the original version of the episode and which were the last-second pick-up shots.
Kovich and Burnham in the Season 5 trailer.
With Star Trek’s future so uncertain, and the survival of Paramount Plus hanging in the balance, the last thing we need is a disappointing, underwhelming, or incomplete Discovery finale. A poorly-received final episode could end up seriously detracting from the show’s very real successes, as well as harming the prospects of both of its upcoming spin-off projects: Section 31 and Starfleet Academy. Paramount needs to get this right – and realistically, that meant planning for the end from the ground up. Season 5 as a whole needed to be written with the show’s end in mind, and it wasn’t. It couldn’t be – because once again, Paramount dropped the ball.
After Coming Home had been such a fantastic end point for Season 4, and with the promise of Discovery finally dropping its “the whole galaxy is in danger and only Burnham can save it!” premise, I felt that Season 5 had a solid foundation to build upon. When the show’s cancellation was announced it was a disappointing blow – but one that, under the right circumstances, could have worked. Now that we know Season 5 wasn’t intended to be the show’s final season, and that last-second rewrites and pick-up shots were needed, I really am concerned that the show’s ending won’t be as conclusive, as definitive, or as enjoyable as it ought to be.
Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available, and are also available on Blu-ray. Season 5 will stream on Paramount+ in early 2024. The Star Trek franchise – including Discovery and all other properties mentioned above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Original Series and Enterprise.
I’m a bit late getting to Among the Lotus Eaters, so I apologise for that! I’m a couple of weeks behind with Strange New Worlds, and I hope to catch up over the next few days.
This episode brought several really interesting concepts to bear, gave Captain Pike his first proper outing of the season, and allowed us to spend more time with Lieutenant Ortegas than in any other story thus far. It took us back to a mission referenced in The Menagerie and The Cage all the way back in The Original Series, but put an unexpected spin on it. And all in all, I had a good time with Among the Lotus Eaters.
Let’s return to Rigel VII…
If I were to make one criticism of the episode it would be that it was perhaps a little overambitious – not in terms of its singular main story, nor even in its B-plot with Captain Pike’s romance, but rather in terms of the number of characters it tried to include. There wasn’t quite enough time to flesh out everyone’s experience with the memory-loss radiation, and I felt that Among the Lotus Eaters – somewhat ironically, given the storyline – seemed to jump quite quickly from one point to another, almost as if there were missing scenes or sequences that could have explained things a little more and provided the story with better pacing.
We missed out on seeing, for example, how the crew of the Enterprise regained their memories and returned to normal, how Dr M’Benga held off the Kalar warriors and went back for La’an, how Spock reacted to losing his memories, and how Dr M’Benga re-learned his medical skills. Unlike the deliberate time-skips – which were well-executed in the episode – these “missing” moments could have added something extra to the story, and if Among the Lotus Eaters had used fewer characters, or used the ones it included sparingly, more could have been made of some of these impactful moments.
La’an and Dr M’Benga near the end of the episode.
For the past three weeks I’d been commenting on how odd it has felt to see Strange New Worlds proceeding with so little input from Captain Pike – and I stand by that, even as I enjoyed what each of those episodes brought to the table. So it was fantastic to see Pike back in action this time, even though he spent much of the episode without his memories.
Captain Pike isn’t just the heart of Strange New Worlds, he’s the reason why the series came to exist in the first place. The incredibly positive reaction that fans had to Anson Mount’s portrayal in Discovery’s second season led to the series being commissioned, and Mount has been a joy to watch in every episode of the series so far. He put in a complex performance this week with some unusual material, and Pike’s connection with Captain Batel managed to keep things grounded and understandable, even as sci-fi shenanigans about radiation-induced memory loss and a rogue forgotten yeoman played out around him.
This episode was Captain Pike’s first real outing of the season so far.
This episode is the first since Enterprise’s second season episode The Communicator that really took a look at the idea of cultural contamination and its impact on Starfleet’s mission of exploration. The two stories play out very differently, and combined they make a great example of how Star Trek can take the same basic premise but have it play out completely differently each time. But as fans, and as people who are invested in this fictional setting, learning more about how Starfleet operates – and in this case, how the organisation behaves when things go wrong – is fascinating. We caught a glimpse of something we don’t always get to see in Star Trek: the aftermath of one of these “away mission gone wrong” setups that the franchise has used fairly regularly.
Speaking as we were of storylines that could’ve been fleshed out a little more, I think a flashback to the events of the original mission wouldn’t have gone amiss in Among the Lotus Eaters. Nor would a flashback depicting Zac’s rise to power on Rigel VII – or at least part of it. Zac himself, despite being the episode’s nominal villain, feels pretty flat and one-dimensional, and some additional explanation could’ve elevated him somewhat.
Zac was an interesting idea for a villain… let down by sub-par execution.
In fact, a better presentation of Zac could have nudged a fairly black-and-white story into a greyer area. If you think about it, what was Zac to do, stranded on a hostile planet with no hope of communication or rescue? Finding a way to preserve his memories – by using the ore that protected them – was about the only thing he could do, and using the resources at his disposal – i.e. his Starfleet kit – makes a degree of sense. There was a pathway here to tell a story with a villain who, if not sympathetic because of the extreme actions he took, was at least understandable, or the predicament in which he found himself could have been presented in that way.
Because we didn’t spend much time with Zac, I didn’t really get any strong feelings about him either way. I wasn’t desperate to see him beaten in the way I can be for some villains, but I also didn’t feel much by way of sympathy for his plight, either. He felt less a fully-rounded character than a plot device; an obstacle for Pike and the others to overcome just as they had to overcome their memory loss.
Zac defeated.
Captain Pike stated up-front that the cultural contamination of Rigel VII was on him – and he’s right, because as captain, the buck stops with him. He also noted that it was a chaotic mission that necessitated a rapid escape. But even so, I can’t be the only one who thinks that Pike and the away team managed to leave a lot of Starfleet junk behind, can I? I mean, Zac had at least half a dozen phaser rifles, an entire crate of Starfleet supplies, a tricorder, a medical kit, and more. Leaving behind a rogue phaser or communicator is one thing… but an entire crate full of stuff? Not to mention a crewman, too. That’s some sloppy away team work right there!
And I know: that’s a nitpick. It was necessary for the story to have all of those things in place. But c’mon… we should expect higher standards from the Captain of the Enterprise! If Rigel VII wasn’t afflicted with that memory-erasing radiation, leaving behind an entire crate full of Federation goodies could have completely altered the destiny of the planet. As it is, Starfleet may just get away with this blatant failure. But it’s not exactly a great look!
A lost communicator is one thing… but an entire crate?!
I’ve been racking my brain, thinking about The Cage and The Menagerie, but I don’t believe that anything in Among the Lotus Eaters contradicts or overwrites what we saw in those episodes. Strange New Worlds has managed to thread the needle: expanding our knowledge and updating a classic story but without treading on its toes. That’s something the series has consistently managed to get right, and I’m pleased to see the trend continue here.
Rigel VII is a planet that has been name-dropped in Star Trek on multiple occasions, often in throwaway lines or even in the background of episodes, but that we only really saw in that first-season episode way back when. It was actually quite nice to take a deeper dive into the mysterious planet, learning more about its inhabitants. Seeing a softer side to the Kalar was interesting, too, as the only Kalar we’d seen before were violent warriors.
The surface of Rigel VII.
Among the Lotus Eaters takes more than its fair share of leaps in logic and contrivances with its central memory loss concept. What knowledge is retained and how after “the forgetting” seems to jump around at the behest of the plot, with the Kalar seeming to hold onto things like the basic operation of their tools in a way that Starfleet personnel didn’t. A central idea on Rigel VII was the totem – mentioned repeatedly but barely so much as glimpsed on screen. The Kalar seemingly retained enough knowledge to look at the totem and decipher its pictograms, understanding from that where they were and what was expected of them. But aboard the Enterprise, Spock and the crew seemed to lose a lot more of their memories and knowledge.
Connecting retained memories to strong emotions was an interesting idea – and one that has some basis in fact, or at least can in some cases. But again, the way this came across on screen seemed inconsistent at best. While everyone aboard the Enterprise wandered around the halls aimlessly, only Lieutenant Ortegas seemed to have a strong enough emotional connection to her work to be able to break through. Are we to assume, then, that Nurse Chapel in sickbay, Pelia in engineering, and everyone else in every department aboard the ship couldn’t do the same? It’s a bit of a leap.
Nurse Chapel and other officers wandering the hallways of the USS Enterprise.
On the planet’s surface, the same was true of Pike and the away team. Pike seemed to retain a lot more of his personality than the crew of the Enterprise, and even compared to the Kalar and the other members of the away team, he managed to hang onto more of himself. If the story had stronger foundations, with an explanation for these discrepancies in the radiation-induced memory loss that was perhaps more easily followed, I think this would’ve worked better.
I think that Among the Lotus Eaters wanted to include something about proximity; that the Enterprise crew were more severely affected because the ship moved closer to the radiation-emitting asteroids. And indeed the epilogue states this as fact in voiceover form. But it wasn’t readily apparent on screen in the moment just what was going on, nor why Pike was able to push through the memory loss to a far greater extent. And that explanation still falls short when it comes to Ortegas and her ability to pilot the ship with finesse, fire the phasers, and generally drag everyone out of the difficult situation they were in.
Pike and Ortegas were able to push through their memory loss to a far greater extent than everyone else.
If we take Among the Lotus Eaters’ memory loss idea as being a metaphor for conditions like dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, we can see Strange New Worlds doing what Star Trek has always done: taking a sci-fi lens to examine a real-world situation. I’m no expert, but I think many of us know or knew a close relative who suffered, to a degree, with a condition like this, and there are definitely areas where this episode seemed to be at least acknowledging the comparison.
Some dementia patients, for example, remember how to perform tasks through “muscle memory,” which isn’t a million miles away from how Ortegas knew how to fly the Enterprise. Seeing the Enterprise crew silently and absently shuffling through the ship’s corridors also brought back memories of visiting an elderly relative in a care facility some years ago, and seeing patients there behaving in a simliar way.
Ortegas remembered how to pilot the Enterprise.
When Star Trek looks at real-world ailments through its sci-fi lens, one thing I’ve always found inspirational is the idea that one day, through advancements in science and technology, life-limiting or even fatal conditions that impact people today can and will be cured. Geordi’s blindness is a great example, and his line in The Next Generation to a Romulan officer that the 24th Century Federation sees value in everyone is something I’ve long felt embodied this aspect of the franchise.
With that in mind, if we stretch our dementia metaphor to its logical end point… I don’t really see what point, if any, Strange New Worlds intended to make. Its sci-fi ailment came with an equally sci-fi resolution, and while one of the Kalar expressed gratitude for regaining his memories and seemed to come to understand their value… that was quite a rapid turnaround for a single secondary character, and wasn’t really enough on its own to be a payoff to a story like this. Maybe I’ve overthought this aspect of Among the Lotus Eaters based on a couple of scenes that felt close to some of my personal experiences.
Nurse Chapel.
Spock’s role this week, while relatively small, was nonetheless an interesting one. Spock’s journey in Strange New Worlds isn’t about recreating exactly the character we’re familiar with from The Original Series, but exploring who he was before that and how he came to become that individual. Seeing Spock make a mistake, taking the Enterprise to the asteroid field on the assumption that it would provide cover, feels like something that could have been a big step for him.
We’ll have to see if this moment is called back to in future episodes, because based on Among the Lotus Eaters alone, I don’t think we really gained a lot of insight into Spock. We saw in a strictly factual sense that Spock can make a mistake, or that his assumptions can be wrong, and I can see how we might extrapolate from that and say that it’s one reason why Spock is so hesitant to make guesses or assumptions as he gets older. But none of that was explicitly stated on screen, and I’d like to see a bit more of that when these kinds of stories arise for Spock.
This could be an interesting foundation for a Spock story.
So here’s a question: was the Kalar palace on Rigel VII supposed to be the exact same one as Pike and co. visited years earlier? Strange New Worlds has updated and, for want of a better term, retconned a number of designs and aesthetic elements across both seasons so far, and when you combine that with the fact that Zac may have made changes in order to better shield the palace and its occupants… I think we can make the case for this castle being the same one that had been seen in The Menagerie and The Cage.
The design was neat in some ways, though I would say – not for the first time in Star Trek – that the castle’s interior and exterior didn’t quite gel. I’d have liked to have seen more of the palace’s exterior design reflected in the set used for its interior – or vice versa. The exterior sets were all created with the help of Paramount’s AR wall, and parts of the snowy, windswept landscape felt quite similar to Season 1’s Valeo Beta V – the planet seen in All Those Who Wander. Neither of these things were bad per se, but it’s the first time in the show so far where I felt that set design was perhaps letting the story down somewhat.
I didn’t feel that the palace interior and exterior matched.
So let’s start to wrap things up!
Among the Lotus Eaters brought together two genuinely interesting concepts: the memory loss radiation and revisiting the only other mission and planet that we saw in The Menagerie and The Cage. Talos IV, remember, had been seen a couple of years ago during Discovery’s second season. Strange New Worlds has now exhausted “classic Pike” storylines, if we can use that definition here.
The memory loss idea was imperfect in its execution, with contrivances involving the extent of characters’ amnesia, the way in which it manifested, and how they were able to push through using emotion or connections to the world around them. Some more explanation – even if it had been little more than technobabble – could have limited the damage here, and built a stronger foundation for this idea.
Captain Pike.
As a metaphor for conditions like dementia, I’m not sure how well Among the Lotus Eaters’ memory loss storyline worked. There was a visual presentation of the Enterprise’s crew that felt uncomfortably real, and the real-world ideas of emotion and “muscle memory” being able to cut through have a basis in fact. But I’m not sure what – if anything – this story wanted to say. It was wrapped up neatly by the end of the episode, with the implication being that Pike’s decision to remove the meteorite would bring a permanent end to the Kalar’s “forgetting.”
On the other hand, the character moments in Among the Lotus Eaters – particularly with Pike and Ortegas – were strong. Pike’s internal dilemma about his burgeoning relationship with Captain Batel was believable, complex, and cute, and the way Pike reached out to Una for guidance went a long way to cementing their relationship as captain and first officer, too. Pike being able to break through his memory loss by focusing on his strong feelings for Batel and the gift she’d given him not only provided a (somewhat convenient) route for the story to take, but also told us a lot about Pike himself.
Fire phasers!
All things considered, I had a good time this week. Among the Lotus Eaters probably isn’t Strange New Worlds’ strongest episode, but it’s a Star Trek story through-and-through. It had an interesting mystery, a sci-fi/fantasy storyline that verged on the mystical, some exciting moments of action, and a villain who, while not as well-developed as I’d have liked, was strong enough to keep things entertaining.
I haven’t watched Charades yet, but I hope to take a look at that episode in the next day or two, and to get back on track with this season’s episode reviews. Thanks for bearing with me!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2 are available to stream now on Paramount Plus in countries and territories where the service is available. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are no major story spoilers for Starfield, but there may be spoilers for the game and its features and systems. This article also uses screenshots and promotional images.
Well it turns out that my last post about Starfield wasn’t enough, and that there are still more questions about the game! Starfield is my most-anticipated game right now, and along with my excitement for Bethesda’s upcoming open-galaxy sci-fi role-playing shooter, I have some concerns and some general questions about the game and how it will work. A few days ago I posed ten questions about Starfield – so click or tap here to check out those questions if you haven’t already – but I’ve already come up with ten more!
What I’m trying to do with these questions is not say “here’s a feature that I think must be part of the game,” because I don’t want to make the mistake of getting over-hyped nor building up an inaccurate picture of Starfield. Instead, what I want to do is fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge of the game, because there are things that Bethesda hasn’t clarified. There are features that seemed to be hinted at by the Starfield showcase that haven’t been confirmed, there are questions raised by statements Bethesda and Xbox made, and then there are systems and mechanics that have been included in past Bethesda or Xbox titles that may make their way to Starfield – we just don’t know yet! That’s my mindset when I pose these questions, anyway. As I said when I wrote up my Starfield “wishlist,” I have high hopes that the game will be fun regardless of whether or not it does everything that I think I want from it at this early stage!
A handgun.
I have a couple of caveats that I always give when I put together a list like this one. The first is that I have no “insider information,” nor any connection with Bethesda, Xbox, or Microsoft. I’m not claiming that anything we’re going to talk about will, won’t, or must be part of Starfield – this is a list put together by someone who’s interested in the game, based on the showcase, interviews, and other marketing material. Secondly, all of this is the subjective opinion of one person – so if you hate all of my questions and ideas, that’s totally okay!
Finally, as I said last time, I haven’t seen every single interview that Starfield’s developers and producers have given. Nor have I read every single press release, comment, or social media post – so it’s possible that I’ve missed something, or that one of the questions on this list will have already been answered. My ageing brain may not have retained everything, too!
With all of that out of the way, then, let’s jump into my list of questions!
Question #1: Is the main quest fully complete? Or: will DLC be required to complete the main story?
Starfield’s premium edition includes access to the first piece of planned DLC.
As you can see from the image above, pre-ordering the “premium edition” of Starfield grants players access to the first piece of planned DLC. I’ve already expressed my scepticism about this; it seems far too early to be considering DLC when the game isn’t even out. But the subtitle of this piece of DLC is what I’m curious about today, because Shattered Space is described as the “first story expansion” for Starfield.
This raises the unpleasant spectre of an incomplete game; a “release now, fix later” title with promises of a “roadmap” to more content. This is the model often adopted by “live service” games, and it seldom works as intended. I’m all for an expansion pack, don’t get me wrong, but the way this one has been advertised has me at least a little worried.
How’s that roadmap working out for you, Anthem?
Bethesda has two points in its favour here, as I see it. The first is that, despite a very poor launch, the company has continued to support Fallout 76 with updates and expansions. Even if Starfield is released to poor critical reception, that gives me hope that support for the game will continue, and that at the very least that first planned expansion will still arrive. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Bethesda’s single-player titles have been well-supported by expansion packs. Morrowind got massive expansions in Tribunal and Bloodmoon, and as much as we like to mock Oblivion’s horse armour DLC, that game also received the major Shivering Isles expansion pack. So the company has a solid track record here.
That being said, I’m still a little concerned about Starfield’s story potentially not being complete at launch. Given that the base game is already priced at £60 or $70, it would be nigh-on exploitative to force players to pay an additional fee of at least £25 or $30 to buy the next chapter of the story. Even more so considering that Shattered Space has been in development alongside the base game.
Question #2: Is Starfield capped at 30fps on PC? Or: is it possible to push Starfield to 60fps and beyond on higher-end PCs?
A fancy-pants gaming PC. (No, it’s not mine!)
Although it wasn’t discussed at the showcase, Starfield’s director Todd Howard subsequently confirmed in an interview that the game will be capped at 30 frames-per-second on Xbox Series S and X consoles, with the less-powerful machine also running the game at 1440p resolution. In the same interview, Howard seemed to indicate that the game can run at 60fps on PC, at least in Bethesda’s internal tests.
But what hasn’t been made clear is whether that will be an option for players on PC. Many modern PC games have frame-rate options as standard, and offer features like Vsync, where the game will match a monitor’s refresh rate. I recently upgraded to an RTX 3070 Ti – a fairly powerful GPU. I’d expect to hit at least 60fps in most titles – or at least in games that are well-optimised and have proper PC ports!
Todd Howard, Starfield’s director.
Thats being said, I’m not a stickler for frame-rate in the way some folks are. I’m not even sure I could tell much of a difference between frame-rates in a lot of cases. But 60fps isn’t even the gold standard, it’s a fairly low bar that most PC games in 2023 should be able to clear. If Starfield is so massive and so detailed that its console version needs to be frame-capped, then I guess that makes sense. But many folks have PCs with specs that far exceed the Xbox Series X.
If this isn’t an official feature, don’t despair. I wouldn’t be shocked at all to see a mod pop up in the days after Starfield’s launch that uncaps the game’s frame rate!
Question #3: What impact (if any) do different levels of gravity have on exploration and combat?
Firing a weapon in zero-G.
At the showcase we saw a zero-G section of gameplay featured prominently. Whether this is a recurring feature, or whether zero-G sections are part of scripted missions only wasn’t clear – but it was still something cool to see. We also saw that planets could have different levels of gravity, which makes sense!
But what wasn’t entirely clear from the gameplay that was shown off is what impact – if any – this will have. If I land on a high-gravity planet, for instance, does that mean I move slower, or can carry fewer items? On a low-gravity world can I jump tens of metres into the air without a jetpack? And what about firing a weapon – do projectiles have less range in high gravity than in low?
Will exploring in low gravity differ from exploring in high gravity?
I’m not banking on any of those things being true, because it seems like it would be complicated and time-consuming to create features like that. But at the same time, it would be neat if gravity was a consideration. There are so many different ways in which this could manifest, potentially impacting everything from combat to resource-gathering.
Although I’m not necessarily expecting a massive and deep gravity levels system, what I will say is this: if a planet designated as a high-gravity world and a planet designated as a low-gravity world are functionally the same, with gravity not seeming to have much of an impact on exploration or gameplay, it will raise the question of why it was even mentioned or included!
Question #4: Will DLC eventually come to Game Pass?
Game Pass is building up quite the library of titles!
As noted above, there’s already DLC planned for Starfield. But it doesn’t seem like that DLC will come to Game Pass – at least, not at first. The base game is available on Game Pass, but it’s also possible to pre-order the premium edition of Starfield, complete with the DLC. This kind of feels like a rough deal for Game Pass players – especially if the first piece of DLC won’t be ready for months or even years.
To be fair to Starfield, other games work a similar way. DLC for the likes of Age of Empires II is also something that has to be bought separately – but that doesn’t really excuse it. This is something Microsoft will have to figure out as Game Pass continues to grow, and while some optional content and DLC might still be okay to sell separately, things like Shattered Space might not be – especially if it’s vital to complete the main quest.
Game Pass players get access to one of the pre-order bonuses.
With Skyrim, the current Game Pass version includes the game’s major expansion packs. So I wonder if, at some point in the future, Starfield will be updated in a similar way. Microsoft is raking in the money from Game Pass every single month, and I’m sure that Starfield’s launch will bring an influx of new subscribers to the platform. But when Shattered Space is ready, some of those folks will be disappointed to learn that they have to pay an additional charge on top of their Game Pass subscription.
The subscription model is still new in the gaming realm, and there are questions like this that need to be sorted out! But if Game Pass is to achieve Microsoft’s aim of being “the Netflix of video games,” then it can’t get away with continuing to charge for add-ons and expansion packs, surely. Netflix doesn’t do that; you don’t get access to the first season of The Witcher then have to pay an additional fee to watch Season 2. So I’d love to see Shattered Space and any further DLC expansion packs come to Game Pass on day one.
Question #5: How important is crafting? And: can weapons and items break?
A weapon in the inventory menu.
I’m biased here: I detest weapon and item durability in practically every game. Very few titles manage to get this feature right, and more often than not it just turns into a frustrating experience. Weapons breaking partway through combat and items needing to be replaced every ten minutes may seem “realistic” in some ways… but it’s not exactly fun.
There are better ways to deal with weapons and items, such as cosmetic wear and tear, upgrades, or simply offering an abundance of choice. Rather than forcing players to a workbench or crafting station to keep re-creating or repairing tools, it’s far better – in my opinion, of course – to figure out other ways to make gameplay interesting.
This may be an in-game crafting station.
This also speaks to a potentially much larger point: what kind of role will there be for crafting in Starfield? We know that there can be a crafting station aboard a player’s spaceship, but how often will we be required to use it? What kind of items will we need to craft or upgrade? And crucially: how necessary will crafting be?
Bethesda role-playing games have always offered customisation options, even for things like weapons. Swords could be enchanted in Morrowind, for instance, and guns could be upgraded in Fallout 4. The latter also introduced settlement building, with resources needing to be collected. I feel there’s scope for a detailed and in-depth crafting system in Starfield, but I also think it’s something that may be optional for players who want a more action-forward experience.
Question #6: Can we give names to outposts and planets?
“Jemison Outpost 1” doesn’t feel like the most inspired name…
I’m fairly sure that re-naming spaceships is possible in Starfield; it certainly seems that way based on footage from the showcase. And of course the player character’s name can be freely chosen. But what about outposts and planets? We saw at the showcase several locations that were simply called “civilian outpost” or “industrial outpost,” so I’m not sure whether or not this will be possible.
It would be nice to be able to give a name to an outpost, though! Instead of making my home at the rather clinical and official-sounding “mining outpost,” it would be neat if I could give it a more personal name that reflects my character, their style, or even simply geographic features present at the base.
The moon Tau Ceti VIII-b.
While I have some hope for outpost names being possible, I’m far less convinced that re-naming planets will be part of Starfield. But again, I’d quite like this to be included in the game. Obviously we won’t be re-naming Mars or Jemison, nor any of the other named worlds that already have settlements. But if I stumble upon an uninhabited rock called something like Kepler-295 B, and decide to build the first-ever human outpost on its surface, I’d like to be able to give that world a more personal name!
Maybe this seems like something minor, and it is in a way. But these kinds of personal touches can go a long way to making the role-playing experience feel immersive; coming home to Fort Dennis on the planet Dentopia would be a lot more fun than returning to Outpost #7 on Kepler-259 B.
Question #7: How do factions work? Or: does joining one faction permanently cut off another?
The Freestar Collective is one of the main factions in Starfield.
In past Bethesda games, choosing to associate with one faction over another could permanently cut off that second faction, making it impossible to complete every available quest in a single playthrough. The example that leaps to mind are Morrowind’s Great Houses: joining one would mean the other two would be permanently unavailable.
This adds a lot of replay value to a game, especially if those factions have well-developed characters and long, detailed questlines of their own. Indeed, one of the appeals of a Bethesda role-playing game is that some of these factions and their missions can be at least as in-depth as the main quest and just as worthwhile to play.
Joining one Great House in Morrowind would permanently close off the other two in that playthrough.
We’ve seen at least a hint at something similar in Starfield via the traits menu in the character creator. Choosing to have a United Colonies background means that players can’t also choose to have a Freestar Collective background, and there are three religious affiliations which are also mutually exclusive. Whether and to what extent those traits will impact gameplay is still not known, but it’s interesting, at any rate.
Starfield will contain joinable factions in addition to the Constellation organisation, and it seems logical to assume that being a member of the Freestar Rangers might permanently cut off membership in the United Colonies’ space force. That’s just one example. If these factions are as deep and well-developed as we’d hope they would be in a Bethesda game, this feature would add a ton of replayability to Starfield.
Question #8: Are there invisible walls? Or: are landing zones limited in size?
Will we see a message like this in Starfield?
This kind of ties into a point that I raised last time: how much of the surface of an individual planet can be explored? There was mention at the showcase and in subsequent interviews about selecting a “landing zone” on a planet’s surface – with players seemingly given a completely free choice of where to land. But do those zones have limits, or is it truly going to be possible to circumnavigate a planet on foot?
If there are limits to landing zones, I hope that invisible walls won’t be the way it’s handled. Something like that would absolutely break the immersion, even if landing zones are massive in size. A game that encourages exploration will surely push players to roam far away from their spaceships.
A spaceship on the surface of a planet.
I’m not really sure how Starfield should deal with this. The best-case scenario is that exploration is completely unlimited, and players who want to will be able to go on long-distance expeditions far away from where they landed. Look at games like Minecraft, for example, and how some players will go on huge treks across vast swathes of the procedurally-generated map.
That being said, there are ways in sci-fi to generate a technobabble explanation or reason for just about anything! If it were explained at an early stage that, for example, communicators had a limited range, then maybe that could be an excuse for why roaming too far beyond where a spaceship landed isn’t possible. I think running into a random invisible wall with no explanation won’t cut it, but some kind of “turn back” message, perhaps with multiple warnings preceding it, could work.
Question #9: Are gas giants among the promised 1,000 explorable planets? Or: what role will gas giants play in Starfield?
This appears to be a moon orbiting a gas giant.
Plenty of images and clips of Starfield prominently feature gas giants – massive planets like Saturn and Jupiter that are mostly comprised of hydrogen, helium, and other gaseous material. Because of the nature of gas giants, there isn’t a “surface” to speak of that can be visited; gas giants are comprised of various layers of gases and liquids, with the “boundaries” between different densities often being very gradual.
So it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll be able to land on gas giants – but can we fly near them? Can we fly into their cloudy atmospheres at all? What about gathering resources? In real life, gas giants are known to harbour vast quantities of helium – and helium-3 is confirmed to be the material used for spaceship fuel in Starfield. So gas giants could conceivably have resources to collect… somehow.
Jupiter and its moon Io, as photographed by NASA’s Cassini probe.
But how would this work? You can’t build an outpost on a gas giant like you would on the surface of a planet, and unless spaceships can be outfitted with equipment to harvest resources – something we also haven’t seen – then I’m just not sure how we’d go about extracting anything from a gas giant in the game.
Finally, Starfield’s marketing has promised 1,000 planets to explore. In real life, the majority of planets that have been discovered so far are gas giants or ice giants; will that be true of the majority of Starfield’s 1,000 planets, too? If so, it could cut down the number of planets we can actually land on by a considerable margin.
Question #10: Are there procedurally-generated quests and missions?
Will some NPCs be randomly generated or dish out random quests?
We know that Starfield will use procedural generation for some of its planets and environments. There’s still a degree of confusion over how exactly this will function, but today I’m asking a different question! Are all of Starfield’s missions and quests hand-crafted? Or will there be procedurally-generated quests and missions?
Some games have random encounters and/or missions with set parameters but where the specific details are procedurally-generated. This could include, for example, a quest involving killing a monster – but where the quest-giver is a procedurally-generated NPC, the monster type is chosen at random, and so on.
Discovering a hand-crafted location in a random place!
Another example would be the patented “nemesis” system used in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel. Random NPCs in the enemy army would be promoted, depending on the actions of the player, and defeating these levelled-up enemies was an integral part of both titles. I’m not expecting anything like this in Starfield, it’s just an example of how this kind of randomness can work!
So will Starfield have anything comparable? Or have all of the game’s missions and quests been constructed by human developers from the ground up? The way Bethesda has talked about the game seems to suggest that at least some quests may take place in randomly-assigned locations.
So that’s it!
Is that a crashed spaceship?
I managed to find another ten questions that I’d love Bethesda and Xbox to answer before Starfield’s release.
As I’ve said before, the point here is not to pre-emptively criticise the game, nor to deliberately seek out things to pick on. Instead, I’m concerned that Bethesda and Microsoft ought to do more to rein in speculation when it gets out-of-hand. If a feature isn’t going to be included in the game, or won’t behave in the way players are expecting, it’s infinitely better to say so now, months before release. The alternative is that the hype train ends up going down the wrong track – before ultimately derailing when players finally get their hands on Starfield.
A good marketing team knows how to say “no” in a way that isn’t offputting, and how to redirect the conversation in a positive direction. If the interiors of spaceships can’t be customised, for example, then tell us and be up-front about that – but also shine a light on outpost building or the variety of costumes and cosmetic options elsewhere in the game. That’s just one example. But covering things up or saying “pass” when asked a basic question about an in-game system or feature that would in no way be a spoiler… well, it isn’t always a good look.
Dogfighting in space!
There are reasons why Starfield should sit in the “wait for the reviews” category. But at the same time, it’s absolutely my most-anticipated game and I can feel the hype train leaving the station. I really can’t wait to get my hands on Starfield, and even if the game doesn’t do absolutely everything that I think I want it to right now, I still think we’re in for a fun time.
There are quests in practically all of Bethesda’s older games that I still haven’t played – or even started! These games tend to be overstuffed with things to do, such that even years later I still haven’t seen or done it all. But I greatly enjoyed all of them in different ways, and the chance to take to the stars in a sci-fi role-playing game like this… it has the potential to be incredible. I haven’t felt this much excitement for a new game since Bethesda’s own Morrowind more than two decades ago!
Starfield will be released on the 6th of September 2023 for PC and Xbox Series S/X consoles. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. Some promo images and screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: Picard Season 2, Enterprise, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was an interesting episode – and one of the better time travel stories in modern Star Trek. Its central pairing of La’an and an alternate timeline Kirk was interesting, and one that accomplished the objective of putting them together but without treading on the toes of established canon; Kirk’s legendary conflict with the original Khan Noonien Singh is something that modern Star Trek needs to preserve at all costs!
There were a few contrivances in the episode, though, and both the opening act and Kirk’s willingness to erase his own timeline seemed to be quite rushed. That’s despite Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow being the longest episode of the season so far!
Stranded in the past…
I’ve commented on this twice already this season, but here we go again: where oh where is Captain Pike?! Was Anson Mount unavailable for part of the season’s production? In the first episode, Pike was present only briefly before taking off on a mission of his own. Last week, the opening act saw Pike recruit Una’s lawyer – but he was then sidelined and didn’t have much to say. And this week, Pike got one line in a very short sequence right at the end of the episode. Is Paramount paying Anson Mount by the line these days? What’s going on?!
I say that jokingly – but Strange New Worlds was “the Captain Pike show” when we were campaigning to make it happen. You have to admit that it’s odd, at the very least, for Pike to have been so thoroughly absent in the first part of this season. Basically one-third of Season 2 has now progressed with very little input from the Enterprise’s captain. In past iterations of Star Trek there were always spotlight episodes for individuals and stories in which some characters were more prominent than others… but these came in longer seasons, and it was still relatively uncommon to go three episodes in a row with the captain having so little to do. In modern Star Trek it’s unprecedented; can you imagine if Discovery had run three episodes with so little screen time for Burnham? I just find the whole thing rather perplexing – even though I’ve enjoyed each of these three episodes.
Captain Pike was once again notable by his absence from the story.
Let’s talk about a specific story criticism. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow saw La’an make wild assumptions and leaps that had no basis in fact or logic. Given that she’s been thrust into a completely new and unfamiliar situation, her assumption that she must have been sent to a specific timeline to team up with Kirk, or to a specific moment in the past for a reason, or that the device she was given wouldn’t “unlock” until she’d completed her mission… all of these things and more needed more time to play out.
As much as I dislike Picard’s second season, the episode Penance is actually a reasonably good example of this “fish-out-of-water” idea. In that story, Picard and several of his crewmates find themselves in an alternate timeline, separated from one another and with no idea of what’s going on. It takes them basically an entire episode just to piece together what’s happened and get back together; it’s not something that can or should be rushed in the way that Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow tried to do.
La’an and Kirk made some wild leaps in logic.
We know that La’an is capable and self-reliant, but her completely baseless assumptions – though validated in a way by the resolution of the story – undermine her characterisation and significantly weaken the episode. Because of the time constraint, it was necessary for La’an to quickly assess the situation she found herself in and come up with a plan – but there may have been ways to cut some other scenes and sequences down, giving this incredibly important setup more time to play out.
This is also true, to an extent, of other parts of the episode. After seeing the bombing and chasing after stolen parts, La’an and Kirk seemed to pretty quickly figure out – again, via baseless assumption – what they had been sent to the past to do. Although Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow found time to slow down in between these rushed moments, the main plot of the episode seemed to leap from point to point incredibly quickly, leaving very little time to digest what was going on. I wanted to shout at La’an and Kirk to slow down and give me a moment to catch my breath!
Racing through the streets of Toronto…
While we’re picking holes in the story, I’ll say this: time travel can be exceptionally difficult to get right in any fictional setting. It’s all too easy to write oneself into a corner, relying on paradoxes, tropes, and “you can’t tell anyone this ever happened” in order to get out of it. The end of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow raises such a point: if the Department of Temporal Investigations knew what was going on and were able to observe La’an and Kirk, why didn’t they intervene?
La’an is a 23rd Century security officer, and Kirk was a starship captain from a dystopian timeline that shouldn’t exist. They are categorically not the best-qualified people to stop a Romulan super-spy from the future… not without help or guidance, at any rate. If the episode had ended without the official from Temporal Investigations showing up, I guess we could have written it off as the first agent turning to La’an out of desperation. But knowing that this organisation had been watching her all along… it kind of smacks of Enterprise’s Temporal Agent Daniels teaming up with the 22nd Century’s Captain Archer. Surely these organisations have their own staff!
Doesn’t the Department of Temporal Investigations have its own staff?!
That being said, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow might just be my favourite Star Trek time travel story – or at least my favourite one for a long while! Time travel to the modern day is difficult to get right, and practically every Star Trek episode that’s taken this approach has also taken its crew to the sunlit coast of southern California. This happened in Voyager, in Picard, and even in The Voyage Home. By taking the simple step of visiting Toronto (where the series is filmed) Strange New Worlds was already doing something different. I appreciated that.
I was worried that, coming only a year after Picard Season 2 had spent eight-and-a-half episodes wandering in the 21st Century, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow might just turn me off before it even got started. Luckily that wasn’t the case, and we got a good mix of lighthearted moments. Kirk and La’an having to figure out how to dress and how to act in an unfamiliar environment stood in contrast to the heavier storyline involving time-travelling terrorists and a plot to stop the Federation from ever being created.
There were lighter moments to balance out a heavy story.
This last point – preventing the Federation from coming into existence – was a fascinating one that I would have loved to explore in more detail. Because it was only revealed at the climax of the plot that the Federation’s existence hinged upon disaster, genocide, and the reign of terror that Khan brought to Earth, there wasn’t an awful lot of time to get into the real implications of this – and of the decision that La’an was forced to make.
But this is such an interesting idea! I even wondered if Picard’s aforementioned second season might’ve been going for a similar setup, because the idea of having to consciously choose to permit something so horrific is a real moral quandary. In that moment, La’an was face-to-face with one of Earth’s most brutal dictators. She could have chosen to kill him, sparing Earth the torment that she knows is 100% guaranteed to happen. But she didn’t – she couldn’t. Not because she wanted it to happen, but because she knew that without those horrors, the future would be radically and almost unimaginably altered.
La’an confronted her family legacy.
The fact that La’an has a personal family tie here makes it an even more complex idea. La’an has spent her life living in the shadow of an infamous, hated ancestor – and she was given an opportunity to prevent any of that from ever happening. The themes at play here, expressed through La’an’s decision and the impossible choice that befell her, are incredibly deep, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tommorow almost feels like an episode posing a challenge to its viewers: what would you have done in her place?
This storyline also updates that of Khan and his augments, changing parts of Star Trek’s internal timeline. The Romulan super-spy seemed to imply that the actions of a variety of time-traveling factions may be to blame for Khan’s rise to power taking place decades later than it was supposed to – and that’s something we’ll have to digest or figure out later if it ever returns as a major plot point!
Young Khan.
For now, suffice to say that I’m not a canon “purist,” and I like the idea of Star Trek refreshing and updating itself. That being said, I don’t necessarily feel that the specific timing of Khan’s rise to power is some kind of gaping plot hole that needs to be plugged, even as Star Trek continues to tell modern-day time-travel stories that, in theory, contradict or overwrite parts of the franchise’s prior history. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow could have proceeded just fine without this somewhat ambiguous line.
This was, perhaps, Strange New Worlds throwing a bone to long-term fans: people like you and I who remember Spock’s line in Space Seed confirming that Khan’s ship left Earth in the late 1990s. Is that a discrepancy? Sure, of course it is. But does it matter? Should all future Star Trek projects avoid modern-day time-travel because the franchise’s fictional history tells us that the late 20th and early 21st Centuries are radically different from how they actually turned out to be? Personally I don’t think so – though canon purists may disagree!
The crew of the Enterprise will meet Khan again…
At first, I was concerned that I wouldn’t be sold on Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow’s Kirk-La’an relationship. But as the story progressed, this turned out to be one of the episode’s strongest elements. The slow buildup to their shared kiss stood in contrast to other story beats that felt rushed or blitzed through too quickly, and by the time Kirk was dying in La’an’s arms, the love story that the episode had constructed truly hit home and formed a much stronger emotional core to the story than I’d been expecting.
Paul Wesley has earned my respect for not only taking on the role of Captain Kirk – a role that is fraught with criticism and that is watched hawkishly by fans – but for putting his own spin on it. Wesley’s Kirk isn’t an attempt to mimic William Shatner’s portrayal – nor Chris Pine’s, come to that. Paul Wesley has made the role his own, showing off his own range, his own emotions, and his own comedic timing. It’s not a carbon copy – any more than Ethan Peck’s Spock is a carbon copy of Leonard Nimoy’s. But I’m impressed with what he’s done with the character – and this alternate version in particular gave the actor a fair amount of leeway.
Paul Wesley as Captain Kirk.
Does La’an’s contact with Pelia form a paradox? I guess we could argue that it does! If Pelia was inspired to become an engineer by La’an in the past, then investigating her possessions was the reason why La’an was alone in the corridor when she crossed over to the alternate timeline, then… wait, my head hurts.
Pelia’s role in the episode was fun, paradoxes aside. It was neat to see Kirk and La’an tracking her down in the past, and the resolution to this side of the story both gives a bit of background to Pelia that we didn’t have before while also being a lighter moment as it became clear that she wasn’t an engineer and would be of no help whatsoever in creating a tracking device. Again, the resolution to this point felt rather contrived and rushed, but the scenes between La’an, Kirk, and Pelia were more than strong enough to carry the story through.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was interesting for the character of Pelia.
Although it was obvious that there would be no “happily ever after” for La’an and Kirk, the way in which the latter was killed was still pretty brutal by Star Trek standards. The episode did a reasonable job at setting up the idea that La’an and Kirk had hope that he might’ve been able to transport back to the prime timeline, but it still felt like a sure thing that that wouldn’t be able to happen, no matter how much they wanted to believe it.
As mentioned, though, the let-down on this side of the story was the rapid, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it turnaround in Kirk. The episode wanted to say something like this: after seeing Earth for the first time with his own eyes, learning of his brother’s survival, and hearing La’an’s tales of a United Federation of Planets and a peaceful, prosperous humanity, Kirk was willing to sacrifice his timeline in order to bring hers into being. Self-sacrifice is a well-established Kirk trait, so that tracks.
Kirk was killed.
But there just wasn’t enough time for this to play out effectively, and it makes the story substantially weaker than it could’ve been. In order to fit in everything else that Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow wanted – the visit to Pelia, the relationship buildup, the car chase, La’an’s run-in with Khan, etc. – this side of things took a back seat. And while other story points worked well, I’m having a hard time with this supposedly grizzled, battle-hardened version of Kirk being so willing to wipe everyone he’s ever known from existence.
This is something that could have been made more of, particularly in terms of a conflict between La’an and Kirk. Two characters from two alternate realities find themselves at the “fork in the road,” where one path leads to one timeline and the other path to a very different one. There was potential in the idea of them arguing over which way to go, because from Kirk’s perspective at least, don’t his people have as much of a right to exist as La’an’s? The episode just didn’t spend much time on what could have been a really interesting idea – and the result of that is that Kirk’s turnaround feels incredibly abrupt.
We could’ve spent longer on this idea.
The episode’s epilogue contained a truly heartbreaking scene. La’an was confronted with the reality that the prime timeline version of Kirk had no idea who she was, and no recollection of the time she’d shared with his alternate counterpart. All credit must go to Christina Chong for a deeply emotional and raw performance; I genuinely felt La’an’s emptiness, loneliness, and heartbreak as she broke down and cried.
The end of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow feels bleak in more ways than one. La’an had to commit to her ancestor’s genocidal reign, but also lost the sole human connection that we’d ever seen her make. La’an has friendly relationships with her shipmates, but Kirk was something different – someone who seemed to understand her and who didn’t feel encumbered by the weight of her past. La’an caught a glimpse of what that could be like – but it was brutally ripped away from her.
La’an’s heartbreak was a sad end to the episode.
So a bit of a contradictory one this week! Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is one of Star Trek’s best modern-day time-travel stories. It was fun and lighthearted in places, dense and heavy in others, and it connected back to The Original Series in clever and unexpected ways. But it was let down by trying to cram in one too many storylines, with the result being that several key moments and elements of characterisation were missing, lessening the impact as the story wore on.
I had a good time this week, all things considered. Pairing up Kirk with La’an was a risk, but because this version of Kirk came from an alternate reality, I think we can say it’s a risk that paid off. It was a great episode for La’an’s characterisation, bringing her face-to-face with the monster from her past, but also taking her on an emotional rollercoaster and showing off a side of her that we haven’t always gotten to see.
There’s only one question left to ask: will Captain Pike finally get a role to play next time?!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2 are available to stream now on Paramount Plus in countries and territories where the service is available. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Although there are no major story spoilers, minor spoilers may be present for Starfield and its in-game systems. This article also uses screenshots and images from the showcase and trailers.
The Starfield showcase has told us a lot about the upcoming sci-fi role-playing game and what we can expect from it. Bethesda has followed this up by putting out game director Todd Howard to participate in a number of interviews, including one in which he was strangely asked about fishing. But there are still some question-marks hanging over Starfield, at least from my perspective.
I’m not in a position to interview anyone or put these questions to Bethesda and Xbox directly. So instead I thought it could be fun to write them out here – as well as share my thoughts on what the answer may be, and what I’d want the answer to be! As I said when I wrote my Starfield wishlist, I have high hopes that the game will be enjoyable to play regardless of whether or not it does everything that I think I want right now. It’s also possible that updates and DLC will add certain features and mechanics in the months and years after the game launches – so if something seems to be “missing” that a lot of players would like to see, don’t bet against Bethesda adding it somewhere down the line.
Piloting a spaceship.
As always, I have a couple of caveats! Firstly, I have no “insider information,” and I’m not trying to claim that anything we’re going to talk about today definitely will or won’t be part of Starfield. These are questions I have about the game based on pre-release footage, the showcase, and interviews I’ve seen with Bethesda and Xbox folks. Secondly, all of this is the subjective opinion of one person; if you hate all of my questions or if I don’t ask something that seems blindingly obvious to you, that’s okay! There should be enough room in the gaming community and the Starfield fandom for different perspectives and points of view.
Finally, I haven’t seen every interview, nor read every single comment by Bethesda and Microsoft. It’s possible that I’ve missed something, or that something I’m uncertain about has been clarified already. My ageing brain may not have retained everything, too!
With all of that out of the way, let’s jump into my list of questions!
Question #1: Do planets rotate? Or: do planets have a day-night cycle?
An astronaut and a star.
We’ve seen some clips that seem to take place in the full light of day, and others that take place in darkness. So it’s obvious that night and day plays a role in Starfield, at least to an extent. But what I haven’t been able to gauge so far is whether there are day-night cycles on every planet – and if there are, would every planet behave the same way?
Past Bethesda games have had day-night cycles, with different monsters appearing at night, for example. In some games, sleeping is only permitted between certain hours, and some quests might even be time-specific in some cases. But if we’re heading out into space, planetary rotation can mean a lot more than just whether the sun is in the sky or not!
A solar system.
Some planets that lack atmospheres have extremes of temperature depending on whether they’re facing their star or not. Mercury, for instance, varies wildly between -170°C at “night” to over 400°C during its “daytime.” If we’re exploring planets comparable to Mercury in Starfield, when and where we land could determine what kind of environmental protection we’d need, for example.
The Starfield showcase seemed to suggest that planetary temperature was one factor that could affect the player character, with the HUD keeping track of temperature. But whether that changes, or whether each planet or landing site has a fixed, unchanging temperature is unclear. I’d love to know whether planets rotate, whether there are varying day-night cycles for the main cities and locations, and whether or to what extent these things could impact exploration.
Question #2: Is the entire surface of a planet explorable?
A close-up view of a planet.
If I disembark from my spaceship and head in one direction in a straight line, will I be able to keep walking, walking, and walking all the way around the circumference of a procedurally-generated planet? If I stay in that straight line without deviating, will I eventually walk all the way back to my spaceship?
There was a lot of talk at the showcase about “if you can see it, you can go there,” with a moon in the sky of a planet being pointed out. But there was also talk of players choosing a “landing zone” on each planet or moon that we’ll visit – and the implication of that could be that each “zone” has limits.
A spaceship blasts off.
I’m not sure how many people would want to walk all the way around a planet. Exploring the entire surface of even the smallest planet or moon in the solar system would be an arduous task… but gamers love to take on challenges! Walking hundreds or thousands of miles to fully circumnavigate a planet might be something that some folks will want to do.
Regardless, if there are limits to how far players can explore, or how much of the surface of a planetary body is explorable at one time, those limits will have to be handled carefully. Invisible walls might not cut it here… and could certainly impact the sense of immersion. But at the same time, it’s hard to see how this could be avoided, even given the game’s size and ambitious scope.
Question #3: Will there be microtransactions, an in-game shop, purchasable currencies, and the like?
The game is launching with pre-order bonus items.
If the answer to this question is anything but a solid, definitive “no” then I will be deeply concerned and very disappointed. Already we’ve seen that not all Starfields are created equal: there are pre-order bonus outfits and deluxe edition-exclusive outfits already. Pre-order bonuses are nothing new, of course, but I’d still rather that every Starfield player could have access to all in-game cosmetic items.
But the existence of these in-game skins has me worried. Are Bethesda and Microsoft planning an in-game microtransaction marketplace? If so, will there be some kind of “premium currency” to go along with it? Some titles can feel downright exploitative with their in-app purchases, with cosmetic items in Diablo IV retailing for £20/$25 in some cases.
In-game currency packs in Fall Guys.
In some ways, we can blame Bethesda for being one of the pioneers of monetisation in single-player games. Oblivion’s horse armour DLC became infamous in 2006 as an exemplar of this kind of cheap cash-grab – and Bethesda has even tried to monetise mods with its “Creation Club” in Skyrim and Fallout 4.
In free-to-play games, in-game purchases can be fine – though they must still be reasonably priced and not unfair. But in a single-player, fully-priced title like Starfield, in-game purchases will be hard to justify – if not outright impossible. Bethesda needs to be honest about this, too – and not send out one version of the game to reviewers, then sneakily add in an in-app storefront after launch. We’ve seen similar things happen with other games. It’s a concern at this point that no one at Microsoft or Bethesda has ruled out in-game monetisation.
Question #4: Will custom backgrounds be available? (A background with a customisable name and a free choice of skills.)
An example of one of the backgrounds.
The Starfield showcase showed off about sixteen different potential character backgrounds, with a handful of sci-fi staples like “bounty hunter” being joined by less common ones such as “chef!” These look like fun – but their inclusion raises a question: can we make our own custom background?
In Morrowind and Oblivion, it was possible to create a custom class. If players didn’t want to pick one of the pre-made options it was possible to become… well, anything. These custom classes also came with a free choice of starting skills. The pre-made backgrounds in Starfield each seem to come with three starter skills, so that raises the question of whether custom backgrounds exist, and if they do, whether it would be possible to have a free choice of skills to include.
Creating a custom class in Morrowind.
At the showcase, it was clear that the choice of background could lead to some unique dialogue options and possibly even unique quests within Starfield. If that’s the case, Bethesda may not want players creating their own custom backgrounds. But it was a lot of fun in Morrowind and Oblivion to become a “dark knight” or “chocolatier,” and to choose which skills to give a boost to at the beginning of the game. This might not be something everyone wants to try – and I think in my first playthrough I’ll probably pick one of the pre-made options to see how much unique content is on offer. But it could be a ton of fun!
This is something that feels like it could be relatively easy to mod, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see a “custom background” mod created fairly soon after the game’s launch if it isn’t an official feature.
Question #5: How abundant will resources be?
This cargo ship looks like it could carry a lot of resources.
We know that there will be resources to collect in Starfield, with some of these being able to be sold for cash and others perhaps being used to craft items or even in the construction of outposts and bases. But how abundant will these resources be? If you think about it, every single item ever used in the entire history of humankind has come from a single planet. All the lead, all the iron, all the uranium we’ve ever used across all of human history came from Earth. With that in mind, it might feel strange to visit a planet and find, say, 40kg of iron, half a brick of lead… and nothing else.
One of my concerns with Starfield is that a deliberate policy of forced scarcity might be used to push players to keep exploring and to keep visiting new planets and locations – or even to pay real-world money to “skip the grind.” Depending on what resources are needed for crafting, and how necessary in-game crafting will be to Starfield, this could become frustrating.
Firing a mining laser.
Not all planets and moons will have every available resource – nor should they. But there has to be a balance found that makes collecting resources feel fun and not like a chore. I would also hope that resources will be purchasable, at least in limited quantities. If I need, for example, 100kg of iron to craft something and I only have 98kg, there are going to be times where I’d rather spend a few credits than have to hop in my spaceship and seek out a planet to collect a paltry amount of a single resource!
So again, this is about balance. Exploring has to feel natural, resource collecting and crafting have to feel fun. If I want to become a miner or if I want to use resources to generate the majority of my income, that’s a different story. But for basic gameplay, it’s imperative that Starfield strikes the right balance between scarcity and abundance.
Question #6: Can spaceship interiors be customised?
Exterior spaceship customisation is part of the game.
At the showcase, a Bethesda developer was prominently shown dropping a pilfered sandwich onto a pile aboard her ship. So we can infer from that that it’s possible to place individual items aboard a spaceship and have them remain there. But is that as far as we can go when it comes to personalising the inside of our flying homes?
I’d like to think it would be possible to do things like change colours, for instance. Changing the colours of the floors, walls, consoles, or furniture would be a step in the right direction, and would go some way to making a spaceship feel personal. There’s a danger, I fear, that no matter how great a ship might look on the outside, the inside might end up feeling like little more than a collection of snapped-together pieces.
Is this a bridge or a large cockpit module?
I’d love to think that we’d have choices over things like furniture. Do we want to pick this style of chair or that one? Do we want to put extra seats in the living area? How about a bigger kitchen? These are the kinds of decisions that I’d love to be making about my spaceship!
Bethesda has suggested that outposts may have a degree of customisation, with furniture and the like able to be positioned. Again, we don’t know how much customisation is available, how many items are available, and to what extent it will be possible to rearrange a room – but that sounds positive, at least. Even though I’d have expected to have heard something about this by now if it was possible for spaceships, I’m still crossing my fingers.
Question #7: Do tiles and points of interest repeat?
Discovering a new location.
At the showcase, Bethesda developers talked about how procedurally-generated planets will work. Todd Howard confirmed that there are hand-crafted “points of interest” to visit, and these will be randomly allocated to planets through this procedural generation system. While we don’t know how many of these pre-made locations there might be, if you think about how many individual tombs, ruins, and settlements there were in a game like Morrowind, it seems fair to think that there could be at least 100 – and possibly a lot more than that.
But here’s an interesting question: if Starfield’s procedural generation allocates these at random, does that mean we could encounter the same location twice? Will two “abandoned mine” locations be identical on different planets – or different parts of the same planet, come to that? And what about the tiles that make up a planet’s surface? Will they repeat, too?
How much of a planet’s surface will be made up of repeated tiles?
If a player visits a dozen or more planets in the same category – say frozen, icy worlds like Pluto – will we eventually see the same hills, the same mountains, the same lakes, and so on? After all, there can only be a fixed number of pre-made “puzzle pieces” for each type of planet or each biome, surely. There could be hundreds and hundreds of each – but in a game that encourages long-term play, it doesn’t seem impossible that we’d eventually run out of these tiles. What happens then?
If there are hundreds, thousands, or even more of these tiles and locales, the chances of encountering two identical ones in quick succession are going to be slim. But it could be immersion-breaking to land on a planet and encounter the exact same mountain or ruin as we’d already seen and explored somewhere else.
Question #8: Are there civilian outposts, colonies, and small settlements beyond the main cities?
A spaceship at a spaceport in the Freestar Collective.
One thing that makes Bethesda’s worlds feel lived-in are the smaller towns and off-the-beaten-track settlements. Look at places like Hla Oad in Morrowind or Breakheart Banks in Fallout 4. These are small settlements with no connection to the main quests of their respective games. The player has no reason to visit them except for exploration and “to see what’s there.”
Starfield needs places like this, in my opinion. It’s great that New Atlantis will be Bethesda’s biggest-ever city, or that Neon will feel like a cyberpunk dystopia – but if there aren’t smaller places to randomly encounter in between those few big locations, Starfield’s galaxy will feel small. The population relative to the size of the map will feel unbalanced.
New Atlantis, capital of the United Colonies.
In other Bethesda games – and other open-world games by other developers, too – smaller settlements can have quests of their own. They often have unique NPCs, shops, taverns, and more. Some may be connected to a faction questline, too. So there should still be things to do in at least some of these smaller settlements!
It will feel strange, I fear, if the so-called “United Colonies” only has two cities under its banner, or if the Freestar Collective is a “collective” of no more than two settlements on two planets. Partly this is for that sense of immersion, to ensure that Starfield’s galaxy truly feels like a living, breathing, perpetual world that will exist whether or not the player character is part of it. But also it’s a question of balancing the game, and ensuring that its open world doesn’t feel too empty outside of a handful of cities.
Question #9: Is it possible to build more than one outpost on a single planet? And: is it possible to build an outpost on Earth?
Constructing an outpost.
Todd Howard has suggested that it may not be possible to build an outpost on every single one of Starfield’s planets – and that makes sense. Building an outpost right next to a major city might not be a good idea, for instance. Or planets owned by certain factions could be off-limits. But with Earth confirmed to be present in the game – and perhaps in a devastated or otherwise uninhabited state – I can’t be the only one who’s considering building an outpost there… can I?
If it’s truly possible to pick any location on a planet to land and construct an outpost, maybe some folks will want to find their home town and build an Earth outpost! I think that could be fun – even though it seems silly, in a way, to build on Earth in a game all about exploring space!
Is this structure the St. Louis Gateway Arch on Earth, as some have suggested? Insert: The St. Louis Gateway Arch as it appears today.
Then there’s the idea of building multiple outposts on a single planet. If I come across a great planet with abundant resources, I might want to set up a mining camp there to generate resources and/or income. But would I want to build my dream home on top of a busy mine? Probably not!
So it would be neat if it would be possible to build different outposts on a single planet, perhaps with different functions for each one. An automated mining outpost could be chugging away in the background while my house is hundreds of miles away. That’s just one example – but there could be other reasons for wanting to do this, such as different resources being present in different locations.
Question #10: Has Bethesda over-promised? Or: is Starfield being over-hyped?
Todd Howard, Bethesda Game Studios executive producer and Starfield’s director.
Too much hype can be toxic to any game, especially if players are allowed to build up an inaccurate picture of what the game could be before it’s launched. This happened in different ways to games like No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk 2077, as players came to believe that they were going to get a once-in-a-lifetime, genre-busting experience. Sound familiar?
A good marketing campaign knows how to set appropriate limits and how to say “no” in a way that isn’t offputting. So far, I don’t think we’ve seen enough of this from Bethesda and Xbox, and there’s a danger that some players are getting the wrong idea about the scope of Starfield or about what may be possible in the game. This is something that has to be addressed as quickly as possible!
Phil Spencer and Matt Booty of Xbox Game Studios.
It’s totally understandable that Microsoft and Bethesda want to paint Starfield in the best possible light, showing the game at its best and making the most of key features. But that kind of positive approach has to be both truthful and balanced; it mustn’t oversell in-game systems nor promise features that won’t be present. It’s also important to quash speculation if it gets out-of-hand.
There are going to be limits to Starfield. There will be places that we can’t go, things we can’t do when building spaceships and outposts, and limits to both exploration and customisation. It’s also distinctly possible that the game will launch with some bugs and glitches, or even missing features that may be promised to be coming as part of an update. At the end of the day, Starfield is still a video game – one that is naturally limited by the technology available to its developers.
So that’s it.
An unknown character.
Those are ten questions that I have about Starfield.
As I’ve said on other occasions, I’m trying to rein in the excitement and hype that I have for this game! There are solid reasons to put Starfield in the “wait for the reviews” category – such as Bethesda’s reputation, the shocking state of many recent PC releases, the Fallout 76 mess, and more. And I will be checking out reviews before I commit to Starfield in September – especially if the game appears to be poorly-optimised or not running well on PC. I don’t need another Jedi: Survivor debacle!
I’d love to see Bethesda address all of these questions head-on, and to provide answers before Starfield is released. I’ve done my part on my small corner of the internet – but it will be up to bigger publications who have the access and the opportunity to hold Bethesda and Xbox leaders to account.
The Freestar Collective.
Some of the questions that have been asked of Bethesda and Microsoft have been missed opportunities, in my opinion. The question about fishing leaps to mind as the stupidest example of a nonsense question, but there have been plenty of others. If I were able, these ten questions would be the ones I’d pose to the senior folks at Bethesda and Xbox.
So that’s all for today! I know we’ve talked about Starfield a lot on the website over the past couple of weeks – but that’s because it’s my most-anticipated game at the moment. And every time I think I’ve said enough, something else comes to mind, or I read another article or watch another interview! There may be even more to say in the days and weeks ahead… so stay tuned! When Starfield is released I’ll also do my best to share my first impressions of the game, as well as talk about some of its systems and features.
Until next time!
Starfield will be released on the 6th of September 2023 for PC and Xbox Series S/X consoles. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. Some promo images and screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers may be present for some of the titles on this list.
It’s the last day of June, and by my reckoning that makes it the halfway point of the year! As we bid farewell to the first half of 2023, it’s a good excuse to take a look ahead to some of the entertainment experiences that we’ll hopefully enjoy between now and Christmas! Is it too early to think about Christmas yet?
The first half of 2023 has been blighted by buggy games and crappy PC ports, but there have been some fun experiences along the way, too. When the year’s over I’ll be sure to pick out some of the highlights in my annual “end-of-year awards,” so check back for that if you want to see me handing out some imaginary trophies and statuettes! But for now, I promised you a look ahead!
I’ve picked five films, five television shows, and five games that I’m looking forward to in the second half of 2023. Maybe I’ll inspire you to find something to watch or play – or maybe you’ll hate all of my suggestions! Either way, I hope it will be a bit of fun to take a brief look ahead.
Film #1: Ladybug and Cat Noir: The Movie 3rd August
If you aren’t familiar with Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir… what have you been doing? The kids’ show is a blast, and has a lot to offer to an older audience, too, as superheroes Ladybug and Cat Noir battle to save the city of Paris! Miraculous is making its first appearance on the big screen this summer with a film adaptation that might just take the series back to its roots. I’m looking forward to seeing what the bigger budget of a cinematic adaptation could do for what is already a well-written and entertaining story.
Film #2: Red One November/December 2023
Red One is an action-adventure film set at Christmas – and features a star-studded cast. JK Simmons takes on the role of Santa Claus, with Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, and Lucy Liu also headlining. Details of the story are thin on the ground, but Amazon Studios apparently intends for Red One to be the first part of an expanded cinematic franchise. Christmas films can become classics – but they can also be naff, overly-sentimental fluff. I’m hoping for some excitement and entertainment from Red One.
Film #3: The Last Voyage of the Demeter 11th August
Based on a single chapter of the original Dracula novel, The Last Voyage of the Demeter will focus on the crew of a doomed ship who are being stalked by the infamous vampire. The horror film could be a fun one to watch around Halloween! Horror usually isn’t my cup of tea, but a combination of the nautical setting and the connection to a classic work of literature has piqued my curiosity. As the horror genre swarms with zombies, ghosts, demons, and monsters, vampire flicks are relatively few and far between – which is another point in the film’s favour.
Film #4: Wish 24th November
Wish looks fantastic! The film has been created especially for Disney’s centenary, and aims to be a celebration of everything the studio stands for. Focusing on the magical star that many characters have made their wishes upon, the film looks set to be another modern-day Disney classic. The animation style used for Wish is a blend of hand-drawn and digital, and the film will star Academy Award-winner Ariana DeBose. The trailer looked fantastic, with an amazing song to boot, and I can’t wait to see Wish for myself!
Film #5: Rebel Moon 23rd December
There’s always room for more sci-fi, and Rebel Moon could be the kind of epic that spawns a brand-new franchise! Though I haven’t always been impressed with director Zack Snyder’s films, Rebel Moon seems to have a lot of potential. The film will star Star Trek Beyond’s Sofia Boutella, and looks to pitch a group of heroes against a corrupt imperial government. One to watch, for sure!
Video Game #1: Star Trek Infinite TBC 2023
Although I’m still not entirely sure what Star Trek Infinite will be like to play, the game is bringing the Star Trek franchise back to the strategy genre on PC (and Mac) for the first time in a long time – and I’m definitely on board with that idea! Publisher Paradox Interactive has a good reputation, and Star Trek Infinite is being constructed atop a streamlined version of the popular sci-fi strategy title Stellaris. There’s potential here, and I shall be checking out the game when it’s ready.
Video Game #2: Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty 26th September
Although I’ve argued that we need to be careful about Phantom Liberty given what happened when Cyberpunk 2077 was released, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least curious about the expansion pack. Described as a “spy thriller,” Phantom Liberty will add a new storyline to Cyberpunk 2077, a new area of the map, and also promises to connect with the base game’s main story, too. There will also be new weapons, new vehicles, and several new characters to engage with. Definitely one to put in the “wait for the reviews” category… but if it launches in good condition, Phantom Liberty could be a blast.
Video Game #3: Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora 7th December
Frontiers of Pandora is an open-world action game set in the world of Avatar. It will tell a story independent of the main Avatar films, focusing on a Na’vi character who was trained by humans. This premise sounds genuinely interesting, and could elevate Frontiers of Pandora to something a bit more interesting than just a typical tie-in game. Gameplay was recently shown off as part of Ubisoft’s summer presentation, and the game looks to be in good shape.
Video Game #4: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – Booster Course Pass Waves 5 & 6 Summer/Holiday 2023
Last week’s Nintendo Direct broadcast showed off two new characters and one new racetrack that will be coming in Wave 5 of the Booster Course Pass this summer. After that there’s only one more wave to come – which will probably be toward the end of the year. The Booster Course Pass has reignited my interest in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and having new racetracks to jump into has given the game a shot in the arm. I’m hoping that Nintendo will put a lot of effort into the final two additions to the game.
Video Game #5: Starfield 6th September
Given Bethesda’s reputation and the appalling condition of Fallout 76 in 2018, Starfield is another game that must remain in the “wait for the reviews” column! But if you’re a regular reader here on the website, you’ll know it’s my most-anticipated game right now. I cannot wait to get stuck into this open-galaxy sci-fi role-playing game, customising my character, my spaceship, and my colony, and getting lost in the world that Bethesda has created. I’m just crossing my fingers and hoping that Starfield will launch in a polished state – and that it can live up to the sky-high expectations that Bethesda and Microsoft have set.
Television Series #1: Futurama 24th July
Futurama is coming back… again! Although the series came to a pretty definitive end in 2013 – following two cancellations and resurrections – Disney and Hulu have opted to bring it back once more. I’m on board with that idea – and I’ll be curious to see what a revived Futurama can bring to the table in 2023. The show was great fun in its earlier iterations, with an intriguing blend of sci-fi wackiness and topical humour, and I have high hopes for more of the same when Fry and the Planet Express crew return.
Television Series #2: The American Buffalo 16th October
This two-part miniseries by Ken Burns will tell the remarkable tale of the near-extinction and resurrection of the American bison, looking at the history of hunting, what the species meant to native peoples, and how it was saved from extinction in the 20th Century. Ken Burns is one of the world’s leading documentary filmmakers, and I’ve long enjoyed his work.
Television Series #3: Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Late 2023
The premise of Skeleton Crew is giving me Star Trek: Prodigy vibes, as a group of youngsters will find themselves lost in a galaxy far, far away. Jude Law is taking on the lead role of a Jedi, and may serve as a kind of mentor to the group. Story details are still thin on the ground, but there’s enough to think that Skeleton Crew might be something a bit different from a franchise that has struggled to break away from its illustrious past. The series may also connect in some way with The Mandalorian, as it’s set in the same time period.
Television Series #4: Good Omens Season 2 28th July
Although it’s been a while since the first season of this adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s story, Season 2 is finally upon us! David Tennant and Michael Sheen are returning as the demon Crowley and the angel Aziraphale respectively, and the continuation looks set to be a ton of fun. After Crowley and Aziraphale managed to prevent the end of the world last time around… what will they get up to this time?
Television Series #5: Foundation Season 2 14th July
The first season of Foundation was outstanding, successfully adapting a very dense work of hard sci-fi in an understandable way. I’m very interested to see what Season 2 might have to offer, and how it might bring together some of the different story threads that the series has in play. Apple has done a great job so far, but Foundation has room to grow. Its complex premise and large cast of characters doesn’t make it the easiest show to follow, but it’s absolutely worth sticking with Foundation.
So that’s it!
We’ve taken a look at a handful of films, video games, and television shows that I hope will be enjoyable between now and the end of the year. In late December I’ll be dishing out some of my annual end-of-year awards to the best of the best, so check back then to see which of the entertainment experiences above made the cut!
What am I most excited about right now? It’s hard to pick just one thing, but I’m very curious to see if Starfield truly lives up to the high expectations that have been set. I’m also really looking forward to Futurama’s return, as well as seeing if Rebel Moon will be “the next big thing” in sci-fi!
I’ll be here throughout the summer, reviewing episodes of Strange New Worlds, sharing my thoughts on new and upcoming projects, and much more! I don’t promise reviews of everything listed above, but I’ll try to share my thoughts and impressions on at least some of these titles. I hope the first half of 2023 has gone well for you, and that you’re looking forward to some fun and exciting entertainment experiences as we pass the halfway point of the year.
All properties discussed above are the copyright of their respective owner(s). Some images used above courtesy of IGDB and IMDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Although there are no major story spoilers for Starfield, spoilers are still present for the game and some of its systems.
Yes, we’re talking Starfield again! Bethesda’s upcoming open-galaxy sci-fi role-playing game is absolutely my most-anticipated game right now, and there’s a lot to look forward to. There are also a few points of concern! I’ve covered both here on the website already, but today I thought it could be fun to put together a “wishlist.” We’re going to talk about some of my biggest concerns for Starfield as well as some possible inclusions that haven’t been announced. We’re also going to look at some of the game’s announced features and mechanics and consider how I’d like them to be used.
The major caveat I always give when putting together a wishlist is this: I have no “insider information.” I’m not trying to claim that anything listed below *is* going to be part of Starfield – no matter how much I might want it to be! I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that the game Bethesda has developed will be plenty of fun to play regardless of whether my “wishes” end up being granted!
A custom spaceship.
And as always, all of this is the wholly subjective opinion of one person. If I miss something that seems obvious to you, or if you disagree with all of my ideas, that’s totally okay! There’s enough room in the gaming community and the Starfield fandom for differences of opinion and respectful disagreement.
Now that that’s out of the way, there are a few points from the recent Starfield presentation that were left unclear, with features I’d like to see included in the game that weren’t announced or discussed in detail. There are also some concerns about the game – from its marketing and hype bubble to Bethesda’s reputation. Let’s jump into the list and look at each of my wishes in turn.
Wish #1: No microtransactions and especially no paid mods.
Starfield will launch with pre-order bonuses.
I was alarmed to see that the special edition of Starfield comes with a handful of character costumes that aren’t going to be part of the main game. Pre-order bonuses are nothing new, of course… but I fear that this is just the canary in the coal mine; a harbinger of some potentially aggressive in-game monetisation.
In a free-to-play game, I’m much more forgiving when it comes to microtransactions. They mustn’t be exploitative, of course, and prices still need to be measured and reasonable, but a game that doesn’t charge its players anything up-front has to make its money back somehow. Starfield will be a fully-priced game, retailing for £60 here in the UK or $70 in the United States, and that means microtransactions are absolutely unacceptable.
An in-game shop in Diablo IV.
I was astonished by the scale of Diablo IV’s in-game marketplace. That game has online features, but it can be a wholly single-player experience – and it’s charging players £20/$25 in some cases for character skins and other cosmetic items. To me, that’s so far beyond the pale that it almost feels laughable.
Bethesda is one of the pioneers of this kind of nonsense, too, with Oblivion’s notorious horse armour DLC in 2006 paving the way for this kind of in-game monetisation in single-player titles. Bethesda has also tried to monetise mods, with multiple attempts to get the “Creation Club” off the ground in both Skyrim and Fallout 4. Paid mods could (and should) be the subject of an entire article one day – but for now, suffice to say it’s something I want to be kept as far away from Starfield as possible.
Wish #2: Customisable spaceship interiors.
A bed – I hope there will be options to customise it!
Bethesda showed off spaceship customisation extensively at the showcase – and the feature looks amazing. But what wasn’t shown was to what extent the interior of spaceships can be modified and customised… or if that’s even going to be possible at all. Part of me thinks that, if it were possible to make any sort of modification to a vessel’s interior, Bethesda would have shown it off and talked about it. So I suspect this particular wish may not be granted.
We saw a Bethesda developer depositing a large number of sandwiches that she’d pilfered onto a table aboard her ship – so it’s obviously possible to place some in-game items aboard a spaceship and have them remain there. But whether that extends to things like furniture is unclear.
Customising a spaceship’s exterior has been shown off…
At the very least, I’d like to see basic options for things like colours being included. If I want a hot pink spaceship for my gay-as-hell pirate – and if you know me, you know that’s exactly what I want – then it would feel a bit disappointing if the inside of that ship was just a boring white or grey colour.
As far back as Morrowind it was fun to put items on shelves and tables, to decorate a home or cave and make it feel a bit more personalised. If Starfield only gives us pre-made pieces to snap together, with no possibility for further customisation, part of the role-playing experience will be lost. We know that the interior of outposts on planets can be customised – at least to an extent – so I hope spaceships can be too. If not, this should be a priority for the game’s first free update!
Wish #3: A polished, bug-free launch – or a delay if that won’t be possible.
A visual bug in Fallout 76.
In 2022, I praised the decision to delay Starfield. If the game wasn’t going to be ready for prime-time in November of last year, a delay was the only thing Microsoft and Bethesda could have done. But Starfield’s hype bubble has inflated massively since the showcase, and with a release date at the beginning of September seemingly set in stone, there’s going to be a lot of pressure to launch the game whether it’s ready or not.
This year alone we’ve seen far too many bug-riddled, broken, unfinished games pushed out too early by greedy publishers. Microsoft and Bethesda are not immune from this, either, with Redfall being an absolute abomination only a few weeks ago. Given the state of other Bethesda titles when they were released – Fallout 76 most notably – there are reasons to be concerned. Starfield is, for me, a game firmly in the “wait for the reviews” column.
A broken character model in Redfall.
Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty was recently quoted as saying that Starfield would have “the fewest bugs of any Bethesda game ever shipped” if it were released today… and that’s a bold claim that he will be held accountable for. It’s easy for any developer worth their salt to put together a “vertical slice” of gameplay that runs well and is polished, and even the worst and most incomplete, broken games can look decent in their own marketing material. All that we’ve seen of Starfield so far has been promotional bumf released by Bethesda, so until the game is actually in the hands of real players, we can’t be sure of its condition.
There is a lot riding on Starfield for Bethesda; the company is looking to recover its reputation after Fallout 76. But there’s a lot riding on the game’s success for Xbox and Microsoft, too. If Starfield goes the way of Anthem or even Cyberpunk 2077, the situation may not be salvageable… and that could lead to serious long-term problems for Bethesda and its parent company. If Starfield isn’t good enough by September, then for god’s sake delay it!
Wish #4: Small towns and settlements to visit beyond the main cities.
The city of New Atlantis.
At time of writing we know of four major settlements in Starfield: Akila City in the Freestar Collective, the pleasure city of Neon, New Atlantis in the United Colonies, and Cydonia on Mars. We also caught a glimpse of a space station that looked quite large, as well as a location called “Red Mile” that we don’t know much about yet. But that’s all.
In Skyrim there were nine cities, five smaller towns, and a number of settlements and farmsteads scattered across the map. Fallout 4 likewise had several larger and smaller towns, and even Morrowind had a number of smaller places to visit outside of the main settlements. I hope that some of Starfield’s planets will have colonies or small towns to encounter, especially if they aren’t tied to the main quest. I hope that both the United Colonies and the Freestar Collective will have other settlements outside of their capital cities. And I hope that these locations will be visually interesting and fun to visit!
The town of Pelagiad from Morrowind is an example of the kind of place I’m thinking of.
This really speaks to a bigger concern that I have about Starfield – namely that the game’s massive open-galaxy map could feel incredibly empty. Without these smaller settlements and the people that live there, Starfield risks feeling very under-populated. If the galaxy only contains four cities and a couple of thousand people… the population relative to the size of the map will be completely out-of-balance.
Bethesda has shown off a handful of locations, like an abandoned mine populated by hostile NPCs, but I’m looking for settlements akin to Morrowind’s Pelagiad or Fallout 3′s Grayditch – small towns with a few characters to encounter that go a long way to making their respective worlds feel lived-in and complete.
Wish #5: Heads-up display options.
The HUD during spaceflight.
One visual choice that I wasn’t wild about came during some of the first-person spaceflight sections shown off in the Starfield showcase. A well-designed cockpit could be seen, complete with buttons, screens, and readouts… but clumsily slapped on top of that was the game’s HUD in transparent boxes.
For me, this detracted from the way those spaceflight sections looked. I’d love to be able to move things like power management to those screens directly, and to see my character pushing buttons that correspond with the actions I’m taking. Failing that, I hope there’s at least an option to minimise or hide the HUD so it doesn’t get in the way.
Transferring energy between systems.
This is less of an issue on the ground, at least from what we saw at the showcase. And a good heads-up display is important; the HUD contains vital information like the amount of ammo you have left, the state of your health, a mini-map, and more. But during those spaceflight sections in particular, I felt that the HUD was clunky and got in the way.
The best-case scenario would be to move the HUD options directly to one or two of the screens in the cockpit. That would be fantastic to see! But at the very least if there could be options to hide this during first-person spaceflight, that would go a long way to helping with that sense of immersion that Starfield is going for.
Wish #6: Difficulty and accessibility options.
Difficulty options in Skyrim.
Say it with me, folks: difficulty options are an accessibility feature! Many modern games offer things like large text, colour-blindness settings, motion sickness settings, and more. One of the best games I’ve played in terms of the sheer number of accessibility features was Control, but other titles like Grounded have been pioneers, with options to dial back the fear factor in some of its bugs and arachnids.
Accessibility extends to difficulty, too, and while I certainly hope that Starfield will pose a challenge for folks who need or want that, I hope there will be options to dial back the difficulty to allow those of us who don’t want to die every six seconds to have an enjoyable time! There’s hope in that regard: Skyrim and Fallout 4 both had decent difficulty options. The addition of a “hard-core” mode with permadeath could be fun for some players, too… but it definitely won’t be something I choose to activate!
I hope I won’t be seeing this very often!
A role-playing game needs to be adaptable, allowing players with different ability levels to participate. Bethesda has usually made an effort, at least, to get this right – but modern games allow for many more options in that regard. It should be possible to dial down the difficulty of combat, for instance, while maintaining a higher difficulty level for something like lockpicking or puzzle-solving.
There’s been a trend in some modern games, pioneered by the likes of the Dark Souls series, toward a punishing level of difficulty. That’s fine for some players – but it would deny Starfield to millions more, myself included. There are games I’ve genuinely wanted to play that were denied to me because they were totally inaccessible – I hope Starfield won’t be among them.
Wish #7: Pets!
An alien life-form!
It’s already been confirmed that we won’t be able to “mount” any of the wild animals we encounter in Starfield. That’s fine by me, as mounts and vehicles weren’t things I was expecting. But it would be really sweet and cute if we could get pets for our spaceships and outposts!
These could either be purchasable from in-game vendors, perhaps with Earth animals like cats or dogs being available. Or, as an alternative, tamed alien animals that we encounter out in the game’s open world. We’ve already seen that players can choose an ability to pacify aggressive animals – it’s not much of a leap from that to having a tamed, domesticated pet!
Commander Shepard with their fish tank in Mass Effect 3.
If this isn’t something included in the base game, it’s absolutely something that Bethesda should consider for an update or even as a standalone piece of DLC. Other games have done this: from Commander Shepard’s hamster and fish tank in Mass Effect 2 through to horses in Red Dead Redemption II and the mini-games required to properly care for them. It’s possible to pet cats and dogs in games like Ghostwire Tokyo, and Bethesda’s own Fallout 4 gave players a pet dog to accompany them!
This is pure fantasy, of course, as it’s a feature that hasn’t been announced or even teased. But the ability to acquire a pet would add a lot to the pure role-playing immersion of a game like Starfield.
Wish #8: Make those traits and backgrounds matter.
The traits menu in the character creator.
The Starfield showcase highlighted both character backgrounds and optional traits – all of which seem like they have the potential to really shake up the way Starfield plays. Some traits add wholly new characters or change the way different factions will react to the player character, and that’s great… I just hope that it matters in a meaningful way.
In Cyberpunk 2077, the much-vaunted “life paths” that a player could choose ultimately had very little impact on gameplay. Outside of a short prologue, which was different for each, there was one solitary quest – and a short one at that – midway through the game, and a couple of places where different dialogue options could appear. That was it. There really wasn’t much to Cyberpunk’s life paths, certainly not enough to add much by way of replayability.
One of the available backgrounds.
Starfield needs to get this right. If I can choose to be a chef who frequently goes home to visit their parents, then playing the game with those options needs to feel substantially different from choosing to be a gangster with a bounty on their head. If these things will only have a superficial impact on gameplay, then they won’t really matter – and that will damage the sense of immersion and make starting a second save file feel less than worthwhile.
If these traits and backgrounds in their various combinations don’t matter as much as Bethesda’s marketing has suggested, then they may as well be scrapped and Starfield could have a Skyrim-style class system instead. It’s hard to see how all of the fifteen or more different backgrounds could each be given their own unique questlines and extensive dialogue options… but an effort has to be made!
Wish #9: A reason to explore – and to keep exploring.
A star system.
Recent interviews by Starfield’s director Todd Howard have confirmed that approximately 10% of the game’s 1,000 planets will have life on them. That leaves 900+ planets being lifeless, but with resources to collect and possibly a handful of ruins or abandoned outposts to discover.
Starfield needs to ensure that players have a reason to explore these worlds. Forced scarcity of resources won’t cut it – and could easily become frustrating. If the game’s Constellation organisation is focused on exploration, then there has to be a reason why they’re pushing the player to explore these planets. Seeking out ancient artefacts could be part of that – but again, there will be a lot of planets that don’t have any. What reason will players have to visit these worlds?
What reason do I have to visit these planets?
I think it’s possible that DLC will add new locations, crashed spaceships, ruined colonies, and much more to some of these empty planets… assuming that Bethesda will be in a position to continue to support Starfield post-release. That’s a longer-term solution, though, and doesn’t really get away from the immediate problem of what could be a map that’s simply too large for the amount of content that will be contained in it.
This is one of my biggest worries, to be honest. I have no doubt that Bethesda will have created some wonderful characters, some fun quests, and some engaging storylines… but will that content be too thinly spread? Or will most of it be concentrated in a handful of big cities and populated planets? Fallout 76 felt big and empty; an open-world with nothing to do and no reason to explore it beyond admiring the scenery. I hope that Starfield hasn’t fallen into the same trap.
Wish #10: Exciting and enjoyable combat.
An example of melee combat from the showcase.
I’ve usually enjoyed combat encounters in The Elder Scrolls games, particularly melee combat with swords, axes, spears, and the like. But Bethesda’s Fallout duology hasn’t always gotten its gunplay right. In Bethesda’s single-player Fallout titles, the VATS system paused the game to allow for targeting, and that went a long way to covering up what was pretty mediocre shooting and gunplay.
When VATS couldn’t be implemented in Fallout 76 – because of the game’s multiplayer nature – Bethesda’s sub-par shooting was laid bare. What we’ve seen of Starfield’s gunplay looks impressive so far, but again that comes with the caveat that everything we’ve been shown is carefully-edited marketing material that may not ultimately prove to be representative of the finished game.
Firing a pistol/handgun in Starfield.
Todd Howard confirmed that Bethesda has worked with fellow ZeniMax studio id Software on elements of Starfield, and the famed developer of the Doom series – including the recent highly-praised titles Doom and Doom Eternal – would definitely have a lot to offer. Some of Starfield’s shooting looked to draw inspiration from those recent Doom games.
At the end of the day, all we really need is for shooting to be competent. It won’t be the main focus of Starfield for the most part, but when combat encounters arise, they need to be basically fun to play and not frustrating! In a role-playing game with different playstyles and options, different kinds of weapons need to behave differently from one another, too.
So that’s it!
Using a mining laser.
Those are ten of my Starfield wishes!
In an ideal world, the game would do everything I want! But even if none of the things we’ve talked about today come to pass, I’m still hoping for a fun and enjoyable game. Maybe Starfield won’t be the best game of all-time… but as long as it has some of that Bethesda magic, and some decent systems and mechanics that don’t get in the way, I daresay it’ll be good enough to keep my attention and focus for a time this autumn.
I really am trying not to get too carried away. It’s hard, though, because I don’t think I’ve been this excited about a game since Bethesda’s own Morrowindmore than twenty years ago. If you asked me to describe my idea of an “ideal game,” many of the things I’d choose to include have already been confirmed to be part of Starfield.
One of the available companions.
In a broader sense, Starfield feels like the game I’ve been waiting decades to play, ever since I first played games like Star Trek: Starship Creator, Star Fox on the Super Nintendo, and first-person shooters like the original Doom, System Shock, and Elite Force. I’m trying not to place too high a bar on Starfield… but I can’t deny how excited I am!
Every time I think I’ve ran out of things to say about Starfield, I find at least one more thing to comment on! So I hope you’ll stay tuned here on the website, because I may have something else to say about the game before too long. When Starfield is released, I’ll also do my best to share my first impressions and my thoughts about the game and its various systems and gameplay mechanics, so definitely check back for all of that later in the year.
Until then, I hope this wishlist was a bit of fun!
Starfield will be released on the 6th of September 2023 for PC and Xbox Series S/X consoles. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. Some promo images and screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are minor spoilers ahead for the first couple of levels of Jedi: Survivor. Spoilers are also present for Jedi: Fallen Order.
I have made a mistake.
With Jedi: Survivor having been released two months ago, and with six major patches rolling out for the PC version of the game in that time, I made the ignorant assumption that the game would have been fixed by now – or at least substantially improved. Having held off on purchasing the game when it was first released given its broken, unfinished state – and even worse PC port – I had hoped that some extra development time and post-release patches would have fixed things up.
Despite trying my best to avoid spoilers for the game, I’d come across a couple of seemingly pretty big ones over the past couple of months, and I wanted to play Jedi: Survivor without encountering any more. I was also keen to fill the void while I wait for Starfield – all of which are factors that led me to purchase Jedi: Survivor.
Cal Kestis – with his trademark moustache and pink lightsaber, of course.
On PC, the game is in a poor state even two months and six patches later. My PC far exceeds the game’s recommended system requirements, and should be capable of running Jedi: Survivor with detailed graphics and ray-tracing enabled without any issues. For comparison, I can run demanding titles like Red Dead Redemption II and Cyberpunk 2077 at their highest resolution, with ray-tracing enabled, and easily get a smooth 60 frames-per-second.
Jedi: Survivor runs poorly. Most of the time, walking around and exploring a level isn’t an issue. But as soon as combat begins, or even when Cal has to perform an acrobatic move like a double-jump or running along a wall, there are noticeable frame drops and stuttering issues. With some levels requiring fairly specific button-presses to navigate areas, inconvenient frame drops can mean the difference between successfully completing a section and having to replay it. This got old fast.
Cal stuck in the environment due to a glitch.
And this is in spite of turning down all of the in-game settings. I tried Jedi: Survivor in 4K at first, then 1440p, then finally 1080p. I tried the “high” preset, before dropping down to medium, and then again turning some settings – like shadows and the draw distance – all the way down to low. I refuse to drop the settings any further; playing the game in 720p with all settings on low would make it look no better than an Xbox 360 title, and what’s the point?
Some of these frame-drops occur during cut-scenes, which is something I haven’t encountered in a game in a long time. Although this kind of problem is annoying during gameplay, at least it’s understandable to an extent… but for cut-scenes to be similarly afflicted is actually quite shocking. It speaks to how unready Jedi: Survivor was when it was forced into a premature launch.
This “optimisation” takes place every time the game is started.
The frame-rate and stuttering issues are indicative of a game that is poorly-optimised. Despite Jedi: Survivor taking its sweet time to “optimise files” every time it boots, there’s no indication that this does anything at all. The game simply isn’t running well on PC. This isn’t an issue on my end, either – take a look at tech breakdowns from people far more skilled than I am and who have significantly more powerful computers. Similar issues are also impacting performance on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X – though I don’t have those consoles so I can’t speak to that for myself.
Jedi: Survivor has some visually interesting locations, but the experience of these – and the sense of immersion that I was hoping to find – has been ruined; soiled by just how janky and unfinished the game still is. When it works, these sights are definitely something to see, but the sad fact is that the game doesn’t work far too often.
Some of Jedi: Survivor’s levels should look great.
I’m now considering abandoning Jedi: Survivor, despite only being a couple of hours into the game. If future patches come along that will genuinely address the performance problems that are plaguing the game on PC, it will be worth revisiting or restarting. But at the moment, I find that I’m spending almost as much time battling poor performance as I am battling enemies – and that just isn’t a lot of fun. Jedi: Survivor isn’t the only game this year to arrive in an unfinished state, especially on PC, but it’s so disappointing to see that this godawful “release now, fix later” approach has really put a downer on what should have been an exciting and fun experience.
But there’s more to say. In the time I’ve spent with the game so far, I have a couple of thoughts to share on the narrative and gameplay. This all comes with the major caveat that I’m only at the beginning of the main story, and that my thoughts may very well shift depending on how things go later on. How a story begins isn’t nearly as important as the journey it takes us on, after all!
Concept art for Jedi: Survivor.
That being said, the first couple of hours of Jedi: Survivor haven’t exactly blown me away narratively. I’ll avoid as many major spoilers as I can, but there will be some minor spoilers ahead – so if you ignored my spoiler warning at the beginning, this is your last chance to nope out!
When we’re reintroduced to Cal, he’s working with a new crew, with the friends he met in the first game having gone their separate ways. I’m not averse to that idea, as several years have passed since the events of Jedi: Fallen Order. Unfortunately, however, the members of Cal’s crew that we’re introduced to just feel incredibly one-dimensional and bland. Their dialogue was laden with clichés – something clearly designed to convey Cal’s friendliness with them all – but it all ended up falling flat. I couldn’t find a way to care about any of these people when they were in danger – because the game didn’t succeed at getting me invested in them or their fates.
Some of the game’s new characters felt bland and uninteresting.
Contrast this with Prauf, Cal’s scrapper friend from the opening act of the first game. Prauf felt like he had personality, and I genuinely felt his connection with Cal from almost the first moment he appeared on screen. When Prauf was killed, Cal’s reaction was genuinely heartbreaking because the game had successfully set up their relationship.
I’m also a little concerned that Jedi: Survivor is going to retread parts of Jedi: Fallen Order by seeing Cal seek out the same people that he met last time. Reuniting a crew that had been together the last time we saw them is a risk; it’s something that could feel underwhelming in the extreme. Though there are new characters to get to know, part of the appeal of a sequel is to catch up with all of the characters we met last time – and I’m concerned that the way Jedi: Survivor plans to handle this will feel repetitive and just less interesting as a result.
Promo screenshot featuring Cal and Merrin.
In Jedi: Fallen Order, Cal was guided to a succession of specific locations on his quest. He had to visit the tombs of Zeffo, the forested world of Kashyyyk, the scorched desert of Dathomir, and the frozen wasteland of Ilum – but he went to each of these locations with a goal in mind. The first part of Jedi: Survivor sees Cal seemingly by accident fall into a cave – and from that random cave discover a hidden Jedi artefact. It just feels a little too convenient.
Out of all the places in the galaxy that Cal could have ended up, he finds himself on just the right part of just the right planet – and not because he was guided there by Cere or by Master Cordova’s holocron, but by sheer random chance. Star Wars fans may say “that’s the Force!” and pedants will say “it’s just a story!” but to me, neither of those excuses feel especially strong. Last time, Cal had a purpose, and was guided on his quest to particular locations. This time, things feel a lot more random.
Jedi: Fallen Order’s story seemed to take Cal on a more natural journey – rather than a random, incredibly convenient one.
Mechanically, Jedi: Survivor has a couple of issues, too. Larger levels can be more confusing, and the in-game holo-map still isn’t particularly user-friendly. In just the first couple of stages I found myself getting lost, and partly that’s because the way to go wasn’t well-signposted. Areas that looked accessible weren’t, areas that were supposed to be reachable looked blocked off or too far away, and while I don’t want a Skyrim-style waypoint on my screen the entire time… there’s got to be a way to make some of these pathways more visible, surely.
Jedi: Survivor is leaning into more of an open-world style, at least with one of the planets Cal has visited so far… and that can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, larger and more expansive levels are a welcome change from linear paths, but on the other, some open worlds can get in the way of story progression. There are also more hiding places for items and chests… and it can be frustrating, sometimes, to explore a whole chunk of a level, climbing on every ledge and jumping into every cave only to find nothing at all.
Battling battle droids.
I like the expanded customisation options for Cal – and I’ve already found a suitably silly moustache for him to plaster on his face. I wish more customisation options were unlocked at the start, though; the available cosmetics felt pretty threadbare at first. I love a game with good customisation options, though, and Jedi: Survivor appears to have a bunch of fun cosmetics to play about with.
The game is larger than Jedi: Fallen Order was – with more characters, more skills, more quests, and more cosmetic variety. All of those things are positive, and so far I don’t feel overwhelmed or like the game is too large. Some open-world games can feel like they dropped you in the middle of a mass of stories and quests with little to no direction; at least in its first couple of hours, Jedi: Survivor manages to avoid that sensation.
A closer look at Cal’s moustache.
I want to progress further with this game. I adored Jedi: Fallen Order and I was really excited about its sequel, reuniting with Cal and the Stinger Mantis, and having another adventure in a galaxy far, far away. Although there are a couple of story complaints that I’ve found so far, by far the worst issue with Jedi: Survivor is that it just doesn’t play very well. The game probably needs at least two or three more significant patches and updates to knock it into shape – and when the most recent patch took over a month to be rolled out, that could mean Jedi: Survivor will have to go back on the shelf for a while.
Electronic Arts fucked up what should have been a guaranteed success by doing what they’ve done too many times before: forcing the release of an unfinished game too early. Had Jedi: Survivor been delayed to, say, September or October, to allow Respawn more time to actually finish working on it, we could be talking about one of the best games of the year – and one of the best Star Wars games in a long time.
Instead, Jedi: Survivor will always have an asterisk; a little caveat next to it. No matter what happens to the game in the months ahead – and I sincerely hope that more patches and fixes are coming – it will always be tainted by the poor shape it was in when it launched. That didn’t have to happen… and I wish I’d taken my own advice and waited a little longer before purchasing it.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is out now for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S/X. Jedi: Survivor is the copyright of Electronic Arts, Lucasfilm Games, and Respawn Entertainment. The Star Wars franchise is the copyright of Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company. Some promo artwork and images used above courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Original Series, Deep Space Nine, and Picard.
This review touches on the subjects of transphobia and anti-trans legislation and may be uncomfortable for some readers.
Ad Astra Per Aspera was a great episode that shows Star Trek at its best. It took a sci-fi story about alien races and genetic engineering and used that to shine a light on some very real issues out here in the real world, becoming a classic Star Trek “morality play” in the process. But it did so with subtlety, and without allowing the analogy to overwhelm or subdue the character-driven story at its core. That balance can be difficult to get right sometimes, but Ad Astra Per Aspera nailed it.
For fans like myself, however, who’ve followed Star Trek over the course of decades… Ad Astra Per Aspera runs into one very specific story issue that’s entirely the result of Strange New Worlds being a prequel. This issue doesn’t ruin the episode, but it does detract a little from the powerful message it intended to convey, and leaves the ending feeling bittersweet.
But we’ll get into all of that in a moment.
Una in a Starfleet prison cell.
First of all, before we dive deeply into the analogy at the core of Ad Astra Per Aspera, let’s take a look at a few of the other points of interest in the episode. For the second week in a row – and now for two episodes of what is only a ten-episode season – Captain Pike was once again sidelined. Though Pike had more to do this week than last week, and was physically present for a number of scenes and sequences, his role was relatively minor – as epitomised by Captain Batel telling him that he needed to stay on the sidelines and keep his mouth shut.
As I said last week, this again felt like an odd choice for what we once called “the Captain Pike show.” I’m sure Pike will have more than one centre-stage moment in the episodes that lie ahead, but for Season 2 to have kicked off with not one but two episodes that played out without much input from the Enterprise’s captain is a strange creative choice. Although Captain Batel told Pike that he needed to keep out of the court-martial for both Una’s sake and his own, it would have been just as easy to write a script in which Pike’s input at Una’s trial – perhaps even acting as an advocate for her defence – would have been of vital importance. I don’t hate or even particularly dislike that these two episodes focused on other characters, but it’s noteworthy, at least, that Season 2 started this way.
Captain Pike played a minor role for the second episode in a row.
There was also no mention whatsoever of the events of last week. Again, this is something we could see in a future episode, but Spock’s disobeying of orders, the theft of the Enterprise, and everything that transpired with Dr M’Benga, Nurse Chapel, La’an, and the Klingons… none of it came up. I would have expected Pike to comment, at least, on Spock’s actions – perhaps indicating his approval in such a way that could have set the stage for the events of The Menagerie.
I said last week that I felt it was odd that La’an’s story ended without a definitive resolution. The end of the episode saw her seemingly contemplating a return to Starfleet, but The Broken Circle ended without clarifying further. La’an has rejoined Starfleet, and seemingly regained her posting aboard the Enterprise – but all of this appears to have taken place off-screen. An extra minute or two last week could have cleared that up, and it would have been nice if La’an’s return to duty had been marked in some way by her colleagues and crewmates.
La’an is back in Starfleet.
La’an was one of the more interesting characters this week, and her arc of coming to terms with potentially getting Una in trouble – and her palpable sense of relief when it turned out she wasn’t to blame – was an interesting B-plot that connected with the main thrust of the episode. I wondered if La’an might’ve been the one responsible for “outing” Una, and while I’m glad it wasn’t something she did maliciously, it made for an interesting and engaging secondary storyline as La’an and Uhura looked into what might’ve happened.
Lieutenant Ortegas is the one main character who still hasn’t had a turn in the spotlight. I hope we get to see more from her in Season 2, and while her scenes with Dr M’Benga and Spock this week added a rare moment of light-heartedness to what was an otherwise heavy episode, I’m still hoping to spend more time with the Enterprise’s helm officer.
Lieutenant Ortegas.
The scene in the mess hall with M’Benga and Ortegas was a fun one, though, and I love how the series continues to find new and different ways to make Spock and the Vulcans unintentionally funny. Seeing Spock apologising for his “outburst,” when all we saw was him and the prosecuting officer sitting calmly and quietly was a blast – drawing on what we know of Vulcans and subverting our expectations in the best way possible!
Admiral April continues to confound me. His presentation in Season 1 was that of a decorated, well-respected, and upstanding Starfleet officer. But last week we saw him keeping secrets, potentially scheming with others at Starfleet in a way that could lead to war. And this week, the trend of turning April into somewhat of a “badmiral” seemed to continue. When challenged about Una’s case, April said repeatedly that he would have denied her application to Starfleet Academy simply because of her genetically-enhanced background, positioning him firmly as someone who would uphold the law and the status quo at any cost.
Admiral April may be going down a dark path…
I’m not wild about this direction for Admiral April, and I hope that there will be more to his characterisation this season. We didn’t see any more war scheming this week – which is good. But it’s the second episode in a row that didn’t present him in an especially positive light.
As I said last week, the redress of Discovery’s Federation HQ set wasn’t spectacular. The redress was incredibly obvious, and as Federation HQ has been seen in probably fifteen or more episodes of Discovery beginning with Season 3, it was a poor choice to recycle it here. More could have been done to disguise the repurposed set – such as removing the circular “fence” that took up a large part of the middle of the room. In Discovery, this area is supposed to be open, looking down on other levels. In a courtroom, that just seems silly. The room was also too large for the number of people in it, with a huge gap between the judges’ bench and the prosecution and defence desks. The circular shape also felt clunky and awkward. Better options were available – including the set used for the mess hall, for instance.
The set was a redress of Discovery’s Federation HQ.
Star Trek can do courtroom drama exceptionally well, and Ad Astra Per Aspera will take its place alongside episodes like Court-Martial, The Drumhead, and Rules of Engagement as one of the best. The scenes that took place both in court and outside of it were tense and dramatic, and until Una’s advocate sprung her legal trap it wasn’t at all obvious how the proceedings were going to go. There seemed to be a genuine threat to Una, with the evidence against her being rock-solid, and this was maintained all the way until the final moments of the episode.
The danger with this kind of outcome is that the ending can feel a bit too convenient… and there was a sense of that here. Una’s advocate managed to find a relatively obscure piece of Federation law – obscure enough, anyway, to be unknown to both prosecuting officers – and thus Una escaped punishment on a last-second technicality. That wasn’t unsatisfying by any means, and the writers of Ad Astra Per Aspera did well to connect it back to Una’s own statements. But it’s definitely a trope of the courtroom drama genre.
Neera Ketoul, Una’s advocate, found a technicality to resolve the case in her favour.
One part of Ad Astra Per Aspera that I felt was just a little underdeveloped was the conflict between Una and her advocate: the Illyrian Neera Ketoul. At a couple of points this felt like little more than forced tension; an unnecessary addition to the episode that didn’t really add anything nor elevate the main storyline. We could have seen more of Ketoul in an extended flashback sequence, for example, or learned what transpired between her and Una either at the beginning of the episode or during Pike’s conversation with Una last week. Something like this would have added a bit more to this otherwise pretty bland dispute.
That aside, however, I loved what Ad Astra Per Aspera did with Neera Ketoul – and with the Illyrians in a broader sense. Unlike someone like Atticus Finch – the small-town lawyer in To Kill A Mockingbird – Ketoul’s entire practice is based on advocating for civil rights, particularly for the Illyrians. She embodies many of the same traits as someone like Atticus Finch, but comes from a much stronger starting point. It’s obvious from her first moment in court why Captain Pike believed she would be Una’s best hope!
Neera Ketoul in her office.
So let’s talk about the analogy at the core of Ad Astra Per Aspera. Such things are subjective in nature, and I’m sure that there are other interpretations of the episode. What I’m going to share is my own take, my own thoughts and feelings on the messaging here, and how well I feel it worked in the context of the story.
I viewed Ad Astra Per Aspera’s main story as being an analogy for trans and gender non-conforming people, our rights, and the multitude of legislation that has been and is continuing to be passed in various jurisdictions around the world. When Una spoke of the “privilege of passing,” and how Illyrians who could “pass” for human could conceal their true selves, that was when the analogy really hit. There are definitely other interpretations – but I think this is what the writers were going for. At any rate, that’s what I took away from the episode.
Ad Astra Per Aspera had a powerful message at its core.
Una’s speech about her childhood, about having to hide her true self while listening to vile abuse dished out by others, is something that really hit home for me. I’ve spoken about this before, but when I was younger, being trans or gender non-conforming was something that would lead to ridicule and mockery at best – and abuse and even physical harm at worst. The way Una described the treatment of Illyrians is something that felt uncomfortable – because it’s something that I think a lot of us have seen firsthand.
Here in the UK, as well as in the United States and elsewhere, there are currently some very vicious anti-transgender movements, some of which have scored some pretty big legislative victories. The prominence of some anti-trans figures has also led to the issue being discussed and debated in public far more often, with the result being a pushback against trans people, the rolling back or blocking of trans rights, and even hate campaigns directed at well-known trans individuals.
Una’s trial and her backstory can be seen as an analogy.
Compare that to Una’s description of her early life and there are a lot of parallels. Una describes a typical “moral panic,” one that targetted the Illyrians. Out here in the real world, a similar panic is being whipped up against trans people, non-binary people, and the wider LGBT+ community.
This is Star Trek doing what it’s always done: telling a sci-fi story with a real-world comparison, using its fantastical setting to shine a light on and even reframe issues out here impacting real people in the real world. It’s hard to watch Ad Astra Per Aspera and not sympathise with Una, with the inherent unfairness of the position she’s been placed in, and with the traumatic experiences she had to endure. At the same time, Una is presented as more than simply a victim: she’s someone with ambitions and aspirations, and despite everything that was done to her under Federation law and Starfleet’s code of justice, she still aspired to join the organisation and embody its values.
Una is back aboard the Enterprise!
This is one of the main messages of Ad Astra Per Aspera: that society may not always live up to its own ideals and promises, but those ideals and promises are still worth striving for and fighting for. The notion that “all people are equal” is under attack in some quarters, and the rights of minority groups – not only the LGBT+ community, but ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, religious minorities, and more – aren’t always guaranteed in an era of populism and government by soundbite. But even when those rights are infringed, the principle that upholds them – and the guiding philosophy behind them – is something worth fighting for.
In terms of the actual narrative side of this analogy, I felt it was brought to screen exceptionally well. Rebecca Romijn put in a truly outstanding performance when Una was taking the stand to speak in her own defence, running the gamut of emotions from trauma, fear, and despair through to the hope and optimism that Una saw in Starfleet. It was gripping to watch; a powerful performance.
This was a really powerful performance by Rebecca Romijn.
Guest star Yetide Badaki was excellent, too, and although I wasn’t wild about the interpersonal conflict angle that the episode forced on her character, she played the role of the seasoned advocate exceptionally well. Seeing Ketoul cross-examining Admiral April, talking around points of law, and finally figuring out how to win the case – these were all exceptional sequences, performed beautifully.
However, as I indicated at the beginning of this review, there is a bittersweet feeling to how things ended – and this is perhaps the biggest example so far of Strange New Worlds as a whole running into what I’ve termed “the prequel problem.” For a casual audience watching the episode, and for new fans too, the episode ended in a positive, uplifting way. Although the laws prohibiting genetic engineering were still in place, an exception had been found for Una – and there was hope, perhaps, that Starfleet and the Federation might re-examine some of their laws and attitudes in light of her case and her exceptional performance in Starfleet.
The end of the episode feels bittersweet.
But for Trekkies who recall Deep Space Nine in particular, we know that isn’t the case. In the Deep Space Nine Season 5 episode Dr Bashir, I Presume, these anti-genetic modification laws were shown to be in place, and still enforced by Starfleet. Dr Bashir’s father would be imprisoned for his role in genetically augmenting his son, and whatever prejudice Ad Astra Per Aspera told us may underlie those laws is something that neither Starfleet nor the wider Federation ever addressed following this episode.
I’d also add into the mix Picard’s ban on synthetic life-forms. A reactionary position taken after the attack on Mars saw the Federation ban any synthetic life-form and prohibit research into synthetic life. Some in the Federation would even adopt attitudes toward synths that seemed positively xenophobic. Whatever lessons could have been learned from Una’s case clearly were never heeded – leading to problems in the 24th and early 25th Centuries… almost 150 years later.
Unfortunately, Starfleet’s treatment of genetically-engineered people did not improve…
I can’t lie: this detracts from the powerful message that the episode aimed to tell. Taken on its own merit, Ad Astra Per Aspera is uplifting, leaving a sense of hope that things can and will get better. But if we extend its metaphor to Deep Space Nine and Picard… well, it’s clear that, at least in the Federation, things don’t get any better.
And I know: this is an issue for the relatively small number of Trekkies who care about a single Deep Space Nine episode. If we set that aside, the analogy works as intended. But any prequel has to consider what comes next within the confines of its fictional universe, and at the very least the knowledge of the Federation’s continued crackdown on genetic engineering puts a downer on the episode’s otherwise uplifting conclusion. Now, there are ways around it if we want to craft some head-canon: we could argue, for example, that the Federation did become much more accepting of genetic engineering and of Illyrians, and its ban only extended to humans by the late 24th Century. Nothing in Deep Space Nine would rule that out. In fact, that might be my personal head-canon going forward!
Pike and Una embrace.
Strange New Worlds has, for me at least, done a good job so far at telling new and engaging stories that expand our understanding of the Star Trek universe rather than overwriting or grating against anything we’d seen on screen in past iterations of the franchise. Nothing we saw this week in any way “challenges” or “violates” Star Trek’s canon or internal consistency – but it feels like Ad Astra Per Aspera kind of hit a wall at the end, unable to go further.
The ideal ending to a story such as this would have been to see the Federation as a whole rolling back its most extreme laws, allowing Illyrians and other genetically-enhanced people to live openly and without fear. To continue its powerful analogy for the plight of trans and gender non-conforming folks, this would be the outcome we’d hope to see here in the real world! But the episode was, to an extent, constrained by canon. Prequels can run into this kind of issue, and I guess I have to say that Ad Astra Per Aspera navigated a difficult situation about as well as it could. But that doesn’t leave the end of the episode feeling any better.
The panel of judges at Una’s court-martial.
So I think that’s all I have to say for now. Ad Astra Per Aspera was a great episode for pride month… and a really good episode in general. Its central message was clever, and it did what Star Trek has done since its inception more than fifty-five years ago: used a sci-fi setting to examine real-world issues. But analogy alone is not enough to make a strong story – and in some cases an overbearing metaphor can actually diminish a story. So where Ad Astra Per Aspera truly succeeded was its engrossing courtroom drama, its smaller character moments with other members of the crew, and in setting up a threat to one of our favourite characters that felt real and, at times, inescapable.
Ad Astra Per Aspera will stand alongside other great courtroom drama episodes in the Star Trek franchise, and nets another massive win for Strange New Worlds. The bittersweet nature of its ending is perhaps the first major occurrence of the series running into “the prequel problem,” and for some Trekkies, such as myself, that unfortunately does detract from its otherwise powerful story – if only a little.
All in all, though, I had a good time this week. And speaking as someone who is non-binary, I found some of Ad Astra Per Aspera’s themes timely, relatable, and even emotional.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2 are available to stream now on Paramount Plus in countries and territories where the service is available. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
If you haven’t already heard the news, then I’m sorry to report that Star Trek: Prodigy has been cancelled. The second season of the animated series is almost complete, but won’t be shown on Paramount Plus. If Paramount can’t line up another network to broadcast it – and on past form, they may not try very hard – then it’s not outside the realm of possibility that we won’t see it at all. Let’s talk about Prodigy and the absolutely pathetic decision-making at Paramount that led us here.
I’ve been ringing alarm bells about Prodigy’s prospects since before the show even aired a single episode. There were several big hurdles that got in the way of Prodigy, and all of them are entirely Paramount’s fault. The first was the choice of platform: Paramount Plus simply isn’t a streaming service with a lot of content made for kids. As such, it isn’t a platform that many kids or young people would have had access to, limiting Prodigy’s potential audience long before the show was even broadcast.
Promo poster featuring the main characters.
Considering that Prodigy is a co-production between CBS and kids’ broadcaster Nickelodeon – both of which are wholly owned by Paramount – this never made any sense to me. Nickelodeon was the perfect home for Prodigy, and the series could have joined a decent lineup of shows aimed at a younger audience. It wasn’t until almost a year after Prodigy premiered that the series debuted on Nickelodeon. Paramount Plus simply isn’t a big enough streaming service, nor one with much appeal to a younger audience, meaning the choice of platform was a weight around Prodigy’s neck from day one.
Then we have some absolutely appalling scheduling. Prodigy debuted in October 2021 with a feature-length premiere. But after that, only three more episodes would be broadcast before the show took a seven-week break. There wasn’t enough time for Prodigy to gain traction with its audience – and especially with a younger audience – before it simply disappeared. Paramount has fucked up the scheduling of Star Trek in general, but Prodigy’s messy launch is perhaps the corporation’s single most egregious scheduling mistake.
Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish, one of the morons most responsible for the state of the corporation.
After its hiatus, Prodigy again only premiered five new episodes before taking an extended break – this time from February 2022 all the way to October. If any kids were still watching at that point… well, they were unlikely to stick around for eight months while the show disappeared. The second half of Season 1 ran from October through to December 2022, and was the only time where Prodigy actually got a decent run of episodes.
By the time the show returned from its extended break, though, it seemed pretty obvious that the only people watching were hard-core Trekkies and a few of their kids.
The crew of the Protostar in Season 1.
Prodigy was cut off from an international audience from the start, with no effort made to broadcast the show outside of the United States. Even in the few places where Paramount Plus existed, episodes of Prodigy weren’t always shown. In Australia, for instance, paying subscribers to Paramount Plus didn’t get to watch Prodigy in full at the same time as American subscribers.
In the rest of the world, including here in the UK, things were even bleaker. Despite the Nickelodeon channel existing in some form in more than 100 countries and territories around the world, Paramount stupidly stuck to its “America First” fetish, only showing Prodigy on Paramount Plus in the United States and ignoring all messages and requests from fans.
Trump would be proud.
This approach will never work. In the 2020s, the internet and social media are one massive worldwide audience. Cutting off more than 90% of the world from a new television show is a catastrophic decision. It means that the hype bubble collapses, there are far fewer conversations on social media, hashtags don’t trend, posts don’t get likes, advertisements don’t get noticed – and then no one turns up to watch. This impacts the show in the United States – and it’s what happened with Prodigy.
Because Prodigy was on an obscure second-rate streaming platform, one that had no reputation with audiences as being a platform for kids’ shows and children’s content, because it was cut off from a worldwide audience and got precious little attention and chatter online, and because it was scheduled in such an appalling, idiotic manner, there was never any hope for the series. The only surprise here is that Paramount dragged it out this long.
Prodigy was a Paramount Plus exclusive.
The lack of toys and tie-in merchandise was just another nail in Prodigy’s coffin. The way kids – especially younger kids – engage with any property is through imaginative play. Star Trek toys would have kept Prodigy alive in the minds of its young fans in between episodes – and during the aforementioned breaks in the schedule. Furthermore, seeing toys being played with by friends or even just on shelves at the local toy shop would have inspired at least some kids to seek out Prodigy and give it a try for themselves.
I’ve shared this story before, but one of my earliest Star Trek memories isn’t an episode or a film, it’s a toy phaser. When I was perhaps as young as seven or eight, I remember seeing my uncle – who boasted an impressive collection of nerdy merch – showing me a phaser pistol from Star Trek. Before I’d even watched a single episode, I remember being intrigued by the phaser pistol and having fun pushing its button, watching it light up and make a noise.
A handful of Prodigy toys were belatedly launched in 2023.
Prodigy must be the only kids’ show in the world in 2023 to have had no tie-in products associated with it for the entirety of its first season. The lack of merchandise didn’t just prevent kids who were already fans of the show from having something to play with, it actively harmed Prodigy’s prospects and is another factor in its failure.
The truth is that Paramount didn’t give Prodigy a fair chance. Despite having so many opportunities to make this show a success, Paramount’s leadership has once again demonstrated that it isn’t fit for purpose. 20th Century thinking is trying – and desperately failing – to lead the corporation into the 21st Century, but the media landscape has shifted so much that these people don’t know what they’re doing. Prodigy’s cancellation follows Discovery’s a few months ago – and despite promises of new content, things don’t look good for either the Star Trek franchise or Paramount Plus.
Tom Ryan, President and CEO of streaming for Paramount Global.
Prodigy had the potential to open up Star Trek to a new, younger audience. The only way the franchise can survive long-term is to bring new, younger fans on board. If Star Trek remains the nostalgic preserve of people like me, it won’t survive – and it won’t deserve to. It’s bitterly disappointing that the series didn’t achieve that objective… but it’s even more disappointing that its failure is entirely the fault of pathetic decision-making by Paramount leadership.
It’s imperative that Paramount learns the right lessons from this clusterfuck. It would be easy to say “let’s never make another kids’ show,” but that would be absolutely the wrong way to react. Prodigy didn’t fail because it was aimed at kids – it failed because Paramount had no idea what to do with it. Scheduling, the choice of platform, the lack of toys, failure to make use of existing child-friendly channels, the lack of an international broadcast… all of these factors contributed. And the blame for all of them lies at the door of Paramount’s board and executives.
It’s Paramount’s fault that Prodigy ended up here.
There were story issues in Prodigy, too, which may have been a factor. The show leaned heavily on the legacy of Voyager – and not just because of the inclusion of Captain Janeway. Prodigy’s story was, in many ways, a Voyager sequel, and it introduced characters and story threads that may have been too complicated or convoluted for a young audience who were unfamiliar with older iterations of Star Trek. That’s a creative decision, and one that I enjoyed – but I’ve been a Trekkie for more than thirty years. I watched Voyager when it aired, I bought the whole series on DVD, and I’ve watched most episodes more times than I can count.
Maybe, in retrospect, we’ll have to call into question the decision to have Prodigy rely on Voyager to such an extent. Maybe it would have been better to allow the show more freedom and to have it stand on its own two feet. Might that have harmed Prodigy with some Trekkies? I suppose so… but it could have opened it up to a new audience, and wasn’t that supposed to be the point?
Was it a mistake to rely on Voyager to such an extent?
At the end of the day, though, this is Paramount’s fault – there’s no two ways about it. Decisions taken by executives at the top cut off Prodigy from the very audience it was supposed to attract, and the show simply never found a foothold outside of existing Trekkies and a few of their kids. With no international audience, with episodes shown in short, random batches on an obscure streaming platform, and with no toys or merchandise… there was no hope for Prodigy.
A Star Trek kids’ show was a brilliant idea. And Prodigy had some wonderful voice acting, stellar animation work, and some engaging, emotional storytelling. But it was sabotaged so thoroughly by the idiots at Paramount that one would be forgiven for thinking their actions were deliberate. Surely no group of executives with dreams of running a media corporation could be so utterly, irredeemably stupid… right? But that’s the reality of working with Paramount, I guess.
The abandoned wreck of the Protostar feels like a fitting image for this occasion.
Paramount needs a good clear-out. Failed leaders need to be ousted and the corporation’s attitude adjusted. Priorities need to be re-examined, and the long-term future of streaming needs to be urgently addressed. Paramount Plus is losing money by the boatload – and that seems unlikely to change in the short-term. Will it survive the decade? Will it last until Star Trek’s 60th anniversary in 2026? Will it still be here at Christmas?
Make no mistake, Prodigy won’t be the only casualty here. Unless and until Paramount can get its act together, these failures will continue to happen. With two of Star Trek’s five shows being cancelled within months of each other, and with Paramount Plus continuing to flop around like a dying fish, fears for the franchise’s longer-term prospects – and the prospects of shows like Strange New Worlds, which is currently paused due to an ongoing writers’ strike – only grow. I wish I had confidence in Paramount’s leadership to steady the ship and sort things out.
The Star Trek franchise – including all properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers are present for The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
Because I was anticipating news about the next wave of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – Booster Course Pass racetracks, I found myself tuning in to yesterday’s Nintendo Direct broadcast. From my point of view, the games shown off by and large aren’t “my thing,” with a lot of attention on the likes of Pokémon, Pikmin 4, and an update for Splatoon 3. But there was news of an upcoming Mario game thrown in there, too… and I’m blown away by how utterly ridiculous some of Nintendo’s decision-making continues to be.
Nintendo never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity, and this one is possibly the biggest open goal that the company has missed in years. Right now, Nintendo should be seeking every opportunity to cash in on the wild success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, a film which has already become the highest-grossing non-Disney animated film of all time – surpassing the likes of Frozen, Minions, and every film in the Toy Story series.
Nintendo has missed a golden opportunity to capitalise on the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
But instead, the company announced Super Mario Bros. Wonder – a game that has nothing to do with the film, doesn’t make any attempt to use a similar art style, and introduces new game mechanics and power-ups that the film didn’t include. Nintendo has had years to prepare for the release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and while I wouldn’t say I was expecting an old-school tie-in game or straight adaptation, I certainly did expect Nintendo to take advantage of the film’s success. There was scope to release a new game that loosely followed the plot of the film, or that at least used familiar settings and a comparable visual style. It’s a profoundly odd decision to follow up the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie with what looks to be a bog-standard 2D Mario game that has nothing in common with the film.
Likewise for the Booster Course Pass. In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, a karting sequence was one of the best and most action-packed moments, bringing a lot of fun to the table. The film also re-introduced some classic Nintendo characters in supporting roles, like Cranky Kong, as well as a kingdom of Penguins who were conquered by Bowser. Any of these characters would have been welcome additions to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – cashing in on the film’s success while it’s still fresh in the minds of audiences.
Promotional screenshot of Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
But instead, Nintendo opted to bring back characters from Mario Kart Double-Dash and Mario Kart 7. That’s not a bad thing per se, but again it’s a wasted opportunity for the company to take advantage of the success of their big feature film. The Booster Course Pass section of the Nintendo Direct broadcast was pretty lacklustre anyway, with only one new track shown off and no release date mentioned beyond a vague promise of “summer 2023.”
At least the character of Kamek, who played a supporting role in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, was included! There’s an interesting fact about Kamek that you may not be aware of: the character was originally supposed to be playable in Mario Kart 64, even appearing in promo material and in a demo build of the game. Kamek was subbed out for Donkey Kong at the last moment, shortly before release.
Finally, a quarter of a century after being cut from Mario Kart 64, Kamek is joining a mainline Mario Kart title!
To get back on topic, I think that Nintendo has missed a golden opportunity to capitalise on the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which received critical acclaim and has been riding high at the box office. While the detailed CGI used for the film would be impossible to fully recreate on the Nintendo Switch, the same art style could certainly be used, and a game that includes locations and characters from the film seems like a really obvious idea that the company appears not to have even considered.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder doesn’t look great, in my view. It looks gimmicky in the way other modern Nintendo 2D games have been, and I doubt very much if the likes of “Elephant-Man Mario” are going to be incorporated into the long-running series in a big way in future. I love a good 2D platformer, don’t get me wrong, as it was exactly this kind of game where I first cut my teeth as a young player. But what we saw at the Nintendo Direct just looked… unspectacular.
Mario the elephant-man.
Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe Super Mario Bros. Wonder will be the shot in the arm that 2D Mario games have been needing. Maybe this game will be the Nintendo Switch’s swansong and will eclipse the Zelda games, Mario Odyssey, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I’ve been wrong about these things before, and while Wonder isn’t on my “must-buy” list right now, I’ll certainly check out reviews and see what players and critics have to say when it’s released later this year.
I’m surprised, though, that Nintendo has made no attempt to leverage the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie. The company has a reputation for abandoning even the most successful projects, and for ignoring requests from fans. So I guess we shouldn’t be all that shocked! I wonder how much more money the company would be making if it listened, if it provided more ongoing support for its own successful games, and if it found ways to better capitalise on its own successes. But hey, that’s Nintendo’s problem!
Super Mario Bros. Wonder will be released for Nintendo Switch in October 2023. Wave 5 of the Booster Course Pass for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe will be released in “Summer 2023” for Nintendo Switch. All titles discussed above are the copyright of Nintendo. Some screenshots/promo art courtesy of IGDB and/or Nintendo. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Although there are no major story spoilers for Starfield, minor spoilers may be present. This article also uses screenshots and promotional artwork of the game.
A few days ago I shared my thoughts on the recent Starfield showcase, which was a standalone presentation that followed Xbox’s summer event. I’m beyond excited for the game’s release, as this kind of open-galaxy, retro-sci-fi adventure almost feels like it was tailor-made for me! Today, as a follow-up to that article, I want to go into a bit more detail about a few of the things that I’m most excited about in Starfield.
This article also serves as the counterpoint to a piece that I wrote a couple of days ago in which I went into detail about some of my worries and concerns about Starfield. These points of concern haven’t wiped away the excitement – but the excitement and hype that I feel for this game is, to an extent anyway, balanced out by some fears that I have. If you want to read about my points of concern, you can find that article by clicking or tapping here.
The player character looks on as a ship blasts off.
First of all, let’s talk about Starfield’s aesthetic, its visual style, and some of the design choices that we’ve seen so far. This retro-futuristic style has been described by Bethesda as “NASA-punk;” a blend of classic NASA-inspired designs with elements of the dystopian cyberpunk genre. I absolutely adore this choice, and some of the NASA-inspired spacesuits, spaceship interiors, and other pieces of technology look fantastic. Visual styles are very much subject to personal taste – but for someone who was inspired by NASA’s space shuttle missions as a young kid in the ’80s, and who read as many books about spaceships and astronauts as I could find, these designs couldn’t be more perfect.
The “NASA-punk” designs feel like a natural evolution of some of NASA’s recent and contemporary designs. The robotic companion Vasco, for example, is clearly inspired by the likes of the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers. The interior of the Frontier spaceship, particularly its cockpit and airlock, feels very close in design to the space shuttle, the International Space Station, and contemporary rockets like SpaceX’s Dragon II.
A first-person view of a spaceship’s cockpit.
Starfield’s designs also incorporate elements from other sci-fi settings. There are elements of “NASA-punk” that remind me of the likes of Firefly, Farscape, and even the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises. There’s also a Disney feel to some of these designs – and if you’ve been to Disney World and ridden rides like Spaceship Earth or Space Mountain, perhaps you’ll pick up on some of that, as I did. Although Starfield is brand-new, some of these visual and aesthetic choices feel quite nostalgic in that sense!
Starfield is standing on its own two feet with this “NASA-punk” style, though. There are influences and inspirations from both the real world and other sci-fi properties, but Bethesda has blended them together and put its own distinctive stamp on them.
Walking on the surface of a planet or moon.
But there’s more to Starfield than one visual style. Beyond the Constellation organisation and the United Colonies we saw the Freestar Collective and the city of Neon, both of which appear to have their own distinct styles of dress and architecture. For me, this harkens back to the likes of Morrowind, where different parts of the game’s world were populated by a diverse array of factions and races, each of which had their own styles. This was still present to a degree in Oblivion, but was much less obvious in the likes of Skyrim and Bethesda’s Fallout duology.
The Freestar Collective looks to have a distinct western inspiration, with cowboy hats and even an old-fashioned pistol duel being shown during the Starfield showcase. This could lead to some incredibly fun moments on the “frontier” of space, and I’m just in love with the “rough and ready cowboy” look of some of these characters and locales. Again, this is something that reminds me of my childhood, of playing “cowboys” with a toy six-shooter and dressing up in Davy Crockett’s coonskin cap! Yes, I really did own a replica coonskin cap as a kid.
The Freestar Collective is giving me wild west vibes!
The city of Neon feels like a ton of fun, too. A kind of “space Vegas,” where anything goes and all forms of pleasure are available – for a price, of course! Neon reminded me of places like Mass Effect’s Omega, Star Trek: Picard’s Freecloud, and other such “outside the rule of law” settlements that are a common enough trope in sci-fi stories. Its unique origin as a former fishing platform-turned-drug haven helps it to stand out, though.
Beyond the major settlements that we’ve seen there are bound to be smaller places to visit, either colonies on planets or spaceships and stations out in space. We caught a brief glimpse of a couple of these in the showcase, and I’m absolutely eager to see more! Bethesda’s past games have often had multiple settlements to visit, so I’m sure there will be several hitherto-unseen places to go.
Vasco the robot.
One feature I cannot wait to get stuck into is spaceship customisation. The idea of being able to create and customise my very own spaceship already sounded like something special – but knowing that I can also recruit a crew and then head out into a Bethesda-created open galaxy… it’s beyond exciting, and again this feels like a feature that was created from the ground up with me and my tastes in mind!
There are multiple methods for… shall we say, “acquiring” a spaceship, too. It sounds like the player character will get access to their own spaceship fairly early on in the game – and this ship can then be modified at will. But there are other options: purchasing a spaceship is possible, but so is stealing one! I don’t know whether it will be possible to land on a random planet or go to a spaceport and simply fly away in someone else’s ship – but after defeating an opponent in ship-to-ship combat, it’s possible to board their vessel, kill the crew, and claim it.
Dogfighting in space.
I’m absolutely in love with the idea of becoming a space pirate! And even if piracy isn’t going to be the focus of a playthrough, I can definitely see how hijacking and then selling a spaceship (or at least parts of a spaceship) could be an incredibly lucrative way of making a ton of money in-game. High-risk, sure… but with a potentially massive payday at the end!
In the showcase, Bethesda employees had designed some wonderfully creative spaceships of their own. And this was an easily-missed feature that Bethesda didn’t draw attention to, but it seems almost certain that it’s possible to re-name spaceships, too. I’m already thinking of names for my own vessel! I wonder if “Enterprise-D” is taken…
A customised ship that looks like it could carry a lot of cargo!
Within days of Starfield’s release we’re sure to see the community’s most creative players sharing their designs. Some will opt to recreate the likes of Firefly’s Serenity, the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, or any of the hero ships from the Star Trek franchise. There are bound to be some incredibly wacky designs in the mix, too. I love the way that Bethesda described this; spaceship design will err on the side of fun, not of realism. What that means in practise should be that players can get really creative without having to worry about the likes of aerodynamics or mass.
There will be limitations to this spaceship creator, and I’m trying not to go overboard with my hype! We haven’t seen, for example, the extent to which interiors of ships can be customised, and whether things like colours can be changed, furniture can be repositioned, and so on. I hope there will be at least some of that, so that we can truly make our spaceships feel like ours instead of like a collection of pre-made pieces.
One possible cockpit style.
But what I love about the spaceship creator is that the interior is fully-explorable. If you place a cargo hold next to a crew cabin, you can visit them – and the design of the ship will be reflected in-game. If you chose to make a really large ship, for example, with a long corridor connecting different rooms, you can actually walk down that corridor and see each of those rooms in the places you put them. In first-person or third-person!
When I was playing Star Trek: Starship Creator in the late 1990s, I’d have loved nothing more than to explore my weird Federation ship in first-person! This spaceship customisation feature is absolutely something that could be a fun game all by itself – and if it lives up to the hype and meets the expectations that Bethesda has set, I can see myself spending hours and hours customising every last detail of my spaceship before I actually get any questing done!
You can give your ship a paint job, too.
But maybe we should say “spaceships,” plural! Because in the showcase, Bethesda confirmed that it’s possible for players to have their very own fleet. We saw that at least nine ships can be owned at any one time, and all of them can be fully-customised. Only one ship can be the “home” ship, but I imagine which ship is the primary one is something that can be changed at will.
The showcase appeared to show a range of different spaceship parts, with different manufacturers having different styles and designs to choose from. We didn’t get a particularly long or in-depth look at all of these options, but we saw enough to at least know that there’s a decent range of potential pieces. The number of possible combinations of parts must be positively astronomical! It will almost certainly be possible to create spaceships with a huge range of believable and fantastical designs, and to fit very different aesthetic styles.
Another custom spaceship.
And we haven’t even talked about functionality yet! Some spaceships that were shown off at the showcase were small, designed perhaps for combat. Others were far larger, with massive cargo holds that can presumably carry a lot of resources – or smuggled goods. It’s possible to add or upgrade every component – such as engines, shields, and weapons. And these things are sure to have a noticeable impact on gameplay, with larger, heavier ships controlling differently from smaller, lighter craft.
I will be tinkering with all of these – adding different kinds of weapons in different combinations is something I’m particularly keen to experiment with. There were three types of spaceship weapon highlighted during the showcase: ballistic, laser, and missile. Again, what the limitations may be on how many weapons a single spaceship can have weren’t mentioned, but it looks like there will be appropriate options for different sizes of vessels.
Customising a spaceship’s weapons.
Sticking with weapons, one area of gameplay that looked great in the Starfield showcase was first-person shooting. Past Bethesda titles – the Fallout games most notably – haven’t always excelled in this area. In Fallout, the VATS system (which paused gameplay to allow for targeting) covered up at least some of those games’ sub-par gunplay, but that won’t be the case in Starfield. Some rumours and reports had suggested that Doom developer (and fellow ZeniMax studio) id Software had been brought on board to help out.
Todd Howard, in a post-showcase interview, confirmed that Bethesda had worked with id Software, but seemed to suggest that they’d been helping more on the technical side with things like lighting and graphical fidelity. Either way, the influence of recent titles like Doom and Doom Eternal looked to be present in Starfield – at least looking in from the outside. It isn’t always possible to get a fair impression of something like gunplay from compressed video footage on YouTube, but from what we could see, gunplay in Starfield looks to be a vast improvement over past Bethesda titles.
An example of a pistol/handgun.
That’s good news, because shooting and blasting your way across space is going to be a big part of the game! Whether you’re wrangling with pirates, getting into a shootout with western-inspired outlaws, or being pursued by aggressive fauna on an unexplored planet, guns are sure to come in handy! What we’ve seen of Starfield’s gunplay looked good – solid, I’d say. It’s probably never going to rise to the level of something you’d see in the likes of a Halo or Call of Duty game, because it’s only one part of a much broader experience. But solid, enjoyable gunplay is a must – and the signs are positive in that regard.
I was also pleased to see that Bethesda hasn’t abandoned the idea of melee weapons in Starfield. Bethesda’s melee combat has usually been pretty solid, at least by role-playing game standards, and it’s a hallmark of their games going all the way back to the first Elder Scrolls titles in the 1990s. Even though melee combat is sure to play a smaller role in Starfield – as the game promises lasers, electro-magnetic weapons, and a range of different guns – it’s not something I’d want to miss out on as it feels like it’s a core part of the Bethesda role-playing experience.
Swordfighting on Pluto? Yes please!
One criticism that I made of 2020’s Cyberpunk 2077 was that the player character’s backstory ultimately mattered very little in-game. Developer CD Projekt Red made a big deal in pre-release marketing material of the three different “life paths” available to players, but these amounted to little more than a short prologue and a single event midway through the game that we might generously call a “mission.” That was a disappointment and hampered Cyberpunk’s replayability.
In Starfield, there appear to be multiple character backgrounds, from action game staples like “bounty hunter” to less common ones like “chef!” The extent to which these will have an impact on gameplay, and the amount of content that may have been created for each possible background isn’t clear, but even if there are just a couple of missions and a few places where different dialogue options are available, it’ll still be fun – and better than Cyberpunk 2077.
One of the character traits will make you an introvert… just like me!
Then there are “traits” – of which players can choose up to three. These are additional pieces of character creation that can be mixed and matched, with each giving an advantage and prospective disadvantage, too. Some look certain to unlock dialogue options and will have an impact on the way the player will engage with different factions and groups, and some even unlock entire characters. Again, this feels like something that has a tangible impact on gameplay, and could be a lot of fun to experiment with.
Past Bethesda titles offered players the opportunity to create a custom character class – rather than just being able to pick from staples like mage or warrior. Starfield’s complex system of backgrounds, traits, and skills looks like it could be something very similar, allowing players to either customise their character in detail or to go with a standard build suited to the likes of combat or stealth. I’m very much someone who likes to tinker and customise, and in my first playthrough in particular I expect I’ll spend ages agonising over which background to pick, then which traits to select, and so on!
There are a lot of things to tinker with!
Starfield also looks like it will offer a fair amount of diversity in its character creator. There were different skin tones, naturally, but also different hair types and hair styles, as well as tattoos, and Bethesda noted in the Starfield showcase that they worked with people from a range of different ethnic groups to ensure that there are a range of characters both as NPCs and as options for the character creator. That’s fantastic! Being able to represent oneself in a game like this is important – and I know a lot of folks like to spend a long time in the character creator recreating their own appearance.
There were also options for body type – including larger bodies that can sometimes be excluded in games like this. That’s also great! Most of the options in the character creator looked like they could be applied to any character – a male-bodied character could use a feminine walk style, for example. I didn’t see makeup options, but there were things like piercings, jewellery, scars, and the like. The player character isn’t fully-voiced, as far as I’m aware, so again I think there are options here for making a male, a female, a trans character, or even someone non-binary. I’m non-binary myself, so I appreciate feeling included!
Body type and walk style options in the character creator.
Starfield has officially been delayed twice: from an initial November 2022 release to a nebulous “the first half of 2023,” and then again to September. Given Bethesda’s reputation for buggy games, and the difficult launch of Fallout 76 in particular, I absolutely see that as a positive thing. There’s a lot riding on Starfield for both Bethesda and Xbox, with the game being Bethesda’s first exclusive title since the Microsoft takeover. Getting it right – and ensuring the game is truly ready for launch – is incredibly important, and in an industry that seems all too happy to adopt a “release now, fix later” approach, I think it’s worth complimenting the approach that Microsoft and Bethesda claim to be taking.
In a recent interview, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty suggested that the reports he’d been receiving about Starfield were looking great – even making the audacious claim that the game would “already have the fewest bugs of any Bethesda game ever shipped” if it was released today. All of this is marketing speak, of course, but given the serious risk to the reputation of both Xbox and Bethesda if it turns out to be untrue… I think it’s positive, at least. Microsoft clearly recognises the issues that have been present, and on the surface at least it seems that they’ve given Bethesda more time to get Starfield ready. We’ll have to judge that for ourselves when the game arrives – and Starfield is, for me anyway, still in the “wait for the reviews” column – but these are positive noises nevertheless.
Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty (centre) was interviewed about Starfield shortly after the showcase.
Characters are the heart of any good story, and Bethesda has created some fantastic and memorable characters for their games over the years. Off the top of my head I could pick out Fallout 3′s Three Dog, Yagrum Bagarn from Morrowind, and Alduin the dragon from Skyrim – and there are many, many more. After the disappointment of Fallout 76 with its empty world devoid of characters, it was wonderful to see so many different NPCs in the Starfield showcase.
The three major cities that we know of in Starfield look set to be large, dense, and full of people to engage with. And the diverse environments and factions should make many of these people feel unique. We’ve barely scratched the surface here, and there are bound to be hundreds or perhaps even thousands of individual characters to meet in Starfield.
Who’s this fella, and what might his story be?
One thing we know for certain is that Starfield is Bethesda’s biggest-ever game. And that includes recorded lines of dialogue: Starfield will have more than double the amount of dialogue that was recorded for Fallout 4. That game had approximately 700 NPCs, but also had a fully-voiced protagonist, something Starfield appears not to have. With so much dialogue having been recorded for the game, there’s bound to be a huge number of people to meet and engage with.
Some of these people can be recruited, joining the crew of your spaceship, being assigned to another spaceship, or being assigned to an outpost. Bethesda didn’t confirm how many recruitable NPCs there are in Starfield, but one thing I absolutely love is the idea of encountering some of these people at spaceports or just out in the wild. Bringing them on board, figuring out what skills and talents they have… it all adds to the immersion and the sense of truly being the captain of a spaceship in this open galaxy.
A potential companion and the skills they offer.
More than two decades ago, Morrowind was the game that I was looking forward to. I was incredibly hyped up for what was my first real open-world role-playing game. I’ve said a couple of times already that I don’t think any game since then has grabbed my attention in quite the same way, nor generated such a high level of interest and excitement – not until Starfield, that is. Ever since I first played Morrowind, I’ve ranked that game as one of my absolute favourite titles of all-time, and if Starfield is as good as Bethesda and Microsoft are promising, I can see it potentially joining Morrowind on that list.
Are there worries and points of concern? Absolutely. As I said, I wrote up all of my biggest fears for Starfieldin an article here on the website just the other day. But at the same time, I still feel that sense of hope. This game, if it lives up to the hype, has the potential to be incredible. A friend of mine recently suggested to me that Starfield might end up being “the best video game that either of us will ever play,” and that assessment is hard to challenge. This game feels tailor-made for me.
So we’ve talked about some of the things I’m most excited about when it comes to Starfield! Stay tuned, because if we get any big updates about the game – or if I find that I have more to say – I’ll be sure to write about it here on the website. And when the game launches in September, I’ll do my best to share my first impressions and more!
Starfield will be released on the 6th of September 2023 for PC and Xbox Series S/X consoles. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. Some promo images and screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda and IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I genuinely don’t understand what Star Trek Infinite is. Am I stupid? Have I missed some key piece of marketing material? Or could it be that Paramount and publisher Paradox Interactive haven’t actually done a good job at communicating what this unexpected game is going to be?
I’ve been a huge advocate of the Star Trek franchise when it comes to video games. In the ’90s and 2000s, when Star Trek video game adaptations were at their peak, I bought practically every title on the market. Some of my favourite games of all-time are from the Star Trek franchise, including relatively obscure titles that didn’t sell very well!
Box art/promo art for Star Trek Infinite.
I’m also a fan of Paradox Interactive – though some of their games can feel overly-monetised, with vast arrays of DLC that can be incredibly pricey. Paradox Interactive has created such titles as Europa Universalis IV and Hearts of Iron IV, and has a reputation for being the undisputed master of the grand strategy, economy-management genre.
Combining Paradox’s in-depth gameplay with the Star Trek franchise should be something special, and I am genuinely looking forward to what the game might have in store. But I feel that its announcement was poor, and that the game hasn’t been marketed especially well thus far. That could be an issue for Infinite, so I’ll try to explain what I mean in this article… as well as share my thoughts on what Infinite might be.
A Cardassian fleet and space station.
Of the three Star Trek video games released so far this decade, I want to say that Infinite would be the one I’m most interested in. I adore a good strategy game, and strategy is a genre that the Star Trek franchise hasn’t touched since the days of Star Trek Armada and Armada II around the turn of the millennium. Those games were a blast; I have very fond memories of LAN parties with Armada II in particular! A return to the strategy space is incredibly welcome, then!
But Star Trek Infinite has had a very strange announcement. Initially announced at Summer Game Fest, a brief CGI teaser promised that more information would follow on “Captain Picard Day” – i.e. the 16th of June, which was only a few days later. That already didn’t make a lot of sense to me; why not simply show the real trailer at Summer Game Fest? Surely more eyes would be on Star Trek Infinite at that moment than would be on it at a random date that isn’t actually celebrated by Paramount. No other Star Trek events were planned for the 16th of June… so what was the point of this weird double announcement?
A promo screenshot that appears to show the main map.
Then there was the second trailer itself, which I dutifully tuned in for a few days ago. Actually, calling it a “trailer” is being unnecessarily generous to Paradox, because we saw barely any gameplay and didn’t get much of a feel for the game itself. It was a poor trailer, one that neither generated much excitement nor showed off a significant amount of gameplay. We caught a glimpse of the game’s four playable factions: the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians… but that’s about it.
Hopping over to Paradox’s website, there is a bit more information about the game. We know that Infinite will be a grand strategy game, presumably in the Paradox mould, taking the game Stellaris and its mechanics and systems as a starting point. I confess that I’m not familiar with Stellaris, but it’s a Paradox grand strategy title that seems to have a good reputation among players. A solid start, then!
Star Trek Infinite is supposedly built atop the bones of Paradox’s grand strategy game Stellaris.
The game promises to put players in charge of one of the four competing factions – so presumably there will be more to the game than fleets and space battles, with some amount of economy management, perhaps planetary and space station management, and other related things, too. Although Infinite claims to have “streamlined” some elements of Stellaris, it still promises to be an in-depth and complex strategy experience.
But there’s still a lot we don’t know. How will fleet battles work, for instance? The first teaser trailer prominently featured the Borg – yet they aren’t listed as a playable faction. The game looks to be set in The Next Generation era, but again I couldn’t find any specific details about this beyond what was implied in artwork and screenshots.
A Federation fleet and Borg vessel as seen in the first teaser trailer.
I’m absolutely on board with the idea of Infinite as a Paradox grand strategy game set in the Star Trek universe. If that’s what it is! But the game’s announcement was poor, with two trailers on different days that didn’t really show off much in the way of gameplay, nor succeed at really communicating what kind of title this is going to be. It’s only because of my familiarity with some of Paradox’s other titles that I even have a vague idea of what I’m going to be in for with this new game.
The Star Trek franchise has long struggled in the video game space, despite Star Trek and gaming being a perfect match on paper. A game like Infinite has the potential to reach out beyond the current Star Trek fandom to fans of these kinds of grand strategy games – potentially bringing a few newbies into the fan community. That’s a great idea… but I fear that Infinite’s lacklustre announcement and marketing is going to get in the way of that.
The four playable factions.
I shouldn’t have to waste time digging through websites and reading marketing doublespeak to understand what a new game is going to be at its most basic level. I’m thrilled that Paramount is being more open with licensing Star Trek games, and a deal with a successful developer like Paradox Interactive feels like it could be a real coup. Taking the skeleton of another successful space-based strategy title and bolting Star Trek onto it is also a clever concept, one that I hope bears fruit.
But again, the way the game has been teased, announced, and marketed has been poor. And even after doing some digging and reading official announcements and press releases, I confess that I’m still not entirely sure what Star Trek Infinite is going to be like to play. The strategy genre is massive, broad, and varied – and there are many different styles of gameplay even within the grand strategy sub-genre.
A promotional screenshot that appears to show a Klingon starbase and starship.
Still, I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for a fun, enjoyable, and perhaps even in-depth experience with Star Trek Infinite when it’s ready. No release date has been announced, though the game is tentatively on the schedule for 2023. That may change, of course, but for now it seems as if we might get to play Infinite before Christmas. If so, I hope there will be a better and more elaborate marketing push in the weeks leading up to release.
I don’t like to be negative here on the website, especially not about a brand-new game that I haven’t gotten to play for myself. But I’m deeply unimpressed with the way in which Star Trek Infinite has been announced, and the difficulty in figuring out just what kind of gameplay experience this is going to be. I’m positively thrilled at the idea of a Star Trek grand strategy game, and the franchise’s long overdue return to the strategy genre. And I will do my best to cover Infinite here on the website if we get a significant update, or to share my thoughts on the title after its release. But for now, sadly, a lacklustre announcement and a lack of clarity have taken at least some of the shine off Star Trek Infinite.
Star Trek Infinite has no solid release date, but will be coming to PC and Mac sometime in 2023. Star Trek Infinite is the copyright of Paramount Global, Paradox Interactive, and Nimble Giant Entertainment. The Star Trek franchise is the copyright of Paramount Global. Some screenshots and other promotional material used above courtesy of Paradox Interactive. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Although there are no major story spoilers for Starfield, minor spoilers may be present. This article also uses screenshots and promotional artwork of the game.
I touched on this subject when I gave my thoughts on the recent Starfield showcase, but I wanted to expand on some of my concerns about Bethesda’s upcoming sci-fi role-playing game. For context, Starfield is absolutely my most-anticipated game right now, and it’s one I’m very excited about! The hype train has definitely left the station, and I’m going to be riding it until September!
But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t concerns to be addressed. Some of these are things we can’t know or won’t get to see until Starfield is released, but others are things that Bethesda can – and really ought to – begin to address right away, before things get out of hand. We saw with Cyberpunk 2077 how dangerous an ever-growing hype bubble can be, and it doesn’t serve any game if players are allowed free rein to speculate and build up an inaccurate and even impossible picture of what it could be.
An unknown character seen in the recent Starfield showcase.
That’s perhaps my single greatest concern: that Bethesda and Microsoft aren’t doing enough to step in when speculation gets wild. I’ve seen commentators and critics propose entirely unannounced features that are almost certainly not going to be included in Starfield, dedicating entire forum threads or YouTube videos to discussing them. Theorising can be fun, but there’s a line somewhere that falls in between speculating about what might be present and convincing oneself (and others) that an exciting-sounding feature is certain to be included.
This is where a good marketing department is essential! There are ways to let players down gently, or to redirect the conversation to other areas of the game, without deflating the hype bubble or crushing players’ expectations. It’s infinitely better to do so at this stage, months before the game is launched, rather than attempting to clean up ambiguous statements and explain the lack of features fans felt certain they’d get to see after a rocky release.
Todd Howard, executive producer at Bethesda and director of Starfield.
In different ways, this is basically what tripped up Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man’s Sky. Both games were subject to intense criticism and even hate upon release, and while Cyberpunk 2077 in particular suffered from being in an incomplete state, both games had been over-sold. In both cases, marketing departments seemed incapable of saying “no,” promising players a genre-busting, once-in-a-lifetime experience that no game could ever hope to live up to. When it turned out that No Man’s Sky was pretty barebones and barren, and that Cyberpunk 2077 was so unfinished that many folks found it to be unplayable, the dejection that players felt as they fell back to Earth was unparalleled. They’d been promised something special, but all they found when the dust had settled was a sense of crushing disappointment.
Starfield is absolutely in danger of doing this. There are going to be limitations within the game: limited NPC numbers, limited character traits and skills to choose from, limits to customisation for spaceships and the player character, limits on exploration, and limits to the role-playing experience. It’s essential that Bethesda and Microsoft use the next few months wisely, setting appropriate expectations and not allowing players to build up an image of Starfield in their heads that the game could never live up to.
Spaceship customisation is sure to have its limits.
Let’s talk about the size of Starfield itself. With 1,000 explorable planets being promised, I can’t be the only one who thinks that Bethesda might’ve made the game too big… can I? Don’t get me wrong, it’s essential that Starfield’s galaxy feels expansive, and if exploration, mining, and resource collection are going to be key parts of gameplay, it’s important to ensure there’s enough space to do all of those things. But 1,000 planets seems like a lot – arguably too many for any one player to even visit, let alone explore thoroughly in a single playthrough.
With the way Starfield’s procedural generation has been described, there’s a risk that players will miss things, too. If some characters, locations, and even missions are randomly assigned to planets, there’s only a one-in-one-thousand chance of finding a particular mission on a particular world. That potentially means that Starfield will be awkward to replay, or that it will be difficult for players to try out a mission that they’ve seen or to share something exciting with their friends.
A close-up scan of a planet.
In Fallout 4 or Skyrim, every single player could go to the same point on the map and encounter the same NPC or start the same quest. But that won’t be possible in Starfield – which is fun in some ways, but could become frustrating. If players find a fun quest or a useful item on one playthrough, locating it again on another save file could be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. That can be fun in some cases… but it will definitely be frustrating in others.
Some of the planets shown off in the Starfield showcase also looked pretty flat and barren. One of the key marketing lines is “if you can see it you can go there,” with words to that effect being used in reference to a moon in orbit of a planet. But here’s the thing: if that moon or planet has nothing of note except, perhaps, for some crafting resources to collect… going there won’t actually be a lot of fun.
Some of these planets look lifeless and barren.
For all the talk of Starfield having 1,000 planets, only a handful of those – perhaps a dozen at most – are going to have a significant amount of content. Whether we’re talking about small settlements, villains’ lairs, shipwrecks to scavenge, random character encounters, ruins, or other hallmarks of exploration in a Bethesda game… there’s only going to be so many of those. My fear here is that 1,000 planets might spread this content too thin, leaving swathes of the galaxy feeling empty.
There was also talk of planets consisting of “puzzle pieces” – i.e. hand-made pieces of content stitched together at random. That seems to solve one problem, but might it create another? Unless Bethesda has created enough of these puzzle pieces to make each planet totally unique, at some point is there not a danger that they’ll have to be recycled? It would be immersion-breaking to land on a planet and see the exact same mountain or ruin as we’d just been exploring somewhere else.
The map, focusing on a single solar system.
I don’t think that Bethesda has done enough to allay some of these concerns about the scale of the map and the amount of content it may contain. One of the criticisms of No Man’s Sky when that game launched was that its planets felt empty – and outside of some of the main settlements and story locations, I’m just not sure how Bethesda will get around this.
Starfield will be Bethesda’s biggest game to date, with some reports suggesting it may have twice as much recorded dialogue as Fallout 4. Fallout 4 had close to 700 non-player characters, but even if we generously assume that Starfield might have as many as 2,000, that still spreads them out very thinly. Even more so if we assume that the three major settlements we know of will congregate a lot of NPCs in one place.
Sarah Morgan, one of the game’s important non-player characters.
Complaining that a space game is “too big” seems silly – and I freely admit that. But my concern is less to do with the size of the map itself and more with the amount of content relative to the size of the map. One of my main complaints about Fallout 76 was that its open world felt utterly lifeless due to the complete lack of non-player characters to engage with… and outside of settlements and space stations, I just fear that parts of Starfield’s galaxy could fall into the same trap.
The game is going to clock in at a whopping 125GB – at least on PC. That sounds huge, but when you compare it to other modern games, it actually isn’t. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is comparable in size, for example, as is Red Dead Redemption II. Now don’t get me wrong, I adore Red Dead Redemption II’s open world – but is its patch of the wild west in the 19th Century a fair comparison with Starfield’s 1,000 planets? Again, my concern is really the amount of enjoyable content relative to the size of the map.
Starfield’s system requirements. Image Credit: Steam/ZeniMax
Let’s hop over to the character creator now. This might seem like a nitpick, and as facial hair is something I seldom use on custom characters, it isn’t something that will affect my own playthrough. But the facial hair in Starfield’s character creator… well, it just looks a bit shit, doesn’t it? I’m not the only one who thinks so, surely. In fact, I’d go so far as to call facial hair the worst-looking part of Starfield that we’ve been shown so far, and on some character models it seriously detracted from the way they looked, dropping the realism down several notches.
Hair and hairstyles looked pretty good, with a variety of hair types and styles that should allow players to create a diverse array of characters. That’s fabulous – but it raises the question of why facial hair is struggling to hit that same level of quality. This is something past Bethesda games have struggled with, too – Oblivion most notably, but also Skyrim and the Fallouts to a lesser extent.
Facial hair does not look great in Starfield.
I fear that facial hair may be the first outward sign of another of my big worries: Starfield’s game engine. Bethesda has insisted on using their proprietary Creation Engine 2 for Starfield – but the underlying technology here is more than twenty years old. The core technology of Creation Engine 2 is Morrowind’s Gamebryo, a piece of kit that Bethesda has literally been using since the late ’90s when that game first entered development. Changes and additions have been made, but this technology has its limits. The facial hair problem, which is a hallmark of prior Bethesda titles, could be the canary in the coal mine here.
There are advantages to working with a familiar toolkit. If Starfield had been built on, say, Unreal Engine 4 or 5, it would have required a completely different development cycle, with a different team who were familiar with how that technology worked. I’m not saying that would have been better, and I’m not arguing in favour of any one of the well-known game engines that other modern titles use. There are drawbacks and disadvantages to working with practically all of them.
Starfield’s game engine uses the same core technology that Bethesda has relied on since Morrowind.
But what I am saying is that Bethesda’s technology is at best untested on a title this massive. Some of the in-game features and mechanics promised for Starfield, such as spaceflight and ship-to-ship combat, have never been done before in any form of Gamebryo or the Creation Engine. That’s one concern.
Then there are things that have been done before – but haven’t always been done particularly well. I noted in my piece on the Starfield showcase how impressed I was with the gunplay. Partly that’s because gunplay in Bethesda’s Fallout duology was pretty poor without those games’ signature VATS system covering for it. An update to the engine should allow for significant improvements in that area, but again this is something that’s untested, and something like shooting can be difficult to judge from compressed YouTube video footage – especially carefully-edited marketing bumf. Any developer worth their salt can make even the most lacklustre game look fast-paced, fluid, and exciting in their own marketing material.
Gunplay looked great in the showcase.
Bethesda has earned itself a reputation among players for releasing games bedevilled by glitches and bugs. The company wouldn’t be the first to release a broken, buggy game in 2023 – but that’s no excuse! I’ve already said that Starfield is a game that I’ll be waiting to see reviews and tech breakdowns of before I commit myself, and that’s because Bethesda has done so much to warrant such a cautious approach.
Look back to trailers and marketing material shown off for Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020. Or Redfall earlier this year. It’s easy for a clever publisher to compile footage – even in-game footage – that looks great, and to show off a “vision” for how the game could look under the right circumstances. Trailers, teasers, and gameplay reveals often turn out to be inaccurate, and the version of a game that arrives on launch day – or during a pre-order exclusive access window – can be a million miles away from how it was promised or presented. Bethesda has done this too, with Fallout 4 and especially Fallout 76 receiving well-deserved criticism for bugs and glitches when they were released.
Fallout 76 at launch had, uh, a few issues…
There’s a specific story concern that I have – one that hadn’t even entered my mind until someone commented on it somewhere online. I can’t remember where I first saw this idea or theory posited, so I apologise to its original creator for that! But several people have suggested that Starfield could be some kind of sequel to the Fallout series – noting in particular that Earth looks barren, devastated, and uninhabitable in teases we’ve been shown… not unlike Fallout’s nuclear wasteland.
To be clear, there’s no indication whatsoever that this will be the case. Bethesda hasn’t denied it outright, but they haven’t actually commented on it at all as far as I can tell.
For my money, this would be an atrocious idea. Even if this was a secret that was kept, with the player character not finding out until well into the main story… it just wouldn’t work. It would make Starfield feel diminished, living in the shadow of another game – and it just isn’t necessary. Starfield can and should stand on its own two feet, doing its own thing, and not needing to be constrained by other games in a different fictional universe.
This is one rumour I hope proves to be false.
After Starfield is launched, a lot of attention will be paid to how well the game sells. But as I’ve said before, in an era where Game Pass has tens of millions of paid subscribers, sales numbers no longer tell the full story. I fully expect the PlayStation fanboys to jump all over Starfield – as they are already for any point of criticism they can find – and if the game seems to be selling fewer copies than other Bethesda games or than comparable PlayStation 5 games, you can bet they’ll take that and run with it. There’s sure to be content proclaiming Starfield a “failure” no matter what happens!
But it isn’t fair to judge Starfield – nor any Microsoft or Xbox game – purely on sales numbers any more. Game Pass is a game changer; it’s quite literally changing the way many of us play games. The way players on Xbox and PC engage with Bethesda titles and other Microsoft-owned games and studios is changing rapidly, with more and more subscribers joining Game Pass every day. Starfield’s release is sure to see a spike in Game Pass numbers, too – because it makes a lot of sense from a player’s perspective! I’ll be playing Starfield on Game Pass, and several people I know will be doing the same thing. Each Game Pass player represents a sale not made – so look to Microsoft and Bethesda for player numbers rather than raw sales data.
Starfield is a big deal for Game Pass.
Speaking of sales and money, another area of concern is that Starfield seems to be quite aggressively chasing some recent cash-grabbing trends that have blighted the modern games industry. It was a given that Starfield would have a collector’s edition and a special edition at launch – such things are so commonplace nowadays that they don’t even raise an eyebrow. But I admit that I was a little surprised at how steep the price was and what kind of content was on offer.
Firstly, for an additional £25 – on top of Starfield’s £60 (US$70) price tag – players get a couple of skins, a digital soundtrack, an “art book,” which will be a collection of JPEG images of the game’s concept art, and access to the first piece of planned DLC. We’ll get to DLC in a moment, but there’s one more thing that pre-ordering this expensive special edition gets players: five days of early access to the game.
Starfield has a special edition – because of course it does.
Let’s look at this another way: Starfield’s release date isn’t the 6th of September, it’s the 1st of September – but only for players who splurge some extra cash. The rest of us plebs will have to wait five days, close to a week, in order to play the game. I find these kinds of paid access periods to be a particularly revolting way of monetising a game, and I’m disappointed that Microsoft and Bethesda would stoop so low in order to manipulate players into pre-ordering Starfield.
Then we have these character costumes. I hope I’m wrong about this, but I fear these paid outfits are a harbinger of some aggressive in-game monetisation. This might be something that’s already present in Starfield, or it might be something Bethesda plans to implement after the game’s release – but either way, it doesn’t bode well. A fully-priced game shouldn’t be selling costumes like it’s some free-to-play MMO, but the games industry has been getting away with more and more of this kind of aggressive in-game thievery. And Bethesda is one of the pioneers of this nonsense, with Oblivion’s infamous “horse armour” DLC.
Yup.
If I’m paying £60 – or £85 – for a game, I should expect to be able to equip my character with all of the costumes that the game has to offer. This isn’t Roblox or Fortnite; free-to-play titles that use in-game purchases and subscriptions to turn a profit. For the money Bethesda and Microsoft are demanding, it’s positively disgusting to think that some character outfits – and possibly other pieces of content too – have been cut out to be sold separately.
I mentioned the first expansion pack there, too, and this is another thing that’s ringing alarm bells. Starfield is still almost three months away from release – this is not the time to be talking publicly about expansion packs and DLC. It worries me that attention and development resources may be diverted away from what should be Bethesda’s top priority: getting the game ready for launch. DLC is great – and if Starfield is as amazing an experience as we’re all hoping for, I’ll definitely be picking up every major expansion pack that gets released! But now is not the moment to be advertising it.
Let’s get the game launched before we talk about DLC.
I do have one final point of concern before we wrap things up. Since the Starfield showcase was broadcast, hype for the game has gone way up. Players like myself who had been on the fence about Starfield or who were tentatively looking forward to it have now well and truly boarded the hype train – and that brings with it a degree of expectation. Microsoft and Bethesda have promised a release date of the 6th of September (or the 1st for people who pay up). There’s now more pressure than ever to meet that deadline.
That means two things. First of all, crunch. Having once worked in the games industry, I’ve seen crunch first-hand, and I know the toll it can take on developers and everyone working at a games company. Crunch is something that should be avoided at all costs – but rigid deadlines make it far more likely.
It’s on Bethesda (and Microsoft) to avoid a difficult crunch period.
Secondly, Microsoft and Bethesda are now far less likely to delay Starfield. The game has already been delayed twice officially – or four times unofficially, if you believe certain reports. If Starfield isn’t ready in time for September, there’s going to be a lot of pressure for the game to be pushed out anyway – and that could be disastrous. Look at Cyberpunk 2077, a game which, despite pulling off an admirable recovery, will be forever tainted in the minds of players by an atrocious launch. Likewise No Man’s Sky. And for every game like those that manage to recover, there are dozens of titles like Anthem, Babylon’s Fall, or 2013’s Star Trek that never do. Bethesda has some experience in this field, both with Fallout 76 and as the publisher responsible for this year’s Redfall.
I praised Starfield last year for being delayed. I stand by what I said then: it’s never fun when a game I’m excited for gets delayed, but more and more players have the maturity to understand that it can be necessary. Practically everyone would rather play a good game a few months later than a bad, broken, or unfinished game a few months earlier. But with so much hype building up and a release date seemingly set in stone, a further delay at this stage might be something that Microsoft and Bethesda are unwilling to consider. I hope that, if Starfield needs a few more weeks or even a few more months, that they will ultimately be willing to take that tough decision.
A spaceship!
So I think that’s all I have to say for now. I know it’s a lot – and if you feel like I just took a big stinking dump all over your excitement for Starfield, well… sorry!
Despite everything we’ve discussed today, I’m still incredibly excited for Starfield. I’m trying to restrain myself and not get overly hyped up – and that’s partly why I decided to put metaphorical pen to paper and write out all of my concerns and issues with the game. But the truth is that in spite of some worries and fears, I’m still really looking forward to this game. In fact, I can’t think of any other title since Bethesda’s own Morrowindmore than two decades ago that I’ve been this excited to play for myself.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed, and I truly hope that all of the points I’ve raised today will turn out to be misplaced fears. In three months’ time, feel free to come back and have a good laugh at my expense if Starfield really does live up to our expectations! I know that’s what I’ll do… if I’m not too busy playing Starfield, of course.
Starfield will be released on the 6th of September 2023 for PC and Xbox Series S/X consoles. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. Some promo images and screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda and IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1 and 2. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Original Series, Discovery, The Next Generation, and Enterprise.
Strange New Worlds Season 2 is off to a good start! The show returned to our screens this week with The Broken Circle – but the episode was noteworthy for the disappearance of one Captain Christopher Pike. As I said in my review of the episode, for the season to begin without him was a particularly bold move for what we once called “the Captain Pike show!”
Captain Pike set off on a journey of his own to help Una Chin-Riley – a.k.a. Number One. Una was arrested at the very end of Season 1, with her Illyrian heritage and genetically-modified background having somehow been exposed to Starfleet. As we know from earlier iterations of the franchise, genetic engineering is banned in the Federation, and lying on one’s Starfleet application – especially about race or species – can be grounds for expulsion.
Una is in a spot of bother…
But how does Pike plan to help Una? And for our purposes today: where might he be headed? It’s possible we’ll learn more about this before the episode airs – if photos are released that show Pike on a particular planet, for instance. But at time of writing all we know is that Pike has departed for destinations unknown – somewhere away from Earth on “the far side of the quadrant,” at least three days’ travel by shuttlecraft. He’s seeking out a mysterious, unnamed, female ally. And you’d better believe that I have a few ideas about where Pike could be going!
As always, some important caveats! First of all, I have no “insider information,” and I’m not trying to pretend that anything discussed below can, will, or must be part of Strange New Worlds. This is theory-crafting and speculation from a fan, and nothing more. Secondly, this is the entirely subjective opinion of one person, so if you hate all of my ideas, or if I don’t include your pet theory, that’s okay! There’s plenty of room in the Star Trek fan community for different ideas and points of view.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s jump into the list.
Destination #1: Talos IV
Two Talosians as seen in Discovery.
Could Pike be about to violate Starfleet’s General Order 7 by returning to Talos IV? Discovery’s second season gave us an updated look at Talos and the Talosians, and it’s possible that Pike may seek out their help and advice in order to save Una. The Talosians are incredibly powerful – hence the regulation banning all contact with their world – and may be able to use their illusory powers to aid Una, to convince the panel at her court-martial to rule in her favour, or even to help her escape. Talos IV could even become a shelter or home for Una.
Pike has a connection with the Talosians following the events of The Cage and Discovery’s second season, and he’s uniquely-placed to work with the Talosians. It could even be possible that Una will be forced out of Starfleet and will seek a new home on Talos IV, potentially being there to welcome Pike after his accident. Such a storyline could pave the way for Una’s departure from the show – and for Spock to step up and assume the role of First Officer.
Destination #2: Vulcan
An older T’Pol from an alternate timeline.
Who could Pike be looking for on Vulcan? Who might be able to help Una get around Starfleet rules and regulations? How about an aged T’Pol, the first Vulcan to work alongside humans in space? I really love the idea of Strange New Worlds bringing an Enterprise character into one of its stories, and as a long-lived Vulcan T’Pol has always stood out as the most logical choice. This could be a fun way to tie together two parts of the Star Trek franchise.
It would be a blast to learn more about T’Pol’s life after the events of Enterprise and the founding of the Federation. Did she continue her scientific work? Perhaps she took on a different role as a kind of ambassador. She could be held in high esteem as a respected elder statesperson, and her intervention on Una’s behalf could be the deciding factor in Una being able to remain in Starfleet. T’Pol also has experience with the Illyrians.
Destination #3: Vulcan (again)
A shuttlecraft touches down on Vulcan.
Season 1 reintroduced T’Pring, Spock’s betrothed. T’Pring worked with Vulcans whose emotions led them to commit criminal acts, and part of her role involved chasing down escapees and fugitives. As someone with experience in a somewhat relevant field, perhaps T’Pring might have some insight into Una’s case that Captain Pike believes could be useful.
This would be a different way to bring T’Pring back into the story. Rather than working closely with Spock, she could be assigned to Una’s case, working with her and Captain Pike. She and Captain Pike know one another at least a little, so it’s at least possible that he might value her judgement and believe that she could be of assistance.
Destination #4: Rigel VII
Rigel VII (or an illusion of it) as it appeared in The Cage.
We caught glimpses in one of the Strange New WorldsSeason 2 trailers of a planet that looked suspiciously like Rigel VII. It’s primarily for that reason that I’m including it on this list! But it’s possible that Pike may have met someone on Rigel VII who he believes is capable of helping Una – maybe a human settler or colonist rather than one of the planet’s aggressive Kalar warriors!
We don’t know a great deal about Rigel VII, nor what Pike was doing there prior to the events of The Cage. But with a return to the world potentially on the cards this season, it would be a mistake to rule it out at this stage.
Destination #5: Starbase 11
Starbase 11.
There’s someone at Starbase 11 who could potentially fit the bill for being someone capable of defending Una: Areel Shaw. In The Original Series first season episode Court Martial, Shaw was the prosecutor who handled Kirk’s case. As a woman, and someone involved in Starfleet’s legal division, Shaw could be the person Pike is looking for.
This could also be the way Kirk is introduced. We know Kirk will appear this season, and we know from The Original Series that Kirk and Shaw were romantically involved a few years prior to the events of Court Martial. Perhaps Kirk will prove instrumental in setting up Pike’s meeting with Shaw – or will contribute, somehow, to Una’s defence.
Destination #6: Illyria (or the Illyrian homeworld)
A 22nd Century Illyrian starship.
Una’s status as an Illyrian is what landed her in trouble in the first place. The Federation’s ban on genetic engineering also indirectly caused an entire colony of Illyrians to be wiped out, as the colonists wanted to purge themselves of their genetic engineering in order to apply for Federation membership. How will the Illyrians view this rather bigoted perception of their culture? Could an Illyrian be the key to Una’s defence?
I like the idea of Pike visiting Una’s homeworld and potentially meeting members of her family. We could learn why Una sought to join Starfleet and pose as a human instead of going into space on an Illyrian vessel, perhaps. Or there could be consequences for Captain Archer’s actions in Enterprise. And such a story could be an interesting analogy for how we view and interact with different cultures with different values out here in the real world.
Destination #7: The USS Cayuga
Alright, that’s not the USS Cayuga – but it’s the same class of starship!
The USS Cayuga is under the command of Captain Batel – the person who arrested Una. At the beginning of Season 1, she and Captain Pike appeared to be in a relationship of some kind, though she was soon ordered away to the Neutral Zone to begin her mission. Although Captain Batel was the one who ordered Una’s arrest, she did so reluctantly while following orders, and may be sympathetic to her cause.
It’s possible that Captain Pike will visit the USS Cayuga to enlist Captain Batel’s support for Una’s defence. We don’t know a lot about Captain Batel – perhaps she was once a lawyer or legal expert before being given her own command. It would be fun, in some ways, if the person responsible for Una’s arrest could also prove key to her defence!
Destination #8: Somewhere entirely new!
Where could it be?
I find myself saying this often on theory lists like these, but modern Star Trek has often wanted to chart its own path instead of relying on what came before. Whether we’re talking about characters, ships, storylines, or destinations as in this case, “something brand-new” is always a very likely contender!
Although we’ve had a bit of fun speculating about Pike’s possible destination, the truth is that it wasn’t something that The Broken Circle really set up as being a huge mystery. He could have mentioned the name of the person he wants to visit, or said his destination out loud – but it wasn’t strictly necessary for the story of the episode, and The Broken Circle didn’t really linger over this point for very long at all. In short, what I’m saying is that all of this theory-crafting and speculation could amount to nothing!
So that’s it!
Captain Pike.
We’ve looked at a few possible destinations for Captain Pike, and considered a few people he might be intending to seek out.
If I had to pick a favourite – a fantasy, really – I’d pick T’Pol. I just love the idea of bringing someone from Enterprise into Strange New Worlds, giving someone from that show an epilogue and catching up with them and their life years after we last saw them. Is it the most likely possibility? Well, no. And there are several reasons why. But as a pure fantasy idea, I think it could be brilliant.
Which option is the most likely is an awkward question on theory lists like these! But I guess I’d say that Captain Pike going to a brand-new location, or at least seeking out someone we’ve never met before, feels like the most likely course of action.
Details of Una’s case on a padd.
Regardless, I hope this was a bit of fun. It’s possible that a teaser or photos from the upcoming episode may reveal what’s going on with Captain Pike before we see it – but it’s also possible that this minor mystery will be kept under wraps until Thursday. I guess we’ll find out! Given that Pike is the captain of the Enterprise and Strange New Worlds’ main character, his absence this week was notable, and the fact that his destination was left unexplained prompted this bit of theory-crafting.
As a final note: I always like to end these theory posts by saying that I do this just for fun. I enjoy writing, I enjoy Star Trek, and spending more time in this world is an escape and an enjoyable distraction for me. But for some folks, fan theories can become frustrating or unenjoyable, especially if they get very attached to a plausible-sounding theory that ultimately doesn’t pan out. I have no “insider information” and I’m not trying to claim that anything suggested above can, will, or must be part of Strange New Worlds Season 2. I fully expect the season to go in wildly unpredictable directions!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2 are available to stream now on Paramount Plus in countries and territories where the service is available. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1 and 2. Spoilers are also present for Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek: Discovery, and Star Trek: Picard.
Welcome to the first of my Strange New Worlds episode reviews! Unfortunately, some truly idiotic decisions at Paramount blocked off Season 1 and prevented fans in most of the world from being able to (lawfully) watch it at the time it was broadcast, so for that reason I elected not to write individual episode reviews here on the website. But because Season 2 is more widely available, I intend to cover the series from this point forward. Individual Season 1 episode reviews/re-watches may also appear from time to time.
Strange New Worlds’ first season was probably the best thing I watched in all of 2022. The show was a wonderfully welcome return to an older, more episodic style of storytelling that I think is a perfect and natural fit for the Star Trek franchise. As I said in my spoiler-free review of the season, there really weren’t any episodes that I felt didn’t hit the mark last time around. Season 2 has a lot to live up to, then!
The Enterprise departs Starbase 1.
And on balance, I have to say that The Broken Circle was a decent continuation of the series. It arguably wasn’t as strong as the final two episodes of Season 1, which were both phenomenal, and I have some specific criticisms that we’ll get to. But in terms of entertainment value, I can tell you that I was gripped the entire time! The Broken Circle was an action-packed episode that started the season with a bang.
There are a couple of points of concern that were raised that kind of fall outside of the story told in this week’s episode, and I want to look at that before we get into the rest of the review. Where Strange New Worlds succeeded last time was in its blend of episodic storytelling with some character arcs and storylines that ran across multiple episodes. This modernised the format, allowing for the likes of Dr M’Benga’s story with his daughter or Captain Pike’s struggles with his impending accident to not be forgotten, but the focus was still very much on distinct and individual stories week-to-week.
Spock seems upset…
In contrast, The Broken Circle feels very much like “Part 1” of a larger, much more serialised story. Captain Pike took off on a mission to help Una, who’s on trial. Pike’s destination, who he plans to visit, and Una’s trial were all stories that were started briefly but then paused. La’an’s status as an ex-Starfleet officer was also set up, but left unresolved by the time the credits rolled. And most significantly, as the episode was drawing to a close we saw Admiral April and another senior Starfleet officer looking at a report of a possible Gorn incursion – something that is clearly setting up a story thread that the next episode or episodes will follow.
I’m not wild about this new direction, and it feels that Strange New Worlds has taken some big steps down a path much closer to serialisation. When the show’s semi-episodic format had been working so well, this change simply isn’t one that I’d have made – and while I’m not averse at all to the idea of character arcs, two-part stories, or even cliffhanger endings… the season premiere seemed to bring a lot of those serialised elements into play all at once, leading to it feeling like the first part of an ongoing story rather than a classic Star Trek episode that could be enjoyed as a purely standalone affair. That the episode leaned heavily on characters and storylines that had been set up in Season 1 only added to this feeling.
Is this the beginning of a season-long serialised story?
There will be time in the weeks ahead, though, to assess how far down this serialised path Strange New Worlds may venture in its second season. For now, we still have a lot to get stuck into from this week’s outing – and I have to say that it was a blast to welcome back the Klingons.
I wasn’t sure to what extent Strange New Worlds would make reference to Discovery’s Klingon War storyline, but this week’s story connected back to it in a very clever way. Nothing in Discovery was truly “required reading” to make sense of events in The Broken Circle, but for fans who recall Discovery’s first season, the connections were there. The story stood on its own two feet without relying too heavily on Discovery, and could be enjoyed by fans and newcomers alike as a result.
I liked what this episode did with the Klingons.
The Klingons in The Broken Circle were much closer, both visually and in terms of their actions and temperament, to how they appeared in much of Star Trek prior to the Kelvin timeline films. For fans who weren’t wild about those more recent depictions, that’s got to be seen as a positive thing! For me, I think there’s room enough in Star Trek for a more diverse and varied look at a familiar race like the Klingons – but I can’t deny that it felt incredibly fun to see them laughing and drinking bloodwine.
The idea of rogue humans and Klingons on a shared world seeking to re-start hostilities for profit was also a genuinely interesting idea, one that the episode did well to explore. Star Trek doesn’t always give us a look at the denizens of the galaxy outside of Starfleet or the main factions – but in a galaxy so vast, there are bound to be settlements like this one, populated by people who’d do anything to make themselves rich. This felt like a glimpse at that world – and it was genuinely interesting.
Cajitar IV is the kind of place Star Trek doesn’t always show us.
Building an entire starship underground felt like a bit of a stretch in some ways (and if this gang had the resources to do that, did they really need to start a war to make more money?) but it was a neat idea nevertheless. It was also a creative way to recycle some of the sets built for the Enterprise, and to get away with a very minimal redress! These sets, which were supposed to be part of the gang’s newly-minted ship, were integrated well into the story. Not every Star Trek episode in recent times has made good use of redressed sets, but on this occasion we can say that it worked well in context.
It was also neat to see a different kind of starship design, one that seemed to use a Crossfield-class saucer section but on a much smaller star-drive and with different nacelles. The Crossfield-class – famous, of course, for being the USS Discovery’s class – was even name-checked in the episode itself, which was neat. In some ways this design felt like an old-school “kit-bash;” a name used for starships that were often created out of spare parts or leftovers in the days when physical models were still used. Some well-known Star Trek ship designs started out life as kit-bashes!
I liked the “kit-bashed” design of the rogue ship.
On the negative side, I felt that Admiral April’s “request denied” was a rather paper-thin setup to the main storyline. We’ve seen in many Star Trek episodes how by-the-book admirals could be little more than bumps in the road, getting in the way of what our heroes needed to do. And this felt very much like that. April had a reason, namely that the Klingons would interpret any incursion to the shared world as an act of aggression, but didn’t seem at all willing to consider other ideas or alternative proposals – even though La’an’s message, as communicated by Spock, suggested that the situation was dire and that the Federation was in danger.
This was disappointing, and there were other ways to get the story to this shared planet without presenting April as a “badmiral” who was getting in the way. In fact, this entire section of the episode didn’t really get any kind of narrative payoff, with Spock’s decision to steal the Enterprise not seeming to give him much trouble, and with April dishing out what amounted to no formal consequences. It ended up feeling a bit artificial; some forced drama to up the stakes.
Spock and Admiral April.
While we’re talking about Admiral April, I’m not thrilled with where his story seems to be going. If there is to be some kind of Gorn conflict that could be interesting, but why present April as someone who has something to hide? It makes sense that any organisation would share information carefully, but the end of The Broken Circle seemed to be saying that April and one of his co-conspirators at Starfleet Command were deliberately concealing information and not sharing it with their crews in the field.
Perhaps this is something that will be resolved or paid off in a future episode – and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that! I don’t want to see someone like April – who seemed like a decent, upstanding officer last time around – in any kind of negative light. Discovery has done great things in its third and fourth seasons with Admiral Vance, bringing a wonderful character to screen as head of Starfleet. I’d very much rather see April go down that route instead of becoming a typical “badmiral.”
I wasn’t wild about the way April was presented here.
It was a very bold choice for the premiere episode of Season 2 to sideline Captain Pike. Every Star Trek season has episodes in which some characters are in focus and others are not, but Pike is not only central to Strange New Worlds – without him, and without Anson Mount’s incredible portrayal, the show wouldn’t have come to exist at all. So while the decision to send him off on his own little mission made perfect sense in-universe, it was a brave narrative decision by the writers and producers. And arguably a strange one, too.
Strange New Worlds is, for many folks, “the Captain Pike show.” Pike was present in all ten of the first season’s stories, and as the captain of the ship is a key part of the series. His absence gave Spock a turn in the captain’s chair for the first time – which was great to see, don’t get me wrong – but I can’t help feel that there must’ve been a way to include Pike in a larger way. Maybe I’d have chosen to restructure the season to place Pike’s solo adventure first, and then this episode second – just as one example.
I have a theory in the pipeline about who Pike may be going to visit – so stay tuned for that before the next episode airs!
Doing “the Captain Pike show” without Pike?!
Season 1 spent a fair amount of time with Spock, and looked at his inner conflict between his human and Vulcan sides. The Broken Circle threw Spock into a brand-new situation for him… and he didn’t necessarily react the way I’d have expected. This version of the character, perhaps inspired more by his adopted sister and their adventures in Discovery’s second season, seemed much quicker to break the rules when faced with opposition from Starfleet. If we hop over to the Kelvin timeline for a moment, in that reality, Spock told the unvarnished truth about Kirk in a written report and ended up getting him demoted. In The Original Series we could see Spock as a stickler for rules and protocol, too, often butting heads with Dr McCoy and others as a result. I don’t want to say he acted “out-of-character” here, because we are dealing with a younger Spock, a Spock who is still finding himself and finding his feet. But it’s certainly interesting to see how he behaved very differently from the man we might remember.
The theme of Spock’s conflicted nature and how he “isn’t like other Vulcans” came to the fore in The Broken Circle in more ways than one – and was arguably part of the episode’s resolution. Spock’s interaction with the Klingon captain was fun, and I enjoyed seeing him drinking bloodwine and finding an unorthodox route to peace.
Spock negotiated successfully with the Klingons.
This final part of the episode didn’t feel especially strong, however. The climax of the story arrived slowly, and The Broken Circle did a good job at building up its Klingon-human shadowy conspiracy. But the resolution to this conflict seemed to be rushed through, with both the Klingon commander standing down at the drop of a hat and Admiral April back at Starfleet HQ agreeing very quickly to overlook Spock’s actions.
This is something that I’d have liked to have seen a few more minutes dedicated to. We could have drawn out the standoff over the planet, with Spock and the Klingon commander talking around one another with the threat of war hanging over their heads. Seeing Spock handle this situation was great – but it didn’t last very long. And Admiral April gave Spock a pass for desertion, theft of the flagship, violating a peace treaty, and a dozen or more other crimes. Again, this was something that needed more time – especially as the payoff to April’s earlier intransigence.
A Klingon D-7 battlecruiser.
A character like La’an can fall into the trap of stereotyping, or can feel left out as writers don’t always know what to do with a security officer who doesn’t seem to have much by way of a softer side. So it was fantastic to see The Broken Circle really giving her something to do, and doing it in a way that felt natural for her. We saw her past experiences with the Gorn come to the fore in Season 1, and The Broken Circle built on that foundation, taking La’an away from Starfleet for a cause close to her heart.
Seeing her with Oriana really humanised La’an, showing that she can care for others and has more to offer than just her skills with a phaser. The only disappointing thing, as mentioned, was that The Broken Circle didn’t wrap up La’an’s leave from Starfleet one way or another. This is something that may come back into play if a more serialised story is unfolding, and there are sure to be plenty of ways an ex-Starfleet officer could be of use on “the outside,” but in terms of her character arc this week, the lack of a conclusive ending makes it feel like there was something missing from La’an’s story.
Oriana and La’an.
Where La’an’s story built on what had been set up last year, the stories of Dr M’Benga and Nurse Chapel sort of felt like they came out of nowhere. Of course we know about the Klingon War; that was discussed in the episode itself. But even in the recap at the beginning of The Broken Circle, it was noted that the Enterprise and her crew didn’t take part in the conflict. If that’s the case, it obviously means that Chapel and M’Benga came aboard later and did take part – but that was a little confusing and not particularly well-established.
I didn’t re-watch all of Season 1 prior to sitting down to watch The Broken Circle, so my ageing memory may be missing a trick, but I don’t recall either Dr M’Benga or Nurse Chapel discussing the war last season. I don’t think it necessarily matters in a big way, but it was undeniably something that I felt came out of the blue. It certainly succeeded at ramping up the tension as the pair were caught by the Klingons and trapped aboard the fake Starfleet vessel, but it wasn’t a point that felt particularly strong in terms of its setup. If I’m wrong, and if their prior service in the Klingon War was mentioned last year, then I’ll be happy to rescind this point of criticism!
Nurse Chapel and Dr M’Benga.
Being ejected into space is usually a death sentence in Star Trek – and in sci-fi in general! In Picard’s recent third season, a character was killed in precisely this way. So it was odd, in a way, to see Dr M’Benga and Nurse Chapel survive such a harrowing experience. I’m glad they did, of course, and the buildup to their being blown out into space was a tense and deeply emotional sequence. But it does feel a tad inconsistent with what we’ve seen in past Star Trek stories – and rather like the two were given some particularly heavy plot armour.
That being said, it was great to see Dr M’Benga and Nurse Chapel paired up for an adventure that took them outside of sickbay. They work incredibly well together and made a fun pair, and I hope we get to see more of them. It would be fun to explore their history, too – did they serve together during the Klingon War, as The Broken Circle seemed to imply? If so, what was that like? Are they still friends, or have their wartime experiences changed them and driven them apart? And the strange drug that Dr M’Benga keeps in his medical case… what is it? I wonder if it might be some kind of Section 31 invention.
Chapel and M’Benga were blasted out into space!
When we were first introduced to Commander Pelia, I confess I wasn’t particularly blown away. She’s replacing a character in Hemmer who I felt was hard done by in Season 1, and was someone I’d have liked to have had the opportunity to spend more time with. There was a uniqueness to Hemmer, not only as a blind character or as the first Aenar to be a major character on Star Trek, but as an avowed pacifist. We’ll have to deal with Hemmer’s wasted potential in more detail in a standalone piece one day, because there’s a lot more to say!
But suffice to say that I was impressed by Pelia’s chaotic energy, and the revelation that she’s a member of a previously-unseen species – one that is especially long-lived and that has lived amongst humans for a long time. Her connection with Spock’s family is also an interesting angle that The Broken Circle set up that I hope will be further explored in future stories.
Commander Pelia is a brand-new character for Season 2.
Pelia’s scenes on the bridge with Spock (and others) were cute, and I liked the way that she was dancing around what was going on without just coming out and saying it. And it was a fun subversion that this older, higher-ranking character who sussed out the truth didn’t immediately turn Spock in, but actually wanted to come along for the ride. That was fun, clever, and a somewhat unique way to introduce this new character.
Pelia has an almost child-like charm, despite being such a long-lived character, and I’m now especially curious to see her in an engineering setting. We only got the barest of glimpses of her in main engineering this week, but I’m sure she’ll have a lot to offer. It’s premature to be thinking about adding too many more characters, but the idea that Pelia might’ve been a mentor of sorts to Montgomery Scott is a fascinating one that I wonder whether the series might explore in future. Perhaps that’s an idea for Season 3, 4, or even 5!
Spock and Pelia have a connection already.
So I think that’s all there is to say for now. The Broken Circle was a solid start to Season 2 – albeit one that wasn’t quite at the level of the episodes that immediately preceded it. There were some contrivances in the story that left some moments feeling rather flimsy or too short, but overall I had fun with Spock and the crew of the Enterprise as they went off on an unsanctioned mission.
I’m curious to see whether some of the storylines set up or teased this week will turn Season 2 into a fully-fledged serialised affair, or whether they’ll be revisited in some other way. My hope is that Strange New Worlds can find a way to course-correct and return to the semi-episodic style that it employed so perfectly last time around. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2 are available to stream now on Paramount Plus in countries and territories where the service is available. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There may be minor spoilers ahead for some of the titles on this list.
Are you as excited for Starfield as I am? Bethesda’s upcoming sci-fi role-playing game had been on my radar, of course, but the recent showcase has absolutely got me hyped up! Although I’m trying to restrain myself and not get overexcited, especially with Bethesda’s track record and 2023 having already seen some truly awful game launches, I just can’t help myself! I want to play the game now now NOW!
So what’s a wannabe Starfield-er to do? With three months to wait until the game’s launch – assuming it won’t be delayed again – what should we play? Today I thought it could be a bit of fun to pick ten games that might scratch part of that Starfield itch!
I can’t wait to build and pilot my very own spaceship!
I’ve picked games for this list that are either in the sci-fi realm, the space-sim or space-adventure genre, the role-playing genre, or that have expansive open worlds. Those are the key traits that Starfield has, so it seems logical to look for games that exist in a similar space – even if they won’t be on the same scale!
As always, a few caveats. Hype can be a dangerous thing, and as I said in my recent look at Starfield, it’s a game that has firmly earned its place in the “wait for the reviews” category! I shan’t be pre-ordering it, and while I’d never want to tell anyone else what to do, I think it’s sensible in most cases to avoid pre-ordering games in order to see what state they’re in when they arrive. Such is the nature of the video games industry in 2023!
Ship customisation in Starfield. I cannot wait to get stuck into this!
Everything we’re going to talk about today is the subjective opinion of one person. If you don’t care about Starfield, if you hate all of the games on this list, or if I don’t include a title that seems blindingly obvious to you… that’s okay! There are myriad opinions on Starfield and video games in general, and all I’m trying to do is offer my personal suggestions for games to play while we wait.
I have no “insider information,” and I’m basing my list on information that has been publicly revealed about Starfield.
With all of that out of the way, let’s get started!
Game #1: X4: Foundations
Promo screenshot featuring a spaceship.
I have to confess that I’m not terribly familiar with either X4: Foundations or the X series as a whole. But looking in from the outside, X4: Foundations seems to have many of the space-based elements that players might be looking for in Starfield. It’s possible to become the captain of a ship, to trade with a variety of factions, and to participate in combat, piracy, and more. There are dozens of ships to control with different specialities, from small mining craft to large freighters.
X4: Foundations is the kind of game that looks quite complex, but could be a blast to really get stuck into. The X series has a dedicated community, and X4: Foundations has received four DLC expansions since its initial 2018 release, with more supposedly in the pipeline.
Game #2: The Outer Worlds
Box art for The Outer Worlds.
The Outer Worlds is smaller in scale than Starfield will be, but it brings many of the same elements to the table. Players have their own ship, can recruit companions for their quest, and can create a custom character. The game’s developers Obsidian once worked alongside Bethesda to develop Fallout: New Vegas, and some commentators hailed The Outer Worlds as Obsidian’s “spiritual successor” to that game.
Though The Outer Worlds is much more linear than Starfield aims to be, it’s still a ton of fun. Gunplay and combat are exciting, there’s an engaging main storyline, and some memorable characters to meet and interact with. A sequel is also in the works – but with Obsidian currently working on Avowed, it might not be coming any time soon!
Game #3: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
The city of Vivec in Morrowind.
If you have a PC and can play with mods, Morrowind can almost feel like a brand-new experience even more than twenty years on from its release. It’s a fantastic role-playing game, one that actually has a lot more to do than either of its sequels. There are some fantastically diverse locations to visit across its open world, a multitude of factions to join, and more side-quests than you can shake a stick at!
I played and adored Morrowind when it was first released in 2002, but to this day there are still quests I haven’t completed and skills I’ve yet to master – that’s how overstuffed with content this game is! Whether you want to be a sneaky assassin, a powerful wizard, a brawling brute, or anyone else you can imagine, you can do it in Morrowind’s fantasy world.
Game #4: Fallout 4
Promo art for Fallout 4.
Fallout 4 may not be Bethesda’s best-ever game, but it’s plenty of fun for what it is! Many of the in-game mechanics and systems that Starfield will employ are present in some form in Fallout 4, such as settlement-building. The game has an engaging main questline, and its post-apocalyptic setting has a unique Americana charm thanks to its ’50s inspiration.
There are several pieces of DLC for Fallout 4, too, two of which are major expansions that add new areas to the game world. For PC players there are also a ton of mods to get stuck into – including some absolutely massive ones that completely change the game and add new features. For my money, Fallout 3 is probably superior… but Fallout 4 is still fun to get stuck into.
Game #5: No Man’s Sky
Starships, a space station, and a suspiciously red sky!
I’ve seen a lot of commentators and analysts comparing Starfield with No Man’s Sky, and there are some superficial similarities. Both are space-adventures, both use procedural generation to create planets, and both have exploration, mining, resource collecting, and crafting elements. No Man’s Sky is a different kind of game, though, with a focus on exploration rather than factions, questing, and storylines.
This may be a bit of a “hot take,” but I felt that No Man’s Sky was decent when it launched. It wasn’t buggy or broken in the way some titles are, and the problem really was that expectations weren’t appropriately managed due to some poor marketing decisions. There’s definitely an element of dishonesty in the way the game was sold, too. But to the credit of Hello Games, No Man’s Sky has received a lot of ongoing support and free updates – and it’s now much closer to that original vision.
Game #6: Cyberpunk 2077
A combat encounter in Cyberpunk 2077.
Another game that suffered a rough launch was Cyberpunk 2077. Though I’d absolutely argue that its core gameplay is nothing special, Cyberpunk 2077 has a visually beautiful open world set in a sprawling dystopian city, and an engaging main story to follow. Non-player characters can be fantastic, brought to life with some great voice acting and motion-capture, and there’s fun to be had here.
By the time I got around to fully playing through Cyberpunk 2077, most of the worst bugs and glitches had been patched out. The game is in a much more stable and playable state today than it was when it launched, and it’s well worth a second look for anyone who hasn’t picked it up since then. An expansion pack, titled Phantom Liberty, is due for release the same month as Starfield.
Game #7: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (and Jedi: Survivor if it ever gets fixed)
Cal Kestis takes on the Empire.
I cannot in good conscience recommend Jedi: Survivor right now. At least on PC the game is in poor shape, with serious performance issues even on higher-end machines, and one questline that’s so utterly broken that it literally cannot even be played at time of writing. EA has been slow to respond to these issues, too. Once Jedi: Survivor is eventually fixed, however, I daresay I’ll get stuck into it! I just hope that the fix comes before September!
In the meantime, though, Jedi: Fallen Order is an exciting adventure game. Set in a galaxy far, far away, players get to take on the role of Cal Kestis, a former Jedi padawan, and join the crew of the Stinger Mantis on an adventure that spans several planets. It’s a great game with an incredibly fun story.
Game #8: The Mass Effect trilogy
Garrus!
The Mass Effect games are a blast – though the first entry in the series is beginning to show its age gameplay-wise. If only there’d been some kind of remaster that could have addressed those concerns… oh well! The original Mass Effect trilogy tells a phenomenal and engaging sci-fi story, and if you haven’t experienced it for yourself – or if it’s been a while since you last played – it’s definitely a great way to get ready for Starfield.
Some commentators have noted what they perceived to be similarities with Mass Effect in some parts of Starfield’s design. I confess that I don’t really see that, at least not in terms of the game’s visual style. But as another role-playing game in the sci-fi space, it’s not hard to see how Mass Effect may have been an influence on Bethesda.
Game #9: Star Trek Online
Promo art featuring Seven of Nine and Michael Burnham.
Oh, how I wish I could find a way to enjoy Star Trek Online! As a huge Star Trek fan, I really wanted to like this game and I gave it my best shot… but I just can’t get on with massively-multiplayer games for the most part. But if you can, or if the MMO scene is your jam, Star Trek Online could be worth a look. It has plenty of story missions to play, starships to buy and customise, and crew members that can be recruited. Quests can take place both in space and on the ground – and so can combat.
Bethesda once held the license to make Star Trek games, and I can’t help but feel that in another world we might be about to play Starfield Trek… or Star Trekfield! At the very least, I think it wouldn’t be totally unfair to say that there’s been some kind of Star Trek influence on Starfield, particularly with the exploration-focused Constellation organisation.
Game #10: Red Dead Redemption II
The great train robbery…
Bethesda executive producer (and Starfield’s director) Todd Howard compared Starfield to Red Dead Redemption II in a recent interview, suggesting that the depth of the game’s open world is comparable to Rockstar’s wild west masterpiece. If that’s even close to being true, we’re in for a whale of a time – because Red Dead Redemption II is one of the best games I’ve ever played.
Red Dead Redemption II has an incredible open world, packed with characters and locations that truly succeed at capturing the look and feel of the United States at the end of the 19th Century. It has some fun customisation, too, with weapons and outfits befitting the time period. The game’s story also packs an emotional punch!
So that’s it!
Swordfights on Pluto will have to wait…
I hope I’ve given you some ideas or inspiration for games to play over the next three months while we wait for Starfield with bated breath!
As I said at the beginning, this is a title that has rocketed up my list of most-anticipated games… and try as I might to slam on the brakes, the hype train has already left the station! Bethesda has a reputation for rough launches, and we’ve seen some recent disappointments from Xbox, too. There are reasons for scepticism – and I will certainly be checking out reviews and technical breakdowns before I commit to Starfield in September.
Firing a laser in Starfield.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to once again encourage Bethesda and Microsoft to consider delaying the game if it needs more time in the oven. Sure, it will be disappointing in some ways if Starfield can’t be ready for September… but I’d rather play it six months later in a better state than struggle to enjoy it because it was released prematurely.
So there really isn’t much more to say! I’m really excited to play Starfield, and I’ve been considering my options for games to play in the meantime while I wait. Though I included one title each from Bethesda’s Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, I tried to avoid making this list too lop-sided and too heavily-dominated by one company and one genre.
I had fun, anyway, and if even one person comes away from this list thinking to themselves “oh, I’d never have thought of that!” or “yeah, that seems like a good game to try,” then I’ll have done my job!
All titles discussed above are the copyright of their respective developer, studio, and/or publisher. Starfield will be released on the 6th of September 2023 for PC and Xbox Series S/X consoles. Some screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda and/or IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Although there are no major spoilers for Starfield’s main story, minor spoilers may be present – and this article includes screenshots and images of the game.
As part of Xbox’s big summer event – or rather, as a standalone addendum to it – Bethesda recently showed off the first proper deep dive into its upcoming role-playing shooter Starfield. The game is due for release in September, barring any further delays, and today I wanted to share my thoughts on how Starfield looks to be shaping up!
It’s been a while since we last took a look at Starfield here on the website. In fact, it’s been over a year since I last commented on the game at length – a piece that was prompted by news that it had been delayed. A single teaser trailer had been released since that announcement, but this showcase offers a much deeper and more expansive look at the game.
The game’s director and Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard spoke at the Starfield showcase.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t excited for Starfield – even more so knowing that it will come to Game Pass on day one. The game that Bethesda showed off and talked about looks fantastic, with a multitude of complex systems and mechanics to get stuck into, and an engaging retro-sci-fi story that I can’t wait to follow.
But at the same time, hype isn’t always a positive thing – and I’ve already seen players and commentators starting to speculate about unannounced features in the game, potentially setting themselves up for disappointment. I’m trying to restrain myself from doing the exact same thing; building up an image in my head of the “perfect” role-playing game that Starfield – and indeed no game – could ever possibly live up to.
Concept art for Starfield.
Bethesda’s games are fantastic. Morrowind in particular will be a permanent fixture on my “favourite games of all-time” list, and I’ve also enjoyed Bethesda’s other modern titles like Skyrim and their Fallout duology. But the company has a reputation, and mistakes have been made over the past few years that are absolutely worth bearing in mind before the Starfield hype train accelerates too much.
Fallout 76 was, for me at least, utterly unplayable. Forget the bugs, the glitches, and the crappy marketing – it was a role-playing game with no characters in it. To Bethesda’s credit they’ve been continuing to work on Fallout 76, but it was a mistake to launch the game in such an unfinished state. Fallout 4 also had its issues – particularly with bland and repetitive side-quests and open-world busywork. And we’d be remiss not to mention the fact that Bethesda’s publishing arm is responsible for such recent abominations as Redfall.
Fallout 76 was a big, empty game that had a very difficult launch.
Even Bethesda’s better titles have a reputation for being buggy at launch – and with Starfield being the company’s biggest release to date, the potential for bugs and glitches to sneak through quality control is off the charts! The game has been delayed from an initial November 2022 release, first to “the first half of 2023,” and then again to September. Delays are almost always good news – but there can be pressure to meet a deadline, especially one that’s been pushed back more than once.
I’d absolutely encourage Bethesda, Microsoft, and anyone who’ll listen to consider delaying Starfield again if the game needs it. The gameplay we got to see in the showcase looked smooth, fun, and bug-free – but any developer worth their salt can create a “vertical slice” of gameplay for a presentation like this. Until the game is actually in the hands of independent reviewers, analysts, and of course players, we won’t be able to say with certainty that it’s in a good enough state.
A mining laser as seen in the Starfield showcase.
There are other concerns I have, too. Bethesda has insisted on re-using their creaking, ageing game engine for Starfield. Creation Engine 2 is a modified, updated version of Bethesda’s old Creation Engine, itself a modified version of Gamebryo. In some form, Bethesda has been using this same technology since the Morrowind days, and I fear that we’ve already seen some of the limitations of Creation Engine 2 in the showcase itself. Look, for example, at the low-quality facial hair and beards present on some characters – this is a hallmark of Gamebryo/Creation Engine, as we’ve seen similar shortcomings in other Bethesda titles.
The Creation Engine was originally designed for role-playing games – not space combat or colony-building, two elements of Starfield that have been teased. Fallout 4′s settlement-building was good – but it had its limitations and could be clunky to work with, especially for new players. Spaceflight and ship-to-ship combat are entirely new for Bethesda in this context, and again there’s a concern about how well Starfield’s underlying technology can deal with that.
It’s an open question as to how well the Creation Engine can handle all of these new gameplay mechanics.
Then there’s the idea of procedurally-generated planets. Procedural generation will allow Starfield to be far larger than any hand-crafted game could ever be… but it has its limits. No Man’s Sky is the title many folks will call to mind when thinking of procedural generation in a space-adventure title, and while that game has pulled off an amazing recovery following a rocky launch… it’s not exactly a comparison that Bethesda would be thrilled to see.
There were a few moments in the showcase where I felt that player characters were gazing out over pretty barren, uninteresting landscapes and vistas. For all the proclamations of “if you can see it, you can go there,” if “there” is an empty wasteland, a barren patch of dirt, or a procedurally-generated mountain with nothing at all to see or do… then I’m sure I won’t be alone in saying I don’t think I’ll bother!
A beautifully-rendered but barren-looking planet.
This is perhaps another case of expectations being raised that can’t be met. Starfield may indeed have 1,000 planets to visit – but only a handful are going to be worth visiting, with solid missions, story content, non-player characters, and hand-crafted locales to explore. Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe Bethesda has found a way to take procedural generation to another level. I hope so! But I’m not convinced of that yet.
I was also not thrilled to see two things as the showcase drew to a close: a timed early-access release for players who pay an extra £25/$30, and talk of a “story expansion” already. Bethesda has created some wonderful expansions and pieces of DLC in the past for all of its games… but it’s premature to be talking about that at this juncture. Let’s worry about getting the game released first!
Starfield has a “digital premium edition” with extra content and early access.
There were also some pre-order exclusive costumes and outfits, and I sincerely hope that won’t be a trend that Starfield aggressively pursues. We’ve seen too many single-player, fully-priced games trying to sell microtransactions and cosmetic items via an in-game marketplace, and to me that kind of thing crosses a line. In a free-to-play title, sure. Go for it. But let’s not have that nonsense in Starfield.
So those are my negative takeaways from the showcase, and I wanted to get them out of the way up front! There are concerns about Starfield, and as excited as I am for the game, it’s another one that has firmly earned its place in the “wait for the reviews” column!
But there’s a lot more to say about Starfield, and I have some very positive impressions and takeaways from the showcase that I’d like to share now.
Concept art of a neon marketplace.
First of all, this game is giving me a “Star Trek-meets-Disney World-meets-old-school sci-fi” vibe! The positivity of Star Trek’s exploration-focused future seemed to be present, and as a massive Trekkie I’m all there for that! Bethesda once had the license to make Star Trek games, and I can’t help but feel that in another world we might be looking at Starfield Trek… or should that be Star Trekfield? Maybe one day Paramount will license a game like that! A fan can dream, eh?
If you’ve ever been to Disney World and ridden the likes of Spaceship Earth or visited Tomorrowland, maybe you’ll also pick up on the same feeling that I did. Perhaps it’s because of the aesthetic, perhaps it was the talk of humanity expanding into the stars, but something in the showcase absolutely harkened back to those Disney experiences for me – and I absolutely mean that as a positive thing.
Paging Mr Morrow…
Finally we have Starfield’s deliberately retro look and feel. Described by Bethesda as “NASA-punk,” this visual style takes NASA’s technology as a starting point and looks to a future inspired by those machines and devices – and their aesthetic – in much the same way as the Fallout games take the early ’50s as inspiration. I adore this look, and while there’s more to Starfield’s galaxy than just one visual style, it seems to fit perfectly with the game’s theme of exploration.
Each faction, locale, and/or area of the galaxy looks to have its own distinct aesthetic, too, which is fantastic. In Morrowind, and to an extent in Oblivion as well, different regions of the map and factions were distinct from one another with radically different styles of dress and architecture. This was far less visible in Skyrim, and while there were distinctive looks in Bethesda’s Fallout games too, by and large those titles had their own post-apocalyptic thing going on that tamped down at least some of the potential for creativity and diversity in terms of style. Starfield doesn’t have that – and it was fantastic to see different cities, different factions, and different characters with pretty diverse styles that complimented or clashed with the “NASA-punk” look of the main character and spaceship.
Starfield has a visual style that Bethesda calls “NASA-punk.”
Let’s talk a bit more about spaceships – because this is one area where I’m beyond excited. With the caveat above about the game’s engine being relatively untested in this area, the idea of building, customising, living aboard, and finding a crew for my very own starship is something I literally cannot wait to get stuck into. Starfield is making my knickers moist with anticipation; this is something I’ve been looking for in a game of this type for a long time.
I adore customisation options in practically any game, and there have been some fun games with base-building elements. Going way back, there are even games like Star Trek: Starship Creator, which, while limited by the technology of the time, were an absolute blast to get stuck into. But being able to build and customise a ship, recruit a crew, and then take that ship on untold adventures in a Bethesda sandbox… I can hardly think of anything more appealing in any video game that has ever been announced in the history of ever!
Spaceship!
At first it seemed as if this feature might be akin to Fallout 4′s settlement-building in the sense that it would feel tacked-on, and like a part of gameplay that could be sidelined or even ignored. And I suppose some players will choose to do the bare minimum when it comes to spaceship customisation, putting their focus into the story or into side-missions. But from what we saw in the showcase – and again, with the caveat that all of this is heavily-edited marketing bumf – it looks like the player’s ship is going to be an integral part of the game. Maintaining it, upgrading it, and finding a good crew will all have tangible effects on gameplay – making space battles easier to win and potentially even unlocking new areas of the galaxy and new planets to explore.
It seems as though there will be a choice of crewmates; this isn’t a Mass Effect situation where there are only handful of characters who could join the squad. Bethesda games have had companions in the past, but I usually found them to be quite limited in what they could do. If each member of the crew brings skills with them when they join up, that completely reframes the entire concept of companions – and makes it way more interesting. That at least some of these people can be found randomly out in the wild is even more enticing!
Ship customisation looks amazing.
My excitement about building my own starship extends to the colony/base-building feature, too. Again, this looks like a ton of fun, and provided that there are enough customisation options – and that things like colours can be changed inside as well as out – it will be an absolute blast to get stuck into. Being able to set up a base on a random planet or moon… again, I feel like this is as close as I’m ever going to get to living out my Star Trek/Disney/retro-sci-fi fantasy!
The game’s character customiser looked good – but as I said above, facial hair seems not to be as well-done in Starfield as we’ve seen it in other modern titles. That’s unlikely to affect my own custom character, but it’s worth noting regardless. I don’t think the character creator will quite match the likes of Cyberpunk 2077, which probably has the best on the market right now, but it should be a solid next-gen improvement over even Fallout 4, which had been Bethesda’s best to date. As long as I have a decent range of options to pick from, I daresay I’ll be satisfied!
The character creator. Note the low-quality facial hair.
Starfield will have two different kinds of combat: ship-to-ship in space and first/third-person on the ground. It can be difficult to tell from compressed video how well these will work, but the signs from the showcase were positive – at least as far as I can tell. Some of Starfield’s combat looked positively Doom-like – thanks, no doubt, to support from Doom developer (and fellow ZeniMax studio) id Software. Gunplay looked fast-paced and fluid, and I even caught a glimpse of some melee weapons in the mix, too.
Combat – and especially firearm combat – had been a bit of a concern. In the Fallout series, the VATS system, which essentially paused gameplay to allow for targeting, went a long way to covering up some decidedly average or even sub-par gunplay. This came to the fore with Fallout 76, which as an online multiplayer title couldn’t implement VATS in the same way. Gunplay in Starfield looks a million miles away from the lacklustre shooting seen in Fallout 76, which is fantastic.
Melee weapons are present in Starfield.
Ship-to-ship space combat reminded me of Everspace 2 and even No Man’s Sky in the way it appeared at the showcase. That’s a compliment – as both games are easy to get to grips with! For players who want to focus less on spaceship battles and more on piloting and exploration, or who see going to space as merely a way to travel to the next destination, ensuring that these combat sequences don’t feel awkward and annoying is a must. I can think of a fair few titles where these kinds of sequences could feel like they got in the way – and I hope Starfield won’t be one of them!
Having gone to all of the trouble of customising and stocking up my ship, it’ll be a treat to see it zooming around in space! If the ship-to-ship combat is as fun and fluid as the first-person shooting looks set to be, then I think this aspect of the game will be fantastic, too. Again, diversity and player choice are on full display here: piracy is an option, raiding other ships. Trading and even smuggling are available, too. And of course, exploration! It sounds like there will be a ton of different ways to use these ships – and yes, that’s ships plural, as it was confirmed that players can acquire more than one vessel.
A spaceship in orbit of a planet.
After the disappointment of Fallout 76′s big, empty world, it was phenomenal to see so many non-player characters milling around. Several of the locales shown off in the showcase look like big, bustling cities, filled to the brim with people. Smaller settlements also seemed to be populated, and as mentioned above, some of these characters can be recruited to join the crew. I don’t know how many potential crewmates there are, but it was implied to be a decent number.
Characters are at the heart of any story, and Bethesda has created some incredibly fun and memorable characters over the years. I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing what they’ve done in the sci-fi space, and all the different kinds of people we might meet. We’ve already seen some of the members of the Constellation organisation – but in a galaxy filled with corporations, pirates, colonists, independent worlds, and so on… there should be a lot of people to meet!
Sarah Morgan is one of the members of the Constellation organisation.
Starfield’s main storyline is still under wraps, but we got a few tidbits of information at the showcase. The Constellation organisation appears to be in decline, and the player character had a unique connection with an artefact of unknown origin – possibly created by ancient aliens. This idea seems like something that has the potential to be fun and engaging! But as with other Bethesda games, the main quest is sure to be only a small part of what Starfield has to offer.
I first played Morrowindmore than twenty years ago, shortly after it was released here in the UK. In that time I’ve returned to the game on multiple occasions – but I still to this day haven’t seen everything or beaten every side-quest. That’s the kind of scope we’re talking about here, and with Starfield promising to be Bethesda’s biggest game ever, there are bound to be factions to join, side-missions to complete, and entire quest lines that are of comparable length to the game’s main story. For many folks – myself included – this is the appeal of Bethesda titles, and thus is the true appeal of Starfield.
Who’s this and what’s his story?
All of the usual Bethesda skills and perks looked to be present in Starfield – along with plenty of new ones, too. Character customisation goes way beyond appearance, and from what we saw in the showcase, players are going to be able to really decide what kind of person they want to be in this sci-fi world – and what kind of gameplay they want to have! I noted options that build up stealth, physical attributes, weapons, engineering, piloting, charisma, and more. And as in any RPG, choosing one set of skills or perks will mean others aren’t available – making Starfield a game with huge replayability potential.
I like tinkering with stats in a good role-playing game, and I hope that Starfield’s skills and perks will be both fun to use and will have a meaningful impact on the game. Some games rightly attract criticism for skills and stats having little functional effect on gameplay – though Bethesda has usually managed to get this right. There were some interesting and unique-sounding skills and perks in the mix, too, including some that seemed to unlock potential characters, dialogue options, and story elements.
Part of the skills menu.
So we’ll have to wrap things up, because this is already running long!
I’m trying hard to suppress as much of my hype and excitement for Starfield as possible. Not only are there concerns about the game engine, Bethesda’s reputation for bugs and glitches, pre-order and monetisation shenanigans, and other things on the technical side, but there’s a very real danger that Bethesda is overplaying its hand. Starfield is being pitched as a kind of genre-busting, once-in-a-lifetime experience… and many players may find themselves falling back to Earth with a thud if the game can’t live up to those impossible expectations.
There are going to be limits to customisation, procedurally-generated locations that may be barren, bland, and less exciting than we’d hoped for, and constraints on what’s possible in terms of both gameplay and story. Both Bethesda and Xbox have track records of poor launches, with Fallout 76 being an unparalleled disaster in 2018, and Redfall being a total mess earlier this year. So there are solid reasons to place Starfield in the “wait for the reviews” category!
Concept art of an outpost or spaceship.
But at the same time, I can’t help myself. A friend of mine recently suggested that Starfield might just be “the best video game that either of us will ever play,” and I can’t argue with their assessment. If Starfield lives up to the hype and the expectations that Microsoft and Bethesda are setting, then it almost certainly will be one of my favourite gaming experiences of the last few years – if not of all-time. I’ve been waiting for a game like this; one that promises to be multiple games with multiple gameplay mechanics all rolled into one.
The showcase did its job, in my view. It succeeded at getting me incredibly excited for Starfield, a title that was already close to the top of my most-anticipated games list. Part of me is saying “please delay it if it needs it!” But another huge part of me wants nothing more than to get my hands on Starfield right now! I don’t think I’ve been this excited about an upcoming game since Morrowind.
Starfield will be released on the 6th of September 2023 for PC and Xbox Series S/X consoles. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. Some promo images and screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda and IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers are present for Cyberpunk 2077.
Although the game was blighted by an appalling launch and received plenty of thoroughly-deserved criticism – including from yours truly – Cyberpunk 2077 managed to pull off a somewhat decent recovery. The bugs and glitches have largely been fixed, and at time of writing, the game is in a playable state. Finally.
In fact, development on Cyberpunk 2077 has been going so well that CD Projekt Red is now ready to show off the game’s first major expansion: Phantom Liberty. The DLC will add a new area of the map, a new questline, new characters, and more. Fans of the game are already getting excited, and pre-orders for Phantom Liberty are now available. On Steam, the expansion has quickly become one of the platform’s top sellers – and that’s probably going to be the case on other platforms and storefronts, too.
But let’s cool our jets, shall we?
Motorbike versus mech.
Pre-ordering practically any game isn’t a good idea, especially if it’s a digital download with absolutely no danger of scarcity. The tactics corporations have resorted to in order to encourage pre-orders – like exclusive in-game content or even early access – are pretty shady, too. Pre-ordering made sense back when games were sold on cartridges or discs in brick-and-mortar shops on the high street, but it doesn’t any more.
And let’s not forget which game Phantom Liberty is an add-on for. Cyberpunk 2077 was broken to the point of being unplayable at launch, especially on last-gen consoles, and it took a long time for developers CD Projekt Red to get it running properly. Or, to put it another way: they released the game before they’d actually finished making it, and it took months of additional development time to actually do the job that should have been done before the game’s catastrophic launch in December 2020.
A mission in the base game.
I’m disappointed to see that Phantom Liberty is beginning to attract the same level of hype as Cyberpunk 2077 did. Have players learned nothing from what happened? Perhaps we’re all just gluttons for punishment, because if Phantom Liberty starts racking up pre-orders… then I don’t even know what to say. Players will deserve any and all future broken-at-launch, “release now, fix later” games.
I don’t hate Cyberpunk 2077. By the time I got around to playing it in full, the majority of its most egregious bugs and glitches had been fixed, and while the gameplay itself was nothing to write home about – and was actually outdated in more ways than one – it was a visually attractive title, its open world was densely-packed and fun to explore, and it had a solid, engaging story that I was happy to follow to its conclusion. While I wouldn’t ever rate it in my “top games of all-time,” it was decent. An above-average title for sure.
And if you want to know more about my own hands-on experience with Cyberpunk 2077, you can read my thoughts on the game by clicking or tapping here.
Johnny Silverhand looks out over Night City.
Additionally, when CD Projekt suffered a cyber attack in 2021, I even defended the company, saying that the hack it had fallen victim to was nothing to celebrate. So I hope you understand that I’m not approaching this topic as some kind of dyed-in-the-wool “hater” of either Cyberpunk 2077 or the corporation that developed and published it.
Instead, I’m trying to be the voice of reason! Outside of a very small number of cases, pre-ordering just isn’t a good idea any more. And when looking at the absolute abomination that was Cyberpunk 2077 when it launched, how anyone could think pre-ordering Phantom Liberty is a good idea is beyond me. If there was ever a release that warranted a “wait for the reviews” approach, it’s this one.
A marketplace.
I absolutely want Phantom Liberty to be good. The trailer was genuinely interesting, and while a “save the President” story isn’t exactly original, I’d be up for a return to the dystopian world that Cyberpunk 2077 built. Expanding the game’s map is a neat idea, too, and the trailer even seemed to tease some kind of tie-in with the main story. All of these things seem like they have potential.
But I won’t be pre-ordering Phantom Liberty. I won’t be picking it up on release day, either. Instead, I’m going to take the “wait and see” approach that CD Projekt Red has done so much to earn. If reviews look promising, and if the game launches in a bug-free state, I’ll absolutely consider picking it up this autumn. For £25 here in the UK (and I assume $30 or so in the US), it feels like a good buy – and one I can almost certainly find room for in my budget.
New characters Alex and Reed.
But that’s only if Phantom Liberty arrives without the problems that plagued Cyberpunk 2077. I’d hope that CD Projekt Red would have learned the lessons of that disaster – especially as it saw the company’s share price take a big hit. But companies are manipulative, and CD Projekt Red has a track record of lying and dishonesty that must be taken into account. The expansion was recently shown off at Summer Game Fest – but its trailer was carefully edited, and journalists and influencers who got their hands on the game only got to spend about an hour with it… and were only allowed to show off pre-made footage that CD Projekt Red gave them.
None of these points need to be problems on their own. But in the context of Cyberpunk 2077′s launch, I confess a degree of scepticism. I hope it’s entirely unwarranted – truly, I do. I want Phantom Liberty to be fun, exciting… and fully-playable. But I also wanted that of the base game, and the truth is that it took well over a year before it was in that position.
Before Cyberpunk 2077 had even released, I warned here on the website about the dangers of hype. I said then that I was certain that excitement for the game was out-of-control, and that CD Projekt Red’s marketing was failing to handle the situation appropriately. As we gear up for Phantom Liberty, let’s try not to repeat those mistakes.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty will be released on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series consoles in September, and the base game is out now. Cyberpunk 2077 is the copyright of CD Projekt Red. Some promotional screenshots and artwork courtesy of CD Projekt and/or IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 and the trailers and teasers for Season 2. Spoilers are also present for Star Trek: Discovery.
There are only a few days left until Strange New Worlds Season 2 arrives, and as the show’s marketing push ramps up we’ve been treated to two major trailers and a handful of additional clips. Today I thought it could be fun to take a look at what’s been revealed about the season so far, and share my thoughts on how Strange New Worlds looks to be shaping up.
On balance, Strange New Worlds Season 1 was probably my favourite television series of 2022. It was, in my view anyway, the best that modern Star Trek has had to offer, ditching the serialised approach taken by most projects since 2017 in favour of a return to a style of storytelling that felt much closer to the franchise’s roots. Its stellar cast was backed up by some fantastic writing, a beautiful score, elaborate sets that both harkened back to The Original Series while taking advantage of cutting-edge technology like the AR wall, and a combination of CGI and animation work with some incredible practical effects and puppets. It was fantastic across the board – with not a single one out of the first season’s ten episodes that I’d consider to be sub-par.
No pressure… but Season 2 has a lot to live up to!
Season 2 is almost here!
First of all, I can’t tell you how glad I am that the new season is arriving in June and didn’t follow last year’s dismal scheduling display. In 2022, Discovery, Picard, and Strange New Worlds all overlapped one another thanks to some truly moronic decisions at Paramount – scheduling decisions that contributed to Strange New Worlds’ first season not being available here in the UK. I will give credit where it’s due and note that in 2023, Paramount is doing a much better job with scheduling Star Trek. There’s been a decent break since Picard’s finale, and breaks like that are good and healthy for any franchise.
But enough about all of that! We’ve already caught a glimpse of Number One on trial – something that was set up right at the very end of Season 1 when she was taken into custody by Starfleet security personnel. Star Trek can do courtroom drama exceptionally well, and while it feels like a safe bet that Una won’t be unceremoniously kicked out of Starfleet… how we get to that point and what role Pike and the others might play feels like it has the potential to be high-stakes entertainment at its very best.
Una on trial.
As an aside, I was a little disappointed to note in this sequence that the redress of Discovery’s Federation HQ set felt nakedly obvious. There are a handful of examples in modern Star Trek where this has happened – the Ba’ul prison cell in Discovery Season 2 being one example that leaps to mind – but as Paramount has pumped more money into the franchise and Star Trek has continued to expand, it’s something I’d hoped to see less of.
In Discovery’s first couple of seasons, this same sound stage was used to depict the USS Shenzou and Georgiou’s Section 31 vessel, so the same set can be used in different ways. Here, though, the redress doesn’t feel quite as extensive, and I see too many elements from the 32nd Century’s Federation HQ present in the court-martial set. Here’s hoping that the story itself will be too tense and dramatic to make its setting much of an issue!
Fire phasers!
When Discovery premiered in 2017, the redesign of the Klingons became something of a sore spot in parts of the fan community. The Strange New Worlds trailer prominently shows off Klingons in their much more familiar style – closer to their post-Motion Picture appearance than anything we’ve seen since Enterprise went off the air (or since Worf appeared in Picard’s third season). I daresay that’ll make some folks happy!
The Klingons are fantastic, and an absolutely iconic part of the Star Trek franchise. Discovery’s first two seasons prominently featured Klingon characters and storylines, and Klingon characters have also cropped up in Lower Decks, but this will be the first time in several years that we’ll get at least one Klingon-focused live-action episode.
A Klingon.
I’ll be particularly interested to see whether and to what extent Strange New Worlds will reference Discovery’s Klingon War storyline. This new season takes place in between Discovery and The Original Series, an era in which the Federation and Klingons should be maintaining a kind of uneasy peace. Spock certainly appeared to be on good terms with the Klingons in the clips we saw; will they know he’s the brother of the human who started the war? Will the war even be mentioned at all, or will Strange New Worlds simply step over this relatively recent addition to canon? Lieutenant Ortegas mentioned something about “the war” in one of the clips, so it’s possible it will at least be made reference to.
The Klingons need to be handled with care. When you think about how many appearances Klingons have made across the history of Star Trek, and the extent to which we’ve gotten to know about Klingon culture and history, making too many changes – especially in a time period so close to The Original Series – could be offputting. However, what we can see seems, if anything, to be a step closer to familiar canon and a move away from at least the aesthetic presentation of the Klingons that Discovery and the Kelvin films employed. That could be a positive thing… or it could be something neutral! I’ve never really had much of an issue with the Klingon redesign – and I liked some of what I perceived to be an “Ancient Egyptian” influence in some of Discovery’s Klingon designs.
Spock drinking bloodwine with the Klingons.
It looks like the Gorn are also coming back! The Gorn played a role in two of Season 1’s most action-packed episodes, and overall I like what Strange New Worlds has done with this relatively unknown Star Trek faction. Giving the Gorn more of a Xenomorph-inspired horror vibe has taken the series in a completely different direction, and any story with the Gorn is sure to be tense, dramatic, and exciting!
Several clips seemed to show Captain Pike (and others) getting into combat – and I could be wrong, but it looked like they were fighting the same kind of warriors that we saw in The Cage. If so, that could mean that a return to Rigel VII is on the agenda – though why, exactly, is still unclear. It could just be a coincidence, but the way it looked certainly felt familiar.
Captain Pike on an away mission.
There were several romantic moments glimpsed particularly in the second trailer. Pike and Una shared a kiss, as did Spock and Nurse Chapel. My first thought on seeing those clips was that we could be in for an episode inspired by The Naked Time and The Naked Now, with some kind of technobabble explanation for lowered inhibitions or misbehaviour among members of the crew. I could be wrong about that – it’s just a guess!
Pike and Una would make an interesting couple – but there’d be an element of tragedy with Pike’s future once again set in stone. We don’t know what became of Una after the events of Strange New Worlds, but it seems unlikely that she’d follow him to Talos. A doomed romance could be on the cards, perhaps, or one that deals with themes comparable to The Next Generation Season 6 episode Lessons – a story in which Captain Picard had to wrangle with the idea of becoming romantically involved with someone under his command.
Pike and Una sharing a kiss.
Spock, though, is a character who needs to be handled delicately. We know a great deal about Spock’s life, including his romantic entanglements – and lack thereof. Spock’s also a character who’s been messed with a lot, with retcons and additions complicating one of the Star Trek franchise’s most beloved and iconic characters. There’s room to make additions, don’t get me wrong, but internal consistency is important – and if we’re to buy into the idea of this Spock being the same man as we see in The Original Series, the films, The Next Generation, and into the Kelvin timeline… he needs to be handled with care.
As an aside, Spock is a character who has often been discussed in an asexual or ace-adjacent context. As someone who is asexual, I’ve always found something relatable in Spock’s presentation. Though he would have romantic attachments, and he would go through a biological mating cycle, outside of a mere handful of few episodes Spock can feel like a very relatable character for people on the asexual spectrum. Season 1 already introduced us to Spock’s betrothed, T’Pring, and adding an ongoing relationship – or even a one-night stand – with Nurse Chapel into the mix would risk detracting from an important character. Again, Spock needs to be handled with care, and there are a couple of points of concern that the trailers raised in that regard.
Spock in the captain’s chair.
Another potential pair who need to be handled carefully is La’an and James T. Kirk! Although Paul Wesley put in a thoroughly fantastic performance as Kirk at the end of Season 1, this came in a sequence set in The Original Series era, years after the events of Strange New Worlds. I confess a degree of scepticism when I saw Kirk on the transporter pad, and while he can be integrated into the series in a way that perfectly fits with everything we know about him and his background… I’m just not sure it’s something I’d have done.
That being said, there are some incredibly enticing possibilities that come along with Kirk’s inclusion. We’ve never seen how Kirk and Spock met in the prime timeline, for example, and whether this will be their first meeting or whether they’ll be catching up after being buddies at the Academy, it could be fascinating to learn more about how they came to become such close friends. There’s also the potential to see a younger Kirk working with Pike and Number One, with the building blocks of his own leadership skills being formed and honed. Again, this feels like something worth seeing.
James T. Kirk.
But as with Spock, there are pitfalls. Kirk never mentioned serving with Pike, nor did he seem especially close to the Enterprise’s former captain during the events of The Menagerie – which should rule out any kind of close bond or mentor relationship between the two men. More significantly, though, is Kirk’s run-in with La’an – something that Una seemed to pick up on.
Kirk’s encounter with Khan – the original Khan – is legendary. The Wrath of Khan is one of the best films ever made, with even non-Trekkies rating it very highly. There’s limited room for manoeuvre here, and bringing Kirk into close contact with another member of the Khan family years before his run-in with the man himself is something that has the potential to undermine or detract from that wonderful story. A friendly meeting could be fine… but pairing these two up for a long period of time would almost certainly cross a line.
La’an seems fascinated with Kirk…
Well, all that’s left is to talk about that crossover!
When the Lower Decks crossover was announced, I felt it was a really fun idea. And from what we’ve seen of it in the trailers, Boimler and Mariner’s visit to the Enterprise looks absolutely fantastic. The details of the story – including how and why Mariner and Boimler might end up on the Enterprise – are still under wraps, but it looks like they’ll get to meet both Pike and Spock… something that Boimler in particular will clearly adore.
The Lower Decks uniforms look great in live-action, and it’s amazing how closely actors Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid resemble their characters. I was already feeling excitement at the prospect of Star Trek’s first major crossover of the current era – but having caught a glimpse of it, now I can’t wait!
Mariner and Boimler will appear in live-action for the first time.
So Strange New Worlds is almost upon us! Season 1 was fantastic, although it was sadly tainted by Paramount’s indefensible decision to only broadcast it in the United States at first. But Season 2 looks set to continue this fun, retro Star Trek series. There were plenty of smaller clips or images seen in the trailers that both harken back to Star Trek’s past and look to be telling brand-new stories, and above all, I’m excited to see a continuation of Strange New Worlds’ episodic style of storytelling.
When the series lands next week I’ll do my best to keep up with weekly episode reviews. I wasn’t able to do that for Season 1 with the series “officially” unavailable to me – but beginning with Season 2 I hope you’ll join me for my thoughts and my take on each of the season’s ten episodes.
I hope this was a fun look ahead!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 will be broadcast on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the service is available. Season 1 is available to stream now. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for all three seasons of Star Trek: Picard – including the series finale and post-credits scene.
For a series that only ran to thirty episodes across three seasons, Star Trek: Picard spent a lot of time overwriting itself! Across all three seasons of the show there were these weirdly contradictory moments where new storylines would appear from nowhere, completely changing what came before. One or two of these instances might pass by relatively unnoticed, or could feel like little more than nitpicks. But for a relatively short series to have so many… it speaks to something bigger, I feel.
I hope in future we’ll get a Chaos on the Bridge-type of documentary or exploration of what went on behind-the-scenes on Star Trek: Picard, because to say that production was “difficult” feels like an understatement. There were clearly major problems on the production side of the series, and I don’t just mean its pandemic-enforced delays. The evidence for this is the contradictory nature of the series itself, and how at the very least there was clearly no overall plan for how the story should be structured. Consistency is an important element of any good story – and Picard absolutely fails on that measure.
Seasons 2-3 showrunner Terry Matalas with Sir Patrick Stewart and the rest of the cast of The Next Generation.
I have a longer piece in the pipeline about Picard’s abandoned and unfinished storylines, but today I thought it could be interesting to take a short look at ten storylines that ended up being overwritten by some pretty sloppy, messy writing that failed to build on the foundations that had been laid in earlier episodes and seasons.
As always, a few caveats. If you loved all of these stories and felt they were perfectly-executed, or if you hated the original setup and feel that it was right and fitting to overwrite or ignore it, that’s okay! We all have different opinions about what makes for a good Star Trek story, and I’m not trying to claim that I’m somehow objectively right and that’s the end of the affair. In several cases, I’d actually agree that the overwrite or retcon was better than what had been previously established. This is all just the opinion of one old Trekkie, and as I always say, there ought to be room in the Star Trek fan community for polite discussion and disagreement! Although I have my issues with Picard, particularly when it comes to the show’s second season, by and large I’m a fan not a hater.
So with all of that out of the way, let’s take a look at some of Picard’s weirdly contradictory storylines.
Contradictory story #1: Seven of Nine is a captain! Oh wait, no she isn’t…
Seven in the captain’s chair at the end of Season 2.
At the end of Season 2, Seven of Nine was breveted into Starfleet by Picard as Captain of the Stargazer. This story point was already a bit… odd. Firstly, it raises the question of why, if offering a brevet position to someone outside of Starfleet is so simple, Admiral Janeway didn’t do that for Seven years ago. It also seemed unnecessary, as with Picard on the bridge, the Stargazer already had a senior officer present who could give orders.
But this already flimsy setup ended up being overwritten by the very next episode – when Seven was bumped down to the rank of commander and found herself serving as first officer of the Titan. There are a lot of contradictions in Picard, but this one feels even more peculiar because it’s something that literally changes from one episode to the next – episodes that, in spite of being one season apart, were produced and filmed at the same time.
Contradictory story #2: Data’s dead. Deader than dead. Lol jk, he’s alive again!
Data awaits his final shutdown.
One of the few redeeming features of the two-part Season 1 finale was the laying to rest of Data, and giving him the emotional send-off that Nemesis didn’t have time to do justice to. It went a long way to making up for other deficiencies in the rushed and muddled end to Season 1, and the sequences with Picard and Data in the “digital afterlife” were powerful and deeply emotional.
But despite Data being as dead as it’s possible to be in Star Trek, with both his physical body and the surviving part of his consciousness having been destroyed and shut down respectively, Season 3 resurrected Data. We’ll have to go into this storyline in more detail in the future, because there’s a lot more to say. But for me, Data’s resurrection never really found a narrative justification, and it felt like the showrunner and writers wanted desperately to reunite the cast of The Next Generation – at any cost.
Contradictory story #3: Welcome aboard the Stargazer! Wait, I mean the Titan…
The USS Titan.
In Season 2, the ship that Picard and co. didn’t spend enough time aboard was the USS Stargazer. In Season 3, they jumped over to the Titan – even though the sets were all the same (with a few minor tweaks here and there). I don’t really understand why this happened. What was the point of setting Season 3 aboard a nominally different starship? The exact same setup could have brought Riker and Picard to the Stargazer as it did to the Titan.
If the two ships had significant aesthetic differences, maybe it would be okay. And compared with some of the other points on this list, I admit it’s relatively minor. But it still feels odd to introduce the new Stargazer, build CGI models for it, and only use it in one-and-a-bit episodes.
Contradictory story #4: Q’s dying… oh wait, no he isn’t.
Q at the end of Season 3.
I know what you’re thinking: Q already explained his “return” by telling Jack Crusher not to think about time in a linear fashion. While that’s a perfectly rational in-universe explanation for Q’s return at the end of Season 3, it doesn’t get around the fact that Q, whose death was such a vital part of the entire plot of Season 2, is a profoundly odd choice of character to use for that one epilogue scene.
Picard’s writers pinned the convoluted and disappointing story of Season 2 on Q, and Q’s entire motivation was his imminent death. To undo that – even if there’s a technical explanation for it – only a few episodes later feels wrong. It undermines the already-weak story of Season 2 and makes me wonder what the point of it all was.
Contradictory story #5: The Borg are back! The Borg are back! The Borg are back!
A Borg Cube.
However you look at it, and whatever nitpicky excuses there may be about who are and aren’t the “real” Borg, there’s no getting away from the fact that across its three seasons, Picard re-introduced the Borg three times. All three of the stories rely, either in whole or in part, on the Borg, and while Picard himself has a connection with the Borg after the events of The Best of Both Worlds and First Contact… there’s a whole galaxy out there filled with alien races that the show’s writers and producers could have used.
While Season 3’s Dominion/changeling rug-pull is probably the worst example of this, it really speaks to a broader problem with the show’s production. Picard’s writers, especially in Season 3, were unwilling to abide by what the show had already set up. The Borg are great fun, don’t get me wrong, but by the time we got to yet another Borg story in Season 3, I was feeling burned out.
Contradictory story #6: The mysterious anomaly has set up a fascinating story! Let’s never mention it again.
Led by the Borg, a Federation fleet stops the anomaly.
The story of Season 2 was bookended by a mysterious anomaly that the Jurati-led Borg faction believed could be an attack against the Alpha Quadrant. Once the anomaly had been stopped, the Jurati-Queen promised to take her Borg faction and stand watch over the anomaly as a “guardian at the gates.” Her Borg faction were even granted provisional membership in the Federation as they did so.
This story felt like it had huge potential. Who could have been powerful enough to create a weapon on that scale? How would Picard and his friends be able to defeat them? What would it be like to see a Federation-Borg alliance? But alas, this storyline was dumped, orphaned, and never mentioned again. Was no explanation ever written? Why end Season 2 on this cliffhanger if it was never going to be resolved?
Contradictory story #7: Soji’s a massively important character… let’s dump her.
Promo photo of Isa Briones as Soji.
Soji played a huge role in Season 1, serving as both the reason for Picard’s mission and later as someone who needed to be talked down from making a mistake. We spent a lot of time with her in the show’s first season, watching as she was manipulated by Narek, as she learned the truth of her own origin and who her people were, and as she came to work with and respect Picard.
It was disappointing that Soji was essentially forgotten after the end of Season 1, with a barebones cameo appearance and nothing more. Isa Briones got to play a minor role in Season 2 as the daughter of antagonist Adam Soong, but this storyline was samey and boring. As a new, young character – and a synthetic life-form – Soji had huge potential. It’s such a shame that a role couldn’t be written for her after Season 1.
Contradictory story #8: Picard has a new relationship with Laris! No wait, Laris has fucked off and now he has a kid with Dr Crusher.
Laris and Picard at the end of Season 2.
The entire story of Season 2 – its raison d’être, at least according to Q – was that Picard was alone, prevented by his childhood trauma from being able to find love. At the end of the season, after ten episodes of shenanigans in the 21st Century, Picard finally returned to his vineyard – and to Laris. The two seemed ready to embark upon a new relationship together.
But nope! Laris made a small cameo appearance at the beginning of Season 3, and was never mentioned again. Picard’s story in Season 3 focused on his past relationship with Dr Crusher, a relationship that led to him having a son he’d never met. The season’s epilogue even showed Picard and Dr Crusher jointly escorting their son to his first Starfleet assignment – with Laris nowhere to be found. As I said above: Season 2 was already a weak, flimsy story. Undermining its ending like this was a poor decision.
Although I wasn’t thrilled to see Elnor killed off in the first half of Season 2, as time went on, it seemed to be working. Raffi’s story of coming to terms with loss and grief was one of Season 2’s stronger elements, and while I would’ve still said I was disappointed in Elnor’s wasted potential, at least his loss had mattered. Until it was all undone with seconds to spare.
If Elnor had a major role to play in Season 3 – and there was absolutely space for him – then I could at least have understood this reversal. But after Elnor was resurrected, he got one very brief scene in which he looked confused on a viewscreen, and another in which his dislike of a beverage made him the butt of a joke. After that, Elnor disappeared from Picard never to be seen or mentioned again. What was the point? Why undo a powerful story for the sake of an overdone sight gag?
Contradictory story #10: Riker and Troi are happy and settled on Nepenthe. Just kidding, they hate it there.
Picard approaches Riker’s outdoor kitchen.
Nepenthe might be my favourite episode of Season 1. It slowed things down, stepped away from some of the drama, and reintroduced us to Riker and Troi – now happily married and living peacefully outside of Starfleet. In spite of the loss of their son, Riker and Troi seemed settled on Nepenthe with their daughter in a home that was important to their son and their family. It was a surprise, to say the least, when Season 3 tried to undo all of that.
In the episode Surrender, Riker and Troi were reunited as captives aboard Vadic’s ship. And while imprisoned, they both spoke about how they hated the “creaky old cabin” that had been their home. The end of the season implied that one or both of them may be back in Starfleet, and all the emotional storytelling present in Nepenthe was taken away.
So that’s it!
Dr Jurati on stage in Season 2.
Although there were some interesting stories – and some complete ones – overall, it’s not unfair to call Star Trek: Picard a contradictory series, one that either intentionally or unintentionally overwrote or ignored key characters and storylines. We’ll talk about some of these in more detail on another occasion, but for now I think we’ve covered the basics.
Picard was clearly a troubled production, one that jumped from one writing and production team to another, and that’s part of why the series as a whole feels so contradictory. I think I could overlook one or two of these things – and I might even support the decision to drop a character or change a storyline that wasn’t working or that failed to resonate with audiences. But for a series that ran to a mere thirty episodes across three seasons… we shouldn’t be able to pull out ten large contradictions like this.
Stay tuned, because I have a lot more to say about Picard even though the series has concluded! A longer retrospective is in the pipeline, and I’ll also be taking a look at abandoned and unfinished storylines, too.
Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in the United States and other countries and territories where the service is available, and on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and around the world. The Star Trek franchise – including Picard and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
A couple of years ago, I put together two lists of things I really dislike about modern video games – but somehow I’ve managed to find even more! Although there’s lots to enjoy when it comes to the hobby of gaming, there are still plenty of annoyances and dislikes that can detract from even the most pleasant of gaming experiences. So today, I thought it could be a bit of fun to take a look at ten of them!
Several of these points could (and perhaps one day will) be full articles or essays all on their own. Big corporations in the video games industry all too often try to get away with egregiously wrong and even malicious business practices – and we should all do our best to call out misbehaviour. While today’s list is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, there are major issues with the way big corporations in the gaming realm behave… as indeed there are with billion-dollar corporations in every other industry, too.
Gaming is great fun… but it has its annoyances!
That being said, this is supposed to be a bit of fun. And as always, I like to caveat any piece like this by saying that everything we’re going to be talking about is nothing more than one person’s subjective take on the topic! If you disagree with everything I have to say, if you like, enjoy, or don’t care about these issues, or if I miss something that seems like an obvious inclusion to you, please just keep in mind that all of this is just the opinion of one single person! There’s always room for differences of opinion; as gamers we all have different preferences and tolerance levels.
If you’d like to check out my earlier lists of gaming annoyances, you can find the first one by clicking or tapping here, and the follow-up by clicking or tapping here. In some ways, this list is “part three,” so if you like what you see, you might also enjoy those older lists as well!
With all of that out of the way, let’s jump into the list – which is in no particular order.
Number 1: Motion blur and film grain.
Film grain and motion blur options in Ghostwire Tokyo.
Whenever I boot up a new game, I jump straight into the options menu and disable both motion blur and film grain – settings that are almost always inexplicably enabled by default. Film grain is nothing more than a crappy Snapchat filter; something twelve-year-olds love to play with to make their photos look “retro.” It adds nothing to a game and actively detracts from the graphical fidelity of modern titles.
Motion blur is in the same category. Why would anyone want this motion sickness-inducing setting enabled? It smears and smudges even the best-looking titles for basically no reason at all. Maybe on particularly underpowered systems these settings might hide some graphical jankiness, but on new consoles and even moderately good PCs, they’re unnecessary. They make games look significantly worse – and I can’t understand why anyone would choose to play a title with them enabled.
Number 2: In-game currencies that have deliberately awkward exchange rates.
Show-Bucks bundles in Fall Guys.
In-game currencies are already pretty shady; a psychological manipulation to trick players into spending more real money. But what’s far worse is when in-game currencies are deliberately awkward with their exchange rates. For example, if most items on the storefront cost 200 in-game dollars, but I can only buy in-game dollars in bundles of 250 or 500. If I buy 250 in-game dollars I’ll have a few left over that I can’t spend, and if I buy 500 then I’ll have spent more than I need to.
This is something publishers do deliberately. They know that if you have 50 in-game dollars left over there’ll be a temptation to buy even more to make up the difference, and they know players will be forced to over-spend on currencies that they have no need for. Some of these verge on being scams – but all of them are annoying.
Number 3: Fully-priced games with microtransactions.
The in-game shop in Diablo IV.
If a game is free – like Fortnite or Fall Guys – then microtransactions feel a lot more reasonable. Offering a game for free to fund it through in-game purchases is a viable business model, and while it needs to be monitored to make sure the in-game prices aren’t unreasonable, it can be an acceptable way for a game to make money. But if a game costs me £65 up-front, there’s no way it should include microtransactions.
We need to differentiate expansion packs from microtransactions, because DLC that massively expands a game and adds new missions and the like is usually acceptable. But if I’ve paid full price for a game, I shouldn’t find an in-game shop offering me new costumes, weapon upgrades, and things like that. Some titles absolutely take the piss with this, too, even including microtransactions in single-player campaigns, or having so many individual items for sale that the true cost of the game – including purchasing all in-game items – can run into four or even five figures.
Number 4: Patches as big as (or bigger than) the actual game.
No patch should ever need to be this large.
This one kills me because of my slow internet! And it’s come to the fore recently as a number of big releases have been buggy and broken at launch. Jedi: Survivor, for example, has had patches that were as big as the game’s original 120GB download size – meaning a single patch would take me more than a day to download. Surely it must be possible to patch or fix individual files without requiring players to download the entire game all over again – in some cases more than once.
I’m not a developer or technical expert, and I concede that I don’t know enough about this topic on a technical level to be able to say with certainty that it’s something that should never happen. But as a player, I know how damnably annoying it is to press “play” only to be told I need to wait hours and hours for a massive, unwieldy patch. Especially if that patch, when fully downloaded, doesn’t appear to have actually done anything!
Number 5: Broken PC ports.
This is supposed to be Joel from The Last Of Us Part 1.
As I said when I took a longer look at this topic, I had hoped that broken PC ports were becoming a thing of the past. Not so, however! A number of recent releases – including massive AAA titles – have landed on PC in broken or even outright unplayable states, plagued by issues that are not present on PlayStation or Xbox.
PC is a massive platform, one that shouldn’t be neglected in this way. At the very least, publishers should have the decency to delay a PC port if it’s clearly lagging behind the console versions – but given the resources that many of the games industry’s biggest corporations have at their disposal, I don’t see why we should accept even that. Develop your game properly and don’t try to launch it before it’s ready! I’m not willing to pay for the “privilege” of doing the job of a QA tester.
Number 6: Recent price hikes.
It must be some kind of visual metaphor…
Inflation and a cost-of-living crisis are really punching all of us in the face right now – so the last thing we need are price hikes from massive corporations. Sony really pissed me off last year when they bragged to their investors about record profits before turning around literally a matter of weeks later and announcing that the price of PlayStation 5 consoles was going to go up. This is unprecedented, as the cost of consoles usually falls as a console generation progresses.
But Sony is far from the only culprit. Nintendo, Xbox, Activision Blizzard, TakeTwo, Electronic Arts and practically every major corporation in the games industry have jacked up their prices over the last few years, raising the basic price of a new game – and that’s before we look at DLC, special editions, and the like. These companies are making record-breaking profits, and yet they use the excuse of “inflation” to rip us off even more. Profiteering wankers.
Number 7: The “release now, fix later” business model is still here.
The player character falling through the map in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
I had hoped that some recent catastrophic game launches would have been the death knell for the “release now, fix later” business model – but alas. Cyberpunk 2077 failed so hard that it got pulled from sale and tanked the share price of CD Projekt Red… but even so, this appalling way of making and launching games has persisted. Just in the first half of 2023 we’ve had titles like Hogwarts Legacy, Redfall, Jedi: Survivor, Forspoken, and The Lord of the Rings: Gollum that arrived broken, buggy, and unplayable.
With every disaster that causes trouble for a corporation, I cross my fingers and hope that lessons will be learned. But it seems as if the “release now, fix later” approach is here to stay. Or at least it will be as long as players keep putting up with it – and even defending it in some cases.
Number 8: Day-one DLC/paywalled day-one content.
An example of a “digital deluxe edition” and its paywalled content.
It irks me no end when content that was clearly developed at the same time as the “base version” of a game is paywalled off and sold separately for an additional fee. The most egregious example of this that comes to mind is Mass Effect 3′s From Ashes DLC, which was launched alongside the game. This DLC included a character and missions that were completely integrated into the game – yet had been carved out to be sold separately.
This practice continues, unfortunately, and many modern titles release with content paywalled off, even if that content was developed right along with the rest of the game. Sometimes these things are designed to be sold as part of a “special edition,” but that doesn’t excuse it either. Even if all we’re talking about are character skins and cosmetic content, it still feels like those things should be included in the price – especially in single-player titles. Some of this content can be massively overpriced, too, with packs of two or three character skins often retailing for £10 or more.
Number 9: Platform-exclusive content and missions.
Spider-Man was a PlayStation-only character in Marvel’s Avengers.
Some titles are released with content locked to a single platform. Hogwarts Legacy and Marvel’s Avengers are two examples that come to mind – and in both cases, missions and characters that should have been part of the main game were unavailable to players on PC and Xbox thanks to deals with Sony. While I can understand the incentive to do this… it’s a pretty shit way of making money for a publisher, and a pretty scummy way for a platform to try to attract sales.
Again, this leaves games incomplete, and players who’ve paid full price end up getting a worse experience or an experience with less to do depending on their platform of choice. That’s unfair – and it’s something that shouldn’t be happening.
Number 10: Pre-orders.
Cartman from South Park said it best: “You know what you get for pre-ordering a game? A big dick in your mouth.”
Pre-ordering made sense – when games were sold in brick-and-mortar shops on cartridges or discs. You wanted to guarantee your copy of the latest big release, and one way to make sure you’d get the game before it sold out was to pre-order it. But that doesn’t apply any more; not only are more and more games being sold digitally, but even if you’re a console player who wants to get a game on disc, there isn’t the same danger of scarcity that there once was.
With so many games being released broken – or else failing to live up to expectations – pre-ordering in 2023 is nothing short of stupidity, and any player who still does it is an idiot. It actively harms the industry and other players by letting corporations get away with more misbehaviour and nonsense. If we could all be patient and wait a day or two for reviews, fewer games would be able to be launched in unplayable states. Games companies bank on a significant number of players pre-ordering and not cancelling or refunding if things go wrong. It’s free money for them – and utterly unnecessary in an age of digital downloads.
So that’s it!
A PlayStation 5 console.
We’ve gone through ten of my pet peeves when it comes to gaming. I hope this was a bit of fun – and not something to get too upset over!
The gaming landscape has changed massively since I first started playing. Among the earliest titles I can remember trying my hand at is the Commodore 64 title International Soccer, and the first home console I was able to get was a Super Nintendo. Gaming has grown massively since those days, and the kinds of games that can be created with modern technology, game engines, and artificial intelligence can be truly breathtaking.
But it isn’t all good, and we’ve talked about a few things today that I find irritating or annoying. The continued push from publishers to release games too early and promise patches and fixes is particularly disappointing, and too many publishers and corporations take their greed to unnecessary extremes. But that’s the way the games industry is… and as cathartic as it was to get it off my chest, I don’t see those things disappearing any time soon!
All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective developer, studio, and/or publisher. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
This article touches on the sensitive subject of transphobia and may be uncomfortable for some readers.
Forgive me the indulgence, but before we get started I really have to claim a victory! In the second half of the 2010s, with the Fantastic Beasts films faltering and Harry Potter’s audience ageing out of the fandom and drifting away, I began to feel it was a sure thing that the stories would be rebooted for a Game of Thrones-inspired big-budget television series. I said so here on the website all the way back in 2019 – so I get to say “I called it!” in response to the announcement of a Harry Potter TV series.
Only a few months ago, in the run-up to the underwhelming Hogwarts Legacy (a game that seems to have dropped off the face of the earth) I also said that I hoped I would never again be compelled to comment on Harry Potter, as I feel I can no longer support the series or its creator. But the announcement of a re-telling of the stories on HBO Max was an opportunity not only to take a victory lap for my correct prediction, but also to consider why it actually feels like a pretty terrible idea – and a bad business decision.
A replica of the Hogwarts Express.
For the most part, this isn’t going to go the way you think. The release of Hogwarts Legacy proved pretty conclusively that a significant portion of the Harry Potter fanbase doesn’t give a shit about transphobia and will cling to their nostalgia and still support the franchise. So this won’t be me claiming that Rowling’s descent down a far-right slope is going to be the deciding factor in why audiences won’t show up for the new show. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Ironically, those two factors – nostalgia and “anti-woke” politics – have already set the stage for the TV series’ undoing. The very things that Rowling and HBO are banking on are going to be the reasons why Harry Potter will fail in this new iteration. And don’t get me wrong… I’m thrilled about that. This show deserves to fail. It’s just bitterly ironic that it will fail in this particular way.
Harry Potter author JK Rowling.
So let’s take a step back. It’s been a few short years since the final Harry Potter film was released, and when we’re talking about reboots, that means one thing: it’s too soon to do this. The Harry Potter films that were released from the 2000s to the early 2010s are, for those still inclined to support the franchise, still perfectly watchable, with decent visual effects, acting performances, and everything else. Rebooting the series now won’t actually add anything of substance.
The series will be live-action, just like the films, and if it has a snowball’s chance in hell of successfully plucking the right nostalgic chords for long-term fans, it will have to re-use a very similar aesthetic. Many elements created for the films – like the sets used for Hogwarts castle, for example – have become inseparable from Harry Potter. Trying to shake things up, even just a little, won’t work and will be offputting for fans.
Concept art for the game Hogwarts Legacy showing the titular Hogwarts castle.
Harry Potter is also a growing, connected franchise. Theme park attractions, video games, and more all rely heavily on the designs created for the films back in the early 2000s. The television series will be forced to recycle these designs, stifling any chance at creativity that its team might’ve had.
But if a new television show will have to retain the look, feel, sound, etc. of the films… how can it differentiate itself? And if it can’t do that, what’s the point? How can this project convince either long-term fans or newcomers to show up for what will be a very similar re-telling of a story that was only told a few short years ago? That’s the first hurdle for the series to overcome – and it’s already a massive one.
Behind the scenes during production of the first Harry Potter film. Image Credit: IMDB
This speaks to a broader question: who, exactly, is this series being made for? From my admittedly limited engagement with the hard-core Potter fandom, I can’t think of anyone who’s been advocating for a project like this or asking for it to be created. Harry Potter fans, by and large, have been content with the books, films, video games, theme park attraction, and other spin-off media. There just isn’t any kind of grassroots movement asking Rowling, Warner Bros., or HBO to reboot it at this point in time.
So if the show isn’t being made “for the fans,” who are the folks that Warner Bros. and HBO hope will show up? The series isn’t being marketed at children, in spite of the source material, so it doesn’t seem as if this is being planned as a typical kids’ show or child-friendly adaptation. If anything, it feels like it’s being pitched at an adult audience; younger members of Gen X and millennials who remember the original films and the Harry Potter craze of the early 2000s. People who will be in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.
A crowd of Harry Potter fans at a convention. Image Credit: 9News via YouTube
Already, this new Harry Potter TV series feels incredibly cynical and calculated. As the “streaming wars” continue to rage, corporations are desperately scrounging around for intellectual properties to turn into “the next Game of Thrones” and give a boost to their failing, unprofitable platforms. The decision to reboot Harry Potter can absolutely be seen through that lens – a cheap, creatively bankrupt decision taken by business executives who are out of their depth.
But there’s more to it than that. As JK Rowling has seen her reputation collapse, this is her latest scheme to try to recapture some of the magic and attention that she hasn’t seen in over a decade. It’s an attempt by Rowling – a cynical, sociopathic attempt – to whitewash her image after the toxicity of the last few years. Rowling will undoubtedly try to shoehorn in gay characters, LGB themes, and more black and ethnic minority characters into the story to attempt to rehabilitate her reputation and the reputation of Harry Potter – as well as to deliberately and maliciously conceal the fact that none of those characters or themes were ever present in the original work.
Richard Harris as Dumbledore in a promotional photo.
But that’s the second hurdle that will trip up the Harry Potter series. As Rowling has progressed with her transphobia, she’s found herself attracting more and more support from the “anti-woke” brigade – a loose affiliation of far-right internet trolls, paleoconservative reactionaries, and religious nutters. These people have become Rowling’s biggest fans in recent years – but how do you think they’re going to react when they see an openly gay Professor Dumbledore or the race-bending of a major character like Hermione Granger?
If you said “they’ll hate it and whine about it,” you get a sticker! Because that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Rowling has lost much of the progressive audience that once turned up for Harry Potter in droves, and this audience has been slowly but surely replaced by the “anti-wokers.” In the run-up to the release of Hogwarts Legacy, I saw many of these people promising to buy the game for no other reason than to support Rowling and her transphobic positions. They are going to detest what they will decry as the unnecessary insertion of “woke” into the Harry Potter television series.
How well do you think a recast Hermione Granger will land with JK Rowling’s new “anti-woke” fans? Image Credit: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
So if this show fails on the nostalgic front and will also fail to connect with Rowling’s new “anti-woke” audience, who’s left? Sure, some die-hard Potter fans will turn up, as they will for anything that has the franchise’s label slapped on it. But are there enough of those people any more, in 2023, for a series with a sky-high budget to bank on?
There’s a casual television audience, people who tune in to see shows that are on the major networks if they’ve gotten a significant marketing push. But HBO Max isn’t a big network – it’s very much a second-tier streaming platform, and one with limited name recognition outside of the United States. So how are people who don’t even know what HBO Max is going to be persuaded to tune in?
Voldemort.
HBO Max doesn’t even exist here in the UK – the Harry Potter series’ native land. At least some of the cast will be British, and if the show is to recycle sets and filming locations, at least some scenes and sequences will be shot here. But how are British fans of Harry Potter meant to tune in? It’s one thing for fans to decide whether they want to watch the show or not – but it’s quite another for a big-budget production to be broadcast exclusively on a platform that isn’t available in 99% of the world.
I’ve talked about this before with the Star Trek franchise, when parent company Paramount likewise made the truly awful decision to broadcast some of its shows in the United States and nowhere else. Taking this “America First” approach harms a series immeasurably – and it harms it in the United States, too. The internet is one massive, worldwide audience – and if the vast majority of that audience is cut off and unable to join in with the hype for a show, the conversation dies down. Hashtags don’t trend, posts get fewer likes, ads don’t get seen, and the bubble deflates.
The Harry Potter series will stream on HBO Max.
It remains to be seen how Warner Bros. and HBO will resolve that particular situation – but it won’t be easy. There are no plans to launch HBO Max here in the UK, for example, and fans won’t stand for being cut off from their favourite franchise… assuming they still consider Harry Potter to be among their favourites.
It’s worth looking at the reception of other big-budget television productions to see what may lie in store for the new Harry Potter series. The main example that springs to mind is Amazon Prime’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Despite getting solid critical reviews – including from yours truly, I should say – The Rings of Power hasn’t hit the highs that Amazon was surely hoping to see.
The negative response to The Rings of Power in some quarters feels like a bellwether for this kind of reboot or reimagining.
By some estimates, only about a third of viewers who watched the premiere episode of The Rings of Power made it to the end of Season 1, which is an absolutely huge drop-off for a series of this type. There was a lot of attention given to that show for years before its first season arrived – and the Harry Potter series will be in a similar boat.
Both The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter were huge fantasy properties in the 2000s thanks to their cinematic adaptations – and both are now being rebooted in a completely different entertainment landscape. Many of the criticisms of The Rings of Power at least made mention of things like the race or body type of certain actors, and other criticisms from hard-core fans focused on their nostalgic feelings for the earlier adaptations and a sense that there was “no need” to revisit them. These points will also apply to the Harry Potter series.
JK Rowling with Rupert Grint, Daniel Radcliffe, and Emma Watson circa 2001. Image Credit: IMDB
If I were an actor, director, or other entertainment industry professional, I wouldn’t touch Harry Potter with a barge pole. The fact that JK Rowling is a transphobe is almost incidental to that at this point; it feels like a catastrophic career move from which many folks will struggle to recover. At best, the new adaptation will be received well by die-hard Potter fanatics… but only with the caveat that “the films were better.” At worst, it’ll be cancelled before it gets anywhere near its purported tenth season, and its legacy of failure will taint all who jumped aboard.
Harry Potter had its moment in the 2000s, but as we’ve seen from the failure of attempted sequels and revivals, the public at large has lost interest in the “Wizarding World.” The Fantastic Beasts films failed to recapture the magic for Warner Bros., and while Hogwarts Legacy sold pretty well, it was an overhyped, pretty average game that didn’t make a lasting impression on the video games industry as a whole.
Diagon Alley is looking empty…
The toxicity that has swirled around JK Rowling and Harry Potter in recent years isn’t dying down or going away, meaning any Harry Potter project that goes ahead right now will be controversial. Controversy can be a selling point – to an extent – as an audience will sometimes turn up for no other reason than to see what’s causing all the fuss and bother. But will that be enough to overcome the massive hurdles in the path of this new Harry Potter series? I doubt it.
There’s no pathway to success for a television show like this right now. On its best day, the new Harry Potter series will still be overshadowed by the films, but on its worst it’ll be hounded by “anti-woke” whiners, overly nostalgic Potter fanatics, and bloody-minded folks who love to see big corporations and franchises fail. And, of course, it’ll be completely ignored by people like me who don’t want to see Harry Potter succeed as long as Rowling continues to spew her bile.
I doubt that anyone involved in the entertainment industry reads what I write here on the website, but just in case: take my advice and stay as far away from this ticking time bomb as possible. It won’t end well.
The Harry Potter television series may premiere on HBO Max in the next few years. Or not, if we’re lucky. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum has become the latest game in 2023 to be launched in a buggy, broken state. Some outlets have gone so far as to call it “the worst game of the year,” and in a year where titles like Hogwarts Legacy, Jedi: Survivor, Redfall, and The Last Of Us Part 1 have been sharted out in unfinished states by major publishers, there’s a lot of competition for that title!
I want to try to treat The Lord of the Rings: Gollum as fairly as possible. Developer and publisher Daedalic Entertainment isn’t one of the games industry’s biggest corporations, with relatively few titles having been developed across its fifteen-year history – and even fewer that I’d heard of. A company with around 100 employees made Gollum, whereas corporations like Activision Blizzard or Microsoft have far more resources at their disposal when it comes to game development.
A promotional screenshot of the game.
As much as I detest the “release now, fix later” business model that too many games corporations have adopted over the past couple of console generations, smaller studios working on passion projects have always been in somewhat of a different category. I’m far more willing to be sympathetic to an independent game developer than I am to one of the industry’s major publishers, simply because the realities of game development and working to a deadline or with a limited budget can go some way to explaining why a game may be released in a worse-than-expected state.
With Gollum having already suffered several lengthy delays, and with Daedalic Entertainment being a relatively small studio, I could forgive a degree of jankiness. That being said, I could forgive quite a bit more jankiness if Gollum had been more appropriately-priced, say around the £30 mark instead of greedily pushing for £50. And of course, a “special edition” will set you back an extra £10.
Gollum in an out-of-bounds area.
Some adverts and marketing material for Gollum have tried to paint the game as the kind of expansive adventure title that you’d get from a major publisher, and combined with the high price, I fear that unrealistic expectations were set. Even if the game had been released in a fully-complete, bug-free state, I daresay a lot of folks would still have found Gollum’s core gameplay and story to be underwhelming.
To me, there are two lessons from Gollum that the games industry – and smaller studios in particular – need to pay attention to. The first, of course, is that the accursed “release now, fix later” business model never works. No matter how good your game could have been, if you try to launch it before it’s ready, you’re going to have a bad time! The second lesson is that games need to be targeted, marketed, and priced appropriately. Gollum isn’t a AAA action-adventure that could go toe-to-toe with the likes of Shadow of Mordor or the earlier Lord of the Rings movie tie-in games. So why present it as that kind of experience? Marketing the game like that was only ever going to lead to disappointment.
Gollum was never meant to be comparable to the likes of Shadow of Mordor.
I don’t know what may have transpired behind the scenes at Daedalic Entertainment that led to Gollum’s disappointing release. I don’t think it’s an unfair assumption, though, that the game had a difficult and troubled development – perhaps with a degree of “feature creep” as the original vision for a small-scale title comparable to Daedalic’s past offerings may have been expanded. Either way, delays clearly added to the game’s cost, and eventually Daedalic decided that they couldn’t wait any longer and needed to push the game out. The result was Gollum’s troubled launch.
On a personal note, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is one of the titles I’d been looking forward to in 2023. Not simply because a return to the world of Middle-earth is always welcome in the gaming realm, but because it seemed like something genuinely different. A game in which the protagonist is an anti-hero or even a contemptible villain was already enough to pique my curiosity, but there was also the kind of gameplay that Gollum seemed to be promising: puzzle-heavy, stealthy, and with a degree of platforming.
Gollum can get stuck in the environment due to a bug.
For me, the real tragedy of Gollum’s release isn’t just that a game I was looking forward to was pushed out too early in a broken, unfinished state. It isn’t even that Gollum is unlikely to ever be completely fixed and brought up to the level that it should be able to reach. No, the real tragedy of this whole situation is that it will almost certainly dissuade other developers – and especially other publishers – from taking risks like this in future.
However you look at it, the decision to create a stealth-puzzle-platformer based on a character like Gollum was a huge risk. This is the kind of game that just doesn’t get made any more, with the games industry retreating to the safest, most overtrodden ground for the most part. Fewer studios are willing to take on risky projects like Gollum, with publishers doubling-down on well-known franchises, popular genres, and looking for any kind of online experience that can generate “recurring revenue streams.”
Making a game like this was already a risk.
With the undeniable failure of Gollum – a failure that seems impossible to overcome, even if Daedalic continues to work on the game for years to come like Hello Games has done with No Man’s Sky – there’s a real danger that the lesson the games industry as a whole will take from this mess will be to continue its retreat from any project that falls outside of the mainstream. Gollum was always going to be a game with limited appeal; a niche product at best. It was also a game that felt innovative in both its premise and the kind of gameplay that it offered – and I truly fear that fewer games that meet those kinds of descriptors will be greenlit in future.
The games industry is already dominated by a handful of genres, most of which haven’t offered much by way of genuine innovation in years. Corporations are quick to chase the next “big” trend, with a focus on whatever looks likely to rake in the largest amount of cash possible. What was appealing about a game like Gollum, at least to me, was that it was a title that didn’t seem to care about those things; it knew what it wanted to be, what kind of gameplay it wanted to employ and what kind of story it aimed to tell, and wasn’t about chasing trends. The games industry needs more of that – because that’s where innovation almost always comes from.
Gollum with a baby bird in a promotional screenshot.
Even on a good day, Gollum was never going to be a genre-busting epic. If it had launched in a better state, I daresay I’d have had fun with it for the twelve or so hours that it would’ve lasted, then I’d have put it down and moved on. But the games industry needs these kind of experiences. It needs the diversity that smaller games bring. And it needs at least some of those titles to exist outside of the self-published, independent space. Gollum could have been precisely the kind of “double-A” release that used to exist in between the big franchises and the small independent titles. Once upon a time, there were a fair few games in that category.
My fear is that the spectacular failure of Gollum, which has been one of the main gaming news headlines over the past week or so, will have a chilling effect that will extend far beyond Daedalic Entertainment. Projects that aim to create a game that might be a bit more of a niche product, outside of the mainstream and perhaps not in one of the biggest genres, will become suspect. Smaller-scale games in that “double-A” space will be less likely to be backed. And innovative, potentially-interesting stories and ideas will be passed over in favour of projects that feel “safer” to publishers.
I hope that I’m wrong, and that smaller studios won’t be impacted by Gollum’s very public failure. But I really do fear for the repercussions that this debacle could have on an industry that needs titles like Gollum. Not every game is going to be Call of Duty or Fortnite, and especially for players who long for single-player experiences, games like Gollum that offer something a little different will continue to appeal. Let’s just hope that this broken, borderline-unplayable mess doesn’t ruin that for everyone else.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is out now for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S/X. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is the copyright of Daedalic Entertainment. The Lord of the Rings and Middle-earth are the copyright of the Tolkien Estate. Some images and promotional art used above are courtesy of Daedalic Entertainment. Images of bugs and glitches via Digital Foundry on YouTube. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
The first part of this review is free from major spoilers. The end of the spoiler-free section is clearly marked.
Let’s-a go!
It’s time to review The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which has finally made its way to on-demand streaming after wrapping up its exclusive theatrical run. And straight away I can tell you this: I had an absolute blast with Mario, Peach, Luigi, and the rest of the Nintendo gang! The Super Mario Bros. Movie is definitely one of the best non-Disney animated films that I’ve seen in a long time, and it absolutely has to be a contender for the title of best animated picture of the year.
The film puts a twist on the typical story of the Super Mario series, but brings all of the familiar faces that fans of Nintendo’s games would expect. There are so many references, callbacks, and cameos that it’s impossible to count, and speaking as someone who’s followed Nintendo’s games for more than thirty years, I appreciated every single one of them!
I’ve followed Mario for quite some time…
But this isn’t just fan service that only the hardest of hardcore Nintendo lovers can enjoy. The film is accessible to newcomers, too, with a pretty barebones, easy-to-follow story that doesn’t get bogged down. In fact, the story progresses from chapter to chapter with a real light-footedness, with no scene or sequence lingering too long. For kids, and especially for a generation raised on short-form videos and TikToks, I suspect the timing and pacing of the film will be pitch-perfect!
For me… well, I could’ve entertained a story that was at least slightly denser, one that didn’t hop so readily from point to point. There were some moments that felt unearned, perhaps, as Mario seemed to very easily and readily accept his fate in the Mushroom Kingdom, and friendships that appeared to form very quickly. But this is a film for kids – and with a story with such strength and heart, picking on any of these things feels gratuitous and unnecessary.
Mario and Luigi.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie accomplished the difficult task of taking elements from the games and making them into something truly worthy of a place on the big screen. The music of the Mario series was reimagined in a style I can only describe as “epic,” with the familiar tunes from the video game series transformed into an heroic score. Visually, the film leaned heavily into the aesthetic of the games – but used its budget to make Mario, Peach, and the Mushroom Kingdom look better than ever.
There had been some criticism of the decision to cast Chris Pratt as Mario, but I felt he did a perfectly creditable job in the role. Mario has never needed to be voiced this extensively before, so bringing in an experienced actor – while not necessarily everyone’s first choice – was the right call. The rest of the voice cast likewise put in excellent performances, and their characters came to life as a result.
Mario was voiced by Chris Pratt – pictured here at the film’s premiere. Image Credit: IMDB
There were a couple of sequences in the first few minutes of the film that I felt might be too scary for very young children – and it’s worth being aware of this if you have very young kids or children who are especially sensitive. These sequences didn’t linger for very long nor have much of an impact on the story overall, but I suspect they may have gone a little too far for at least some children in the audience.
Overall, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is an absolute blast, and one I highly recommend. If you don’t mind spoilers for the admittedly rather formulaic and predictable story, stick around, because we’re going to talk about a few story details up next.
This is the end of the spoiler-free portion of the review! Expect spoilers for The Super Mario Bros. Movie from here on out!
Up first, let’s talk about how The Super Mario Bros. Movie puts a twist on the typical “save the princess” trope. Peach is presented as someone familiar with the world of the Mushroom Kingdom, and thus she has the upper hand over Mario, the newcomer. Through a pretty quick montage, Mario is the one who has to learn the ropes; Peach already knows how the power-ups work and how battles in this universe are fought.
But that means Mario needs someone to save; a reason to set out on this adventure and face off against Bowser. Luigi, who’s the easily-frightened younger brother, is perfect for this role. Mario sets out on a quest not to save a random princess – but to save his brother. It’s a perfectly-executed twist on what is a pretty tired and outdated formula, and it works perfectly.
Princess Peach is so much more than just a damsel in distress this time!
The karting sequence was perhaps my favourite in the entire film! I’ve been a Mario fan for years, sure, but Mario Kart is definitely one of my all-time favourite series. The way it was incorporated into the film was hilarious, and it was a surprisingly tense sequence as Bowser’s troops dropped in uninvited. Many of the items from the Mario Kart games were present – banana skins, shells, bullet bills, and even the dreaded blue shell! It was a fantastic sequence, and Rainbow Road has never looked better or more beautiful!
Although the designs of many of the vehicles were based on the Mario Kart games, there’s potential for a future Mario Kart release to take advantage of some of the new designs created for the film. In fact, the time to cash in on that is now, so Nintendo really ought to consider updating Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with things like Toad’s off-road kart and the Koopas’ combat vehicles. It would even be possible to include one or two of the prominently-featured characters from the film as new characters for the game.
The kart sequence was fantastic!
The world of the Mushroom Kingdom was brought to life through some excellent animation work, and Illumination is to be commended. The cartoony aesthetic of the Mario games was familiar on the big screen – but it looked better than ever. Peach’s castle, first seen in the iconic Super Mario 64, looked fantastic, and the bright, happily-lit Mushroom Kingdom stood in stark contrast to the “dark lands” and Bowser’s castle.
It’s also fair to say that these classic Nintendo characters have literally never looked better, too! There was previously-unseen detail not only in the main characters, but in every minor background character, too. Whether we were looking at Dry Bones, Shy Guys, Toads, Koopa Troopas, Kongs, or anyone else, the animation was fabulous and consistent. There wasn’t a single moment where I felt that the animation work was sub-par or out-of-place.
It’s Dry Bones!
To return to the film’s story, one thing I admired was a willingness on the part of Nintendo – a company that hasn’t always shown itself to have a sense of humour about its properties – to recognise the inherent silliness in Bowser’s scheme. Bowser wanted to force Peach to marry him, yet the specifics of how he possibly expected that to work had never been elaborated upon until now. Of course it makes sense that Peach would reject him – and the way in which this was played, with a nod and wink to the audience, was great.
I don’t think it had ever been canonically established where Mario and Luigi hailed from, nor how Peach and the others came to exist in the Mushroom Kingdom. So The Super Mario Bros. Movie had free rein to decide on its characters’ origin stories. Now, I could be wrong about this, as I’m no expert on the minutiae of Nintendo lore, but I’ve always assumed that Mario was Italian – not Italian-American. The decision to give him an Italian-American origin, and in the New York borough of Brooklyn, no less, feels like an oblique homage to 1993’s Super Mario Bros. – the live-action film that did so much to dissuade Nintendo from ever again taking its brands and franchises to the cinema!
The main characters at the end of the film.
So let’s wrap things up. Who is this film for? While I’d say that Nintendo fans and players will absolutely get more out of The Super Mario Bros. Movie than those unfamiliar with its source material, the easy-to-follow story and fairly basic characters should make it accessible to almost anyone – including the youngest kids. There’s a lot to enjoy here!
That being said, there are a handful of faults that keep The Super Mario Bros. Movie from being the greatest kids’ film I’ve ever seen. Some of its plot points – like the friendship between Mario and Toad, or Peach’s plan to defeat Bowser – were raced past incredibly quickly in a film that didn’t spend more than a couple of minutes on any scene or sequence. I could have happily spent a bit longer watching some of these things play out.
All in all, though, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is one of the better animated releases of recent years. It was a treat to see Mario and the gang taking part in a new kind of adventure, and while I have to hold up my hands and say that 1993’s Super Mario Bros. is one of those “so bad it’s good” films that I consider somewhat of a guilty pleasure, this new animated outing surpasses it in practically every way. If you’re looking for a fun way to spend an hour-and-a-half, and especially if you’ve spent some time with Nintendo and Mario already, it’s very easy to recommend The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is available to stream now and will be released on DVD and Blu-ray later in the year. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the copyright of Nintendo and Illumination. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
If you’ve spent a reasonable amount of time playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe online, chances are you’ve been in races where practically everyone uses the same combination of driver and kart. Usually this ends up being Waluigi – Luigi’s “evil twin” – for reasons that will become clear in a moment. I’d been wanting to talk about this phenomenon for a while, but the recent release of Wave 4 of the Booster Course Pass brought some changes to the game that make it even more timely.
In short, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is unbalanced. The way the game is set up means that each driver and each kart component have their own individual stats, and when there are differences between these elements, that almost always means that there’s one golden combination that ends up being, by as close to objective standards as possible, “the best.” There’s a reason why more than 90% of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe world records all use the same character and build!
Prior to Wave 4, many time trial world records used this combination of Waluigi, roller tyres, Biddybuggy/Buggybud, and paper glider.
Nintendo has made an incredibly late attempt to rebalance this, with Wave 4 of the Booster Course Pass giving a bit of a boost to other characters and kart components, but the only real result of that will be that the best possible combination will change – possibly from Waluigi to Rosalina, in this case. In a few weeks’ time, online races will be full of Rosalinas instead of Waluigis… until the next time Nintendo tries to rework things.
For most players, I guess that this doesn’t really matter. At my low level, online multiplayer lobbies are still pretty varied, and in single-player mode I can just pick whatever combo I like the look of or feel like trying out. But I think the balancing issue in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe speaks to a bigger issue with the game, and while I would absolutely argue that trying to fix it now, almost a full decade after the original release of Mario Kart 8, is far too late and honestly just plain dumb, there are definitely lessons for Nintendo to learn as the franchise moves forward.
Pink Gold peach and Paris Promenade on a promo image for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
It’s disappointing that there hasn’t been a Mario Kart 9, and that the next entry in this long-running series is now almost certain not to be released until Nintendo launches a new console. I held out hope for a while that a new game might’ve launched last year to coincide with the 30th anniversary of Super Mario Kart – but alas, it didn’t happen! As we look ahead, though, I have no doubt that Nintendo would want to create a new game for their new console – and with the Switch’s 6th birthday fast approaching, that could be within a year or two!
So when we think about Mario Kart 9, there are definitely lessons to learn from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. The first is that racing online has become a huge part of the experience for many folks – even casual players like myself. Online gaming has grown a lot since the Wii U’s release back in 2012, and for many players it’s a core part of the Mario Kart experience now. A new game has to be created with that in mind – even though I hope it will retain robust single-player and local multiplayer modes, too!
It’s hard to believe that Mario Kart 8 is almost a decade old and was first released on the Wii U!
But most importantly for what we’re talking about today, I think that the idea of individual character and kart stats has got to go. This isn’t a “hard-core” racing simulation – it’s a casual, fun game with a brightly-coloured cartoon aesthetic aimed at players of all ages. We don’t need stats to tinker with like we might in a game of Forza Motorsport or Project CARS; Mario Kart simply isn’t that type of racer.
The fact that most players online and practically every time-trialler end up picking the exact same racer and kart every time kind of detracts from the experience. It makes races feel less unique and less… well, fun. Although characters having weight classes has been a part of Mario Kart going all the way back to its first title more than 30 years ago, if having these stats means that some characters just aren’t viable choices… maybe it’s better to scrap them altogether.
Mario Kart doesn’t need complex stats calculations. This isn’t Forza Motorsport!
In short, if every character and every kart behaved the same way, the differences between them would be purely cosmetic, and players would have a lot more fun picking the character they liked best or the kart they thought looked the most fun instead of being forced to choose from a very narrow range of options. I mean, if you don’t like Waluigi, it can’t be all that enjoyable to feel like you have no choice but to pick him every time you race online. Can it?
Even if Nintendo completely shakes up the way stats work for each kart and character, if differences remain there will always end up being better and worse options; it’s unavoidable. If the goal here is to give players more choices, and to make the character and kart options matter, then really the only way to achieve that is to drop the stats idea altogether and have every character behave the same way.
A trio of Mario Kart Tour characters – some of whom may be added to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe one day!
I don’t think that this would make races any less entertaining. Far from it, I think it would open up higher-level competitions to look completely different, and the same for time trials and world records, too. Sure, it might not “make sense” that a huge kart with monster truck wheels driven by a tall, husky character would be just as fast as a sleek racecar piloted by a tiny driver… but this is Mario Kart. You’ve got sentient tortoises and literal babies racing against ghosts and a plumber’s evil twin across tracks made from clouds or mushroom-trampolines. We’re way, way past “realism!”
So that’s my proposal in a nutshell: dump the stats. Obviously this can’t happen in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – nor should it, as that would completely change a long-running game and probably invalidate a bunch of world records that people worked hard to achieve. But when it comes to Mario Kart 9, I think it would be a great way to rebalance the game and to bring diversity back to racers and karts. If such a move were combined with a great variety of racetracks that offered a range of obstacles and shortcuts, as well as plenty of items for players to blast each other with in competitive races, there’d still be lots of ways to have fun.
Racing around one of the newly-added DLC racetracks.
At the end of the day, when practically everyone online ends up picking the same racer and kart combo anyway, at least doing things the way I’ve suggested would mean people could pick the cosmetic/aesthetic options that they liked best instead of being forced to use a particular character whether they like them or not. For online racing, and especially at higher levels, it seems like a good idea to me, anyway!
As to the changes Nintendo introduced in the Booster Course Pass… I’m on the fence. I can understand the intention behind making this kind of change, as it’s basically a scaled-back version of my own proposal. But in an established game that’s been out in some form for almost a decade… these kinds of changes can upset players, and I can understand that. It’s better to work on this while the game is still in development, and that’s why I’ve suggested that Nintendo should look at how this issue arose. Tackling the root cause – stats – will mean it should be able to be avoided by the time the next game in the series is ready!
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is out now for Nintendo Switch. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the Booster Course Pass, and the Super Mario series are the copyright of Nintendo. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
One of the most disappointing things about the Star Wars sequel trilogy was that it didn’t actually advance the overall story of the saga in a meaningful way. Think about where it began and ended: a Dark Side, authoritarian power had been defeated in battle, but the war was still to be won. Palpatine had been killed. The galactic government had been destroyed and democracy would have to be restored. One young Jedi survived and hoped to rebuild the Jedi Order. Questions that we had all the way back in the ’80s about what would come next after Return of the Jedi weren’t answered; they were given a new lick of paint and asked again.
All of which is to say that there’s a lot of potential in a story set after the sequel trilogy and the “final” defeat of Palpatine. Seeing what will come next for the Star Wars galaxy as it takes steps toward a restoration of democracy and a recreation of the Jedi Order – in some form, at least – is something I’ve been genuinely interested in seeing since I first watched Return of the Jedi all those years ago.
Rey is coming back to Star Wars… and soon.
I confess that I’m surprised to see Disney and Lucasfilm creating a “sequel sequel” so soon after The Rise of Skywalker. The trilogy proved divisive overall, and regardless of which part fans consider to be the worst, the general consensus is that these films weren’t as strong or enjoyable as they could and should have been. Returning to the sequels’ principal character is, therefore, a bold move.
I felt that there was a ton of potential in Rey as a character. The idea of a Force diad – light rising to meet the darkness – was an interesting one that the sequels, sadly, didn’t do justice to. However, as a young, inspirational character that others could look to for leadership, Rey had a lot going for her. Far from being just a “female Luke Skywalker,” as some dismissively suggested, there were nuances in Rey’s characterisation that took her to different thematic places – at least in the first two parts of the sequel trilogy.
Rey at the end of the sequel trilogy.
Although we’ve caught a glimpse of Luke Skywalker and his attempt to rebuild the Jedi Order, those sequences in both the sequel films and the Disney+ spin-off shows are impacted by the knowledge of the tragedy that will ultimately befall Luke and his new generation of Jedi. He tried his best, but ultimately all Luke could do was pass the torch to Rey – and the task of creating a new and improved Light Side order now falls to her.
That idea holds genuine appeal, as does seeing the galaxy recovering from decades of oppression and civil war. There’s the possibility of telling an inspiring and uplifting story all about finding hope in dark times, and rebuilding from a fascistic dystopia. These are things that have real-world parallels that could prove incredibly timely!
A massive fleet of Star Destroyers.
Is Rey the right character to take the lead in such a story, though? After a disappointingly regressive and arguably quite bland arc across the sequel trilogy, Rey ended in a pretty uninteresting place. As the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine, Rey’s story seems to continue Star Wars’ disappointing trend of seeing the Force as a kind of metaphor for aristocracy; that those who are entrusted with power must derive that power from their bloodline, instead of discovering it on their own.
There’s also the question of whether the Jedi Order deserves to be reconstructed. In The Last Jedi, Luke was acutely aware of the failures of the old Jedi Order – and that’s also one of the key themes of the prequel trilogy: that the Order had grown complacent and arrogant to such an extent that its members couldn’t fathom the idea of somebody like Palpatine operating right under their noses. This is Star Wars, though, and the Jedi are an unshakable part of the franchise, so surely the name won’t be dropped!
The failure of the Jedi Order is one of the themes of the prequel trilogy – and The Last Jedi.
The Rise of Skywalker ended in such a way as to tee up future stories, just as Return of the Jedi had done four decades earlier. The question on my mind, though, is this: is it too soon? It took more than thirty years for Return of the Jedi to get a sequel, and with the disappointment of the sequels still fresh in the minds of many fans, I’m struggling to see how this new film could hope to find success.
At best, a new story featuring Rey will prove to be divisive, continuing the divisions in the Star Wars fan community that have persisted for the past few years at least. Doubling-down on a character that many fans were unimpressed with at best is admirable in some ways… but it doesn’t strike me as being a particularly smart business or storytelling decision. The simple fact is that Rey’s presence in the story is a challenge; a hurdle that the new film will have to overcome.
Rey using her Force powers.
Again, this is something that the passage of time would almost certainly damp down. Look at the reputation the prequel trilogy has today: it’s held in high regard by many fans, especially younger ones, and while there are still grumpy old holdouts like myself who remain unimpressed… the prequels on the whole have gone through somewhat of a renaissance. As fans who watched and loved those films as kids have grown up and continued to participate in the Star Wars fan community, the prequels have been – to an extent – rehabilitated.
The same is true of Return of the Jedi. Though never as controversial as the prequels, when I first encountered Star Wars in the early ’90s, Return of the Jedi was considered its weakest part by far. And it’s easy to see why: “from a certain point of view” is patent nonsense, Luke and Leia being retconned to be brother and sister was just silly, and the Ewoks were an army of teddy bears who defeated the Empire and ruined Palpatine’s carefully-laid plan! Yet you just don’t hear those criticisms any more outside of a small subset of Star Wars fans; Return of the Jedi has been rehabilitated by the passage of time.
Are you old enough to remember when everyone hated the Ewoks?
In time, many of the most divisive and heavily-criticised aspects of the sequel trilogy will be absorbed into Star Wars’ broader canon. We’ve already seen moves in shows like The Mandalorian and films like Rogue One to flesh out story points and new additions like cloning or hyperspace tracking, and as Star Wars continues to expand – both on the screen and beyond, with books, comics, games, and so on – Rey’s status as the grandchild of Palpatine and other controversial (and silly) elements of the sequels will likewise become more broadly accepted.
But this process takes time.
With the sequel trilogy still fresh in the minds of most fans, and with the general consensus being that either The Last Jedi or The Rise of Skywalker are among the worst films in the entire franchise, building a new story atop that so soon feels like it’s asking for trouble. Return to Rey by all means – expanding her story might go some way to making up for its deficiencies in the sequel trilogy. But not yet. It’s too soon.
The “final” demise of Palpatine.
There’s also the point that I’ve made before a dozen times or more: Star Wars has only ever told one real story. Despite existing for more than 45 years, with nine mainline films, two major spin-offs, several live-action TV shows, animated series, books, games, and more… Star Wars has still only told one real story: the “Palpatine saga,” focusing on the rise, fall, rise again, and fall again of Emperor Palpatine. A new story focusing on Rey wouldn’t do the one thing that I’ve been calling on Star Wars to do for years: move on.
The Star Wars galaxy is one of the finest fictional settings ever created, in my view. It has millions of inhabited planets, thousands of alien races, space magic and sci-fi technology, dozens of named factions, and tens of thousands of years of galactic history. But every mainline Star Wars project has been denied access to the vast majority of this sandbox, being forced to return to the same time period, the same planets, the same factions, and even the same handful of characters and families time and again. Surely it’s time to knock it off now and try something genuinely new and different. Because of her involvement in the sequels, and because she’s been retconned to be a member of Palpatine’s family, Rey can’t achieve that objective on two counts.
Rey in The Force Awakens.
Can we have any confidence that Lucasfilm has learned the lessons of the sequel trilogy? Not only was the decision to split up the writing and directing of the trilogy a catastrophic mistake, but allowing someone like J.J. Abrams to essentially re-tell large parts of the original trilogy with a different coat of paint was poor. With Star Wars so intent on doubling-down on the only story it’s ever told, and a lack of boldness in the Disney boardroom seemingly refusing to consider other options, there’s a very real danger that a new sequel will repeat many of the mistakes that the franchise has made in recent years.
Several recent Star Wars projects have been little more than fan-servicey mess, with the utterly illogical or regressive inclusions of characters for no reason other than to compensate for a weak story. Some of these – like Obi-Wan Kenobi – actually ended up damaging the original films and the characters they included. So I feel more than a little concerned that a sequel featuring Rey – and thus continuing, in some form, the “Skywalker saga” – will do the same.
Rey in The Last Jedi.
So I guess that’s where I’m at when it comes to this “sequel sequel.” My main message isn’t “never do this, it’s a terrible idea,” but rather “now isn’t the right time.” As the dust settles on the sequels, and upcoming projects – both on screen and off – incorporate that story into the broader landscape of Star Wars, passions will surely settle. As younger fans who first came to Star Wars with the sequels grow up and come of age, the fan community as a whole will shift to becoming more supportive of those films. When that’s happened – say in fifteen to twenty years time – then it might finally be the right time to return to Rey. But not yet.
If I was in charge of planning the next steps for Star Wars over at Disney and Lucasfilm, I wouldn’t have given the green light to this project. My focus would be on diversifying Star Wars – stepping back in time to the days of the Old Republic, taking a look at new characters, and shining a spotlight on the denizens of the galaxy who aren’t blessed with space magic! Rey will undoubtedly have her moment to return to Star Wars… but for me, it feels incredibly premature to even be considering bringing her back now.
The Star Wars sequel trilogy (The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker) is available to stream now on Disney+. The films are also available on DVD and Blu-ray. The Star Wars franchise – including all titles discussed above – is the copyright of Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
The dreaded “release now, fix later” model that has been adopted by corporations across the games industry has shown up constantly in 2023. Although a number of console titles have been affected, by far the worst impact has been felt on PC. As PC is my primary gaming platform these days, this is something that hits me personally. Today, I wanted to talk a little about the absolute state of many recent PC releases.
Jedi: Survivor, Redfall, Forspoken, Hogwarts Legacy, and The Last Of Us Part 1 should have all been among the biggest PC releases in the first half of 2023. I was genuinely looking forward to several of these games myself. But all of them, despite being massive games with huge budgets backed up by major corporate publishers, have been released in broken, unfinished, and in some cases borderline unplayable states.
It’s Joel from The Last Of Us… apparently.
As a rule, I don’t pre-order games. I’ve been burned in the past, and as someone who doesn’t have money to piss away, pre-ordering just doesn’t feel like a good idea any more. But many folks still do, lured in by pre-order exclusive bonuses and the like, and many of these folks – as well as those who picked up titles shortly after launch – have been left severely disappointed in the first half of 2023.
I had hoped, particularly after the Cyberpunk 2077 debacle a couple of years back, that the games industry was beginning to learn its lesson. Just because it’s technically feasible to launch a title in an unfinished state and patch it out later, that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea; the damage done by a rocky launch can be difficult to overcome – if not outright impossible. For every success story like No Man’s Sky, there are dozens of titles like Anthem, Aliens: Colonial Marines, or Assassin’s Creed Unity that are too far gone to be salvageable. And even titles that manage to continue development, like Cyberpunk 2077, are forever tainted by the way they launched.
A hollow character model in Redfall.
Who knows how many more sales Cyberpunk 2077 might’ve made had it been released six months later? The damage that game did to CD Projekt Red has set back the company immeasurably, damaging its share price and tanking its reputation with players. It’s an expensive lesson in how not to release a video game… so why have none of the other corporations in the games industry taken notice?
I didn’t buy Jedi: Survivor this month, even though I’d gone out of my way to save up for it and allocate money for it in my budget. Why? The reason is simple: I read the reviews, saw breakdowns of the PC port of the game, and decided to put my wallet away and wait. Electronic Arts lost what should have been a guaranteed sale because I’m not willing to buy an unfinished product. And make no mistake, that’s what Jedi: Survivor and all the other games listed above are: unfinished.
Cal falls through the map in Jedi: Survivor.
Unlike making a game for a console, developing for PC can be a challenge. Take it from someone who built their own PC last year: there are a huge number of different internal components from CPUs to GPUs, RAM to solid-state drives, and beyond. Ensuring perfectly smooth compatibility across an almost infinite range of potential PCs isn’t as easy as getting a game to run on an Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5, which don’t have this issue of varied internal components. And I get that, I really do.
But that isn’t a good enough excuse. I’d actually rather that a corporation delayed the PC port of a game than release it in a broken state, and I won’t be alone in saying so. It isn’t ideal to break up a title’s release by platform, and it’s something to be avoided if at all possible, but under some circumstances it can be forgiven – especially where smaller, independent studios are concerned.
Characters clipping through each other in Hogwarts Legacy.
I used to work in the games industry, and I know or knew dozens of developers at both small and large companies. Developers are great, passionate people who put a lot of energy and love into their work. Developers working on franchises like Star Wars, for instance, are almost always passionate fans who want to bring their story to life as best they can. These bad releases are not a reflection on developers – nor should anyone try to harrass or attack developers because of these broken games.
The fault here lies with games publishers: corporations like Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Sony, and Warner Bros. Games. They’re the ones who hold the cards, and developers are forced to work to often unreasonable timelines. Even intense periods of “crunch” are often not enough to salvage a project in time, and a premature launch is almost always forced on a developer by a publisher. That’s undoubtedly what happened in each of these cases.
The fault lies with corporations like EA.
Crappy PC ports used to be fairly commonplace, but as the platform has grown and become more lucrative, that games industry stereotype seemed to be fading away. 2023 has brought it right back, and I’m now in a position where every PC game release is treated with scepticism. As players and fans, we shouldn’t be in the position of assuming a PC release will automatically be buggy, laggy, and an overall worse experience – yet here we are.
I’m not prepared to accept this as being “just” one of the downsides of PC gaming, either. Corporations need to make sure they’re allocating enough time and energy to their PC ports as they are for consoles – and if they can’t guarantee that a game will be in a playable state, the only option is to delay it. Ideally a game would be delayed on every platform, but in some cases it might be okay to go ahead with a console release and merely delay the PC port.
Promo art for Jedi: Survivor.
As consumers in this marketplace, all we can do is refuse to participate. It’s on us to tell corporations that we aren’t willing to pay their inflated prices to do the job of their quality assurance team, and that releasing games before they’re finished and before they’re basically playable is not acceptable.
One of the disappointing trends that I’ve seen, not just with PC games in 2023 but with a whole host of “release now, fix later” titles, is players and fans covering for and continuing to support these faceless, greedy corporations. Too many people seem willing to make excuses on behalf of big publishers, essentially doing the job of a marketing team for the. Some games, like Jedi: Survivor, have even received positive reviews on platforms like Steam and Metacritic, even as the reviewer admits that the game is in a poor state and playing it isn’t a great experience. Why say that? What benefit is there?
A couple of examples of positive Steam reviews for Jedi: Survivor.
I’m also deeply disappointed in some professional outlets. Practically all of the titles above received positive reviews from professional critics, reviews which in some cases glossed over or outright ignored bugs, glitches, and other issues with the titles in question. There’s a stinking rot at the core of the relationships between some games corporations and certain media outlets – and while I would never accuse anyone of writing a paid-for review, there are clearly incentives given and threats made to keep review scores higher than they deserve to be in some cases.
I also don’t buy the excuse of “pandemic-related disruption,” not any more. That might’ve worked three years ago, but as the World Heath Organisation downgrades covid and society gets back on track across the globe, it’s beginning to stretch credulity to blame any and all problems on the pandemic. That’s a cheap excuse by corporations who don’t want us to know the truth: they’re greedily publishing unfinished games to grab as much cash as possible for as little work and investment as possible. That’s always been the case, but it’s been turned up to eleven in recent years.
At the end of the day, this is all about money.
Unfortunately, I don’t see this trend disappearing any time soon. For me, all PC releases are now suspect, and I will be checking out multiple reviews and tech breakdowns of the latest titles before I even consider parting with my money. I would advise all PC players to take the same approach – and to not shy away from calling out games corporations that misbehave. No other industry could get away with this – not in entertainment nor in any other sector. We wouldn’t take this kind of behaviour from other corporations and companies – so why should we be forced to put up with it with our games?
It is infinitely better to delay a game, continue to work on the issues it may have, and only release it when it’s ready. This is a lesson that the games industry really ought to have learned by now – but I guess we’ll have to do whatever we can to hammer the point home. Why should we accept low-quality, broken, unfinished games with promises of fixes and patches to come? We shouldn’t – and this awful trend of crappy PC ports has to stop.
All titles discussed above are the copyright of their respective developer, studio, and/or publisher. Some screenshots and promo images courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the Star Trek franchise, including all episodes on this list. Spoilers are present for the following: Discovery Season 4, Picard Season 3, Prodigy Season 1, Strange New Worlds Season 1, and more.
So, I did a thing. A few days ago, I published a tongue-in-cheek list of what I consider to be some of the worst episodes in the Star Trek franchise. Since it went up, it’s been racking up clicks – almost immediately becoming the most-viewed piece on the website over the past few days. To balance out that list – and to claw back some of my standing as a Trekkie – I thought I shouldn’t wait any longer before writing the counterpoint!
As I said last time, I’m a huge Star Trek fan. Heck, I run a Star Trek-themed website – so obviously I like the franchise! But I’m not one of those fans who says that “everything Star Trek has ever done is perfect,” nor am I someone who wants to whitewash Star Trek and never mention the bad parts. Paramount has a marketing team to do that.
It’s the Enterprise-E!
So today, as a counterpoint to my last list, I’m going to pick twenty of my absolute favourite episodes. It should go without saying that this list is also entirely subjective, so if I exclude your favourite episode or you hate all of my picks… that’s okay! We’re all entitled to our preferences about which Star Trek stories we prefer, and there should be enough room within the Star Trek fan community for polite discussion and disagreement.
So without any further ado, let’s dive into the list!
Episode #1: The Doomsday Machine The Original Series Season 2
The wreck of the USS Constellation.
The Doomsday Machine is, in some respects, The Original Series in microcosm. It has everything that fans loved about the show: an exciting sci-fi premise, an incredible guest star, and a hard-hitting real-world comparison. It’s always stood out to me as one of The Original Series’ finest outings, masterfully building up tension as the unmanned weapon mindlessly carries out its directive.
The character of Commodore Decker, who was created for The Doomsday Machine, is one of the show’s most brilliant and tragic characters. His story has always been an absolutely riveting one for me – and the performance by guest star William Windom is phenomenal. The Doomsday Machine had a point to make about nuclear weapons out here in the real world, too – and coming at the height of the Cold War, less than six years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, it could hardly be more timely.
Episode #2: Coming Home Discovery Season 4
Captain Burnham on the bridge of the USS Discovery.
Discovery’s fourth season – like its predecessors – took a meandering and occasionally frustrating route to reach its final episode… but it was more than worth the wait! Coming Home is fantastic, and encapsulates everything that Star Trek is and always has been. There were incredibly tense and exciting moments as the Federation leapt to the defence of Earth, which was in serious danger, but those moments were coupled with the discovery of a very new and different alien race.
Seeking out new life has been at the heart of Star Trek since its inception. But, as many have pointed out over the years, Star Trek’s “new life” could often look and act very, well, human. Species 10-C, which we finally got to meet in this episode after a season-long buildup, have to be one of the most strikingly different aliens ever created for the franchise. Above all, though, Coming Home excels for its sense of optimism and hope. I’d challenge even the most ardent Discovery-avoider to give it a try.
Episode #3: The Siege of AR-558 Deep Space Nine Season 7
Quark and Nog.
Few Star Trek episodes truly manage to capture the feel of being at war quite so dramatically and spectacularly as The Siege of AR-558. Director Winrich Kolbe drew on his own experiences in the Vietnam War to create a claustrophobic, frightening scenario in which Federation soldiers were fighting for their lives over a nameless lump of rock. The futility of war is on display in The Siege of AR-558 in a way that Star Trek has seldom touched upon.
Nog’s character arc is one of Deep Space Nine’s best, and this episode shows why. Nog went from petty thief to Starfleet hero over the course of seven seasons, and the life-changing injury he suffered in the battle on the planetoid AR-558 would be a defining moment for him. The Siege of AR-558 is an episode that challenges many of our assumptions and beliefs about the Federation, Starfleet, and the Dominion War – and it’s an absolutely incredible watch.
Episode #4: First First Contact Lower Decks Season 2
Shaxs in First First Contact.
First First Contact is Lower Decks at its very best. It’s a Star Trek story through-and-through, with a challenge befalling the crew of the Cerritos that’s of a scientific and engineering nature. It’s also the perfect example of how Star Trek can tell tense and exciting stories without the need for evil villains and big set-piece battles.
Lower Decks often operates with a two-story or even three-story structure, pairing up characters and setting them off on their own adventures. But First First Contact is a comparatively rare example of the entire crew working together and taking part in the same storyline – and it works incredibly well. There are moments of high drama, tension, and emotion as the Cerritos races to save a stricken Federation starship and an uncontacted planet – and a moment of engineering genius that would rival anything Scotty or Geordi could’ve come up with!
Episode #5: Disaster The Next Generation Season 5
A plasma fire!
I consider Season 5 to probably be The Next Generation’s strongest overall outing, so Disaster really is the cream of the crop! This is an episode in which every main character gets to play a role in one large, connected story – but it’s a story that throws everyone far outside of their comfort zones and usual roles! The situations the characters find themselves in are tense, dramatic, and occasionally comical, because Disaster really is an episode that has it all!
The basic premise of the episode sees the Enterprise-D damaged, without power, and adrift. Troi is the senior officer on the bridge, being advised by Ro and O’Brien. Data and Riker rush to engineering to try to bring power back to the ship. Picard is stuck in a turbolift with three frightened children (his own personal hell). Worf must take care of civilians in Ten-Forward. And Dr Crusher and Geordi are trapped in a cargo bay. Everyone gets their moment in the spotlight, making Disaster a genuine ensemble piece.
Episode #6: Vanishing Point Enterprise Season 2
Hoshi on the transporter pad.
Although Vanishing Point’s ending is pretty cheap and uninspired, the episode itself is a truly interesting exploration of one of Star Trek’s best-known pieces of technology: the transporter. We’ve seen characters like Dr McCoy being averse to the transporter, and more transporter accidents than I can call to mind! But Vanishing Point steps back in time to when the technology was new and untested, and places Hoshi Sato at the centre of its story.
Ensign Sato was such a great point-of-view character, as her nervousness and anxiety at being out in space had already been well-established. Vanishing Point also took Hoshi outside of her usual role as communications officer, allowing her to take centre-stage in a different kind of story. Although the ending drags it down somewhat, Vanishing Point is nevertheless a ton of fun!
Episode #7: A Quality of Mercy Strange New Worlds Season 1
Christopher Pike as we’ve never seen him before!
Season 1 of Strange New Worlds is fantastic across the board, without so much as a single bad episode! It was difficult to pick just one for this list, but I’ve decided to go with A Quality of Mercy. This episode gets time travel just right, with Captain Pike dealing with himself from an alternate future timeline in which he avoided his devastating accident and disability. Time travel can be tricky to pull off, but A Quality of Mercy manages it.
The episode also returns to the classic story Balance of Terror, showing us an alternate outcome to the battle between Kirk and the Romulan Commander. This gives it the feel of a story “made for fans,” and Trekkies who’ve followed the franchise for a long time will surely find a lot to love here. At the core of it all is Captain Pike, a character who I find incredibly relatable. Knowing that one’s health is in decline and seeking to make a “deal with the devil” to find a solution… I’ve been there. And Anson Mount plays the whole thing – and the roles of two different Pikes – incredibly well.
Episode #8: Equinox Parts I and II Voyager Season 5-6
Captain Ransom.
Voyager’s fifth season ended in stunning fashion with the first part of Equinox. I was hanging on for months waiting for Part II, which brought the story to an explosive conclusion. After years lost in the Delta Quadrant, Captain Janeway and the crew finally encounter another Federation vessel – and another crew who understand what they’ve gone through. But all is not what it seems, as it turns out that the aliens attacking the small USS Equinox are actually in the right.
Equinox is a challenging episode, condemning Captain Ransom’s actions while also presenting him and (most of) his crew in a relatively sympathetic light. It’s an episode that hammers home how lucky Janeway and the crew of Voyager have been – comparatively speaking – and shows the extremes that people can be willing to go to in order to survive.
Episode #9: The Star Gazer Picard Season 2
Who’s this?
I debated for a long time whether I wanted to include The Star Gazer on this list. The story that it so brilliantly set up went off the rails pretty quickly in subsequent episodes, and Picard’s second season is, overall, a disappointment. But on its own, The Star Gazer is actually a pretty great episode, one that re-introduces one of Star Trek’s classic villains in a new and terrifying manner.
If the rest of Picard Season 2 had been anywhere near as good as The Star Gazer, it would be one of the best in the entire franchise! As it is, this episode almost feels like an alternate timeline, showing us what might have been! Regardless, though, it sets up a tantalising mystery, teases us with some serious development for some of the show’s supporting characters, and contains one of the best and most frightening clashes between Starfleet and the Borg that the Star Trek franchise has ever created.
Episode #10: Homefront and Paradise Lost Deep Space Nine Season 4
Benjamin and Jake Sisko.
Deep Space Nine had done things differently from its very first episode, and some fans weren’t wild about its darker tone. This shift away from the Federation and Starfleet being presented as an incorruptible and enlightened paradise was on full display in this pair of episodes. In between the discovery of the Dominion and the official outbreak of war, the Federation was terrified of changeling infiltrators. Feeling that politicians and bureaucrats weren’t up to the task, a renegade “badmiral” plots a coup.
Some early Star Trek stories could present the Federation as almost too perfect, and this continued into The Next Generation era. What Captain Sisko and Odo had to confront here was the idea that Starfleet officers could themselves fall prey to paranoia, corruption, and ego – and this very human reaction to the threat of infiltration felt quite relatable. Although we’re firmly on Sisko’s side, Homefront and Paradise Lost throw some moral ambiguity into the mix thanks to some complex writing and several outstanding guest stars.
Episode #11: The Royale The Next Generation Season 2
The away team gambling.
I confess that I have a soft spot for The Royale for one principal reason: it’s the earliest episode of Star Trek that I can remember watching! Although I’m sure I’d seen at least parts of other episodes prior to The Royale’s broadcast on terrestrial TV here in the UK in 1991, this is the first one I have rock-solid memories of, and it’s always carried special significance as a result. So that’s my own bias stated up front!
Bias aside, though, I think there’s a lot to enjoy in this episode. It’s the kind of story that no other sci-fi franchise would attempt, and it has an unusual and somewhat eerie feel. Imagine having to spend the rest of your life trapped in an alien recreation of a three-star hotel! That seems like a very specific kind of hell, putting a dark spin on what could’ve been a purely comical story. The idea of roaming to the farthest, unexplored reaches of space only to find an Earth hotel and a mystery is part of what made Star Trek stand out to me, and seeing Riker and the away team solve the puzzle is still an engaging watch more than three decades later!
Episode #12: Through the Valley of Shadows Discovery Season 2
The Klingon monastery on Boreth.
Through the Valley of Shadows reframes Captain Pike and the accident that left him disabled. The Menagerie, from the first season of The Original Series, showed us the aftermath of what happened to Pike, as well as introduced us to the character and his time in the captain’s chair. Through the Valley of Shadows took that idea to a completely new and different thematic place: Captain Pike had to choose this future for himself, making an unimaginable sacrifice in order to complete his mission and save untold numbers of lives.
We looked at one consequence of that above with the Strange New Worlds episode A Quality of Mercy. These two episodes make a fascinating pair, and the tragedy of Captain Pike takes on a whole new dimension in light of what we learn here. Pike has always been a character I find incredibly relatable, and Through the Valley of Shadows puts a distinctly “Star Trek” spin on the idea of seeing one’s own future – and knowing that illness, disability, and worsening health lie ahead.
Episode #13: Court Martial The Original Series Season 1
Captain Kirk with his lawyer.
Court Martial is Star Trek’s first foray into courtroom drama – a genre that the franchise would return to on multiple occasions! Captain Kirk is accused of murdering an officer under his command and attempting to cover it up, and the stakes are high! We know he couldn’t possibly be guilty, of course… but the evidence against him appears to be compelling.
Samuel T. Cogley – Kirk’s advocate – is a character I’d absolutely love modern Star Trek to revisit! Based on the “old country lawyer” character archetype, Cogley led Kirk’s defence in unorthodox fashion, and is one of the best parts of Court Martial. Along with The Conscience of the King and Charlie X, which also delve into Kirk’s backstory, Court Martial puts flesh on the bones of someone who was still a new character. Kirk’s integrity and honour are on display – and on trial.
Episode #14: Dragon’s Teeth Voyager Season 6
The USS Voyager prepares to land.
Dragon’s Teeth is an interesting episode, and one that tells us a little about the history of the Star Trek galaxy. It’s also a story that looks at the potential consequences of war and conquest, as well as how different reality can be from societal memory. The crew of Voyager re-awaken a group of aliens who have been in stasis since the 1400s, following a devastating war that culminated in the bombardment of their planet.
The Vaadwaur proved to be untrustworthy allies, however, and attempted to capture Voyager. The “underspace corridors” that were present in this episode weren’t revisited, even though they potentially offered a quicker way to traverse this region of space. The concept was fun, though, and reviving a long-dormant race was likewise an interesting and well-executed idea.
Episode #15: The Andorian Incident Enterprise Season 1
Andorians!
I have to hold up my hands and confess that I wasn’t a big supporter of Enterprise during its original run. I was disappointed in its choice of setting, believing that Star Trek should move forwards instead of looking back at its own fictional history. But episodes like The Andorian Incident show just how wrong I was to feel that way! The episode showcases the conflict between Andoria and Vulcan in the years prior to the founding of the Federation – and begins to set the stage for humanity to bridge the divide and bring them together.
At a Vulcan holy site on the planet P’Jem, a monastery has been attacked by Andorians. The Andorian leader claims the monastery is a front for a listening post. Jeffrey Combs returns to Star Trek after his roles in Deep Space Nine to play Andorian leader Shran, and the interplay between Shran and Captain Archer would be one of Enterprise’s best. All in all, a fascinating outing.
Episode #16: Where Pleasant Fountains Lie Lower Decks Season 2
Andy Billups, chief engineer of the USS Cerritos.
I adore Where Pleasant Fountains Lie. I think it has a potentially-interesting explanation for the abundance of human-looking aliens in the Star Trek galaxy (they’re all Earth colonies), but moreover it touches on a subject close to home for me: asexuality. I’m asexual, and while the Cerritos’ chief engineer Andy Billups isn’t explicitly stated to be asexual in the story, Where Pleasant Fountains Lie focuses in large part on his discomfort with having sex and desire to avoid it.
Star Trek has always used its sci-fi setting to shine a new light on the real world, and for me, this episode absolutely nailed it. When people ask me about asexuality, I now have a relatable story that I can point to, one that touches on many of the same feelings and experiences that I’ve personally had as an asexual individual. I wrote a longer piece about this episode’s asexuality analogy, and you can find it by clicking or tapping here if you’re interested to read more.
Episode #17: Let Sleeping Borg Lie Prodigy Season 1
What have the crew of the Protostar got themselves into this time?
Prodigy had a strong first season – though it’s been disappointingly let down by a lack of support from Paramount, especially in the merchandising department. There are several contenders for episodes to include on this list, but I’ve decided to go with Let Sleeping Borg Lie from the second half of the season.
The episode focuses on a derelict Borg vessel – tying into the story recently seen in Picard’s third season – and gives all of the main youngsters something to do. The episode moves key storylines along, as Prodigy is a surprisingly serialised affair, but it also takes the crew to a different environment. One of the advantages of animation over live-action is the ability to visit different ships and planets every week relatively inexpensively! There are strong themes of sacrifice and friendship that form the emotional core of the story, too.
Episode #18: Birthright, Parts I & II The Next Generation Season 6
The Enterprise-D at DS9.
This story is a fun crossover between The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, which wasn’t yet ten episodes into its first season. The main story focuses on Worf as he tracks down a hitherto unknown group of survivors of the Khitomer massacre – the event in which his birth parents were killed. The second part of the story in particular focuses on the Klingons and Klingon culture.
I adore a good crossover, and it’s a ton of fun to see Picard and Dr Crusher aboard DS9, as well as Data and Dr Bashir working together. This episode was designed to give Deep Space Nine a jump-start as its first season got underway, but it’s more than that. It’s a fantastic combination of characters and settings that expands Star Trek beyond a single series into a connected franchise.
Episode #19: State of Flux Voyager Season 1
Janeway, Chakotay, and Tuvok discuss the situation.
Voyager never managed to make good on its “one ship, two crews” idea, and State of Flux, coming midway through the first season, was one of the few episodes to really explore that concept. When the crew of Voyager come to suspect that someone is passing secret information to the Kazon, a trap is laid – and a member of Chakotay’s Maquis sect is the prime suspect.
This episode set up a recurring story that would come back in Season 2 and at the beginning of Season 3, giving Voyager at least some consistent themes across the first part of the crew’s journey home. It’s also an engaging mystery on its own merit, and a strong episode for Chakotay – a character who could feel under-used, especially toward the latter part of the show’s run.
Episode #20: Civil Defense Deep Space Nine Season 3
Kell, the former commanding officer of Terok Nor, appears on a screen.
Despite a station-threatening premise, Civil Defense is a remarkably fun episode! It takes the premise of occupying an alien space station to a completely different place than almost any other story in the series, as O’Brien accidentally triggers a computer programme designed to put down a rebellion by the Cardassian station’s former Bajoran workforce.
Civil Defense gives most of the show’s main characters – including Jake Sisko – something to do, putting together groups or pairs of characters who always work well together and provide a ton of entertainment. Quark and Odo help to keep things light – and so does Dukat, to an extent, when he arrives to offer his “assistance!” All in all, an exciting and surprisingly fun outing.
So that’s it!
The USS Enterprise in The Wrath of Khan.
We’ve taken a look at twenty fantastic Star Trek episodes from across the franchise, getting a great mix of modern and older episodes. Hopefully this will help me regain some of my lost standing as a Trekkie after my list a few days ago!
All jokes aside, though, there’s a ton of fun to be had with Star Trek. Put all twenty of these episodes together in a playlist and you’ve got a hugely entertaining Star Trek marathon that will take you from the very beginnings of the franchise in 1966 right the way through to the most recent seasons that have only just been broadcast. It was a blast to go back and revisit all of these wonderful episodes.
The Star Trek franchise – including all series, films, and episodes mentioned above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the episodes on this list.
Today I thought that we could have a little bit of (mostly) tongue-in-cheek fun at Star Trek’s expense! See, if a franchise has been running for more than five decades and has broadcast well over 800 episodes and 13 films… there’s bound to be a few crap ones in the mix. I’m not one of those Trekkies who says that “Star Trek is always flawless,” and if you’ve read some of my episode reviews here on the website, you’ll know that!
That being said, this list is intended to be taken in the spirit of light-hearted summertime fun. Even Star Trek at its worst is better than no Star Trek at all, and even in episodes and films that I generally didn’t enjoy, there are almost always fun and engaging elements. And it should go without saying that I’m a huge Star Trek fan – the franchise has too many enjoyable episodes and stories to count.
This is all just for fun!
A few caveats before we go any further: firstly, all of this is, of course, entirely subjective! I’m not trying to claim that these episodes should be considered awful by everyone, simply that I don’t personally enjoy them or find them particularly entertaining. Secondly, this article isn’t meant to be an attack on any actor, director, writer, or anyone else involved in the creative process. I’m an independent critic, so criticism is the name of the game – but it’s never okay to get personal! Finally, if you hate everything I have to say today – or I exclude an episode that you think seems patently obvious for a list like this – that’s totally okay! There should be enough maturity in the Star Trek fan community for a bit of polite disagreement and gentle poking of fun.
All that being said, if you don’t want to read critical (and occasionally downright scathing) opinions about Star Trek, now’s your last chance to nope out!
So without any further ado, let’s jump into the list – which is in no particular order!
Episode #1: Shades of Gray The Next Generation Season 2
Riker in sickbay.
A couple of years ago I jokingly said that Shades of Gray was the best, most underrated episode of The Next Generation – but that was just an April Fool’s Day gag here on the website! Star Trek’s first (and thankfully only) clip show is a bit of a mess, and a disappointing way to end The Next Generation’s otherwise strong second season. It was also the final appearance of Dr Pulaski – who didn’t get any kind of send-off before being dumped from the series.
Television production has changed a lot over the past thirty-five years, but in 1989, The Next Generation was obligated to produce 22 episodes on a fixed budget. A couple of episodes earlier in the season had been more expensive and taken longer to produce than expected – most notably Q Who, which introduced the Borg for the first time – so cuts had to be made. A clip show was a relatively inexpensive way to produce an episode, so Shades of Gray was born. It has to be one of the worst pieces of television in the entire franchise – and a comparatively weak premise/frame narrative couldn’t hold it together. Luckily, clip shows are now a thing of the past – so we’re not going to see another Star Trek episode like this!
Episode #2: The Red Angel Discovery Season 2
Michael Burnham.
For me, The Red Angel was a total misfire toward the end of Discovery’s second season. Season 2 had been an improvement on Season 1 – thanks in no small part to the inclusions of Captain Pike and Spock – but The Red Angel knocks it down a rung or two. In short, it suffers from two major problems: the mischaracterisation of Georgiou, who began behaving like her Prime Timeline counterpart out of the blue, and its convoluted time travel story.
Time travel is very difficult to get right in fiction, and The Red Angel presents one of the worst and most irritating time travel tropes: the paradox. It made no sense for the rest of the crew to let Burnham know what their plan was, as they were operating under the assumption that the titular Red Angel was Burnham from the future. It was just a disappointment all around – albeit one that led to better things in the remaining part of the season.
Episode #3: These Are The Voyages… Enterprise Season 4
Wait, I thought this was Enterprise…
Enterprise’s finale, regrettably, has to be one of the weakest endings to a series in the franchise. And I think it’s this episode’s status as a finale that compounds the disappointment – though it wouldn’t have been a great offering on its own merit, admittedly. To make matters worse, These Are The Voyages was conceived as an attempt to really celebrate all things Star Trek and to bring together two different, disconnected parts of the franchise. It’s such a shame that it wasn’t a stronger story.
By 2004, Enterprise’s cancellation was clearly imminent. And to its credit, These Are The Voyages jumps forward in time to wrap up Enterprise’s story of Captain Archer and the crew and the role they played in the creation of the United Federation of Planets. But the decision to use a frame narrative set during The Next Generation, reducing all of Enterprise’s main stars to holograms, wasn’t great for a series finale. There were also issues with the visual presentation of The Next Generation sequences – issues that, for the most part, were unavoidable. Had the same concept been applied to a mid-season episode, it might’ve worked better.
Episode #4: Envoys Lower Decks Season 1
The problematic moment.
My criticism of Envoys largely focuses on one sequence – but it’s a sequence so bad and so antithetical to everything that Star Trek stands for that I feel it warrants a place on this list. Where Lower Decks has succeeded is in finding ways to make the wacky goings-on in Starfleet comical. Where it failed, in my view, was in its early attempts to set up Ensign Mariner as Star Trek’s answer to Rick and Morty’s Rick Sanchez – something that’s on full display in the opening sequence of Envoys.
In this sequence, Mariner captures (or kidnaps) a sentient energy-based life form because she thinks it’ll be funny, and then forces the creature to grant her a wish. I know that this is a comedy series and the sequence is meant to be a gag – partly, at least, at Mariner’s expense. But I can’t forgive how selfish and inherently un-Starfleet she acts. Lower Decks has told some incredible stories across its first three seasons, but this sequence at the beginning of Envoys is not among them.
Episode #5: Move Along Home Deep Space Nine Season 1
The crew in Move Along Home.
I adore Deep Space Nine on the whole… but Move Along Home might just be its worst individual episode. The premise is utterly ridiculous, as Sisko, Kira, Dax, and Dr Bashir are transported into an alien board game. Star Trek has had lots of fun with similarly wacky story concepts over the years, but Move Along Home is poorly executed, and the rug-pull at the end – that there was never any real danger – just adds to the disappointment.
The set design used for parts of Move Along Home is pretty poor, leading to an underwhelming visual presentation. Star Trek in the ’90s often reused sets and props to save money, but in Move Along Home it just doesn’t feel as if much effort was put into the episode’s visual style. There’s a reason why the alien race featured in this episode, the Wadi, haven’t been revisited!
Episode #6: Monsters Picard Season 2
One of the titular monsters.
We could’ve made up nine-tenths of this list with Picard Season 2 episodes, but if I had to pick one out of that thoroughly disappointing season that encapsulates its issues, it would have to be Monsters. This navel-gazing story abandoned most of the season’s semi-interesting plotlines, including Q, Picard’s ancestor Renée, and the Borg in order to stage a ridiculous coma-dream populated by the most uninspired and amateurish B-movie monsters that I’ve seen in the franchise this side of The Original Series.
Moreover, Monsters is a waste of time. It fails to move the story along at a reasonable pace, and that led to serious problems in the remaining part of the season. Despite learning a theoretically interesting fact about Jean-Luc Picard’s early life, the revelation isn’t as big as the story wishes it to be – and it does nothing to reframe Picard’s characterisation, personality, or outlook on life, nor show them in a new light.
Episode #7: Infinite Regress Voyager Season 5
Seven of Nine.
Seven of Nine was a fascinating addition to Voyager when she joined the crew – though I confess that I was sad at the time to lose Kes. But as I’ve said before here on the website, I never felt that the writers of Voyager did justice to Seven of Nine, and Infinite Regress is just one example among many of samey, repetitive, and just plain boring over-uses of this character.
Seven’s appearance in Infinite Regress is a riff on the same idea used in Season 4’s The Raven, to such an extent that I sometimes get the two stories muddled up. It was one of the first solid indications that Seven’s original premise was played out, and things only went downhill from here. Seven was thrust into the spotlight often across the back half of Voyager’s run – and that wasn’t always to the show’s benefit. There are some decent stories in the mix, sure, but there are also more than a few repetitive and uninspired ones. It wasn’t until Seven re-emerged in Picard that she was given the chance to develop and grow as a character – and I can’t tell you how cathartic that process has been to see!
Episode #8: Spock’s Brain The Original Series Season 3
Spock and Dr McCoy.
No list of bad Star Trek episodes would be complete without Spock’s Brain! Widely considered to be the worst that The Original Series has to offer, this ridiculous story was a pretty poor start to the show’s third and final season. The Original Series Season 3 was greenlit after a letter-writing campaign from fans, but television network NBC only agreed to renew the show in exchange for cuts to its budget. Episodes like Spock’s Brain were the result of trying to keep costs down.
There’s a certain charm to Spock’s Brain in some ways… but in a “so bad it’s good” kind of way rather than for anything the story does on its own merit! A combination of the utterly bonkers premise and some less-than-stellar special effects make this a no-brainer for this list – pun very much intended!
Episode #9: Code of Honor The Next Generation Season 1
A group of spectators on Ligon II.
Code of Honor is incredibly outdated and racist in its depiction of Africans – and it boggles my mind that it was ever made, let alone that it was made for The Next Generation as late as 1987! Surely someone must’ve realised, while the episode was in production, that a story about a black planetary leader (with a noticeable accent) kidnapping a white female crew member would be problematic.
Unlike other episodes on this list, it’s hard to find any redeeming features in Code of Honor, and it’s one that I have to say I can’t enjoy in any way. It was a mistake to make it and to bring it to screen – but it serves as a reminder that Star Trek, despite its lofty ambitions and attempts to depict a better, more enlightened future, can still get it wrong.
Episode #10: Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1 Picard Season 1
Sutra, Soji’s “evil twin.”
After the preceding eight episodes had slowly built up an intriguing mystery, Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1 derailed Picard’s first season. The episode tried to dump whole new factions, characters, and storylines into the season but didn’t have anywhere near enough time to do justice to any of them. The truly disappointing thing isn’t that these ideas were bad, but that the poorly-paced episode and season ran out of road, making the entire season feel worse in retrospect.
Some scenes in Et in Arcadia Ego are so short that they’re barely even clips, with characters seeming to speak to no one. Special effects weren’t great, either, with a copy-and-paste Romulan fleet comprised of identical starships. And that gold makeup used for the Coppelius synths is just awful. Despite a solid performance across the rest of the season as Soji, Isa Briones was unconvincing as the rogue synth leader Sutra, too. All in all, a misfire – and one that, sadly, damages the integrity of the entire ten-episode story.
So that’s it!
The USS Discovery.
I hope your favourite episode wasn’t on the list! But if it was, please try to keep in mind that we don’t all like the same things, and even as Trekkies there are going to be disagreements about which stories work and which don’t within the Star Trek franchise. This was meant to be a bit of fun, not something to be taken too seriously or to get worked up over!
Although there are a handful of Star Trek episodes that I generally don’t enjoy, every series, and practically every season of every series, has wonderful moments of action, adventure, sci-fi, and more. I’m a huge Star Trek fan – even if I don’t enjoy everything that the franchise has put out over the last fifty-six years!
Live long and prosper!
You’ll note that Prodigy and Strange New Worlds didn’t feature on the list above – and that’s because the first seasons of both shows were pretty darn good. I couldn’t pick a single episode from either show that I could genuinely say I disliked, and I think that’s testament to the quality of modern Star Trek. Picard’s third season was good, too, and though Discovery has made mistakes, Season 4 was a vast improvement and ended in spectacular fashion. So there are plenty of reasons to be positive as we look ahead to upcoming productions!
So I hope you enjoyed this look at a few of Star Trek’s less-than-great stories. I actually had fun revisiting some of these episodes, several of which I hadn’t watched in years. Although the stories themselves aren’t great, it’s still nice to go back and watch them sometimes!
The Star Trek franchise – including all series, films, and episodes mentioned above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Discovery, and Prodigy.
So this is it, then! This is the last theory update for Season 3, the last ever theory update for Star Trek: Picard in general, and the final part of a series of theory-crafting articles that I began writing when Picard’s first season kicked off in January 2020. Are you as emotional as I am?
There were two pretty big theory culls earlier in the season, so we arrived at the finale with only eleven theories that remained on the list. Of these, one counts as confirmed, but the rest were debunked – or simply ignored entirely. With no more Picard on the schedule, we’ll have to retire all of these theories.
The Enterprise-G.
If Star Trek returns to the 25th Century in the next couple of years – perhaps with a Picard spin-off that fans have been asking for – it’s possible, I suppose, that such a series might revisit characters, locations, and factions from Season 3. But I wouldn’t bet on it… and some of the things we were hoping to see resolved from Season 2 (and even Season 1) are all but certain to be abandoned now.
One of the disappointing things about Picard as a whole series is the abandonment of certain characters and storylines, particularly main characters and story points that appeared to be major. Although the way Season 3 was structured always meant that it was a remote possibility that any of that could be addressed in the final episode, there are still things I’d wanted to see resolved!
Riker, Picard, and Geordi bid farewell to the Enterprise-D.
But all of that is for the birds now! Our task today is to wrap up the remaining theories so we can draw a line under this series of articles. Although we netted some big theory wins this season, we’re finishing up with a whole lot of theories that didn’t pan out. I wouldn’t say I was overly attached to any of them – but several would’ve been fun had they come to pass.
As I always say, this has just been a bit of fun! Serialised storytelling has its drawbacks, but one thing I’ve enjoyed across all three seasons of Picard has been that the show has lent itself to this kind of theory-crafting and speculation.
Without any further ado, let’s jump into the list for one final time!
Confirmed theory: At least one more unannounced character will appear.
An emergency transmission from a familiar voice!
I’m claiming this one as a win for both Q’s appearance in the epilogue and for Walter Koenig’s audio-only role as Anton Chekov! The son of Pavel Chekov, Anton was the Federation President whose message was heard as the crew of the Enterprise-D raced to Jupiter to confront the Borg. It’s fantastic to think that, more than fifty-five years after his first Star Trek appearance, Walter Koenig was able to return and play a role in the finale of Picard.
However, I was disappointed that we didn’t get to see anyone else. There were multiple mentions of Admiral Janeway in earlier episodes, and a perfect opportunity presented itself in the epilogue for Guinan to appear at her bar. A returning character could’ve also joined the crew of the Enterprise-G under Seven’s command, or we could’ve seen a familiar face battling the assimilated fleet over Earth. Picard did well with cameos and returning characters across Season 3 as a whole, though.
Debunked theory #1: The absences of characters from Seasons 1 and 2 will be explained.
Elnor in a promo photo for Season 2.
I held out hope all season long that someone, somehow, in some way, might’ve explained why Elnor, Soji, and the Borg Queen-Dr Jurati hybrid weren’t joining Picard’s mission or taking part in the story. However, none of these characters – who played major roles in Seasons 1 and 2 of the series – were so much as mentioned. The finale was the last chance for it to happen, but it didn’t.
In the future, when we dissect the troubled, disjointed production of Picard in more detail, I think we’ll have to talk about the waste of characters like Soji and Elnor – characters who absolutely could have been included here. Think how much more impactful it might’ve been to see Elnor as one of the assimilated youngsters, having spent three whole seasons with him, instead of the relative newcomers that we got in the story. There’s a lot more to say about this – but we’ll leave it for another time when we can discuss it in more detail.
Debunked theory #2: The Borg and/or the rogue changelings are responsible for the mysterious anomaly seen in Season 2.
The anomaly at the end of Season 2.
Another abandoned idea that Season 3 didn’t revisit was the mysterious anomaly from Season 2. This storyline – like others from both Seasons 1 and 2 – is now orphaned, unlikely to be revisited. Though it was long past time for the mysterious anomaly to have been incorporated into the plot in a big way, I still felt there was a possibility that it might be mentioned. Someone might’ve explained that it was the Borg’s first attempt to attack the Federation, for example.
Getting more detail on the mysterious anomaly was one of my requests of Season 3, and it’s disappointing that this storyline was abandoned with no resolution. The anomaly kick-started the plot of Season 2, and it was one of the few potentially interesting narrative points from an otherwise disappointing season. Being left with no explanation for something so seismic is disappointing – and another piece of evidence for how poorly-managed Picard’s overall production has been.
Debunked theory #3: Picard will donate his golem body to Jack.
Jack with Picard in the season finale.
I came up with this idea when Jack was first misdiagnosed with Irumodic Syndrome earlier in the season. Even though that diagnosis was later proven to be incorrect, the brain abnormality that Picard and Jack shared still had the potential to prove fatal – as it did for Picard in Season 1. With that in mind, I wondered if the only way Jack could be saved would be for him to be transferred into a golem body.
Picard could have made the ultimate sacrifice for his son, donating his golem to Jack as a final act of parental love. There had been speculation for years that the series would end with Picard’s death, but after the fake-out in Season 1 I felt it would have been hard to pull off killing Picard for a second time. This was one way it could have happened, though! However, the epilogue explained that Dr Crusher came up with a cure for the Borg modification, and that’s that.
Debunked theory #4: At least one main character will be killed.
The main cast of The Next Generation Season 2.
As much as I’d been expecting this, in the end it turned out that the finale and Season 3 as a whole were a bit of a throwback! Television storytelling has gone through a significant evolution since The Next Generation premiered in 1987, and main characters should no longer be considered “safe” just because of their status. With a dangerous mission at hand – and the Borg involved – it seemed plausible to think that at least one of our heroes would be killed off.
Season 3 did find time to kill off Ro Laren and Captain Shaw, but none of the main characters from The Next Generation found themselves on the chopping block. In fact, the season actually resurrected the long-dead Data and even the Enterprise-D, meaning that by the time the credits rolled the death toll for main characters stood at -2!
Debunked theory #5: The Jurati-Borg will ally with Picard and the Federation.
The Borg Queen-Dr Jurati hybrid.
At the end of Season 2, Dr Jurati’s Borg faction asked for provisional membership of the Federation and promised to watch over the unexplained anomaly. With the Federation seemingly staring defeat in the face as a huge assimilated fleet attacked Earth, I wondered whether Dr Jurati’s Borg might show up to render assistance. The anomaly seemed to be relatively close to Earth, based on its Season 2 depiction, so it seemed possible that she might’ve been able to help.
We knew going into Season 3 that Alison Pill wouldn’t be reprising her role – so that always meant that this theory was unlikely, I guess. But even so, it feels incredibly wasteful to have abandoned that Borg faction and the mysterious anomaly, especially when they could have been incorporated into the story in some way. Even if they showed up too late, after Picard had already saved the day, it would’ve been a fun addition.
Debunked theory #6: Deanna Troi will use her “pain removal” skill on Jack.
Troi in The Last Generation on the bridge of the Enterprise-D.
Earlier in the season, it had been established that Troi had the ability to “enter” someone’s mind and remove pain – a skill superficially similar to Sybok’s, I suppose. With Season 3 dedicating time to this revelation, I wondered whether it might come into play at a crucial moment later on, with Troi using this skill to aid Jack in some way. She might’ve been able to sever his connection to the Borg or even cure him of his Borg-induced brain abnormality.
None of that came to pass, however. In fact, Troi’s role in The Last Generation was one of the episode’s least impressive and most clichéd moments, as seemingly from nowhere, as if by magic, she was able to use her empathic ability to pinpoint the location of Riker and the rest of the away team. I’m not disappointed that this “pain removal” angle wasn’t included… but I am a tad disappointed in the way Troi was used in the finale.
Debunked theory #7: Floaty McFloatface will be back.
Nope.
Because of the truly abrupt way in which Vadic’s story ended, I wondered if we might get to learn a little more about Floaty McFloatface – the nameless character who may have been some kind of envoy or go-between for Vadic and the Borg Queen. Although Vadic had died and the Shrike had been destroyed, we hadn’t seen Floaty McFloatface killed – nor was it even clear what Floaty McFloatface was – so it seemed possible, at least, that we might’ve got some kind of resolution to this partial character.
The Last Generation barely mentioned the changelings at all, with a very brief appearance of a rogue changeling being detained in the epilogue being all we got. There was definitely more to say about this faction, including how they came to work with the Borg and what will happen to the surviving members of the conspiracy.
Debunked theory #8: Floaty McFloatface isn’t a changeling.
Floaty McFloatface in its goo form.
As above, I speculated that Floaty McFloatface may not be a changeling itself, but might’ve been a Borg or some kind of representative of the Borg sent to Vadic by the Queen to keep an eye on her. Floaty McFloatface clearly had power over Vadic – both in a figurative and literal sense – and I’d have liked to know at least a little more about how all of that worked.
We’ll have to discuss Vadic in more detail on another occasion now that the season has ended, because there are some pretty big issues with the way her involvement in the story ultimately landed. But for now, suffice to say that this theory is debunked and we can assume that Floaty McFloatface either died with Vadic or died when the Shrike was destroyed a few moments later.
Debunked theory #9: Odo will make an appearance – somehow.
Odo in Deep Space Nine.
Odo had been mentioned by Worf – albeit rather obliquely – earlier in the season, and with the changelings playing a significant role in the story that, in spite of Vadic’s death, was yet to be wrapped up, I felt it was at least possible that the show’s writers might’ve included Odo in some kind of epilogue sequence. It didn’t happen, though – and I’m actually really glad about that!
Season 3 didn’t lean into Deep Space Nine as heavily as I’d expected after the first two or three episodes, and all of the returning characters were from The Next Generation or Voyager. There was scope to do more with the Deep Space Nine and Dominion War angles, but I’m glad that Odo wasn’t digitally recreated or recast on this occasion.
Debunked theory #10: Other old/classic starships will join the Enterprise-D to face off against the Borg.
The Enterprise-A.
As cool as it was to see the Enterprise-D standing alone against the Borg… imagine how much fun it could’ve been if the ship had been joined by other older vessels. We could’ve seen some of the ships from Geordi’s fleet museum, for example, with the Enterprise-D and Enterprise-A fighting alongside one another for the first time ever. Now that would have been spectacular!
I’m a sucker for the “desperate last stand” story trope no matter how it’s written, and The Last Generation did its thing pretty well. But it would have been amazing if Picard and the Enterprise-D could have been joined by even just one or two other classic/retired starships for this final fight. There must be other ships in Starfleet that weren’t upgraded in addition to those at the museum. Oh well!
So that’s it!
The “Death Star trench run!”
We’ve wrapped up our remaining Picard theories now that the season has come to an end. Although there were a lot of debunkings, across the season I did manage to make a few successful predictions! And above all, I had fun speculating about where the story might go. That was the point of all of this, really, and I’m glad to have been able to follow along with Picard from beginning to end, sharing my theories and speculation with you.
So what’s next? Although my theory lists and episode reviews are over, there’s still a lot to say about Picard’s third season and the series as a whole. When the dust has settled I’d like to re-watch all three seasons of the show in one hit to see how well it works (or doesn’t work) in that format. And I already have a few articles and essays that I’m tentatively sketching out in my head, talking about the third season, some of its narrative decisions, potential spin-off ideas, and much more. So although Picard has come to an end, I hope you’ll check back to see some of that!
All together on the bridge, safe and sound.
And of course there’s more Star Trek to come! Strange New Worlds Season 2 will premiere in June, and we have Discovery’s fifth and final season in early 2024 – plus Prodigy, Lower Decks, Starfleet Academy, and Section 31 to look forward to as well!
For now, though, I’ll end by saying that I hope you had fun following along with my theories this season – and across Seasons 1 and 2, too. I had a great time keeping the theory list up-to-date, coming up with ideas, and speculating about the story that Picard was telling. And who knows… if a certain Legacy pitch gets picked up by Paramount, maybe some of my theories will return in the future! Watch this space, and live long and prosper!
Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in the United States and other countries and territories where the service is available, and on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and around the world. The Star Trek franchise – including Picard and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the following Star Wars productions: Rogue One, The Book of Boba Fett, Jedi: Fallen Order, and The Rise of Skywalker.
Happy Star Wars Day! May the Fourth be with you… and all that.
Today is a day of celebration for Star Wars – and I like to try to say something positive about the franchise every Star Wars Day! So this year, I thought it could be fun to run through five of my favourite Star Wars experiences that have been released since Disney acquired Lucasfilm back in 2012.
I felt quite optimistic when I first heard this news more than a decade ago. I’d been disappointed, on the whole, by the Star Wars prequel trilogy, and with Disney promising a sequel that would take the story beyond Return of the Jedi, I truly felt that there was the potential for some exciting and engaging storytelling. It’s absolutely true that not every Disney project has hit the high notes that I’d been hoping for – but conversely, it’s not the case that Disney has added nothing of value to Star Wars, either. There have been some misfires and unexceptional stories… but there have been some fantastic ones too.
Porgs!
So on this illustrious day, let’s celebrate some of the successes that Disney has rolled out! I’m going beyond the films to include television shows, specials, video games, and more on this list, because Star Wars has always been a very diverse franchise. There are plenty of highlights worth celebrating that I didn’t get a chance to include this time… but who knows? Maybe they’ll make the cut next year!
As I always say: all of this is just the subjective opinion of one person, so if you disagree with my picks and hate everything I have to say… that’s totally fine! There’s plenty of room in the Star Wars fan community for polite disagreement.
Let’s jump into the list!
Highlight #1: Jedi: Fallen Order (and Jedi: Survivor)
Cal Kestis.
Jedi: Survivor has had a very rough launch, especially on PC, and that has sadly detracted from what sounds like a sequel with a fun story. I haven’t gotten to play it for myself yet, but when the bugs are patched out and the game is more stable, it’s one I hope to pick up. I adored Jedi: Fallen Order, though, and I’ve played through it twice already!
Jedi: Fallen Order is one of the most interesting standalone Star Wars stories of the past decade, exploring a setting and time period that was relatively unknown, and telling a story all its own. I genuinely got roped in by some fantastic writing, and felt as if I was taking part in my very own Star Wars adventure with former Jedi Padawan Cal Kestis and the crew of the Stinger Mantis.
Promo artwork for Jedi: Survivor.
Jedi: Fallen Order also gave me one of my favourite experiences in any Star Wars game ever: piloting an AT-AT walker! This sequence might just be the best in the entire game; it was tense, perfectly-paced, and exciting, with the controls of the clunky machine feeling exactly as I’d expected when I first saw an AT-AT ambling across the battlefield on Hoth decades earlier!
After feeling disappointed by some of the narrative decisions taken elsewhere in the Star Wars franchise in the year or so before I played the game, it was somewhat of a cathartic experience to know that I hadn’t totally fallen out of love with Star Wars, and that the franchise can still tell the kinds of fun, exciting, and adventurous stories that I enjoy the most.
Highlight #2: Rogue One
The Death Star under construction.
I adore Rogue One, which was Disney’s first attempt to create a spin-off from the main Star Wars saga. The film told the story of Jyn Erso and the birth of the Rebellion, including the theft of the original Death Star plans that set up the events of A New Hope. It was a fantastic action-packed romp with some great moments of characterisation. Not only that, but it was an incredibly bold move for the film to kill off practically all of its major characters.
Although Rogue One featured some (rather gratuitous) sequences involving Darth Vader, by and large it stood apart from other entries in the franchise by leaving the Force, the Jedi, and lightsabers behind. This is something I think Star Wars needs to try to do more of; there’s a whole galaxy out there away from the Jedi, the Sith, and other Force-wielders that’s crying out to be explored!
Stealing the Death Star plans.
At the time of its release in 2016, Rogue One truly felt like something dramatically different from Star Wars. After the disappointment of the prequels and the relatively safe ground of the copycat production that was The Force Awakens, here was a cinematic demonstration that Star Wars could push the boat out and try new and different things. Although it was still a prequel that was very closely tied into the original films, it was also a work that existed in its own narrative space and could be enjoyed on that basis. Again, this is something I’d love to see more of from Star Wars.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen Rogue One! I’ve definitely seen it more times than all of the prequels and sequels, and it’s a film I’m happy to return to time and again. It got its own spin-off last year: Andor. I haven’t yet found time to check out that series, but I hope to in the weeks and months ahead.
Highlight #3: Galaxy’s Edge and Rise of the Resistance
First Order Stormtroopers.
I dearly wish that I could visit Walt Disney World and experience Galaxy’s Edge and Rise of the Resistance for myself! Unfortunately I’m in poor health and can’t travel, so I’ll have to settle for enjoying this immersive experience from afar.
Galaxy’s Edge is a themed attraction at Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California, and it’s set on a brand-new planet in the Star Wars universe. The area includes a cantina, shops, and two rides: Smuggler’s Run and Rise of the Resistance. Smuggler’s Run is set aboard the Millennium Falcon, with riders able to take the controls of the famous vessel. But Rise of the Resistance is the showstopper: a trackless, immersive ride experience.
The official map of Galaxy’s Edge.
If, like me, you aren’t able to get to Disneyland right now – and with those prices, who is? – then you can find video tours of Galaxy’s Edge and even full videos of the rides on YouTube and other video platforms. It’s not the same, of course, as being able to ride for ourselves, but it’s the best a lot of us can hope for!
Although I’d say that Galaxy’s Edge is probably limited, in some ways, by its sequel-era setting, it looks to be an incredibly immersive experience, by far the best that Disney’s Imagineers have built for the parks in recent years. Being able to build a lightsaber, drink cocktails and blue milk in a cantina, or just soak up the atmosphere of a galaxy far, far away… it looks like a ton of fun! If you’ve been able to visit, I hope you know how jealous I am!
Highlight #4: The Book of Boba Fett
Concept art of Boba Fett and his ship.
As I said in my review of The Book of Boba Fett: this is a series that I’d have expected to find pretty boring and disappointing! It was such a nostalgia overload, especially in the final couple of episodes, that it could feel like watching overgrown children playing with action figures rather than a scripted television series! But there was something about the fun, lighter tone and the smaller-scale story that made it thoroughly enjoyable for me.
It’s surprising to me that The Book of Boba Fett hasn’t been greenlit for a second season, and I wonder why that is. The overall consensus seems to be less positive, unfortunately, and perhaps that’s the reason. But for my money, The Book of Boba Fett was far more enjoyable than its cousin The Mandalorian.
Boba Fett and Fennec Shand.
Star Wars can take itself very seriously sometimes… and that can be okay. But The Book of Boba Fett didn’t fall into that trap, and the show’s lighter elements helped it to stand out. By telling a story mostly set on one planet, focusing on a small cadre of characters, and without much of an emphasis on the Force and the Jedi, The Book of Boba Fett also managed to feel like something a little different.
I was never particularly taken by Boba Fett as a character in the original films. He had an interesting visual style, but in his only real combat encounter he died pretty easily! The Book of Boba Fett took this bland, faceless character and truly fleshed him out, giving motivation, understanding, and even a sympathetic presentation to the galaxy’s most famous bounty hunter.
Highlight #5: The Lego Star Wars specials
Palpatine is not amused!
At time of writing there have been three Lego Star Wars specials on Disney+: The Holiday Special, Terrifying Tales, and Summer Vacation. And all of them are fantastic! The Lego Star Wars specials are cute, funny homages to the Star Wars franchise, bringing in elements from across the prequels, sequels, and original films and putting a distinctly comedic, light-hearted spin on them.
Fans who want to take everything seriously might not enjoy what these specials have to offer, but everyone else should be able to find at least something to enjoy! I’d even go so far as to say that the Lego Star Wars specials can make some of the weaker elements of cinematic Star Wars seem better – or at least less bad!
Palpatine and Vader.
I can’t pick a favourite out of these three specials. Each one has so much going for it – and each one is also tailored to fit a certain theme or time of year. The fact that all three specials are so strong is testament to the quality of the writing, and to Disney’s commitment to this unexpectedly fun idea.
The fact that Disney was willing to commit a decent amount of money to non-canon comedy is fantastic, and shows that the corporation can do more with Star Wars than just make carbon copies of what came before. These specials were, once again, something genuinely different for the Star Wars franchise – and all three are well worth a watch if you can find them on Disney+.
So that’s it!
Poe’s X-Wing fighter.
We’ve celebrated Star Wars Day by looking at five recent highlights from the Disney era. There are plenty of others that I could’ve chosen to include, but I think we’ve managed to put together a pretty fun and diverse list.
I’m not fully caught up on all things Star Wars, having missed Andor and The Mandalorian’s third season. The franchise might be beginning to get a little unwieldy as it continues to expand… but I suppose for fans who are more into Star Wars than I am, that’s a good thing! There are several projects on the horizon that hold genuine appeal, and I’m looking forward to seeing what else Disney and Lucasfilm have in store.
So I suppose all that remains to be said is this: may the Force be with you! Happy Star Wars Day from Trekking with Dennis.
The Star Wars franchise – including all films, games, and other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: Lower Decks, Discovery, Prodigy, and Starfleet Academy.
I’m adding my voice to the growing chorus asking Paramount to commission a brand-new Star Trek series!
It’s surprising to me that – not for the first time – this request appears to have caught Paramount off-guard. As happened with the “Captain Pike show” in the aftermath of Discovery’s second season, the corporation finds itself ill-prepared for the reaction from fans, and doesn’t appear to have made any moves to line up actors or a production team for the series tentatively titled Star Trek: Legacy.
Picard Season 3 was… well, a mixed bag, to be honest. But it ended in spectacular fashion, bringing the series to a close in style. The final episode also very clearly and deliberately set up a potential successor series; more than simply “leaving the door open,” The Last Generation went out of its way to actively set up at least one potential story that a new show could follow.
I hope you didn’t skip the post-credits scene…
Whether or not characters like Jack Crusher and Raffi Musiker return, though, in a broader sense I’m not ready to leave the early 25th Century behind. Even after three seasons, Picard has barely scratched the surface of this time period – and there’s so much potential here that abandoning it feels positively criminal! Although we have Lower Decks and Prodigy both in the late 24th Century, potentially able to pick up on storylines and characters from The Next Generation era, Picard’s finale marks the end of Star Trek’s live-action commitment to this time period.
As I’ve argued before, one of the mistakes that Paramount has made – in my subjective opinion, naturally – has been to underestimate fans’ love for The Next Generation and the other Star Trek shows of the 1990s. Sure, The Original Series got things started, but it was the ’80s and ’90s when the Star Trek franchise as a whole had its real heyday, and there are so many characters, factions, and incomplete storylines from this era that are crying out to be expanded upon.
Legacy could be set aboard the Enterprise-G.
Terry Matalas, who was the showrunner for Picard’s second and third seasons, has suggested that his Star Trek: Legacy concept would pick up right where The Last Generation ended, with Captain Seven, Raffi as her first officer, Jack Crusher, and some of the secondary characters that we were just starting to get to know aboard the newly rechristened Enterprise-G. If Paramount gets in quick, before the sets that had been built are mothballed and the actors have moved on, it could be relatively inexpensive to get production re-started.
I know, I know. There’s more to commissioning a brand-new series than just sets and actors, and there are 1,001 other things that will need to be organised. But that just means that time is of the essence, and that Paramount should seize the moment that has been presented right now. Fans are clamouring for Star Trek: Legacy with no less fervour than we were for Strange New Worlds back in 2019, and there’s a limited window of opportunity for the corporation to take advantage of that.
Legacy could take advantage of existing sets and other infrastructure.
It might even be worth reconsidering some of the productions that are currently lined up. If you asked 1,000 Star Trek fans whether they’d rather have Starfleet Academy as a Discovery spin-off or Legacy as a Picard spin-off… I bet you could predict which way that poll would go! As happened with Section 31 and Strange New Worlds… I fear that Paramount may have messed up its timing.
We’ve talked before about the Star Trek franchise becoming too busy and too complicated, and that there’s a need for Paramount to slim down and produce less content in the years ahead. Fewer shows that could potentially have at least slightly higher per-episode budgets instead of a glut of content would be my preference – and with the Picard time period being ripe for exploration, I’d absolutely urge Paramount to prioritise Star Trek: Legacy ahead of other projects… even those that may have already entered pre-production.
What about Starfleet Academy?
Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy have all demonstrated that actors from past iterations of Star Trek – both main cast members and guest stars – have been more than willing to reprise their roles, so there’s scope to bring on board a plethora of the 24th Century’s finest! Picard has told stories that expanded upon the lore and world of Star Trek in different ways, and there’s scope for Legacy to do something similar.
More significantly, perhaps, Legacy could ditch the fully-serialised approach that has been the hallmark of modern live-action Star Trek in favour of the model used by Strange New Worlds – a more episodic and varied style that is perfectly suited to the franchise. Although there’d have to be care taken to ensure two similar productions aren’t tripping over one another, my heart says that episodic Star Trek is where it’s at!
Raffi and Seven could come back!
Whatever the plan may be for Legacy, though, it’s a pitch that Paramount ought to give serious consideration to. Picard’s third season was well-received, both by fans and a wider audience, so it feels like the perfect launchpad for a new Star Trek series set in this time period. There’s a lot more to explore in the 25th Century, picking up themes, factions, characters, and even storylines that Picard didn’t get a chance to look at across its three-season run.
At time of writing, there’s a fan petition on change.org that’s rapidly approaching the 50,000 signatures mark. It’s already surpassed a similar petition that ultimately led to Strange New Worlds – so there’s clearly an appetite for this series, and it’s something that Paramount really needs to take seriously.
The petition at time of writing.
I don’t usually lend my support to this kind of thing, but with Star Trek making announcements that seem to take the franchise to different time periods, alternate timelines, and thematic places, I wanted to do what I can in my small corner of the internet to signal my support for Star Trek: Legacy – or another, similar project set in the Picard era.
The history of Star Trek is quite literally built on the strength of the fan community and fan-led campaigns. The Original Series was greenlit for a third season thanks to an extensive letter-writing campaign, fan support for The Original Series in syndication led to The Animated Series and later The Motion Picture, and fan campaigns also supported The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. As recently as 2021, a fan campaign led to Discovery’s fourth season being broadcast outside of the United States. So when Trekkies come together, we have the power to influence the people in charge – and that’s what I hope will be the outcome this time!
Star Trek: Legacy feels like a pitch with a ton of potential. Fans are waiting – and the moment to act is now! I sincerely hope that Paramount is listening, and that conversations are happening behind closed doors that will eventually lead to an announcement. Stay tuned, watch this space, and take whatever opportunities are presented to advocate on behalf of this project!
If you want to sign the fan petition on change.org, you can find it by clicking or tapping here. (Leads to another website)
The Star Trek franchise – including Picard and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Wrath of Khan, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Discovery.
It only really hit me when I was sitting at my desk, creating the header image for this review: this is the final episode of Star Trek: Picard. This will be the last time I crop still frames, the last time I have to warn you about spoilers… the last time I review a brand-new episode of this series. There will be plenty of opportunities in the weeks, months, and years ahead to look back at Picard – and I have no doubt we’ll do just that. But for now, suffice to say that I already feel a swirling mass of emotions as the series comes to an end.
I’d waited more than eighteen years for Remembrance– the premiere episode of Season 1. In all of that time, Star Trek had looked backwards. Prequels, spin-offs, and and alternate timeline had all told some fun stories and kept the franchise going, but my Star Trek era – the late 24th Century – had been sidelined. Picard was the show that brought it back, and that brought back Jean-Luc Picard and other incredible characters. I was so passionately excited when I sat down to watch Remembrance a little over three years ago… and it’s been a journey, to say the least!
The Last Generation got its own poster.
If you read my review of Võx last time, you can probably skip this one! I’m going to say more or less the same thing about The Last Generation as I did about Võx: this was a flawed episode, hamstrung by clichés, contrivances, and a badly-paced second half of the season… but I liked it anyway because of the deeply emotional storytelling that it managed to get right.
For a good hour or more after I’d first watched The Last Generation, I found myself sitting around wearing a big stupid grin – because despite the obvious flaws and issues with the episode that we’ll get into in a moment, by far my biggest takeaway was how it made me feel. That’s the success of The Last Generation – and, in a broader sense, of the final chapter of Picard’s third season as a whole. I didn’t expect to feel this way, and if you write out on paper the elements that were dumped into the story at this late stage, how they came together, how rushed much of it felt, and more, I’d have expected to come away from The Last Generation feeling disappointed. But… I don’t.
Showrunner/director Terry Matalas with the main cast.
And that’s in spite of The Last Generation being a deeply flawed outing from multiple angles. I’d go so far as to say that the episode doesn’t even feel like a finale or an ending… let alone a definitive one for a crew who should be ready to enter retirement. Think about where everyone ended up at the end of the story: Dr Crusher has been reinstated in Starfleet, Seven, Raffi, and Jack are about to head off on a new adventure, Riker and Troi appear ready to leave Nepenthe behind and find a new home, Data is just beginning to get used to his new body and newfound humanity, and the only characters who might be ready to return to their pre-Season 3 lives are Worf, Geordi, and Picard… though we didn’t see much of an indication of that in the episode itself.
And that’s before we get into the strange implications of the mid-credits scene.
You did stick around for the mid-credits scene, right? After the credits roll over the lingering overhead shot of Picard and the crew playing poker – a callback to All Good Things at the end of The Next Generation – we got one final scene. Go back and watch it if you haven’t! I’ll wait here.
You stuck around after this, right?
I guess we’ll start with what The Last Generation got wrong, as well as talk about the decisions that led to the story reaching this particular ending.
This was a rushed episode, one in which the main villain of the entire season was outsmarted and defeated in a matter of minutes. There were gripping moments of explosive action and tense drama along the way – but practically all of them would’ve benefitted from a few extra minutes. I stand by what I said last week: the decision to change track from the changelings to the Borg came too late, and there wasn’t enough time remaining to have the kind of climactic final battle that the writers wanted.
If this exact pacing problem hadn’t also afflicted Seasons 1 and 2 of Picard, it would still be deeply disappointing to see it here. But given the criticisms that both of the previous seasons of this series received for precisely this issue… quite frankly it’s unforgivable. This isn’t strictly a problem with The Last Generation, but rather with the pacing and structuring of the season as a whole. If showrunner Terry Matalas is to be trusted with a spin-off – as he and some fans are pushing hard for at the moment – then lessons have to be learned. Matalas helmed Seasons 2 and 3 of Picard, and both seasons came to a close in a mad rush, without enough time to fully explain everything.
The Enterprise-D in action.
As the dust settles, it isn’t even clear whether Vadic and her rogue changelings actually knew who they were working with, or the extent of the damage done to the Borg Collective. That side of the story evaporated with Vadic’s death a couple of weeks ago, and was barely touched in the epilogue after the Borg’s defeat. For a story that supposedly brought together two of Star Trek’s most powerful villainous factions – the Founders and the Borg – to come to an end without any on-screen interaction between them… again, it’s very odd. Something is missing here.
Realistically, if both the rogue changelings and the Borg were to be included, we needed this revelation to have come earlier. There would still have been secrets to keep – such as the inclusion of the Enterprise-D – but had the Borg reveal come sooner, and been explained better, other story elements that came to a head in The Last Generation would have flowed better and more naturally.
Behind-the-scenes on The Last Generation.
The Last Generation relies heavily on a story from two decades ago that wasn’t explained and only got the most oblique of references earlier in the season. In the Voyager finale, a time-travelling Admiral Janeway infected the Borg Collective with a “neurolytic pathogen,” devastating it. It was this event that the Borg Queen said was the cause of the decrepit state of the Collective – but for such an important story point, this needed far more explanation than it received.
Although the latter part of Picard’s third season has the feel of a production that was “made for fans,” it isn’t just hard-core Trekkies who watch the show. I have friends who aren’t immersed in the world of Star Trek who have enjoyed Picard for the sci-fi series it is on its own merit – and I suspect that a lot of more casual viewers, those who either don’t recall or didn’t watch Voyager, would have been left baffled by the Borg Queen and the Collective in general being in such a state. That this presentation of a different Borg Queen is now the third distinct version of the character to appear in Picard just adds to the confusion.
The Borg Queen.
Again, this isn’t a problem with The Last Generation on its own, nor even just of Season 3. Picard’s showrunner and writers chose to bring the Borg into focus in each of the show’s three seasons, offering different and contradictory presentations of the Collective and its leader each time. Given that the changeling storyline had worked so well for the first three-quarters of this season… perhaps a different ending could have been written, one that kept the Borg out of things. Or, alternatively, given that Seasons 2 and 3 went into production together with the same team at the helm, Season 2 could’ve been changed if this Borg ending to the series had already been decided upon.
Though we can argue it’s fitting, in a way, for Picard to be present at what appears to be the final demise of the Borg, given that he was present when the faction was introduced and was assimilated by them, the way this story unfolded doesn’t actually have that much to do with Picard. The Borg’s defeat came at the hands of Janeway, who was mentioned by name several times but didn’t even make a cameo all season long. Picard himself was just sort of… there. As has been the case more or less all season long, Picard – the show’s title character and main protagonist, lest we forget – was swept along by a narrative current that was almost entirely out of his control.
Picard in the Borg Queen’s chamber.
Because the reveal of the Borg’s involvement came so late in the story – partway into the ninth episode of a ten-episode season – Jack’s “defection” to the Collective already felt like it was built on shaky ground. There was the kernel of a good idea here, but again I feel the pacing issue causing a stumbling block. Jack’s powers manifested slowly earlier in the season, and in fact it wasn’t until several episodes in that we saw any indication that he was anything other than human at all. His decision to run away last week was blitzed through in a matter of seconds, and his reconciliation in The Last Generation was likewise rushed.
Reaching out to someone and using “love” to bring them back from a dark place is a bit of a cliché, but it’s hardly the worst that Season 3 has offered up. The way it was handled worked well enough in the moment – though I would argue that Dr Crusher, rather than Picard, would surely have been better-placed to try to convince Jack to stand down. Although we’ve seen a developing relationship between Picard and his son, the events of Season 3 have taken place over a few days at most, meaning the connection between Jack and Dr Crusher is going to be far stronger.
Picard and Jack embrace inside the Borg Collective.
Given the remarkably similar premise between Jack’s story here at the end of Season 3 and Dr Jurati’s toward the end of Season 2, it’s a shame that she and her Borg faction couldn’t appear. In fact, the whole end of Season 2, with the mysterious, unexplained anomaly attacking the Federation, has now passed its last chance to get any kind of resolution. At this late stage I wasn’t expecting that to happen – but it’s again indicative of Picard as a whole being a deeply troubled and poorly-managed production. Lessons need to be learned going forward so that future Star Trek projects don’t suffer similar shortcomings.
As I said last week when discussing the Borg, Jack’s story would feel stronger – and certainly more original – were it not basically a re-hashing of Dr Jurati’s story from last season. Dr Jurati felt lonely, isolated, and without friends – and found those things in the Borg. Jack felt lonely, isolated, and without friends… and also sought out those things from the Borg. Jack’s defection feels weaker, in some respects, because of the way it was set up, and the fact that it’s no longer an original idea further diminishes it.
Jack was able to break free of the Borg Collective thanks to Picard.
Several characters displayed skills in The Last Generation that are either perfectly aligned with things we’ve seen them do in the past, or that felt like natural evolutions based on the story the season has told. Dr Crusher manning the Enterprise-D’s weapons is a case in point: after two decades away from Starfleet, operating outside of the Federation under dangerous conditions, she knows her way around a phaser bank and torpedo launcher!
But Deanna Troi exhibited a telepathic skill that we’ve never seen her use before, being able to pinpoint Riker’s location as if by magic. There were opportunities earlier in the season to set this up, such as the conversation Troi and Riker had while imprisoned aboard the Shrike. As it is, this newfound ability felt like a magical solution to a story that had rather written itself into a corner – a cheap way to allow the Enterprise-D to swoop in and save everyone at the last second.
Deanna Troi on the bridge.
Unlike some of the other points I’ve raised, this one isn’t even a question of timing or pacing. It would’ve required an extra handful of lines of dialogue in an earlier episode, explaining that Troi had been honing her abilities or that when she used her “pain removal” skill on Riker she’d done so at a distance. That small amount of setup would’ve allowed this moment to flow far more naturally, and wouldn’t have led to me rolling my eyes quite so much!
A clever and well-executed misdirect can add a lot to a story, particularly if the stakes are high. But even with that caveat, I have to say that the excessive “foreshadowing” of the deaths of Riker and Picard in particular fell very flat for me in The Last Generation. The episode dedicated an inordinate amount of time to setting up that the away team wouldn’t be returning from the sojourn to the Borg Cube… only for everyone to survive. Stripping some of this out would’ve still allowed The Last Generation to keep the tension high, but would’ve blunted the impression that it was deliberately deceitful. Not only that, taking a few of these scenes away would’ve opened up other possibilities, such as spending a bit more time with the Borg Queen.
There was a lot of foreshadowing that wasn’t paid off.
There’s nothing wrong with an episode feeling like a throwback to an earlier style of storytelling – especially in a story with such a strong nostalgic component. But even with that in mind, the fact that all of the main characters survived the story was a bit of a surprise. Television storytelling has changed a lot since The Next Generation premiered in 1987, and main characters should no longer consider themselves to be safe just because of their status. To the episode’s credit, it genuinely felt like Picard, Riker, and Worf were all in danger during their mission… but nothing substantial came of that, and we even got a deus ex machina rescue right at the end.
Killing off a legacy character was always going to be controversial, and I’m sure that if someone hadn’t survived, there’d have been criticism from some quarters. But a well-timed character death can feel right, conveying how high the stakes are, paying off a character arc, or making an heroic sacrifice. Star Trek has done all of these things before in different ways, and I feel it would have strengthened not only The Last Generation but Season 3 as a whole if a well-written end could’ve come for one of our main characters.
Jack and Picard were both saved at the last second.
Part of the reason for that is that, for all the buildup, The Last Generation doesn’t really feel like an ending. It feels more like All Good Things than The Undiscovered Country, with a new chapter for some or even all of these characters seemingly ready to be written. I’m all for leaving the door ajar, with possibilities on the table… but this season was supposed to be the “final” outing for this crew. Only Picard seems ready to enter retirement – and even that feels questionable as he reunited with Dr Crusher to escort Jack to his first ever Starfleet posting.
All Good Things was clearly part of the inspiration for the epilogue at the end of the episode, particularly the poker sequence. But All Good Things was written and produced at a time when the cast and crew knew that Generations was literally days away from entering production. It didn’t need to be a definitive end… because it was never meant to be. Season 3 as a whole, and The Last Generation in particular, was billed as the final voyage of this crew. And yet it ended in such a way as to suggest that practically everyone has at least one more adventure yet to come.
Riker, Picard, and La Forge on the Enterprise-D.
The final fight against the Borg Queen brought with it a lot of tropes. The Enterprise-D blasted its way along the surface of the Queen’s oversized vessel almost like an X-Wing running the Death Star trench in Star Wars, and though this sequence was visually exciting – and technically perfect from an animation point of view – it was again something that was rushed. The buildup to this sequence was blitzed through, thanks in part to the decision to spend so much time setting up character deaths that ultimately didn’t come.
Starships and the way they operate have always been vague; adaptable to different kinds of stories. Given the size discrepancy between the Enterprise-D and the Borg Queen’s mega-cube, I don’t think it’s any kind of “problem” to see the Enterprise-D move as quickly as it does and with such fluidity – and this sequence felt like an updated, modernised version of the starship’s clashes with Borg vessels in episodes like Q Who and The Best of Both Worlds.
The “Death Star trench run!”
I think my biggest eye-roll in The Last Generation came as the Enterprise-D swooped down for a last-second rescue, literally appearing in the “sky” above the Borg Queen’s chamber. Both in terms of narrative and visual presentation, this was just such an overdone trope. Across the sci-fi genre and into action, adventure, and more… we’ve seen this kind of ending so many times.
Part of the reason why this moment fell so flat for me was, I suspect, because The Last Generation hadn’t made good on any of its foreshadowed character deaths. The rescue of the survivors might’ve been more impactful had one or two of these characters lost their lives along the way. But a combination of the trope itself, its previously-unseen telepathic “magic” setup, and the fact that it rescued all of the main characters from a supposedly impossible situation… it all came together to feel like a clichéd ending.
The Enterprise-D saves the day!
I stand by what I said last time: the presentation of the Borg Queen feels quite diminished in light of what we saw in Season 2. The idea of a decrepit, weakened Borg Queen was an interesting one – but not one that The Last Generation found much time to explore. She leaned very heavily into the “I’m evil for the sake of it” villain trope, far more so than earlier presentations of the Borg Queen, who seemed to have an overarching goal in mind for the Collective. However, I can forgive that trope in light of the collapse of the Borg Collective; the idea that she’d use the last of her power to seek revenge on Starfleet makes sense.
As Jack was liberated from the Collective, and particularly as the Enterprise-D came racing in to save the day, though, the characterisation of the Borg Queen fell apart. Another huge part of why this sequence felt so clichéd was the Borg Queen’s screams of “noooo!” as her plan unravelled. This is the kind of thing that you expect to see from the supervillains of children’s comic books, or the bad guys in a Saturday morning cartoon, as their evil scheme is defeated. Again, this whole sequence was so much less interesting than it could’ve been.
“Nooooooo!” screams the defeated villain.
But now we have to contend with a question that I asked last week: does any of that matter? The clichés, the overused tropes, the basic, formulaic story, the cookie-cutter plot, the poor pacing, the underused yet also played-out villain… none of it really feels like it gets in the way of a fantastic, thoroughly enjoyable romp with Picard and the crew.
Even though The Last Generation absolutely fails to feel like an ending in any sense of the word for basically any of its characters, it’s still a more enjoyable send-off and final mission than the crew of the Enterprise-D got in Nemesis. If this is to be their final outing (and I wouldn’t bet against Paramount considering some kind of Picard TV movie or even theatrical release, given the strong reception to Season 3) then we can finally say that this crew went out on a high.
All safe and sound on the bridge.
And it’s a high because of the emotional storytelling that manages to play the nostalgia card in a way that works. This was another “made for fans” outing, one that leaned heavily into The Next Generation, Voyager, and really all of Star Trek’s past. If you’d told me at the start that the season finale would be like this, I’d have been sceptical – fearing that it would come across as a nostalgia overload. And frankly that’s what The Last Generation is: an episode that sacrifices narrative integrity for the sake of nostalgia.
Maybe it’s the blinkers of nostalgia speaking, as The Next Generation was my way into the Star Trek fandom more than thirty years ago, but I can’t hold that against Picard. It worked for me – and if that’s because I’m a basic bitch, blinded by nostalgia to the obvious flaws and gaping holes of a mediocre story… then so be it! I’ll be a basic bitch all day long.
The Enterprise-D arrives at Earth.
There’s more to storytelling than canon, consistency, and even logic. These things all matter, don’t get me wrong – but in a story like The Last Generation, it’s just that they matter far less than how the episode makes us feel. And for me at least, though I recognise with a critical (some might say cynical or jaded) eye that the episode and its narrative have flaws, almost the entire time I was on the edge of my seat, truly going through all of the emotions with Picard, Riker, and the rest of the crew as their mission unfolded.
As happened last week, that’s my real takeaway from The Last Generation. The fact that I was roped in, entertained, and went through a rollercoaster of emotions with Jean-Luc Picard and the crew more than makes up for any logical inconsistencies or narrative missteps that the episode made.
Picard toward the end of the episode.
The idea that Picard, Riker, Worf, or anyone else might actually be killed – as was extensively foreshadowed and hinted at – was gripping, and more than a little upsetting. Death felt like it was stalking the members of the away team – and those on the bridge of the Enterprise-D or trying to remain in control of the Titan scarcely felt much safer, either. This feeling persisted for much of the episode, and though the way in which it ended was ultimately a little unsatisfying because of everyone surviving, in another way that’s very “Star Trek.” Heroes like Captain Kirk famously didn’t believe in no-win scenarios – and Picard managed to pull off the impossible task of saving everyone.
Animation brought these stories to life in spectacular form – and thinking back to the finale of Picard’s first season just three years ago, it’s amazing how far Paramount and Star Trek have come. The fleets and ships seen in The Last Generation were beautiful and diverse, and seeing Spacedock as Earth’s last line of defence against a massive, imposing armada was a truly stunning sight.
Spacedock and the assimilated fleet.
Both the Titan and Enterprise-D were beautiful, too, and both ships performed incredible feats as they battled their foes. Seeing the Titan in action, taking on the entire assembled fleet, was spectacular to see – and it found another narrative justification for the cloaking device that Jack and Sidney “borrowed” a few episodes ago!
Seven and Raffi hadn’t had as much to do this season as I’d hoped – but the moments they got in The Last Generation showed both characters at their best. Part of the reason fans are so hyped up for a potential spin-off is to see more from Seven of Nine, and The Last Generation added to and rounded out her arc across all three seasons of Picard by placing her, once again, in the captain’s chair. This time, we got to see her people skills – being able to inspire and protect the motley crew of survivors on the bridge was pitch-perfect.
This was a good episode for Seven of Nine.
Again, my only real criticism of this part of the story is that I could’ve happily spent more time with Seven of Nine and the crew of the Titan! As Picard and his crew worked to stop the Borg Queen, Seven and hers provided essential covering fire – and the way that this came across was outstanding. Seven, Raffi, and their assembled survivors felt in danger practically the entire time, especially as the Titan’s cloak was destroyed and its assimilated youngsters made their way back to the bridge.
As unsold as I’ve been on Data’s resurrection this season, the character dynamic between Data and Geordi has been cute – and this trend continued in The Last Generation. Geordi sat beside Data on the bridge of the Enterprise-D – as he had in The Next Generation’s first season – and they had some fun and exciting moments together.
Data.
Likewise Riker and Worf! These two characters had a great relationship during The Next Generation era, serving together and often taking part in away missions. It was a treat to see them teamed up once again, and the dynamic they had aboard the Borg vessel added a lot of comedy to what was an otherwise serious story. Jonathan Frakes and Michael Dorn have great chemistry and comedic timing together, and the moments of lightheartedness through what was a dangerous mission really elevated the sequences aboard the Borg vessel.
Picard’s act of sacrifice required him to “jack in” to the Borg Collective – voluntarily assimilating himself. As the culmination of Picard’s arc with the Borg, this was a fascinating idea. Picard had already come to terms with aspects of his Borg experience in First Contact and in Seasons 1 and 2 of this series, so it wasn’t totally original or new – and that might’ve improved it, perhaps. But making this sacrificial move was clever, and fits right in with themes that the entire series has touched upon in different ways.
Picard jacks in.
I’m glad that Tuvok survived his ordeal with the changelings – though I would’ve liked to have seen how he and others may have been rescued. Again, this is something a longer season might’ve been able to include. But his scene with Seven, in which she was promoted to captain, was a very sweet part of the epilogue.
I’m not sure how I feel about the return of Q. As I said last year after Q had been “killed” in Season 2, bringing him back to life – especially with the kind of hand-wavey explanation of “don’t think in such linear terms” – undermines one of the few remaining narrative points propping up the entirety of Picard’s disappointing second season. For the sake of such a brief cameo… I wouldn’t have included Q here, I think.
Q is back.
One cameo that I adored was Walter Koenig – who sadly only appeared in audio form – as Anton Chekov, the son (or grandson) of Pavel Chekov. I jokingly said a few weeks ago in one of my theory updates that Chekov would be an unlikely inclusion this season… but it turns out I’m rather prophetic!
The name Anton was presumably chosen in memory of Anton Yelchin, who portrayed the character of Chekov in the Kelvin timeline films. This was a sweet way to memorialize him. Bringing Walter Koenig in for a cameo really brings together all of Star Trek. This finale began last week with a callback to Enterprise, Koenig represents The Original Series, and we have main characters from across The Next Generation era. It really was a celebration of all things Trek!
Data and Geordi listening to President Chekov.
There’s more to say – but we’ll have to return to The Last Generation and Season 3 on another occasion.
This review took me a long time to finish, having started it on the day the episode premiered. I had an original draft ready by last weekend, but I wasn’t happy with it so I ended up deleting and re-writing large parts of it. Keeping up with Picard this season has been a struggle, and I think I’m ready for a bit of a break from these reviews! Thankfully, the Star Trek franchise seems to be better-paced this year, and there’s a break before Strange New Worlds Season 2 arrives in June.
I enjoyed The Last Generation – in spite of its shortcomings. It was a great way to end the season, and it potentially sets up a spin-off set in this same time period, which is something I truly hope can happen.
So long, Captain Picard!
So we come to the end of Season 3… and of Star Trek: Picard. In the weeks and months ahead we’ll return to The Last Generation and to Season 3, perhaps taking a deeper look at some of the individual characters, narrative points, and themes – and dissecting them! But for now, I’m about ready to put this review to bed and move on to other topics!
I’ll round up my theory list sometime soon, too. But for now, I hope you enjoyed following along with my Picard reviews this season. Season 3 was an improvement on Season 2, without a doubt, and for the most part I had a good time with it.
Stick around, because the website isn’t going anywhere! There’s Strange New Worlds to come this summer, the video game Star Trek: Resurgence, and Discovery’s final season in early 2024. In between I’ll be re-watching older films and episodes, crafting theories, previewing upcoming projects, and talking about other franchises, too. Thanks for bearing with me while I was writing this review, and I hope to see you soon!
Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in the United States and other countries and territories where the service is available, and on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and around the world. The Star Trek franchise – including Picard and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-3, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Prodigy, and potentially minor spoilers for Star Trek: Section 31.
Second time lucky?
Paramount will certainly be hoping so, because this is the second time they’ve tried to get Star Trek: Section 31 off the ground! Originally envisioned as a television series, this latest announcement is something new for the Star Trek franchise: Section 31 will come directly to Paramount+ as a kind of “TV movie.” Reading between the lines, I think we can expect a lower budget than a full theatrical film, but perhaps a higher budget than would be afforded to a miniseries or a couple of episodes of a regular show.
If Section 31 proves to be a success with this format, I wouldn’t be surprised to see other Star Trek projects created in the same mould. As I said last year when discussing Short Treks, there’s a lot of potential in one-off stories – and with the sets having already been built for the likes of Picard and Strange New Worlds, there could also be a relatively low cost of entry, too.
The official announcement graphic.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves!
Off the back of Michelle Yeoh’s success at the Oscars and Golden Globes, her star has risen significantly. It’s a coup for Paramount to have won her back, there’s no two ways about it. Yeoh could have chosen to pursue other projects – she will have had no shortage of offers after Everything Everywhere All At Once took the world by storm – so it’s significant for both Paramount and the Star Trek franchise that she’s been convinced to come back.
With Michelle Yeoh at the helm, there’s potential for Section 31 to pick up a lot more interest and attention than it otherwise might’ve done – and that can only be a positive thing! We’ve talked before about how Star Trek needs to win over new viewers, and how the franchise needs to get new fans through the door. A project like Section 31 could be a gateway into Star Trek for legions of new viewers – at least some of whom will stick around. The potential for the franchise and the fandom to grow is significant – and growth is the only way to ensure that Star Trek will continue to be produced.
Paramount hopes this project will bring in a large audience…
Over the past couple of years I’ve talked about Section 31 a handful of times here on the website, and my overriding thought has been this: Paramount screwed this up. By announcing the project far too early, and at a time when fans were just about to get excited for the return of Captain Pike, Section 31 was dead on arrival. And it was such a shame, because by the time the groundwork had been properly laid for the project in Discovery’s third season, it was something I’d come around to.
This revival is, let’s be honest here, driven almost entirely by Michelle Yeoh’s success and Paramount’s wish to capitalise on it. I don’t think there’s much of a creative or artistic side to it – this is a commercial decision. As was the decision to dump the original Section 31 concept into development hell. In that case, Paramount saw the appetite for a Pike spin-off and prioritised that idea ahead of Section 31. This time, the board has seen the success Michelle Yeoh has had and has pulled out all the stops to bring her back to Star Trek.
Michelle Yeoh at the 2023 Golden Globe Awards.
But by the time Georgiou departed Discovery in the two-part episode Terra Firma, she’d undergone a significant shift in her characterisation – and was finally ready to take the lead in Section 31. If only Paramount had announced the project at that stage instead of two years earlier!
A TV movie feels like a good compromise for a franchise that’s in danger of burning out. With Starfleet Academy having just been announced as a new series, and growing calls for a Picard spin-off, I’m not sure that another series would’ve been the right call, especially with the Star Trek franchise continuing to have different eras and timelines on the go simultaneously. A TV movie could certainly lead to something more – either in the form of a sequel or a series – if it proves to be a huge hit. But for now at least, this feels like a surprisingly good call from a corporation that has made very few of those over the last few years.
Michelle Yeoh during production on Discovery’s first season/
The story that Section 31 will tell is going to be kept under wraps for a long time – and we might not see it until 2025 or even 2026. It’s my hope that Section 31 won’t feel like a re-hash of some of Star Trek’s recent “the whole galaxy is in danger!!!” stories that have been prevalent in Discovery, Picard, and even Prodigy in recent years. The writers need to find a way to take advantage of the secretive organisation to tell a different kind of story – a kind of black ops/spy thriller that might best be summed up as “Star Trek does James Bond.”
Besides Michelle Yeoh, there are other Discovery alumni who could potentially join the cast – though no announcements have been made at this stage. Shazad Latif, who played Ash Tyler in Discovery’s first and second seasons, is perhaps the most likely candidate, and I’d be interested to see what might’ve become of Tyler after his run-ins with Michael Burnham and the USS Discovery!
Could Section 31 bring back Ash Tyler?
There’s also the potential for Section 31 to cross over in some way with Strange New Worlds, with the TV movie potentially debuting the same year as that show’s third season. The end of Discovery’s second season certainly implied that Captain Pike was aware of Georgiou’s true identity, and bringing him into the story could make for the kind of team-up event that Star Trek really ought to consider doing more of. If Section 31 were to aim for a 2026 release, coinciding with the Star Trek franchise’s 60th anniversary, it could even be billed as an anniversary event.
There’s been far more of a positive reception to the announcement of Section 31 in 2023 than there was to its premature announcement more than four years ago, and that’s good news. The project feels much more solid this time around, and is almost certain to get off the ground and escape the gravitational pull of development hell. Partly that’s thanks to Michelle Yeoh’s newfound stature as an award winner – but it’s also, at least in part, thanks to the development of her character across Season 2 and especially Season 3 of Discovery. The more grounded, nuanced, and dare I say more human presentation of Georgiou toward the end of her tenure on Discovery is what has made her into the kind of antihero that fans can root for.
Star Trek will celebrate its sixtieth anniversary in 2026.
So I can now say I’m genuinely looking forward to Section 31… even though I have no idea when it will be set, who it might include, or what kind of story it will aim to tell! As a standalone Star Trek project it represents a genuinely different format that the franchise hasn’t really attempted before – albeit one that could, perhaps, lead to a more traditional series if it proves a runaway success.
There’s a lot more potential in Section 31 today than there was when its original announcement in early 2019 flopped and failed to get off the ground, and I think you can see that in the positive reaction both within the Star Trek fan community and outside of it. Michelle Yeoh brings a star power to Star Trek that’s unprecedented, at least in the franchise’s modern incarnation, and the effect of that should be to bring more eyes to Star Trek – and to Paramount Plus – than it’s seen in a long time. It may not be an exaggeration in the years ahead to say that Section 31 shored up Star Trek and set the stage for its future success.
Until then, I hope you’ll stay tuned here on Trekking with Dennis! As and when we get more news about Section 31, details about the cast, teasers and trailers, and the like, I’ll do my best to discuss and analyse it all. And when Section 31 is ready, you can expect a full review, too!
Star Trek: Section 31 will premiere on Paramount Plus in the United States, United Kingdom, and other countries and territories where the platform is available at an unknown future date. Further international distribution has not been announced. The Star Trek franchise – including Section 31, Discovery, and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Discovery, and Prodigy.
I had a tough old time figuring out what to say about Võx this week. It was simultaneously an incredibly emotional episode that hit all of the right nostalgic notes… and a flawed, trope-laden outing that literally had me rolling my eyes and even laughing out loud. But as Picard and the crew boarded the Enterprise-D and the dust settled… it’s also an episode that has completely decimated our theory list!
You can find my review of Võxby clicking or tapping here – and I hope you’ll check it out if you have time. I’ve shared my thoughts as best as I can… but I’ll be genuinely curious to see how the episode holds up in a year’s time when we’ve had time to process everything that happened this season, and to move on. Will those deeply nostalgic moments still cover up the episode’s flaws?
Jack aboard a shuttle in Võx.
This week we have five debunked theories, three further theories that I’m choosing to retire, and five fully confirmed theories. We also have three theories that I’m calling “semi” confirmed – and the reason for that status is the same in every case: something I’d proposed might be a changeling idea was actually a Borg idea. I got the basic outline more or less right – but called it a changeling plan not a Borg plan. But it’s my list so I’m still calling those “semi” confirmed!
I had a lot of fun last week theorising about what the “ancient evil” surrounding Jack might be – as well as knocking over a couple of popular fan theories that I’d spotted on social media. There’s no such bonus theory to come this week… and as we strike so many theories off of the list, we’ll be going into the finale with only a few remaining on the table!
As always, we’ll start with theories that were confirmed or debunked this week.
Debunked theory #1: Jack has changeling/Founder DNA.
Jack in this week’s episode.
Until we saw the Borg hiding inside Jack’s mind this week, which began the process of unravelling the Borg’s involvement in the story, the “big bad” that Picard and the crew were facing appeared to be a group of rogue changelings. With their focus on Jack, and Vadic appearing to have some kind of personal interest in him or connection to him, it seemed a reasonable guess that Jack might have somehow got changeling DNA mixed in with his human DNA.
Võx debunked this idea, though, explaining that Jack’s condition is in fact the result of Borg biotechnology – something that he inherited from Picard at the moment of his conception.
Debunked theory #2: The rogue changelings are attempting to reach the Nexus.
The Nexus.
This was a total wildcard, and I freely admit that! When we saw James T. Kirk’s body at Daystrom Station in the episode The Bounty, I wondered if that might’ve been a hint at the Nexus – the powerful energy ribbon seen in Star Trek Generations. The Nexus was a gateway to a paradise-like realm… but it also offered the opportunity to travel through time, something that Picard and Kirk both took advantage of.
With no other references to the Nexus or the events of Generations, it always felt like a bit of a long-shot. And if it had come so late in the season, it might’ve felt like a bolt from the blue! But the idea of the rogue changelings looking to use time travel to avenge or prevent their defeat in the Dominion War is an interesting one. Perhaps a future Star Trek story will consider an idea like this one day… or find another reason to return to the Nexus.
Debunked theory #3: Jack has Borg nanoprobes in his system.
Borg nanites as seen in Season 2.
This was completely debunked by Dr Crusher in Võx, as she stated outright that scans of Jack had confirmed that he has no Borg nanites or technology in his system. This revelation makes the Borg even more frightening, in my view, as their biotechnology is clearly light-years ahead of anything the Federation has… and proved to be completely undetectable, too!
Although I wasn’t certain that there was a Borg connection to Jack, it felt like a solid possibility – especially as we headed into Võx. With that in mind, Borg nanoprobes seemed like a reasonable explanation – but it didn’t pan out that way!
Debunked theory #4: Irumodic Syndrome is important to the rogue changelings.
Picard was first told about his susceptibility to Irumodic Syndrome in All Good Things…
The rogue changelings – who we now know were being controlled and/or directed by the Borg – couldn’t care less about Irumodic Syndrome. Picard and Jack don’t actually have the condition after all, it would seem! They wanted Picard’s old corpse and Jack because the anomaly in their brains was latent Borg biotechnology.
The Borg needed Jack to broadcast and amplify their signal, which they did during the Frontier Day event. Irumodic Syndrome was never part of their plan – it was a misdiagnosis by Starfleet doctors who didn’t understand what they were dealing with.
Debunked theory #5: The rogue changelings are planning to cripple Starfleet.
The assembled fleet in orbit of Earth.
Although being assimilated and controlled by the Borg is a crippling blow to Starfleet, that isn’t really what I meant by this theory! In short, I suggested that the rogue changelings’ scheme involved destroying either key front-line ships within Starfleet or blowing up large numbers of ships indiscriminately. When we saw that some rogue changeling operatives had powerful explosives with them, that possibility seemed likely!
We now know, of course, that the plan was for the Borg to assimilate younger Starfleet officers and hack into the connected Federation fleet. It doesn’t seem like the Borg plan to destroy any of the ships under their control – though they did destroy a vessel that managed to escape!
Retired theory #1: Someone on the crew is a changeling imposter.
Picard and the crew aboard the Enterprise-D.
Even though there’s one episode remaining in which I fully expect twists and turns, I’m choosing to belatedly strike this theory from the list. After the deeply emotional reunion at the end of Surrender, and Picard and the crew taking their posts aboard the Enterprise-D this week, I no longer feel that this kind of storyline would work. With less than an hour left to wrap up all of the storylines in play, adding something like this into the mix would also complicate the story unnecessarily.
As Võx has moved away from the rogue changelings to re-orient the story around the Borg, I suspect we won’t hear much more about them at all. There really ought to be something to wrap up that side of the story… but with the Borg planning a conquest of Earth, this theory now feels beyond the realm of possibility.
Retired theories #2 and #3: The rogue changelings are also planning attacks on the Klingons, Romulans, Bajorans, and Cardassians.
A joint Federation-Klingon task force during the Dominion War. Image Credit: JTVFX on YouTube
These two theories are also being retired now that we know the Borg are the ones directing this conspiracy. In short, I’d suggested that if the changelings were on the march, they might be seeking revenge for their defeat in the Dominion War. If so, it seemed logical to think that they might also be targeting other factions beyond the Federation who fought alongside them.
The Klingons and Romulans were the main ones, as they’d been part of the anti-Dominion alliance. But the Cardassians turned on their Dominion allies near the close of the war, and while officially neutral, Bajor clearly sided with the Federation, too. But now that we’ve seen the truth behind the conspiracy, this idea seems to be busted!
Semi-confirmed theory #1: The rogue changelings didn’t want Jean-Luc Picard, they wanted Locutus.
Locutus of Borg.
The conspiracy necessitated the use of Jean-Luc Picard’s corpse… but not for any reason to do with Picard himself! Borg biotechnology that had been installed or generated inside of Picard’s brain while he was assimilated was key to the conspiracy, meaning that the rogue changelings really needed the body of Locutus.
It seems as if this DNA/brain modification isn’t something that all Borg receive, otherwise the conspiracy could’ve targetted someone like Seven of Nine – or simply used any other Borg drone or ex-Borg. So it really was Locutus who was the key to the success of this scheme.
Semi-confirmed theory #2: Jack is a “sleeper agent.”
Jack in Võx.
The Borg clearly knew of Jack and his potential long before this conspiracy got started. They didn’t necessarily “plan” his conception – and it remains unclear whether any other child of Picard’s would have been similarly useful to them. But when the Borg learned that Picard had a child, they realised they could take advantage of his abilities.
In that sense, Jack is a “sleeper agent;” an asset that the Borg had within humanity unbeknownst to anyone in Starfleet – or even to Jack himself. Jack would never have voluntarily participated in the plot – though his decision to seek out the Borg Queen had the unintended consequence of the scheme succeeding – but the Borg Queen planned to use him for that purpose.
Semi-confirmed theory #3: The Borg hacked into the connected Federation fleet.
The USS Titan.
Having a connected fleet that could operate as a single entity always felt like a dangerous idea – and so it proved! The Borg were able to tap into Starfleet’s connected armada and turn the entire fleet against the Federation – even destroying ships that broke formation and tried to escape. This had been set up by comments about the connected nature of newer Starfleet vessels earlier in the season.
The Borg are a fascinating warning about the dangers of out-of-control technology, and if we extend that metaphor to their takeover of the fleet, there are some very interesting real-world parallels as we continue to work on artificial intelligence out here in the real world!
Confirmed theory #1: The “ancient evil” was the Borg Queen.
Well, look who it is!
I tackled this question in last week’s theory update, and expanded it in a standalone piece in which I considered a few other ideas – and debunked a few theories that I felt certain weren’t correct! It never seemed plausible to me that Species 8472, the Romulans, or the Pah-Wraiths could have been introduced into the story at such a late stage – not without any kind of hint or suggestion that they were implicated in the conspiracy. The Borg – and the Borg Queen specifically – seemed the most likely “ancient evil” to me, and so it proved!
There had been hints and teases all season long; a trail of breadcrumbs to follow that led to this revelation. While we can (and will) criticise the decision to bring the Borg into play for the third season in a row, the timing of this revelation coming so late in the season, and myriad other issues with this storyline, I can’t really find fault in the setup.
Confirmed theory #2: Jack’s hallucinations, red eyes, and superpowers came from the Borg.
Jack’s glowing red eyes.
There was a bit of a misdirect here, as the colour red isn’t one we’d really associate with the Borg. Nor are Jack’s other abilities, come to that! But given that I was always suspicious of some kind of Borg involvement or connection to the events of the season – going all the way back to before the season premiere – it seemed plausible that what was happening to Jack was caused by the Borg.
The biotechnology deployed by the Borg is unlike anything we’ve ever seen them use – but that’s a pretty cool idea, and it shows once again just how much more advanced the Borg are when compared with the Federation. In addition to tapping into combat prowess he didn’t know he had – which may have come from assimilation victims, if you think about it – Jack also heard the voice of the Borg Queen and possessed the ability to “assimilate” other humanoids, albeit only briefly. The glowing eyes were just a symptom.
Confirmed theory #3: Captain Shaw died.
Captain Shaw meets his end.
Poor Captain Shaw! After surviving far longer than I’d expected, he was finally killed off in Võx, with his death buying time for Picard and the others (sans Seven and Raffi, for some reason) to escape the Titan. Captain Shaw had been an interesting character in the first three or four episodes of the season, but had felt superfluous for a long time. I’d been expecting his death from the very first episode, initially wondering if he might be killed off to allow Picard, Riker, or Seven to sit in the captain’s chair.
At this late stage in the story, Shaw feels like the easiest main character to have killed. And while his death had an impact and showed the danger faced by Picard and everyone else in Starfleet… it came a bit late in the game for me. As a character who hadn’t had much to say or do for several episodes, Shaw’s death was perhaps less significant than it could’ve been. But regardless – I got this prediction right!
Confirmed theory #4: Another unannounced character returned!
Admiral Shelby!
After Ro Laren and Tuvok had appeared earlier in the season (and of course Lore and Professor Moriarty, who had been teased in pre-season trailers, appeared too), we got to see Admiral Shelby this week. Shelby appeared in the classic episode The Best of Both Worlds, where she was one of Starfleet’s biggest experts on the Borg. In an episode in which the Borg returned, there was something fitting about bringing her back – as indeed there was at having her (apparently) killed by the Borg.
There were also name-drops of a couple of other characters, including a starship seemingly named after Dr Pulaski – the doctor who joined the crew of the Enterprise-D for one year. This one is going to be recycled back into the main theory list, though… because there’s still time for another surprise or two before the season is over!
Confirmed theory #5: The Borg are involved.
Called it!
After the season premiere, in which there were a handful of Borg references, this theory was added to the list. And it turns out that those hints and teases actually were intended to jump-start the process of setting up the Borg to be the season’s main antagonist. We can argue that this reveal came too late in the story, and with only one episode left it might not be the most satisfying conflict, but at the end of the day it’s still pretty cool to have Picard and the crew facing off against the Borg once again!
As above, this is something I feel was pretty well-established by earlier episodes in the season, even as the main story seemed to focus on Vadic and the changelings. There are issues with the way this was done, particularly in terms of timing and pacing, and we’ll have to unpack all of that in the future. But for now we can call this one confirmed!
So those theories were confirmed, debunked, or have been retired.
Phew, that was a lot! There are still a few theories that remain in play, though – and Võx threw up a couple of new ideas, too. So let’s jump into the main theory list!
Theory #1: The Jurati-Borg will ally with Picard.
The Dr Jurati-Borg Queen hybrid.
The events of Season 2 were briefly mentioned earlier in the season, but it’s worth remembering that the Jurati-Borg are still out there, potentially as provisional Federation members in relatively close proximity to Earth. Maybe they will ride to Starfleet’s aid and help protect Earth against their Borg brethren.
We still need to get closure on Dr Jurati’s story, which ended with a kind of “see you later” as she promised to watch over the mysterious anomaly at the end of Season 2. Perhaps the final episode of the series could bring her back – along with her Borg offshoot faction.
Theory #2: Other old/classic starships will join the Enterprise-D to face off against the Borg.
The Enterprise-D departing the Fleet Museum.
One starship against the entire Federation fleet? The Enterprise-D will be obliterated in a furious storm of quantum torpedoes the moment it arrives at Earth. Galaxy-class ships aren’t especially manoeuvrable, either… so if Picard is going to take a stand and defeat the Borg, he’s going to need allies.
Perhaps there are other ships in the fleet that weren’t upgraded, or other mothballed vessels that could join the Enterprise-D. Ships with primarily older crews, or vessels whose transporters hadn’t been meddled with could all – in theory – join in. We’ve already seen some beautiful CGI recreations of ships like the USS Voyager and Enterprise-A… maybe they could join the party?
Theory #3: At least one more unannounced character will make an appearance.
I don’t think we can rule out Morn…
We’ve already seen characters from The Next Generation and Voyager this season – but aside from Worf, there hasn’t been anyone from Deep Space Nine. Could that change? Someone like Miles O’Brien, for example, could make for a great inclusion in the story. We could also get another cameo or two from guest stars from that era – older Starfleet officers who may rush to the Federation’s defence and take a stand against the Borg with Picard.
There are many possibilities for how this could play out – and after the shocking appearance of Wesley Crusher last year, I’m not ruling anyone out as we head into the final episode of the season!
Theory #4: At least one main character will be killed.
Rest in peace…
The demise of Captain Shaw has proved one thing: this is a dangerous, life-threatening situation! As I said before the season began, television storytelling has changed a lot since The Next Generation first aired, and main characters should no longer be considered to be “safe” simply because of their status.
As we approach what seems to be a climactic battle, practically everyone could be in danger! I’d posit that most of the officers who had been “assimilated” are still salvageable, though.
Theory #5: The Borg and/or the rogue changelings are responsible for the mysterious anomaly seen in Season 2.
The anomaly.
With their plot now exposed and out in the open, could we finally learn that the mysterious anomaly from Season 2 was also a Borg/rogue changeling attack? Perhaps it was intended to be a precursor to their scheme, or the thwarting of their attack is what led them to develop this more underhanded plan.
I hope that the series won’t just end without explaining this anomaly… even though I fear that will be the case! It was an important point in the story of Season 2, and is actually one of the few elements from last time that might’ve worked. I’d like to know more about it at any rate – even if the Borg and rogue changelings had nothing to do with it.
Theory #6: Picard will donate his golem body to Jack.
Picard with Jack.
Even if the Borg can be stopped and Jack can be recovered safely from the Borg Queen’s clutches, he still has a brain anomaly that is likely to prove fatal. Although Picard and Jack are not afflicted by Irumodic Syndrome, the Borg biotechnology in their brains is still an issue – and it “killed” Picard back in Season 1.
With that in mind, perhaps Jack could be saved the way Picard was – by being transferred into a golem body. Picard could step up and donate his golem to Jack, saving the life of his son in one final act of parental love.
Theory #7: Deanna Troi will use her “pain removal” skill on Jack.
Deanna with Jack.
A couple of weeks ago we learned that Troi was able to “enter” Riker’s mind and remove from him the pain he felt at the death of their son. This skill feels like it could come in handy for removing something malicious from someone’s brain – and Jack is just the person who might need that kind of help!
Even if Troi can’t physically remove the Borg’s biotechnology, perhaps she will be able to use this skill to prevent the Borg from using Jack in this way again, or at least cover up the symptoms so Jack can live a normal life.
Theory #8: Floaty McFloatface will be back.
Floaty McFloatface.
We haven’t seen Vadic’s boss for a couple of episodes now, and it’s plausible to think that her death means this unnamed character won’t be back. But if the finale is to explain the alliance/relationship between the Borg and the rogue changelings in any degree of detail, it’s at least possible that Floaty McFloatface could be part of that – either by having survived or via a flashback sequence.
I’d quite like to know how the Borg were able to either assimilate or ally with Vadic and her group, and there’s only one episode left for this to be explained!
Theory #9: Floaty McFloatface isn’t a changeling.
Vadic with Floaty McFloatface.
It seems plausible, if not downright likely, that Floaty McFloatface is a Borg, perhaps a representative sent by the Queen to keep Vadic in line. However, Floaty McFloatface always appeared to have changeling-like qualities, and the exact nature of who and what they are hasn’t been fully explored.
As above, it’s possible we’ll get none of this, and that the season will end without going into detail on this half-baked character. But I hope we’ll get to know something about how the Borg and changelings came to work together, at the very least.
Theory #10: The absences of characters from Seasons 1 and 2 will be explained – or at least mentioned.
Soji in Season 1.
Was Elnor aboard the USS Excelsior when it was destroyed? Because that was the ship he was assigned to in Season 2. Where are Soji and her friends from Coppelius? And is the Dr Jurati-Borg Queen hybrid still watching over the mysterious anomaly? These characters were all important in earlier chapters of the story, and while Laris briefly appeared in the season premiere, the others have yet to be so much as mentioned.
It would be a shame if the series were to end without at least mentioning some of these characters – even if they don’t appear in person. They were all important in Seasons 1 and 2, and while Picard seems to have given up on the idea of introducing brand-new characters, developing them, and giving them a chance to take the franchise forward… I’d still like to know why some of these folks couldn’t have joined Picard’s mission on this occasion.
Theory #11: Odo will make an appearance – somehow.
Odo in Deep Space Nine.
I don’t know how I feel about this one. It was sweet to see Worf make reference to Odo in Seventeen Seconds – though the connection could have been clearer, especially for more casual viewers – but I’m not convinced that we need to see Odo for ourselves. The reason for that is simple: the only way we could see Odo is either by re-casting the character or recreating him through some kind of CGI process.
Star Trek has successfully re-cast many characters over the years, so I don’t really take exception to that. But the death of actor René Auberjonois is still recent and fresh in our minds, so bringing Odo back without him just feels… uncomfortable. Although Odo is well-suited to a story in which the changelings are back, I think I’d rather he didn’t appear in person on this occasion. But I wanted to acknowledge that it’s at least a plausible development for the story.
So that’s it!
The Enterprise-D is en route to Earth…
As we head into the final episode of Star Trek: Picard, the theory list has been slimmed down! I’m sure that there will be twists, turns, and unpredictable moments as Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D battle the Borg for one last time. I have absolutely no idea how they’ll pull it off or turn this dire situation around… so I guess the only way we’ll find out will be to watch The Last Generation when it airs!
I’ll be trying very hard to avoid spoilers before I watch the episode – and I hope you’ll manage to do the same. The finale of Picard is bittersweet, and to think that this is the last time I’ll be writing theories about an upcoming episode of this show… it’s an emotional moment!
As a final note: I always like to end these theory lists by saying that I do this just for fun. I enjoy writing, I enjoy Star Trek, and spending more time in this world is an escape and an enjoyable distraction for me. But for some folks, fan theories can become frustrating or unenjoyable, especially if they get very attached to a plausible-sounding theory that ultimately doesn’t pan out. I have no “insider information” and I’m not trying to claim that anything suggested above can, will, or must be part of Picard Season 3. I fully expect many of these theories to be debunked and for the season to go in wildly unpredictable directions!
Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in the United States and other countries and territories where the service is available, and on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and around the world. The Star Trek franchise – including Picard and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Wrath of Khan, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Discovery.
First of all, before we say anything else: Võx might be the most important episode of the season to go into un-spoiled. If you’ve somehow stumbled upon this review before watching the episode – and you decided to ignore Captain Stiles issuing a “spoiler alert” above – this is your last chance to nope out before we get into major spoiler territory. I was lucky to have avoided spoilers before watching Võx, and the episode will be infinitely more enjoyable for you if you can do the same.
Võx is a hard one to review with any semblance of objectivity. It’s an episode “made for fans,” and it hit some absolutely incredible emotional notes, particularly in the closing few minutes. As someone who first came to Star Trek in the early ’90s by way of The Next Generation, and who found comfort in that show as a lonely adolescent, it’s hard to even find words to fully express how incredible some of these sequences were with Picard and his reunited crew.
You know me well enough by now to know that there’s a “but” coming, though.
The Enterprise-F.
But at the same time, Võx prioritised these emotional sequences of pure fan-service over narrative cohesion, and my overriding concern is that the story has reached this point too late in the game – leaving the final episode of the season, and the series, with too much work to do to pull out a successful ending. This problem plagued both Seasons 1 and 2 of Picard, and I can’t help but feel that lessons have not been learned from those stories.
There were logically inconsistent moments spread throughout Võx, moments that could have worked if more time and explanation had been dedicated to them, but that fell flat – or even felt downright laughable – because of how unoriginal, trope-laden, or just plain ridiculous they were. Some scenes and sequences that needed more time dedicated to them were blitzed through in minutes or even seconds, and while the incredible sequences with Picard and his old crew basically wipe away many of those criticisms – or at least they did in the moment – when trying to look at the story through another lens, they seriously challenge and even potentially undermine the entire affair.
Picard is back in the captain’s chair.
As I said last week, the eight-episode chase with Vadic has proven to be a complete and utter waste. Vadic was a bland, unoriginal, and boring villain who accomplished very little, and whose over-the-top performance didn’t come close to finding a narrative justification. That on its own was already problematic for the story of the season, but the revelation in Võx that the Borg have been directing this conspiracy now feels like it has come too late in the game.
There have been hints and teases at a Borg connection to the story all season long – and I’m glad that those received a narrative payoff, don’t get me wrong – but is there enough time now to do justice to this story? The preceding eight episodes – a full 80% of the season-long story – now feel like a preamble; the prologue to what will be a remarkably short main event.
Sidney La Borg.
Last week, I made a comparison to The Wrath of Khan, and said that Vadic’s death coming in the eighth part of a ten-part story is akin to Khan having been killed when there was still half an hour left in the film. Now we can add to that metaphor and say that this story compares to Khan having been killed while there was still half an hour left, and it was subsequently revealed that the Klingons had secretly been pulling his strings all along. Would such a revelation have made the film better? Or do stories work best when they have a clearly defined antagonist who fills the role for the duration?
There’s another point that’s been bugging me, and I’ve struggled with finding the right word for it. Picard Seasons 2 and 3 went into production back-to-back, with the same production and writing team involved in both stories. With that in mind, these two seasons feel remarkably jumbled and even contradictory – the story leaps from one version of the Borg and the Borg Queen to another, sees two structurally similar re-emergences of the Borg play out, and seems to completely ignore its own earlier chapters.
Guess who’s back?
This is something we’ll have to tackle in the future when we do some kind of retrospective look at Star Trek: Picard as a whole, but I feel echoes of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, at least in terms of the way in which production was handled. And no, I don’t mean that in any way as a compliment! Like the Star Wars sequels, Picard was cleaved into three parts. Like the Star Wars sequels, one production team took the helm for two of those parts. And like the Star Wars sequels, the decision to split up the story has led to some seriously questionable narrative decisions.
But that’s a conversation for another day!
Not for the first time in Star Trek: Picard, a genuinely interesting, exciting, and engaging storyline has been presented – but was let down by overused clichés, insufficient explanations, and unnecessary time constraints. The idea that the Borg would ally with (or take advantage of) a rogue group of changelings, combining their powers together to take on Starfleet, is a fascinating one – in theory. Likewise, the Borg having biotechnology far beyond the capabilities of the Federation, and insidiously using that to take over Starfleet, was an incredible shock, and a concept that fits right in with everything we know about both of these factions.
This explanation was clever.
But Võx was imperfect in its execution of these fascinating ideas, and Picard’s third season as a whole spent an awfully long time arriving at this point. With only one episode left, which on current form will be somewhere less than an hour long, is there enough time to fully explore this changeling-Borg team-up, undo the damage to the Federation, save Jack and the La Forge sisters, and protect Earth from the “assimilated” Federation fleet?
As the ninth part of a ten-episode story, Võx repeated the problem that Et in Arcadia Ego had in Season 1 by dumping all of this into the story at a very late stage. Surely there must’ve been ways to keep some secrets while revealing others earlier in the season – to move the story along at a more reasonable pace, reaching this point sooner, allowing for more time to do justice to some of these wonderfully creative ideas.
Did we reach this point in the story too late?
Let’s talk about some of these tropes and clichés, because they let down what could have been a far more entertaining episode – and I’m afraid that there really is no excuse for them other than uninspired writing.
Firstly we have Jack’s conversation with Deanna, his confrontation with Picard, and particularly his escape from the Titan. After so many teases of the “red door” that I’ve lost count, having Deanna run away from Jack without revealing what she saw – and without the episode letting us see what she could see – wasn’t the best or strongest way to start. If I were to nitpick, I’d also say that Deanna choosing not to tell Jack what she saw, and experiencing such fear, feels out-of-character for her. That she’d tell Jack’s parents what she knew without informing Jack himself is, in Jack’s own words, “unethical.”
This sequence wasn’t great – though I’m glad Troi finally got something to do!
Jack’s escape from the Titan was poorly-scripted, with practically every character aside from Jack himself behaving in profoundly odd ways. After their clash in Jack’s quarters, Picard simply stood around, not bothering to give chase, contact anyone on the Titan, order a lockdown… or do anything at all to prevent Jack from leaving. Perhaps Jack’s Borg-given superpowers would have made his escape inevitable, but Picard should have done something beyond standing there yelling his name.
I literally laughed out loud when Picard and Dr Crusher were stood at the window, haplessly watching Jack’s shuttle warp away – such was the absolute anticlimax of this sequence. And again, this is a consequence of season-long pacing: had some of the extraneous fluff been cut from the past couple of episodes, we could have had more of an involved sequence depicting Jack’s escape. One that might have felt a little less contrived.
I laughed out loud at this moment.
Technobabble in Star Trek can be used to cover all manner of sins – including weak story points! But even with the caveat that “technobabble solves everything,” the way in which the technology and universe of Star Trek behaves has to be basically internally consistent from one story to the next, and there can’t be too much hacking away at the foundations of how some of these computers, machines, and equipment have been known to operate for literally decades.
With that in mind, the idea that the Titan would be unable to locate Jack’s shuttle – which had departed a matter of seconds earlier with everyone watching – simply because he “deactivated its transponder” doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t gel with how sensors have always been shown to operate in practically every other Star Trek story, and while I will give credit for Võx re-using this idea later with Picard’s crew taking their shuttle using a similar loophole, for me, it was a bridge too far in terms of technobabble. I’ve written before that internal consistency is the bedrock of suspension of disbelief in any story, so when a new chapter makes changes on the fly to established technologies that are too big, the gulf between what we’ve seen before and what’s currently unfolding becomes too large to cross. That’s what happened at this moment in Võx. It was too great a contrivance for me – though in a stronger story, perhaps it’s something that would have felt less of an important point.
Suddenly being unable to scan for a shuttlecraft was a major contrivance.
I can understand Dr Crusher and Picard jumping the gun and rushing to talk to Jack before they were ready. They’re emotionally compromised by their ties to Jack and, in Picard’s case, an overwhelming sense of guilt for passing this genetic condition to his son. But the others – Deanna, Data, and Geordi in particular – should have been the level-headed ones here. We saw moments later that they had been able to learn a great deal about Jack’s condition, so if Picard could’ve gone into his conversation with Jack armed with some of that knowledge, it feels like Jack’s need to run away might have been avoided altogether.
Again, this is a contrivance – characters behaving in illogical ways to serve the plot. Such contrivances can pass by inoffensively, and they have in many other Star Trek stories, I daresay! But here, as I watched the discussion of Jack’s condition and the revelation of what’s happened to him, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t particularly well-written.
The situation with Jack could (and should) have been handled better.
The firefight in which Captain Shaw lost his life also played out like a tired trope. Dozens of blasts of phaser fire from assimilated Starfleet crewmen evaporated into thin air the second Shaw was hit, and the convenient end of the battle allowed Seven and Raffi to rush to his side. There are many ways to script and film heroic deaths without falling back on such overdone clichés… and it was a bit of a disappointment that the firefight in the Titan’s hallway ended this way.
Captain Shaw’s death was certainly dramatic, and I felt a pang of emotion in the moment thanks in part to an evocative performance from Jeri Ryan and an excellent musical score. But at the same time, Shaw feels like the lowest of low-hanging fruit to kill off, especially at this late stage in the story. The writers clearly wanted to get the impact of killing off a major character – but didn’t want to risk killing off a legacy character, at least not until everyone had taken their places on board the Enterprise-D.
Captain Shaw died this week.
Shaw served two purposes earlier in the season. He got in the way of Picard and Riker as they tried to jump-start their rescue mission, and his big blow-up with Picard about Locutus and Wolf-359 was the most significant reference to the Borg prior to the events of Võx. But since his emotional outburst, which came all the way back in the episode No Win Scenario half a season ago, Shaw has felt completely listless and unnecessary to the story. He’s been sidelined and kept out of the decision-making on his own ship, showing none of the backbone that he seemed to have in the season premiere.
Worse, Shaw’s continued mistreatment and deadnaming of Seven of Nine passed several opportunities for a resolution – and while there was a sweetness, in a way, to his seeming acceptance of her with his dying breath, it wasn’t the best way for this storyline to have progressed. In some ways, we can argue that Shaw actually regressed as a character after the events of No Win Scenario and Surrender in particular.
Captain Shaw used Seven’s real name with his last breath.
So by the time we arrived at Shaw’s end this week, two things struck me. Firstly, Shaw’s irrelevance to the story for the past few episodes, and the uninspired resolution to his conflict with Seven of Nine, come together to mean that his death could’ve come sooner – and that the story of the season as a whole might’ve been better for it.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Shaw’s death had an impact, demonstrating the high stakes and danger that the crew are now facing. But it wasn’t as impactful as it could’ve been, and killing off someone who is still very much a secondary character is less significant at this juncture than killing off someone more major.
The choice to kill off Captain Shaw – rather than another character – feels like the writers taking the safest route.
The decision for Raffi and Seven to remain aboard the Titan also feels narratively incoherent. Again, the writers and director/showrunner Terry Matalas clearly (and pretty desperately, it seems) wanted the reunion scene on the bridge of the Enterprise-D to consist of only characters from The Next Generation – which is why Seven and Raffi didn’t escape with the others. But the way in which they ended up abandoned aboard the Titan was poor; there was seemingly no reason why they couldn’t have boarded the shuttle with Picard and the others.
Maybe having Raffi and Seven staying on the Titan will lead to something significant next time – and I certainly hope that will be the case, or this will feel even more wasteful than it already does. But even assuming that hope comes to pass, there were better and more natural ways that they could have been trapped or forced to remain behind. Again, I feel the consequences of a season that padded out key storylines over the past few episodes and arrived at this stage with a lot to cram into a forty-five-minute runtime. A couple of extra minutes with Raffi and Seven in the aftermath of Shaw’s demise could have logically explained why they couldn’t board the shuttle, and would have gone a long way to strengthening this sequence.
Seven and Raffi are stuck on the Titan.
One line of technobabble leapt out at me in Võx, and it’s one that I fear could become problematic. One of the key narrative conceits of the episode is the Borg’s newfound ability to transmit their programming through biological means, specifically through a DNA sequence that afflicts the frontal cortex of the brain. I actually thought that this was a really neat idea, one that magnifies the threat that the Borg pose and simultaneously reinforces the idea that the Borg are still light-years ahead of the Federation in technological terms.
It was also a clever idea, especially in a story whose protagonists are older, to have this newfound Borg ability only impact younger members of the crew. That’s something that gives a reason for Picard and his old crew to work together – though it’s a justification for bringing back these characters that comes after they’ve already reunited! But when the story has dealt with themes of family, of parent-child relations, and of inheritance, it’s something that fits.
The Borg have modified Picard’s and Jack’s DNA.
However, there’s a real-world comparison that really bugs me in the way this was explained and brought to screen. I will caveat this by saying that I’m sure this story point wasn’t intended to be taken this way… but there are uncomfortable comparisons that exist nonetheless. In some anti-transgender circles, one line of attack that is particularly deployed against younger trans people is that “their brains aren’t developed enough” to make a decision about their gender identities. Specifically, this attack centres on the development of the frontal cortex and the age at which it supposedly stops developing – something that, of course, varies from person to person.
Although this idea is based on real-world science, I can’t help but feel that its inclusion in Võx may not have been the best idea given the situation out here in the real world. There are already a lot of anti-trans organisations here in the UK that are trying to contort science to support their views, and something like this is unhelpful at best. At worst, it risks adding fuel to the fire. I have no doubt that the writers and creative team didn’t intend for this line of technobabble to be taken so seriously, let alone be used as some kind of anti-trans metaphor. But that interpretation is present and it isn’t a total leap.
Worf and Geordi explaining the DNA modifications.
Võx has all of these imperfections and flaws, and key narrative points rely on tropes and clichés that have been done to death – and done far better in other stories, come to that. It’s worth pointing these out because the issues with the episode aren’t merely a consequence of narrative decisions taken earlier in the season, nor are they problems necessarily with the story of the season as a whole. These moments take what could have been a better episode and drag it down a rung or two, and while there are criticisms of the overall season, how long it took to reach this point, and the apparent irrelevance of much of what came before, it’s worth also noting that Võx is an imperfect offering even when taken on its own.
The question now is this: does any of that matter? All of these criticisms of Võx itself and of the occasionally ambling story… can they be overlooked, or even eradicated, by considering the strengths of the episode, and the nostalgia overload presented? See, the rational part of my mind is screaming “no!” because throwing up the nostalgia card, bringing back the Enterprise-D and the Borg Queen… it all feels so cheap. But the rational part of me is being completely drowned out by another voice, the voice of emotion. And that part of me adores practically everything we got to see this week, and is totally willing to overlook all of the contrivances and flaws that were present along the way.
The big reveal.
I’ve stated several times that I didn’t want Star Trek: Picard to try to be The Next Generation Season 8 or Nemesis 2. I wanted it to do its own thing, stand on its own two feet, drive Star Trek forward in new and different ways, and introduce some fantastic new characters who just might become fan-favourites for a new generation of fans. We’ll have to assess whether and to what extent the series as a whole accomplished any of those objectives after the dust has settled on this final outing.
But as much as I wanted to see more of the new characters, and to get Picard to a place where it could reasonably become a launchpad for other live-action Star Trek projects set in this era… again, a big part of me is on board with this TNG reunion. I genuinely didn’t expect that, especially after the disappointment I felt last year when the news emerged that most of the new characters were being jettisoned. We can argue about whether this was the right way to do it, whether this story is strong enough to move beyond those contrivances, and whether individual storylines and character arcs have worked as well as intended. But at the end of the day, seeing Picard and the crew reunited aboard the Enterprise-D, and getting that flyby of the ship itself… all of the criticisms that I had of Võx and of Season 3 seemed to melt away in the moment.
The crew arrives on the bridge.
Storytelling isn’t just canon, consistency, and logical outcomes. It isn’t just about the strength or weakness of individual storylines, whether a plot point is original or clichéd, or whether lines of technobabble stick the landing. Those points all matter, don’t get me wrong. But they aren’t the only factors.
Where Võx succeeded for me was in its emotional storytelling. It got so much right on this front, and not just the reunion of classic characters that I remember with fondness from my formative years. This was an episode that plucked all of the right emotional chords – even when it wasn’t getting every element perfect or making total sense. And this is a combination of elements: it’s cinematography and camera work, it’s the musical score, it’s visual effects, it’s acting performances, and of course, it’s the script itself. While there are undeniable flaws in Võx, the episode’s ability to pull at the heartstrings and create incredibly powerful emotional moments is its true success.
According to executive producers, this is the original dedication plaque from the set of The Next Generation.
The episode was densely packed with callbacks and references too numerous to list. The inclusion of the USS Pulaski – presumably named for Dr Kate Pulaski – was incredibly sweet, and I appreciated that the story hadn’t entirely forgotten her contributions to Star Trek. The return of Elizabeth Dennehy as Admiral Shelby was also pitch-perfect – Shelby was the up-and-coming young officer who helped Riker and co. battle the Borg in The Best of Both Worlds. As the Borg make their return, Shelby feels like a wonderfully fitting inclusion.
The speech Admiral Shelby gave brought a tear to my eye, and I’ll unashamedly admit that. As she sat on the bridge of the Enterprise-F, Shelby spoke of the NX-01 Enterprise and its original mission of exploration, laying the foundations for what would become Starfleet and the Federation. Enterprise hasn’t always been fully appreciated by Trekkies – myself included at the time of its original broadcast, regrettably – so to build this Frontier Day event on the back of Enterprise was incredibly sweet. Moments like this tie Star Trek together, especially as Enterprise premiered after The Next Generation.
Admiral Shelby’s speech was fantastic.
Shelby’s apparent death was also incredibly dramatic, being gunned down by her partially-assimilated crew as chaos was breaking out across the fleet. Although I think it’s important to concede, given the direction taken by the story and what we knew of the conspiracy by this late stage, that Shelby felt like a goner the moment she appeared on the viewscreen, her death was still dramatic, well-portrayed, and demonstrated clearly the extent of the Borg’s conquest of Starfleet.
Shelby and the captain of the USS Excelsior (which briefly appeared in Season 2) also stand as exemplars of thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of Starfleet officers who suffered similar fates during Frontier Day. The Borg-led scheme has been successful thus far, and the result is the decapitation and perhaps even the decimation of Starfleet as a whole. It wasn’t possible to show the unfolding chaos aboard multiple vessels in the fleet, so Shelby’s shock at what was rapidly transpiring around her, and her quick execution, stand in as the most brutal of examples.
The (apparent) demise of Admiral Shelby.
The Borg make a great metaphor for our collective fears of out-of-control computers, artificial intelligence, and the “technological singularity” that some have argued may lie in our future. This is something that I discuss in far greater detail in my essay The Borg: Space Zombies, which you can find by clicking or tapping here. What we saw in Võx feels – as it should do – like a modern-day adaptation of this same basic concept.
When the Borg Collective was first conceived in the ’80s, there was a technological revolution underway as computers and digitisation were transforming many aspects of life. This was the world of my childhood, and I remember arguing with my parents about getting a computer in the house – something they adamantly refused to do for a long time! But we’re drifting off-topic. The Borg at that time represented “technology gone wrong,” or what could happen to a race of technophiles if they took things to an unreasonable extreme.
The newly-assimilated Ensign Esmar.
In Võx, we see an evolution of this idea, complete with modern-day influences. The Borg in Võx “hack” into both Starfleet and into human beings – using a combination of biology and technology to do harm. The connected, linked fleet represents our globalised communications infrastructure, and the ease with which it was hacked and turned against our heroes is a warning against an overreliance on technology and artificial intelligence. Picard and his crew are forced to turn to the Enterprise-D – because it’s outdated, disconnected, and therefore perfectly-placed to save the day!
I’ve always found the Borg to be fascinating, and this Battlestar Galactica-inspired idea of using a “dumb” ship to combat the connected, “smart” ships feels like it fits perfectly with what we know of the Collective. As with the Borg’s biotechnology, this feels like a natural evolution of the Borg’s story – and of the Federation’s ongoing war against them.
Some kind of Borg transmitter… or something.
A Borg Cube was beautifully created in CGI, and the visual of it hidden in a nebula or cloud was spectacular, too. The new vessel seemed to have more illumination on the outside when compared to Borg ships seen in past iterations of Star Trek – but I actually quite liked the way it looked. Again, though, there are issues here: Jack figuring out where to go and how to get there is a moment that needed a bit more time, and I could’ve happily spent a scene or two with Jack en route to the Borg, perhaps seeing him struggling with his decision or seeing the Borg side of his mind working to suppress his human side.
Then there’s the interior of the Borg vessel. This was… not great. There were a couple of alcoves that looked decent, but overall I felt that the set design and construction could’ve been better. Looking back to scenes aboard the Artifact in Season 1 and there really is no comparison. If we aren’t going to spend too much time aboard this ship, then I guess it will pass inoffensively enough. But as the climax of a storyline for Jack Crusher that has been running all season long… I was underwhelmed with the small and unimpressive interior of the Borg Cube.
I wasn’t blown away by the set design here.
And this is another example of how the jumbled, muddled production of Star Trek: Picard as a whole series trips up Võx. Had we not seen the Artifact in Season 1, and the spectacularly frightening Borg vessel at the beginning of Season 2, this return to a Borg environment would have been far more impactful – and I could have probably overlooked the deficiencies in the presentation of the Borg ship.
The Borg Queen, played this time by a body double and archive voice recordings, was likewise a bit of a let-down. At the beginning of Season 2, we got a truly shocking and terrifying presentation of a new Borg Queen: hooded, wearing a robe, wielding mechanical tentacles, and able to take over an entire starship completely on her own. The way the Borg Queen came across in that episode was stunning, and because Võx comes barely a year later, this reversion to an older presentation just feels lesser in comparison.
This older presentation of the Borg Queen feels less interesting and intimidating than the version we saw in Season 2.
Tragic news broke in January of this year that Annie Wersching, who played the Borg Queen last season, had passed away. Given that she had been unwell during filming, we can’t say for sure whether she’d have been able to continue to work as production got underway for Season 3. But if the Borg Queen is going to be featured here – for the second season in a row – it would have made sense to retain the same actor if at all possible, surely? Again, given the circumstances we can’t say for sure one way or another – but it feels like something that should have happened if it had been possible.
And again, I feel the consequence of a muddled, mixed-up production here. Having the Borg as Picard’s final, ultimate “big bad” makes a lot of sense, as they’re a faction closely associated with Picard himself and The Next Generation, but also as they’re so powerful and threatening. But having had two Borg stories in previous seasons – one of which was written and produced by the same team that created Season 3 – I just feel that the Borg should have either been saved to be the final villain this time, or else the way in which they were used in Seasons 1 and/or 2 should have been all we got. After all, the changeling idea seemed to be working well all throughout the season – and seeing Picard and the crew face off against a genuinely different threat, one we’d never seen them tackle before, was also a fun idea. One that has been if not overwritten then at least brought to a screeching halt.
The Borg Queen as presented in Võx feels less impactful in the aftermath of the way the Borg appeared in Season 2. And in Season 1.
So we come – as Picard and the crew did – to the Enterprise-D.
This was an exceptionally well-kept secret, and that’s why I said at the beginning that Võx is an episode to watch without spoilers if at all possible. I’m pretty attuned to what’s going on at Paramount, and I keep an eye on the production side of Star Trek as much as possible so that I can follow significant developments and share my thoughts here on the website. But even I was blindsided by the reconstruction of the Enterprise-D’s bridge that we got to see in Võx.
There had been hints and even teases from some folks on the production side of Picard’s third season that we might get to see “more than one” USS Enterprise this season, but after we’d seen the Enterprise-F in trailers and the Enterprise-A at Geordi’s museum, I figured that would be that. The Titan has made a great hero ship this season, feeling smaller and less powerful than vessels like the Enterprise, Intrepid, or the Shrike – but having a plucky attitude and ability to punch above its weight that reminded me of the comparably-sized USS Voyager.
The USS Titan at warp.
But the Enterprise-D is special to me, and seeing it recreated here – inside and out – was beautiful, and it was undoubtedly the highlight of Võx. The emotional impact these ships can have can’t really be overstated, and pairing a beautiful starship, wonderfully rendered with CGI, with a stirring musical score – it hits me just as hard in 2023 as it did when I watched The Next Generation back in the ’90s. Seeing the Enterprise-E swooping in to save the day at the Battle of Sector 001, watching Kirk lay his eyes on the refit Enterprise for the first time in The Motion Picture, and of course getting so many beautiful sequences with the Enterprise-D across The Next Generation’s run… this moment in Võx equalled the very best of them.
Picard and the crew arriving on the bridge was also an incredible moment. I didn’t know how much of the ship might’ve been rebuilt for Picard – especially with just two episodes in which it would feature. So I wasn’t sure if we were going to get a kind of AR wall/greenscreen mashup as the crew made their way to the ship aboard their shuttle. To my delight, the entire bridge set has been recreated – and it looks absolutely stunning.
The recreated bridge of the Enterprise-D. Image Credit: Paramount/Dave Blass
I hope in future the producers and creative team will tell the tale of how they came to recreate the bridge in such detail, because I’d love to hear more about it. A couple of photos have been shown off on social media, but there’s obviously a lot more to say! For my two cents, though, it looks absolutely fantastic – a recreation down to seemingly the last detail, recapturing perfectly the look and feel of the Enterprise-D from The Next Generation.
This is a starship that I’d long ago fallen head-over-heels for, and the Galaxy-class remains one of my all-time favourite Star Trek starship designs. We’d seen a CGI model as far back as Enterprise’s finale, and an up-to-date version in the Season 1 premiere of Picard, but the time dedicated to the flypast in Võx was something special. Seeing the Enterprise-D powering up and departing the Fleet Museum was also something new – though we’d seen similar sequences with other vessels, this is the first time we’d gotten to see it with a Galaxy-class ship.
She’s a beauty!
From Scotty’s love for the Enterprise in The Original Series through to Captain Shaw’s “fanboy” moment with Geordi just a couple of weeks ago, we’ve seen the respect and adoration that Starfleet officers have for their ships. Starships are, in many ways, an additional character in their respective shows – so to see Picard and the crew treating the Enterprise-D as they might an old friend was an incredibly powerful and sweet moment.
This was a starship that was with them through many adventures, a vessel that was their home for seven years, and this reunion feels just as powerful as any interactions between the reassembled crewmates. It actually surpasses some of those moments for me, especially given the weakness of the Data’s resurrection storyline that we’ve discussed over the past few weeks. The restoration of the Enterprise-D is by far the better and more coherent of Season 3’s unexpected resurrections!
Rebuilding the iconic bridge console.
Oh, and I absolutely agree with Picard: starships need carpets! This line was a cute little nod and wink to fans who’ve commented on the lack of carpets aboard vessels in modern iterations of Star Trek – something that has been a minor point of contention in some quarters of the fan community. Beyond mere attention to detail, this is an indication that the writers and producers are fans themselves, or at least are aware of the things that fans pick up on and discuss. Having Picard himself comment on the carpet was cute, but it also shows how the writers and producers are at least trying to keep the fan community on side.
There are absolutely nitpicks and contrivances on this side of the story. Was no one at the Fleet Museum assimilated? How did the shuttle get from Earth to the Fleet Museum so quickly? Will it be possible to operate a Galaxy-class starship with just seven people when it took a crew of roughly 1,000 in The Next Generation? How can one ship – disconnected though it may be – stand a chance against a fleet of newer and more powerful vessels? Why did Geordi install an automatic torpedo launcher on the ship – was he expecting an event like this?
The Enterprise-D departs the Fleet Museum.
These are the structural weaknesses of Võx, and it remains to be seen how and even if they’ll be resolved. As above, several of these points could have been addressed had the season as a whole been better-paced, arriving at this point either an episode or two earlier, or with more explanation and exposition having been dropped in previous chapters of the story. As I said about Seasons 1 and 2 in various ways, the flaw doesn’t lie with the story beats themselves, which are fascinating, but rather with the way in which they were executed.
Even a few days after first sitting down to watch Võx, the emotional side of the story goes a long way to making up for its flaws – but it’s not clear to me whether that will always be the case! If we go back to Picard Season 3 in a few years’ time, will the return to the Enterprise-D still be enough to redeem Võx for all of its contrivances and narrative inconsistencies? Perhaps that’s another conversation we’ll need to have one day!
Picard orders everyone to their posts.
As you can tell by now, I’m conflicted about Võx.
On the one hand, it’s an episode of overplayed tropes and boring clichés, let down by a muddled, incoherent story that didn’t have enough time to properly explain key points. It takes the safest path, killing off the least-important secondary character and finding an incredibly contrived way to ensure that only the characters from The Next Generation would make it to the bridge of the Enterprise-D.
The episode is also hamstrung by what came before it: not only the eight episodes of Season 3, plagued by an over-acted villain who now feels like an utter waste of time, but also by Seasons 1 and 2 and the storylines they introduced. The presentation of the Borg, Borg Queen, and Borg Cube in Võx are very much the lesser versions of those same creations that we saw in earlier seasons – and had those stories not taken place, Võx would be in a much stronger position.
The Enterprise-D prepares for departure.
But despite all of its flaws, I can’t hate or even particularly dislike Võx. The emotional storytelling was fantastic, and maybe this is just the blinkers of pure nostalgia, but I felt that the problems and inconsistencies in the episode melted away in light of the incredible, beautiful sequences with Picard and his old crew – and especially their reunion with the Enterprise-D itself and its wonderfully reconstructed bridge.
It isn’t enough to just throw legacy characters into a story and rebuild sets, and if Võx had presented these elements in a worse way, I think I’d have found it too much, or I’d be saying that the nostalgia card doesn’t cover up any and all storytelling sins. But when watching the episode itself, a combination of clever direction and creative writing, beautiful visuals and a wonderful musical score, and some outstanding and evocative acting performances made the whole thing work. This nostalgia-heavy, deeply emotional story feels like one that was perfectly made for Trekkies like you and me.
Picard and the crew in a promotional photo.
There’s a lot of work for the season finale to do, and I’m really not sure how things will shake out when all’s said and done. I also think we might return to Võx in the years ahead and consider it a little less favourably – particularly if the series ends in unspectacular fashion next time. I’ve tried to treat the episode as fairly as I could, and having sat with it for a few days… the emotional side of the story still really sticks with me, and remains my biggest takeaway from Võx.
I genuinely don’t know what to expect from the finale. There are so many possibilities for where the story could go! Although this feels like an existential threat to the Federation, surely it must be possible for Picard and the crew to save the day, right? But one old starship against an entire connected, Borgified fleet? That’s a tough task right there!
Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in the United States and other countries and territories where the service is available, and on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and around the world. The Star Trek franchise – including Picard and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Wrath of Khan, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Discovery.
Toward the end of the episode Surrender, Deanna Troi told us something very interesting about Jack Crusher: there’s an “ancient and weak” voice that surrounds him, a voice that isn’t his own. This voice has also been described as a “darkness,” and something “evil.” Today, I want to consider a few possibilities for who and what this “ancient evil” could be.
There are, at least as I see it, two candidates that are more likely than any others – at least based on the narrative elements that have already come into play. I covered the Borg Queen in my most recent theory update, but it’s also worth considering the Founders themselves, and how an ancient changeling or changeling leader could be a likely possibility. Finally, we have to contend with the idea that the “ancient evil” will be a character or faction that we’ve never met before – as this is something that’s happened in these types of stories consistently in modern Star Trek!
Let’s try to peek through the keyhole of Jack’s red door…
I’ve heard several fan theories that seem completely implausible to me, and I’ll also cover a handful of the more popular ones and why I think they wouldn’t make sense or wouldn’t work narratively. If I try to shoot down a theory you’re personally invested in, I hope you won’t take that as some kind of attack! I’ll try to explain my reasons as gently as possible.
It also goes without saying that I have no “insider information!” I’m not trying to claim that any of the ideas we’re going to discuss today can, will, or must be part of Picard Season 3. It’s possible that I’ve completely misunderstood what Troi was saying, or that Jack’s hallucinatory red door will lead to something completely unexpected, unpredictable, or even a completely different kind of storyline altogether. All of this is also just the subjective opinion of one person.
With all of that out of the way, let’s get started!
“Ancient Evil” #1: The Borg Queen.
The Borg Queen in First Contact.
As I explained in my recent theory update, the Borg Queen is the candidate I feel is most likely to be the “ancient evil.” The voice Jack has occasionally heard has a feminine quality, there have been multiple references to the Borg and to Picard’s assimilation experience, and the idea of Jack “inheriting” some kind of Borg nanites or Borg DNA from Picard would connect with themes of family, parentage, and inheritance that have been present in different ways all season long.
The Borg Queen hasn’t been explicitly mentioned, but right now, the myriad references to Locutus, the Battle of Wolf-359, and Picard’s connection to the Borg haven’t had any kind of narrative payoff. Bringing the Borg Queen into the story at this particularly late stage is a risk, but it’s also something that has been set up across the entire season – so it wouldn’t feel like a total bolt from the blue.
“Ancient Evil” #2: The Season 1 super-synths.
The super-synths’ mechanical tentacles.
Should we abandon all hope of the unnamed “alliance of synthetic life” from the end of Season 1 ever making a return to Star Trek? Well… probably! But of all the “ancient” factions we know of in Star Trek, few are older – and potentially more malevolent – than the super-synths that were introduced in Season 1.
Millions of years before the events of the story, this synthetic faction literally moved the stars in the Milky Way and created a beacon, promising to ride to the aid of any synthetic life-forms that needed their help. Whether that offer was genuine or an elaborate trap, well… I’m still not sure! But these super-synths may not have given up on their aim of returning to the Milky Way just because Picard convinced Soji to close the portal to their realm.
“Ancient Evil” #3: The Female Changeling from Deep Space Nine.
The Female Changeling.
The Female Changeling who led the Dominion’s war effort against the Federation alliance seemed to be one of the most senior Founders. With the changelings featuring heavily in this story, perhaps she is once again trying to lead the charge against the Federation, using Vadic and her evolved allies to get revenge.
Earlier in the season, Vadic cited revenge against Starfleet and the Federation as one of her motives – though she didn’t really elaborate on what that meant. Floaty McFloatface – the unnamed character who seems to have been Vadic’s boss – also mentioned vengeance, so could the changelings be seeking to avenge their defeat in the Dominion War? Vadic knew the details of Jack’s hallucinations, including the existence of the red door – how could she have possibly known that if the changelings aren’t involved?
“Ancient Evil” #4: Locutus of Borg (or a clone of Locutus).
Picard was assimilated by the Borg.
As above, Season 3 has made multiple references to Picard’s assimilation experience and time as Locutus. Could the rogue changelings have stolen Picard’s corpse as part of a plan to resurrect Locutus? Or could the Borg Collective itself have recreated or cloned Locutus based on Picard’s genetic material? Perhaps Floaty McFloatface is a representative of the Borg – and wants Jack Crusher to become the new Locutus.
The idea of Picard having to come face-to-face with Locutus would surely be his worst nightmare. Locutus would literally know Picard inside and out – and could be very difficult to outmanoeuvre and defeat as a result.
“Ancient Evil” #5: Someone entirely new.
Who could it be?
In earlier seasons – and in other modern Star Trek productions, too – the franchise’s past didn’t provide the answers to mysteries like this one! So it has to be considered plausible or even downright likely that a brand-new character or faction is the “ancient evil” that we’re looking for. This could come in the form of a new character from a familiar faction – a new Borg or changeling leader, perhaps. Or it could be an entirely new creation that doesn’t connect to Star Trek’s past at all.
There is a danger in this approach, and part of the reason why creations like the super-synths and Species 10-C didn’t excite fans as much as they could’ve is that, after a season-long tease, expectations have been raised! But at the same time, writers should feel free to create new elements to add to Star Trek instead of being constrained by what has come before. A new character or faction could absolutely stick the landing – if it was handled well.
So those are the candidates I consider to be most plausible.
Up next, we’ll take a look at a few others that I’ve heard suggested by fans on forums and on social media. For reasons that I’ll try to explain, none of these feel likely to me… so feel free to come back at the end of the season and laugh at how wrong I was if any of them prove to be the true “ancient evil!”
Not the “Ancient Evil” #1: The Pah-Wraiths.
Jake Sisko possessed by a Pah-Wraith.
I don’t know who originated this idea, but it seems to have spread like wildfire in some quarters of the fan community! For my money, there’s no way the “ancient evil” could be the Pah-Wraiths, though – even though the faction is undoubtedly both ancient and evil! Firstly, despite references and connections to Deep Space Nine, there have been no mentions of Bajor, the wormhole, the Prophets, or the Pah-Wraiths all season long – so any last-second inclusion would be a complete deus ex machina.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the return of the Pah-Wraiths would hugely undermine the ending of Deep Space Nine, and Captain Sisko’s arc in particular. Sisko sacrificed his life to prevent the Pah-Wraiths from escaping their confinement in the Fire Caves, fulfilling his duty as the Emissary of the Prophets. For a new story to say that the Pah-Wraiths escaped anyway, a mere twenty-something years later, would seriously damage that story and undermine Sisko’s arc and characterisation. Finally, the Pah-Wraiths have no connection to Picard or to the Crusher family.
Not the “Ancient Evil” #2: Armus.
Armus in Skin of Evil.
C’mon everyone… it isn’t Armus, okay? It just isn’t. Not only has Armus not been mentioned since Season 1 of The Next Generation, but the evil puddle of printer ink has no real connection to Picard, to the Crusher family, or to anyone else involved in Season 3. As a villain who only appeared once in what was, let’s be blunt here, not one of The Next Generation’s best stories, Armus would also be underwhelming in the extreme.
Had the story of Season 3 revisited the planet of Vagra II, or if Tasha Yar had been mentioned in the story somehow (aside from a minute cameo as part of Data’s memories) then maybe we could consider this theory more favourably. But Armus would also be a complete bolt from the blue – and one that I don’t believe could possibly be strong enough to carry the ending not only of Season 3, but of the entire series.
Not the “Ancient Evil” #3: The Romulans/Zhat Vash.
Zhat Vash initiates as seen in Season 1.
Although it would be cyclical in a way if the end of Season 3 were to return to the Romulans in some form, I don’t believe that the story will go in this direction. There have been no Romulans included in the story all season long, and no mentions of the Zhat Vash or their conspiracy, either. The Romulans were also a faction that fought against the changelings during the Dominion War – and there probably isn’t enough time left to sufficiently explain how they might have been persuaded to switch sides.
Finally, although Elnor continues to exist in the Picard timeline, he hasn’t been part of the story of this season – despite opportunities to include him. Elnor is a Romulan, and if there was to be any kind of Romulan connection to the story, I’d have expected him to take part in it.
Not the “Ancient Evil” #4: Q and/or the Q Continuum.
Q as he appeared in Season 2.
We got our Q story – for better or for worse – in Season 2. While it would be thematically interesting in a way if the end of Jean-Luc Picard’s story were connected to the very first episode in which he appeared, the death of Q last year combined with the total absence of any discussion of Q and the Q Continuum this time make it feel very unlikely at this juncture.
There’s also the question of motivation – something that also tripped up Q’s story in Season 2! Why would Q, or another member of the Continuum, have allied with a faction of rogue changelings to attack Starfleet? If the Q wanted the Federation weakened or destroyed… all it would take is a snap of the fingers. Why go to all this trouble? And why would the Q Continuum hate Starfleet anyway? The Q Continuum is ancient… but is it evil? I don’t think so.
Not the “Ancient Evil” #5: Khan.
Khan as he appeared in Space Seed.
Genetic engineering and augmentation were discussed in Season 2, and there was even a reference to something called “Project Khan” at the end of the season. But not only is Khan dead, he has no connection to Picard and the Crushers. Although Season 2 has leaned heavily into the legacy of The Wrath of Khan in more ways than one… I just don’t see how the story bringing him back could possibly be made to work.
Star Trek Into Darkness was a riff on the Khan story, and it worked pretty well – at least in my view. But Khan is a character that we don’t really need to see more of… which is part of the reason why I was always sceptical about the Ceti Alpha V pitch! Bringing Khan and his augments into Picard wouldn’t work.
Not the “Ancient Evil” #6: The Abronians, the Kelvan Empire, the Voth… and more!
Hanar, a representative of the Kelvan Empire.
There are a number of ancient races in Star Trek – and a number of villainous ones, too. But many of these made only a single appearance or a handful of appearances in stories that most viewers would struggle to recall decades later, and while some of them might nominally fulfil some of our criteria – such as by having a tangential connection to Jean-Luc Picard or Dr Crusher – the fact that they haven’t been so much as hinted at all season long should be enough to rule out all of them.
At this late stage in the season, and with the only named villain having already been killed off, it’s already a storytelling challenge to make whatever’s behind Jack’s red door and whomever has been directing the conspiracy not feel like a deus ex machina. If this character or faction is ultimately revealed to be something or someone that we’ve had no mention of through the entire story… I fear that would be too high a narrative hurdle to successfully clear.
So that’s it!
The Shrike’s destruction in Surrender.
We’ve considered a few possibilities for who the “ancient evil” could be. This “ancient and weak” voice that Jack has heard seems to have somehow latched onto him – and is giving him superpowers. Deanna Troi (and everyone else involved in the story) seems to believe that this is directly tied to the rogue changelings and their plans to attack Frontier Day, so one way or another this “ancient evil” has been driving the story all season long.
The death of Vadic has, for me at least, thrown a cloud over this story. Even if the “ancient evil” is the Borg Queen, another Borg representative, or a changeling, it will still be difficult to pull off this storyline successfully and explain everything sufficiently with just two episodes left. I feel echoes of the Season 1 problem, in which the two-part finale dumped new characters, factions, and storylines into the plot but didn’t have anywhere near enough time to pay them off successfully. But we’ll have to wait to see if Season 3 will fare any better!
Jack will explore this “ancient evil” alongside Deanna Troi.
I hope that this was a bit of fun. I tried to consider some seemingly-plausible ideas for the “ancient evil,” as well as explain why I feel that some popular theories are unlikely. If you put me under duress and forced me to pick only one candidate, right now I’m inclined to say that the Borg Queen feels the most likely. There have been multiple Borg references this season, there’s a solid connection to Picard, there’s a narratively coherent way in which Jack could have inherited Borg DNA or nanites from Picard which would also tie in thematically to the ideas of parent-child relationships and inheritance, and the voice that Jack has periodically heard sounds feminine in tone. So that would be my guess – if I absolutely had to choose!
As a final note: I always like to end these theory lists by saying that I do this just for fun. I enjoy writing, I enjoy Star Trek, and spending more time in this world is an escape and an enjoyable distraction for me. But for some folks, fan theories can become frustrating or unenjoyable, especially if they get very attached to a plausible-sounding theory that ultimately doesn’t pan out. I have no “insider information” and I’m not trying to claim that anything suggested above can, will, or must be part of Picard Season 3. The story will almost certainly take an unpredictable path!
Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in the United States and other countries and territories where the service is available, and on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and around the world. The Star Trek franchise – including Picard and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Discovery, and Prodigy.
Phew! Surrender has finally killed off a whole bunch of theories as we gear up for the final two episodes of Star Trek: Picard. There are still twists and turns to come, of that I’m certain, but this week marks the definitive end for a whole host of theories – several of which have been running for all or almost all of the season!
Quite a few of the debunked or retiring theories were to do with Vadic – and as she died this week, so do they. Vadic’s death was unspectacular, at least in my opinion, and also it feels premature. Vadic died without telling us much of anything, aside from her tortured backstory, and several of these theories still feel like they could have been plausible had we spent more time with the season’s only named villainous character.
Vaporising a dead changeling.
But you can check out my review for my thoughts on Vadic, Surrender in a more general sense, and my unease at the concept of killing the only named villain in the eighth episode of a ten-episode season. You can find my review of Surrenderby clicking or tapping here.
This week we have one confirmation, one semi-confirmation, a whopping five debunkings, and two theories that – while not debunked outright by the events of Surrender – I’m choosing to retire from the list. They now seem completely implausible based on the direction taken by the story. As always, we’ll take a look at all of these first!
Confirmed theory: The rogue changelings are keeping their most important prisoners alive.
Riker and Troi in a prison cell aboard the Shrike.
I have to say that it never seemed to be a realistic prospect that Riker would simply have been murdered after being kidnapped by Vadic – not before he could rejoin the crew and participate in the TNG reunion that pre-season marketing heavily pushed! But the fact that Riker and Troi were being kept alive by Vadic’s crew may also bode well for Tuvok – and possibly for other characters, too.
We saw in earlier episodes that the rogue changelings were killing at least some of the individuals that they replaced – but with all the talk of blood and DNA, it seemed at least plausible that they might keep some of their more important targets alive. Hopefully that includes Tuvok!
Semi-confirmed theory: Worf and Raffi saved Riker and Troi.
A hug for a job well done!
I had also included Tuvok in this theory last week, so we can only call it “semi” confirmed! But as expected, Worf and Raffi successfully tracked down Riker after his capture and were able to free him – along with Deanna Troi – from captivity aboard the Shrike.
Raffi played less of a role in this story in some ways, but she got her explosive action sequence after boarding the Titan.
Debunked theory #1: Picard and the crew will commandeer the Shrike.
The destruction of the Shrike.
There were multiple narrative routes to Picard and the crew of the Titan stealing the Shrike – a powerful warship that could have proved useful in the fight that may lie ahead! I wondered if Vadic may have been trapped in the holodeck, for example, or if Picard would use her takeover of the Titan to covertly slip his forces aboard her vessel somehow.
Regardless, this idea was shot down in flames – literally! The Titan blew up the Shrike shortly after Vadic’s death, and although it might’ve made sense to try to capture the vessel instead, its destruction is kind of symbolic of the story of the past eight episodes being brought to a close ahead of the finale.
Debunked theory #2: Vadic and/or the rogue changelings got to Lore before Picard.
Lore in Surrender.
For me – speaking as someone who has admittedly never been the biggest fan of Lore – the return of Data’s “brother” fell rather flat. His lack of connection to the main story made the sequences in which he appeared feel like little more than padding; an unnecessary bump in the road as a relatively thin story was stretched to breaking point.
One way in which I felt Lore could have made a more positive contribution to the plot is if he’d been connected to Vadic and the rogue changelings somehow. With Vadic’s people having boarded Daystrom Station at least once – to steal the portal-weapon and Picard’s body – it seemed plausible to think that they might’ve somehow tampered with Lore, reprogramming him to be on their side. But it didn’t pan out that way!
Debunked theory #3: Vadic is the female changeling from Deep Space Nine.
Vadic shifting between forms.
While I wouldn’t say I was ever “sold” on this theory, it seemed like a possibility for a while. The female changeling who directed the Dominion’s war effort in Deep Space Nine was one of only a handful of changeling characters that we met, and as of the end of the Dominion War she was in Federation custody.
The story of Season 3 has touched on Deep Space Nine in more ways than one – but the female changeling hasn’t been so much as mentioned all season long. It would have felt like a bolt from the blue if this connection had been made at such a late stage… but it could have been interesting if it had been handled well.
Debunked theory #4: Deanna Troi is a changeling.
Oh no she isn’t!
In a story involving a changeling-led conspiracy, I think it’s all too easy to become “paranoid” and to see changelings behind the face of practically every character! That being said, Troi’s first appearance in the season – outside of minor cameos – came aboard the Shrike… a vessel crewed by changelings.
It didn’t seem like much of a leap to think that she may have been replaced, and that this imposter was designed to trick Riker into betraying Picard or revealing the location of the Titan.
Debunked theory #5: Vadic will be killed by her own portal-weapon.
Vadic was ejected into space.
In the first part of the season, Vadic’s portal-weapon was a big plot point. In fact, Vadic’s theft of the powerful device was basically the only thing we knew about her for several episodes! In stories like these, it’s not an uncommon trope for the villain to be killed by their own weapon; hoisted by their own petard.
After Vadic jettisoned the portal-weapon before taking the Shrike into the nebula a few weeks ago, I felt sure she’d pick it back up. It seemed like too powerful a weapon to just abandon. But the portal-weapon disappeared from the plot – and Vadic’s ultimate end was entirely unrelated to it.
Retired theory #1: Not all of Raffi’s messages were from Worf.
The encrypted communications panel aboard La Sirena.
This theory hasn’t been debunked – but with two episodes left and a conspiracy to defeat, it feels all but certain that the story is going in a completely different direction. In short, I had suggested that there was a reason why Raffi’s messages from her handler came in the form of text and a disembodied digital voice, and that perhaps Vadic or other rogue changelings hacked into her messages and relayed her false information.
Raffi’s relatively minor role over the past few episodes, and the story leaving behind the criminal underworld, had already made this one feel increasingly unlikely. I’m choosing to pull it from the list at this point, since it doesn’t seem like a story beat that will be revisited.
Retired theory #2: Vadic has assembled a “rogues’ gallery” of Star Trek villains.
Vadic in Surrender.
This theory had been barely hanging on for several weeks – but I was still wondering if other characters from past iterations of Star Trek might’ve been allied with the rogue changelings and included in their conspiracy. The fact that the crew of the Shrike were all wearing strange masks led me to wonder whether there might be familiar faces hidden behind the masks – but the Shrike was destroyed this week, and its crew were all killed.
As a concept, the idea of Picard having to face an alliance of all of his most powerful adversaries from across The Next Generation was a fascinating one – and while we won’t see it in this series now, perhaps it’s an idea that could be revisited one day. It would make a fun 60th Anniversary special, for example, if a combined crew from across The Next Generation era had to face down a rogues’ gallery of villains!
So those theories were confirmed, debunked, or have been retired!
Now we’ll move into the main theory list, beginning with theories that are brand-new or that saw significant movement in the episode Surrender.
Theory #1: Troi will use her “pain removal” skill on Jack.
Troi and Jack.
While Riker and Troi were imprisoned, their conversation turned to something that Troi had done to Riker: she used her Betazoid abilities to “enter” his mind and remove the pain he felt at his son’s death. She did so with the best of intentions – but as always, these things have unintended consequences!
But why bring up this episode in their past? We didn’t see any of this happen, after all, and Surrender seemed to linger over this idea. Could it be that this sequence has established Troi’s pain removal skill for a reason? If so, who might need something removed from their mind? Jack Crusher, who has been struggling with hallucinatory experiences, seems like the most likely candidate!
Theory #2: The rogue changelings didn’t want Jean-Luc Picard… they wanted Locutus.
Picard comes face-to-face with Locutus in Season 1.
Did Picard’s old body just get blown to smithereens when the Shrike was destroyed? Regardless, it seems as if the rogue changelings took part of Picard’s brain – the part that may have been affected by Irumodic Syndrome. But why would they want that? My theory is that they were harvesting not something organic, but rather a Borg device that was left over from Picard’s assimilation experience.
We saw in Season 2 that Starfleet has used Borg tech in its latest generation of starships – and how the Borg were able to take advantage of that. Maybe the rogue changelings’ plot involves using parts from Locutus in order to commandeer, hack into, or damage Starfleet vessels. They didn’t need Jean-Luc Picard’s body… they needed Locutus.
Theory #3: The rogue changelings are planning to hack into the entire connected Federation fleet.
A Starfleet armada as seen in Season 2.
Connected to the idea above, perhaps part of the rogue changelings’ plans for Frontier Day involve hacking into Starfleet. We learned earlier in the season that all of the ships in the fleet can communicate with one another – so perhaps the rogue changelings want to take advantage of this. They could instruct the ships to fire on one another, perhaps.
I would say that it’s kind of frustrating at such a late stage to not know what exactly the rogue changelings are planning! This feels like a plausible idea based on what we’ve seen on screen so far, though.
Theory #4: Jack’s eyes, combat skills, and hallucinations are connected to the Borg.
Jack’s eyes.
If Picard’s Irumodic Syndrome may have been misdiagnosed, then perhaps the same has happened to Jack. If Picard’s brain was actually affected by Borg implants, perhaps Jack somehow inherited these Borg changes from Picard. If so, his skills, eyes, and hallucinations may all be connected to the Borg.
Red isn’t a colour we typically associate with the Borg – but if Jack’s eyes glowed green, perhaps that would be too much of a giveaway! In past Star Trek stories, characters who had previously been assimilated have been shown to “hear” Borg voices, or the voice of the Borg Queen, so that could also connect with this theory.
Theory #4-A: Jack has Borg nanoprobes in his body.
Borg nanoprobes.
If Jack has a Borg brain (or a Borg brain implant) then it stands to reason that he also has Borg nanites in his system. Given the connection to Picard, it seems likely that he would have inherited these from Picard at the moment of conception, but I suppose it’s also possible that he picked them up somewhere along his travels.
These latent nanoprobes may be the key to his hallucinations – explaining how Jack can hear a voice that isn’t his own.
Theory #5: Jack’s “ancient” voice is the Borg Queen.
The original Borg Queen.
At the end of Surrender, Deanna Troi explained that Jack is hearing an “ancient” voice that is not his own, and that this voice is tied to the darkness swirling around him. In earlier episodes, a voice that Jack could hear had a feminine quality to it, so my thoughts have immediately turned to the Borg Queen. If, as suggested, Jack has Borg nanites in his system that he inherited from Picard, maybe he’s hearing the voice of the Borg Queen.
Presumably, if this theory were to pan out, we’d be talking about the original Queen, not the Dr Jurati hybrid that was created in Season 2. There are certainly other ancient evils that I can think of in Star Trek, but none are as connected to Picard – and possibly to Jack – as the Borg Queen. This connection could also pay off the multiple Borg mentions earlier in the season.
Theory #6: The Borg are involved.
A Borg cube in The Next Generation.
There have been multiple references to the Borg this season – and to Picard’s assimilation experience in particular. We’ve just looked at a couple of possible ways in which the Borg could be brought into the story, but there are others. I suspect that, if there is to be a Borg connection, it will involve Borg technology rather than the Collective itself – especially with only a couple of episodes remaining.
However, we can’t rule out some kind of alliance between the rogue changelings and the Borg. Floaty McFloatface may have been the Borg’s “representative,” for example, directing the rogue changelings to carry out the Collective’s orders.
Theory #7: Jack Crusher has changeling DNA… somehow.
A strand of DNA from the closing credits.
Whatever is going on with Jack is implied to also be tied to Picard, so would this mean that Picard also has changeling DNA? That’s something to think over! But for now, suffice to say that Vadic knew a lot about Jack, including the specific details of one of his hallucinatory experiences. How could she possibly know that – unless it’s something that she and/or other changelings have experienced?
I don’t believe that Jack is a changeling – and at this late stage, the story couldn’t get away with going down that route. However, it seems possible that Jack has somehow got a small amount of changeling DNA in his system – explaining why the rogue changelings have been so interested in him, and how they’ve come to know so much about him.
Theory #8: Jack is a “sleeper agent.”
Jack holding a thermal detonator.
Jack may or may not have Borg nanites or changeling DNA… but either way, perhaps he’s a “sleeper agent.” He could be either a Dominion sleeper agent or a Federation one, who has been programmed or brainwashed – perhaps while away from Beverly attending school – and designed to be “activated” at a later time.
Jack’s birth came after the end of the Dominion War, so he wasn’t – as I had originally guessed – programmed to participate in that conflict. But this kind of deep cover intelligence asset is something that Section 31 might use, as well as other factions.
Theory #9: Floaty McFloatface will be back.
Floaty McFloatface with Vadic.
Argh, I hate this one. But it seems at least possible that Floaty McFloatface – who appeared to be Vadic’s boss – may not be as dead as we think. We didn’t see Floaty McFloatface in Surrender, and while Vadic seemed to have both of her hands when she died, it’s possible that this unnamed character may have survived, or may have never been a true part of Vadic to begin with.
I don’t like this idea because bringing a character back in this kind of fake-out way is usually not very satisfying. But another part of me wants to know who Floaty McFloatface was and what they hoped to achieve – things I can hardly believe that we still don’t know at this late stage in the story!
Theory #10: Floaty McFloatface isn’t a changeling.
Who (and what) is Floaty McFloatface?
If we haven’t seen the last of Floaty McFloatface, perhaps we’ll learn who they really are – and I suspect that they may not be a changeling, or at least not a Founder. The way in which Floaty spoke to Vadic, and specifically the way in which he talked about her “kind,” seemed to imply that they may not be the same race.
Vadic also appeared to fear Floaty McFloatface, which could suggest a power imbalance. If Floaty was a representative of the Borg, for example, Vadic may have feared their power. Vadic’s death throws this theory into doubt, but I don’t think we should strike it from the list just yet.
Theory #11: Captain Shaw will be killed.
He’s lasted longer than I expected…
I’m tempted to strike this one off the list, to tell you the truth! But I’ve held onto this theory for the whole season, and with two episodes left it still seems possible – despite the fact that Captain Shaw has survived two major injuries so far. I maintain that Shaw feels superfluous – decisions appear to be taken on board his ship without his input, and that doesn’t really pass muster as a narrative point. But at the same time, opportunities to kill him off have come and gone.
It would have been far more impactful for Vadic to have killed Shaw in Surrender than to have killed the relatively minor character of T’Veen, for example. If the writers want the impact of killing a major character but don’t want the controversy of killing a legacy character, Shaw and Raffi are the only real choices. With two episodes left – in which Picard and the crew must confront the remaining changelings – Shaw could still be in danger, even if the impact of his possible death would be lesser at this point in the story.
Theory #12: Someone on the crew will turn out to be a changeling imposter.
Picard and the crew in The Next Generation Season 5.
At this point in the story, it seems as if we should be able to rule out all of The Next Generation characters as changeling imposters. But part of me still feels suspicious – there may yet be a twist in someone’s story that we’re not supposed to see coming!
It might be difficult to pull this off now, especially after a touching reunion between the old friends at the end of Surrender. But when the changelings are involved… as I said earlier, it can be tempting to feel paranoid and see changelings hiding everywhere! Perhaps a changeling has been hiding in plain sight all along, pushing Picard and the crew to a specific place to benefit their overall conspiracy.
Theory #13: The rogue changelings are planning to cripple Starfleet.
Federation vessels seen in a pre-season trailer.
Frontier Day is now just hours away… and we still don’t know what the rogue changelings are hoping to accomplish. Having replaced dozens or perhaps hundreds of well-placed Starfleet personnel, it seems plausible that they may be planning to destroy or disable a significant number of Federation starships. We’ve already seen on two separate occasions that rogue changeling operatives were equipped with bombs. Perhaps blowing up the fleet is their ambition.
A coordinated strike against dozens of ships could cripple the Federation’s ability to defend itself, especially if the rogue changelings pick their targets carefully and select the right ships! This could even be a backup plan of sorts – something that the rogue changelings will do if their main plan involving Jack Crusher can’t be carried out.
Theory #14: At least one main character will be killed.
Spock’s funeral at the end of The Wrath of Khan.
As we approach the end of the story, there’s still at least one battle to come. I suspect that not everyone will make it to the end in one piece – and a well-timed character death could really seal the deal when it comes to raising the stakes and/or paying off a character arc. It would be shocking and tragic, of course, to have to bid farewell to someone we may have known for more than thirty years… but it’s a distinct possibility.
I’m a tad surprised at this point in the season that we haven’t seen more death. Ro Laren’s death was the most significant so far… but there’s still time! I wrote a list before the season premiere outlining who I thought could be in danger, and you can find it by clicking or tapping here.
Theory #15: At least one more unannounced character will make an appearance!
Could it be Julian Bashir or Ezri Dax?
In addition to the characters we knew would be returning, there have been two big surprises: Tuvok and Ro Laren. But there’s still time for at least one more character from the past to make a welcome return to Star Trek. Admiral Janeway’s name has been mentioned more than once, and we know that Kate Mulgrew is still involved with Star Trek as she’s appeared in Prodigy, so she has to be a contender!
But there are a whole host of characters – major and minor – from The Next Generation era and beyond who could potentially appear. There isn’t time now for anyone to play a major role, but cameos are a distinct possibility. We saw in both Seasons 1 and 2 that the final episodes included surprises… so be on the lookout for familiar faces!
So those theories are new or moved significantly this week.
Now, as always, I’ll recap the remaining theories that are still in play. I find it helps to keep everything in one place!
Theory #16: The rogue changelings are planning attacks on the Klingon Empire and the Romulans.
A joint Federation-Klingon task force during the Dominion War. Image Credit: JTVFX on YouTube
It wasn’t only the Federation that opposed the Founders during the Dominion War. The Klingons, Romulans, and later a Cardassian resistance movement all played significant roles in preventing the Dominion from conquering the Alpha Quadrant – so it stands to reason that the rogue changelings would be looking to get revenge on these powers, too.
Despite having had two full seasons of Picard already – one of which had a major Romulan theme – we still don’t know much about the state of the galaxy in political terms. Are the Federation, Romulans, and Klingons on friendly terms in this era, or has the Dominion War alliance of necessity fallen apart? After the Zhat Vash plot was exposed, what happened to Federation-Romulan relations? All of these things would be interesting to explore, and the rogue changelings’ plot could lead to such a storyline. For now, though, suffice to say I suspect that the Federation may not be the only target that the rogue changelings have in mind!
Theory #17: The rogue changelings may also be targeting the Bajorans and Cardassians.
Gul Dukat with Weyoun in Deep Space Nine.
These two factions played smaller roles during the Dominion War in some respects, with the Cardassians serving as Dominion allies (and members of the Dominion), and Bajor signing an official non-aggression pact with the Dominion. However, both the Bajorans and Cardassians later opposed the Dominion, and the Prophets – who are strongly aligned with Bajor – arguably turned the tide of the entire war.
If the rogue changelings are on the move, I would suspect that the Federation, Romulans, and Klingons would be their main targets as it was these powers who played the biggest and most obvious roles in the conflict. But Bajor and Cardassia may not be safe.
Again, we don’t know enough about the geopolitics of this era! Bajor may have joined the Federation, and even Cardassia could be under Federation protection. If so, that changes the dynamic.
Theory #18: The rogue changelings are responsible for the mysterious anomaly seen in Season 2.
The anomaly in the Season 2 finale.
It didn’t escape my notice that the events of Season 2 were referenced – albeit incredibly briefly – by Captain Shaw in No Win Scenario. That being said, this theory still feels like somewhat of a long-shot just based on how Picard seems to have moved on from what happened last year.
In short, what I’m suggesting is that the mysterious anomaly that was a big part of the story of Season 2 will turn out to be a weapon of some kind deployed by the rogue changelings, either as part of or as a precursor to their plan to attack Starfleet and the Federation. This would explain Dr Jurati’s comment that the anomaly seemed to be artificial in nature – and it would tie up a massive loose end from last season.
Theory #19: Picard will donate his golem body to Jack.
Picard in his golem body at the end of Season 1.
The revelation that Jack has the terminal and incurable Irumodic syndrome was a surprising inclusion in The Bounty – and it tied into that episode’s theme of the relationship parents have with their children, and what kinds of things children inherit from their parents. Irumodic syndrome was the most obvious example of a “flaw” passed from parent to child.
But this story could have also set up the endgame – not only for Season 3, but for Jean-Luc Picard himself. In short, I’m suggesting that Picard will donate his golem to Jack, sacrificing himself to save his son’s life in one final act of parental love. This will come after the rogue changelings have been defeated – and will mark the definitive, conclusive end of both Star Trek: Picard and the show’s title character.
Theory #20: The rogue changelings are trying to reach the Nexus.
Dr Soran excitedly awaits the Nexus.
One of the easter eggs in The Bounty showed us a glimpse of Captain Kirk’s body – or a readout on a screen, at least. As far as we know, only two corpses were stored at Daystrom Station: Picard’s and Kirk’s. Aside from both being captains of the Enterprise, what else do these two characters have in common? They both used the Nexus to travel through time. Picard travelled only a few hours, but Kirk jumped forwards in time by decades.
The Nexus hasn’t been mentioned since Generations, and it would be a less well-known part of Star Trek to bring back in some ways. But the timelines could kind of sync up here: if it’s been 30+ years since the events of Generations, and the Nexus returns every 39.1 years, that could work! The Nexus could also be phenomenally useful for the rogue changelings – if they wanted to travel back in time to prevent the Dominion’s defeat, for example.
Theory #21: Irumodic syndrome is important to the rogue changelings.
Irumodic syndrome “killed” Picard… briefly.
As Picard noted in The Bounty, he “died” of Irumodic syndrome back in Season 1. Irumodic syndrome is a big link between Jack and Picard right now – and because these two characters are the ones who seem to have gotten most of the rogue changelings’ attention, that fact could be significant!
Perhaps Irumodic syndrome can be used by changelings to mask their presence, or maybe it can somehow cure the genetic disease that Section 31 created. Irumodic syndrome could also be an indication that an individual possesses changeling DNA – or some other attribute that’s important to changelings.
Theory #22: The absences of characters from Seasons 1 and 2 will be explained.
Elnor with his fellow cadets in Season 2.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Laris was included in the season premiere, and while she won’t have a big role in the story of the season, it was great that the story didn’t just dump her as it raced ahead. Due to her importance to the story of Season 2, Laris was perhaps the character who I felt it was most important to include in some way, and I’m glad we got to see her.
But there are still several characters from Seasons 1 and 2 who haven’t been mentioned. Elnor and Soji could easily be name-dropped; a line or two of dialogue could clear up where they are, what they’re doing, and why they can’t join Picard on his current mission. The Borg Queen-Dr Jurati hybrid is a bit more complicated; her self-appointed role as “guardian” of the mysterious anomaly makes it a bit harder to just wave away her disappearance.
I hope we’ll get something that will acknowledge these characters’ absences. All were important in the first two seasons of the show, and simply abandoning them without any kind of goodbye was disappointing at the end of Season 2. If Season 3 could do something to rectify that, I’d appreciate it!
Theory #23: Odo will make an appearance – somehow.
Odo in Deep Space Nine.
I don’t know how I feel about this one. It was sweet to see Worf make reference to Odo in Seventeen Seconds – though the connection could have been clearer, especially for more casual viewers – but I’m not convinced that we need to see Odo for ourselves. The reason for that is simple: the only way we could see Odo is either by re-casting the character or recreating him through some kind of CGI process.
Star Trek has successfully re-cast many characters over the years, so I don’t really take exception to that. But the death of actor René Auberjonois is still recent and fresh in our minds, so bringing Odo back without him just feels… uncomfortable. Although Odo is well-suited to a story in which the changelings are back, I think I’d rather he didn’t appear in person on this occasion. But I wanted to acknowledge that it’s at least a plausible development for the story.
So that’s it!
Vadic’s disappointing demise.
It’s still all to play for as we approach the final pair of episodes, and there are still many different routes that the story could take. I desperately hope that whatever comes next will feel natural, and will feel connected in some way to the story elements that have already been introduced. The last thing Picard needs is yet another deus ex machina-type ending! In spite of my disappointment with Surrender and the premature death of Vadic, I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for an ending to the story that is, at the very least, narratively coherent.
As a final note: I always like to end these theory lists by saying that I do this just for fun. I enjoy writing, I enjoy Star Trek, and spending more time in this world is an escape and an enjoyable distraction for me. But for some folks, fan theories can become frustrating or unenjoyable, especially if they get very attached to a plausible-sounding theory that ultimately doesn’t pan out. I have no “insider information” and I’m not trying to claim that anything suggested above can, will, or must be part of Picard Season 3. I fully expect many of these theories to be debunked and for the season to go in wildly unpredictable directions!
Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in the United States and other countries and territories where the service is available, and on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and around the world. The Star Trek franchise – including Picard and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 