Microsoft Starfield - Information Thread, update (09/16): "Shattered Space" expansion deep-dive video

[Biggie]

3 minutes ago, TheLeon said:

I’ve settled into a bit of a groove with it finally, but I really don’t see myself deviating much from major quests. 

Not going to join any factions or do activities?

[Best]

3 minutes ago, Biggie said:

I love the exploring. Going thru areas/buildings and killing enemies is good stuff. Guns feel great. Probably the best combat has ever felt in a Bethesda game. 

 

Yep. I explored for 2 hours yesterday accomplishing nothing but gathering quests. I agree, best combat yet but I did like VATS in Fallout. 

[Keyser_Soze]

I decided to do a little exploring myself. I went to that ice planet, I'm sure you've all been there.

 

There was a base with dudes and a cave.

 

The game kinda makes me wish it was a little more realistic in terms of damage. If someone shoots you and it's like -200 degrees outside, once your suit is pierced you would be done for. Like it would be pretty cool if I shot a guy in the arm and then his arm just froze off.

 

Cave was disappointing though, it was really small with like a rock pile and some other pile.

[TheLeon]

Just now, Biggie said:

Not going to join any factions or do activities?

A faction, sure. Haven’t done it yet, but I understand those have pretty significant questlines. Or if one of my companions has their own quest, stuff like that I would do. But my quest log is filling up with all this random shit just from walking around, I guess those are the “activities”. Not interested. Or if I have to stop in one system before jumping to my destination, I’m not checking out the random points of interest scattered around if I don’t have to. 
 

If I was really loving the game, or if it was the only game I had to play for a while, I would do more. But realistically, I figure this game only has my attention for another week or two at most, so I want to focus. 

[Best]

3 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Cave was disappointing though, it was really small with like a rock pile and some other pile.

 

That's disappointing. I was afraid of that. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

I’m still figuring shit out. Only Sunday night did I figure out that in ship builder I would get a huge menu of parts if I clocked away from my ship. I had been wondering WTF I was missing. Guessing that maybe I wouldn’t get to actually design a ship until I got the ship designer skill. NOPE. 
 

There are parts of the UI where if you know you know, but if you don’t, well … 

 

speaking of which; is there any way to pick up equip-able items to place them on tables and stuff? I don’t see anywhere on controller or M&K for that option. I want to have a display of helmets on my ship in my captain’s quarters, and I can only drop them on the floor, take them into inventory or equip them. 

[CitizenVectron]

On 9/10/2023 at 10:53 PM, Xbob42 said:

They did! Shame about the weapon variety, but at least the few guns there are aren't terrible. And by weapon variety I mean guns that handle in a meaningfully different way. The laser and plasma and particle guns all just feel like normal ass guns. Gimme a big fuckin' laser that I can sweep around a room! The cutter is the closest thing and it quickly becomes bad.

 

But I'll take a few good guns over a huge variety of shitty funs, so it's still a win to me.

 

One of the most frustrating things about FO4 was the lack of variety in weapons. There were some good mods that fixed this by adding 100+ new guns and 20+ ammo types (meaning you had to be much more careful when scavenging/using bullets, as stuff was diluted). Hopefully the same happens with SF.

[Keyser_Soze]

17 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

speaking of which; is there any way to pick up equip-able items to place them on tables and stuff? I don’t see anywhere on controller or M&K for that option. I want to have a display of helmets on my ship in my captain’s quarters, and I can only drop them on the floor, take them into inventory or equip them. 

 

I described this yesterday but for a controller so figure out what binding corresponds to what.

 

Hold A - Picks up the item

Left and Right trigger rotate the item

Left stick button changes the axis of the rotation

Press a to put it down

Press x to throw it

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

11 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

I described this yesterday but for a controller so figure out what binding corresponds to what.

 

Hold A - Picks up the item

Left and Right trigger rotate the item

Left stick button changes the axis of the rotation

Press a to put it down

Press x to throw it

Does that work for things like weapons, suites, and helmets? I hold A (Y on my bindings) but for equipables it doesn’t just pick them up, it equips them. Unless you’re saying there’s a separate list of bindings for this? 

[Keyser_Soze]

32 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

Does that work for things like weapons, suites, and helmets? I hold A (Y on my bindings) but for equipables it doesn’t just pick them up, it equips them. Unless you’re saying there’s a separate list of bindings for this? 

 

Ah I see what you mean. I've never tried with equippables, well until now. So I'm not sure. Would take some fiddling around I suppose.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

I guess I could just build a larger ship with an armory connected to my captain’s quarters, but it’s not quite the same. 

[Xbob42]

Call me when they mod it so I can make a ship long enough to touch the planet from orbit so I can walk to the landing pad without landing!

[Littleronin]

I see there is a new Nvidia driver for Starfield this morning. 

Runs a bit better on my living room pc. I might for the shits and giggles install it on my tablet later and see how it handles it. 

[Xbob42]

Driver update seems pretty massive, at least on my 4080.

 

Took a screenshot before and after with RTSS on up in the corner.

 

 

 

Then went to Akila, where yesterday I was getting mid-80s, now no matter where I look or move I'm not going below 100.

 

[Keyser_Soze]

Savanna Sweetbush is my favorite porn star.

[Paperclyp]

NASA punk is a bit corny, but I really enjoy the art / environment design of this game. 
 

I also think the voice acting is quite good. 

[Spork3245]

New nVidia drivers are out, looks like they enable ReBAR for Starfield without having to hack a profile. If you weren't forcing ReBAR before, you should see a decent performance improvement.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

I hope turning reBar on isn’t what will give the most performance boost from the driver update. 

[brucoe]

I explored Earth last night and landed where I live now, in Texas. It was nothing but rocks and desert. Wow, they captured Texas exactly as it is today. So impressed. If there would have been a bus driving aliens north to drop them off in New York, they would have captured it perfectly.

[Spork3245]

1 hour ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

I hope turning reBar on isn’t what will give the most performance boost from the driver update. 

To be fair, drivers can only do so much  

[Best]

I thought New Atlantis was huge then I discovered:

 

Spoiler

The Well. Another small "city" underground. I spent 2 hours again today just in New Atlantis. 

 

I fucking love this game. 

[Best]

@Mr.Vic20 what's your quick thoughts on the main campaign storyline? Solid story?

[Mr.Vic20]

32 minutes ago, best3444 said:

@Mr.Vic20 what's your quick thoughts on the main campaign storyline? Solid story?

Sadly, it’s just OK. As much as I think starfield has a glorious modded future, the vanilla launch game is just that, vanilla. There were a few decent scenarios, but by in large the plot is phoned in. If you’d like to discuss the particulars, we should make a spoiler thread. Please don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the game and put in plenty of time, but narratively this game is a B- at best.

[Best]

6 minutes ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

Sadly, it’s just OK. As much as I think starfield has a glorious modded future, the vanilla launch game is just that, vanilla. There were a few decent scenarios, but by in large the plot is phoned in. If you’d like to discuss the particulars, we should make a spoiler thread. Please don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the game and put in plenty of time, but narratively this game is a B- at best.

 

That's ok for me. The story isn't the main draw of Bethesda games so if it's serviceable then that's good. I don't want to know anything and yes, the modded future is so bright. 

 

I was a PC guy for Skyrim and that was glorious. 

[TwinIon]

I've spent way too much time and have now done most of what there is to do in Starfield, and I apologize for how much follows, but this game has consumed me I and I have thoughts.

 

I need to start with confidently saying that it's an excellent game. It's flawed, probably more than most great games, but there are a ton wonderful experiences to be had that few games can even come close to. There are fun stories littered throughout the game, both scripted and emergent. It has so much to offer in such a variety of ways and has such an incredible scope. For all that it does accomplish however, it is deeply flawed in some new and old ways, but it's mostly the old that stand out. While Starfield is set in the future, it is not the future. If anything, it's a blast from the past.

 

Starfield plays like a good remaster of a game that came out more than a decade ago. The tech isn't up to par, but that's because the old engine couldn't do ray tracing or anything too fancy. The constant loading screens are reminder of a time before game engines allowed for more fluid open worlds. The remaster really made environments pop and brought textures up to modern standards, but other things like animations didn't get as much attention and feel their age. It's a good thing the art style is great and the detail in some of the environment objects is quite impressive. The faces are mostly pretty good; not up to the quality we expect from modern AAA games, but not distractingly bad (until you're in bad light or a bad angle). The gameplay loop is comfortable and familiar, rarely pushing into new ground, but it's a classic for a reason.

 

If I were to choose one specific point of comparison, it would be Cyberpunk. Both are long gestating enormous open world RPGs set in the future with branching stories and skill trees, but Cyberpunk, for all it's early troubles, feels like a completely modern game, the kind of thing AAAA devs should aspire to. It's beautiful and it's a tech demo, but it's more than just that. In Starfield things are scripted, but in Cyberpunk things are choreographed. The kinds of presentational polish that was reserved for smaller scoped games has made it's way to these really big games like Cyberpunk and Horizon, and Starfield is so consistently janky by comparison.

 

The game is big though. One main quest, plus four faction quest lines, plus a huge array of side quests, both generated and scripted. There are so many game systems that you can sink your time into, and much to my surprise the procedurally generated stuff was really worthwhile. I spent a ton of time visiting random planets, scanning them, and checking out the random sites for some exploration or combat. Sometimes I'd stumble into scripted events, and sometimes I'd just pass some time looking for loot or a good ship to commandeer. It's really easy to spend time in Starfield, and I've spent more than my fair share. That said, not every part of Starfield has been made up to the same standard.

 

I feel like elements of Starfield fall into one of three camps: either they've achieved a level of functionality and depth that the developers actually intended (regardless of what I might want), they have been refined down to nothing, or they are simply unfinished; and I'm not sure I can always tell which is which. I think most things to do with ships are probably about where the devs were aiming. Ship building, combat, decoration, power management, all seem finished and at the level of complexity and capability that feels purposeful. I really enjoy ship building, and even if I wish I could rotate things and want more pieces, I still think it's a highlight of the game. I cared far more about making a nice ship than I did finding the best gun or fiddling with my house or character. There is a lot I would like to change in the ship building, but what's there is really good (when it's not bugging out).

 

Fuel management seems like something that was probably refined down to nothing, as if all that is left are remnants of a more complex system excised after playtesting. You either have enough fuel or you don't, and when you don't that only ever means one extra stop.

 

Outpost management just feels unfinished. They were getting close, and they hit some key marks to bother including it at all, but the more time you spend with it the less rewarding it is. They built this whole system where you can mine resources and store them and send they to other planets to automatically build stuff in complex manufacturing combinations, the tools you get are terribly insufficient for what it's trying to get you to do. There also doesn't end up being much of a point to it, since most of what you need the materials for is the outpost infrastructure. I built this whole operation where I had mapped and planned out my supply routes and in the end I didn't see the point. It brought me almost no value at all, despite a ton of effort and character points.

 

Inventory management likewise something I hope is just unfinished. If this is where they ended up with after a million rounds of polish, it's a disaster. Inventory on your person, on your companions, on your ship, on your outpost, it's all so messy and there are so few tools to manage it. Why is there no "mark as junk" button? Why have useful things mixed in categories with decorative items? Why can't I see how many med packs I have left in the UI? It also doesn't even show you all the relevant information. Great, this gun does X damage at rate Y, do some quick math so you can figure out if it's better than gun that does A damage at rate B. Same thing with ship parts. So not only is the inventory a mess, but you don't get enough information from it so you're forced to spend more time in it!

 

It's also poorly balanced. I can't believe how much time I still have to worry about it in the end game. The baseline should be that you can carry at least two full suits, a full compliment of weapons, and a healthy load of resources, but that was rarely the case for me even as I prioritized capacity. Basically every inventory stat should be doubled at a baseline and every few levels every incrementally better suit should be another +20. I do wonder if they balanced it that way because they knew how hard it is to manage your stuff, so they just made it so you can hardly carry anything, rather than just giving you better tools to manage your gear.

 

I could write a couple thousand more words on inventory management in Starfield, but I'll go into one specific issue I feel is emblematic of why it falls under the "unfinished" category: the "track" option in crafting. When you don't have everything you need to craft something, you can press a button to track what resources you need to go find. It does this by putting an icon next to all of the resources needed for that mod or research project or outpost building. That way when you see a little icon next to that adhesive on a shelf, you bother to pick it up. Unfortunately, you also get one next to your giant haul of aluminium, even though you have 100x the required amount thanks to your outpost, even if you have it on you when you start tracking. Also, it doesn't tell you how much you need of any given thing, so if you find some expensive resource you have no clue how many you need I guess you just buy them all and hope when you try crafting again it was enough. And hopefully you remember why you were looking for every single resource you track, because it doesn't track what you were collecting it for. So if you tracked a new sight for a gun you no longer use, now those items (including the really common ones!) will just be highlighted forever. Horizion FW had this exact same feature, but it just gave you a quest that specified what you were tracking and how much more you needed of each thing, including how many you had, and it's great. They even gave it a separate quest category so you could easily find them. The system in Starfield is just missing that crucial step of actually being useful. So many things having to do with inventory are like this, and I just have to assume that they didn't finish it in time.

 

I'm not sure where the computer systems land on the scale. They're so incredibly basic it's unclear if that's what they were aiming for. Did they finish a simplistic vision, refine complexity out of the interactions, or did they not have time to implement something more. They're basically single purpose buttons or single pieces of paper, and having them locked with the same (admittedly good) lock as physical objects just seems odd. Comptuers play a surprisingly small role in Starfield, and while they're hardly a problem they still feel lacking.

 

The health and status effects belong with fuel as a system that seems to have the pieces for something more complex, but was probably whittled away until it was basically pointless. You can get all sorts of conditions, and I assume the numbers on your armor helps prevent them as well as damage, but I can't say they really mattered. I was constantly frostbitten, had lacerations, burns, a cough, lung damage, and/or radiation poisoning, and it basically never mattered. I'd use a med pack when I got low health, would occasionally take a nap, and very rarely I'd actually use an aid or see a doctor to settle my conditions. (Since I can't I use the infirmary on my ship) Maybe this matters more on higher difficulties, but on normal you can basically ignore all of it. There also wasn't any way I found to gauge how much more shielding you needed to be ok. This was a huge mechanic in No Man's Sky, and all the numbers are in Starfield, but I never found something that would say "you need X amount of protection to not get frostbite on this planet," so there was never anything to chase even if you did have to worry about it more.

 

Stealth and corporate espionage I again have questions as to what category they belong to. It seems like a lot of the friend or foe detection for stealth missions is hard coded to that mission. So instead of engaging with a consistent system, you're working with rules specific to each scenario. You can "stealth" around a hyper secure military installation by putting on a random guy's uniform, but walk into a factory wearing one of their uniforms and you're instantly being attacked by everyone in sight, because the mission didn't tell you to. In some stealth missions, no stealth is actually required. You can walk into a business on a mission of corporate sabotage or investigation and there are cameras and turrets and guards, but there is no resistance at all. No need to sneak, no need to turn off cameras or knock out guards, or sneak through vents, no one really stops you. The "vents" in this game are also a complete joke. It's hilarious to me that they exist basically only in spaces you might need to stealth during a mission and that they're full size doors. It's so lazy it feels out of place. The trappings of stealth gameplay are all there, but it feels unfinished in significant ways. It ends up making some of the stealth focused missions by far the worst experiences in the game. When Googling some of them a constant suggestion to just shoot everyone and deal with the consequences because the stealth was so bad or broken in that scenario.

 

Local maps: obviously unfinished. I don't really mind not having local maps of generated landing zones, but for cities it just feels like an oversight, though it could just be a way of limiting exposing just how small the cities are. Star maps though, I think are pretty good overall. I just really wish there was a super simple database. If I scan a planet I should be able to type in a resource or location name or planet name and find it. I did the work of scanning all those systems, I shouldn't have to Google search to remember which one had unobtainium.

 

I also feel like land vehicles are something that should have existed, but they didn't have time. I don't think you should have one right away, because I do agree there is value in feeling how big the planets are when you land and look around. After a few dozen hours though, the novelty had worn off, and I just wanted to get where I was going. Make driving a high level skill, story gate your vehicle access, whatever, but the spaces are too big to have nothing more than a jetpack.

 

Story elements themselves are all over the place, with some huge stories feeling like they were scrubbed of any possible friction and others feeling really great. There's an undercover faction quest line with pirates that I felt was constantly straining credulity on all sides. That was the exception more than the rule; most of them were fun and interesting, going to unexpected places and introducing some cool wrinkles in the setting.

 

With the main quest, I do have a specific complaint that is more gameplay related than story, and it makes the whole experience feel clearly unfinished. There is a type of building that you have to find repeatedly in the main quest, and the way it was handled boggles my mind. How there wasn't any kind of puzzle or dungeon or or platforming section or spectacle or anything is mind blowing. Just a door, some lights, and some horns. It's also odd that while the existence of these places was supposedly revelatory, their zones still seem procedurally generated. The result of being that sometimes these incredible, unmistakable structures were literally a stones throw from established outposts. These locations should probably have been the most carefully crafted in the game, and instead they felt completely trivial. There should have been Zelda style dungeons. They also clearly see how important these are, because one of the best quest sequence in the game surrounds one of them, they just all didn't get such treatment.

 

The conversation and persuasion system is often silly, but I think it's probably the desired level of complexity. Sometimes I can pass persuasion checks just saying the easiest things, like "I don't see why this is a problem" over and over and never actually make any kind of argument, but once their boxes are checked they just agree to my demands. It also very rarely seems to take into account my actions outside the specific quest. If I've finished a primary quest line and I'm an officer in this jurisdiction, it seems like that could be useful and maybe worth bringing up. I've seen far fewer of those dialog options than I have options for random things I have skill points in that don't actually seem to affect much. The writing is all over the place, but mostly it's pretty good.

 

Finally, I imagine that we can file all the numerous bugs as "unfinished." I think bugs kind of accumulate as you go along. At this point in my save I cannot make changes to my ship on any orbital platform and then re-board that ship. I end up clipping through geometry, and even if I board directly to the cockpit, I can't unlock because I'm not really in the seat. Sometimes it wouldn't matter where I was and editing a ship would clip through the ground, or just vanish. Most of the time I can edit it and then fast travel away, but even that doesn't always work. I've had all sorts of inventory issues with my ship, especially when changing ships or editing them. I've had companions and passengers stay on the ship after they've been transferred or dropped off, even changing ships with me. I've had one companion's kid stay on my ship most of the game, even though the parent hasn't been on board for a dozen hours. I've had several quest lines bug out and prevent progress, forcing me to reload a save. I think it often has to do with random events interfering with scripted ones, but it's hard to be sure. I've had a number of places go completely hostile for no reason, making some quests really annoying or impossible. I've had semi-persistent meteors following my ship around.  I've had a number of crashes, even on just exiting, and recently even on saving! Point being, reports of this being a bug free experience have been greatly exaggerated.

 

My number one tip to everyone is to save early and often. Don't just rely on auto-save or quick-saves either. Make manual saves often, especially before doing anything to a ship.

 

This is more than anyone will bother to read, but I still want to end on a positive. Despite all these issues I honestly think Starfield is a great game. It's huge and there is a ton of fun to be had in choosing how to take on your adventure.  It has consumed my time and my mind like few games in recent memory. It's not a tech demo or proof of concept for forthcoming open world games, but it's a wonderful trip back to the future Bethesda style. It's janky and not every endeavor is equally worthwhile, but when everything is clicking, there's little else like it, and none to match its scope.

[Keyser_Soze]

20 hours ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

speaking of which; is there any way to pick up equip-able items to place them on tables and stuff? I don’t see anywhere on controller or M&K for that option. I want to have a display of helmets on my ship in my captain’s quarters, and I can only drop them on the floor, take them into inventory or equip them. 

 

I looked into this a little bit more but can't test it myself since I haven't gotten that far. You can move them in outposts or houses in build mode, I guess trying on a ship is the only way it doesn't work but I also haven't built a ship so I'm not sure how far you can take it there.

[Spork3245]

8 hours ago, TwinIon said:

This is more than anyone will bother to read

I would appreciate some cliff notes

[Keyser_Soze]

9 hours ago, TwinIon said:

My number one tip to everyone is to save early and often. Don't just rely on auto-save or quick-saves either. Make manual saves often, especially before doing anything to a ship.

 

I've played Bethesda games before so this is kind of basic knowledge. I  save often on foot I have two manual saves so far. Usually I do a manual save before I enter a building or get on the ship, or on the ship before I take off somewhere.

[Biggie]

BRB. Asking for today off from work so I’ll have time to read @TwinIon post. lol

[Best]

Just now, Biggie said:

BRB. Asking for today off from work so I’ll have time to read @TwinIon post. lol

 

I litteraly just read it all. I couldn't sleep for shit last night so I got out of bed and played 3 fuckin hours of this. It's such an excellent game and it's absolutely never boring. Im taking my sweet little time. I went to bed at 2am lol. 

[Biggie]

3 minutes ago, best3444 said:

 

I litteraly just read it all. I couldn't sleep for shit last night so I got out of bed and played 3 fuckin hours of this. It's such an excellent game and it's absolutely never boring. Im taking my sweet little time. I went to bed at 2am lol. 

Surprising knowing how much you cherish your sleep. But other than the space combat I think the game is fantastic. Pure Bethesda goodness. 

[Best]

1 minute ago, Biggie said:

Surprising knowing how much you cherish your sleep. But other than the space combat I think the game is fantastic. Pure Bethesda goodness. 

 

Space combat is pretty damn good imo. I kinda suck at it but it's not because it's flawed. 

[Biggie]

1 minute ago, best3444 said:

 

Space combat is pretty damn good imo. I kinda suck at it but it's not because it's flawed. 

Yeah some of the problem is that I’m not good at it which makes it not fun lol. I love the skill trees. Such interesting things to drop points into. 

[Best]

4 minutes ago, Biggie said:

Yeah some of the problem is that I’m not good at it which makes it not fun lol. I love the skill trees. Such interesting things to drop points into. 

 

Yes plus I like the challenges you have to do to unlock more skills. I am really working on my pistol abilities and basically just use that. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

So the driver update did make minor improvements to performance, but I think the bulk of performance was due to reBar being enabled by default. For people that had not done this already they should see significant bump. For me doing the reBar and dropping a couple things to medium was enough I could up my output resolution from 1080p to 1440p image was clearer, and it felt more smooth to play. 
 

13 hours ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

Sadly, it’s just OK. As much as I think starfield has a glorious modded future, the vanilla launch game is just that, vanilla. There were a few decent scenarios, but by in large the plot is phoned in. If you’d like to discuss the particulars, we should make a spoiler thread. Please don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the game and put in plenty of time, but narratively this game is a B- at best.

 

Another area where I didn’t expect too much. My favorite Bethesda RPG has been Oblivion. I played that game for hundreds of hours across multiple play throughs. Never beat the main story once, because I got bored with oblivion realms. 
 

12 hours ago, TwinIon said:

Starfield plays like a good remaster of a game that came out more than a decade ago.

This is the best single line review for Starfield I’ve read yet. 
 

but yeah, the engine clearly doesn’t seem to up to what this game needed for a modern game. I suspect loading behind cutscenes or during animations of doors opening and closing is not something the creation engine is even capable of doing. 
 

I’ve seen people defend using the creation engine, because modders are used to using the creation engine. Well modders are also used to UE4 and are getting used to UE5. One person game studios use it all the time to build entire games. It’s a hobbiest engine as much as it is a professional game developer engine. Buuuuut everyone at Bethesda studios would have to learn unreal, while any long time employee has been using creation engine for their entire career. It’s also about the money and not sharing profits with Epic, I’m sure. 
 

if UE would have streamlined and made many things easier and faster than creation to a degree that it offsets the time to adjust to the learning curve, maybe it could be worth the switch. But who’s to say that without their familiarity with the creation engine we wouldn’t have gotten this much game, with this few bugs, as optimized as it is, in the time they’ve taken. I don’t think we’ll ever know, but even CDPR, who’s last game already looks and runs better than Starfield, and feels more like a modern game, is switching over to UE. Not quite apples to apples, but it could speak to how good UE5 is and becoming over older in house engines. 
 

12 hours ago, TwinIon said:

Story elements themselves are all over the place, with some huge stories feeling like they were scrubbed of any possible friction and others feeling really great

I’ve said it before, but the Paradiso mission is still one of the most disappointing things to me in Starfield. Such a great concept for a mission/quest that feels like it was either rushed or fell victim to cut content and much of the quest got gutted. It falls so short of its potential. After this mission I mentally prepared myself that it wasn’t alone in the game, and there would be others that felt just as short changed. I’ve seen a few threads online where many people are waiting to complete the mission until modders go in and either restore the content or flesh out the mission to what it should have been. 
 

…and now @Biggie needs two days off of work.