It’s an unwritten rule that if you get arrested in aBethesdagame, you just reload your save. Nothing of note happens. You get chucked into a cell, sleep in a bed, and return to society as though you never slaughtered every single soul in Riverwood. There’s no meat to getting caught,just a nuisance begging you to save scum.Starfield, however, changes gears.
I boarded a journalist vessel to answer a survey then promptly killed everyone on board, emptied their cargo hold, and flew off with their ship in full view of the UC. I managed to take down a few of their soldiers before grav jumping to a derelict research station on a random moon nearby. War crimes behind me, I was now gunning down spacers and stealing their ill-gotten goods. There’s always a bigger fish, and in this case, I’m a megalodon.
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At the research station, I found some ‘harvested organs’. I don’t want to know what these spacers were doing, but I took them, figuring I could turn a decent profit at the Trade Authority. Like the idiot I am, I stumbled into UC airspace (space-space?) and got caught with contraband.
I was ready to open up the menu and reload my last save, expecting the usual Bethesda trite. I’d be in some cell, this time inspace,with a bed calling to me. Sure, I can just sleep and it’d be over, but then I’d lose all my pilfered loot. To my surprise, I woke up in a chair facing a window where a UC SysDef general awaited me, ready with a proposition. The last place I expected to stumble on a main faction quest was in a prison cell.
He gave me an option, to rot (which I guess means spend five minutes before pressing A on the bed) or help him take down the Crimson Fleet,a band of intergalactic pirates that have been hounding the UC for years. I’d be sent as an undercover operative, tasked with gaining their trust and uncovering gaps in their armour so the UC could blast them into oblivion. Granted, this was my ‘evil’ playthrough, so I had no intention to help the Vanguard in any meaningful way, but I accepted.
My run-of-the-mill crime spree ending in prison had in fact led me to becoming one of the most trusted advisors in the largest pirate organisation in the Settled Systems. What is usually a minor nuisance in Bethesda games suddenly sent me on a treasure hunt for a fable that would, in the end, make me unbelievably rich with the UC Vanguard none the wiser.
You can access this quest by being a goody two-shoes and signing up with the UCV, but being presented with it from across a bulletproof window by the man holding you captive is far more startling… and oddly enticing. I had a way out of here that involved something other than mundane monotony. Given that I’d spent my time hopping from system to system, aimlessly finding evil shenanigans to get up to, an option to join some pirates and string the UCV along while backstabbing them at every turn was too good to pass up.
Bethesda has never nailed making arrests interesting, mostly because it’s a mechanic that boils down to taking back stolen goods and little more, but Starfield tying it into a larger story subverts that in the best way. For once, I came out of the loading screen fascinated and ready to take my story further rather than itching to plunge back and do things better. Hell, maybe I’ll make a bigger spectacle out of it next time just to wipe the smug look off the general’s face with my track record.
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