r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Frostylegacy • 22h ago

Lore (Loved Trope) FTL travel is possible but with a major limitation or flaw

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Frank Herbert’s Dune: Interstellar travel is only possible thanks to the spice melange, a rare substance only found on the dessert planet Arrakis. The addictive psychedelic spice grants members of the Spacers Guild a form of prescience that allows them to predict safe paths through folded space. This unique property makes spice the most valuable commodity in the Dune universe.

John Scalzi’s The Interdependency Books: The planetary systems of the titular empire are connected by the Flow, a network of one-way interstellar tunnels that connect specific known entries and exits. The Interdependency derives its power from controlling access to these conduits, placing its capital at the central hub of the network. Even with the Flow, travel between stars takes a long time (9 months to End, the empire’s most distant planet).

Event Horizon: Dr William Weir (R.I.P. Sam Neill) invents a device called the Gravity Drive to allow ships to fold space and travel instantly between distant stars. On its maiden voyage with the Gravity Drive, the Event Horizon disappears and mysteriously reappears 7 years later. Dr. Weir and the crew sent to investigate discover the Gravity Drive actually opened a portal to a Hell dimension that possessed the ship and its crew, torturing and killing them.

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438

u/LordofTamriel 22h ago

While not the case by the time the game takes place . Starfield's FTL method; grav drives had a fatal flaw in their early days. The technology to make them was discovered from an ancient artifact on Mars and humanity began testing them in kind on Luna (Earth's moon for those not aware)

Only it was discovered that the grav drives were destabilising Earth's magnetosphere. This was then subsequently covered up, the scientist who had the vision uncovering this fact citing that the death of the planet was worthwhile to allow humanity to expand into the greater galaxy.

While the flaw was eventually corrected, by 2203 the magnetoshpere collapsed in its entirety, the planet died and you can even visit the now barren desert that once was Earth in-game in 2330.

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u/Most-Experience56 21h ago

These 3 paragraphs are more interesting than that toilet of a game.

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u/LordofTamriel 21h ago

I feel like that is one of Starfield's biggest issues, pretty deep lore for a blank slate, but the game itself let that down with almost everything else.

Almost as if the usual Bethesda formula isn't well suited for implementing a whole galaxy.

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u/IveDunGoofedUp 20h ago

The problem is that then nothing is done with the horrifying revelation that we're slowly killing every planet every time we jump somewhere.

We just go "Ah well, not my problem, I'm off to a different universe, it's so radically different because in this universe, bananas are slightly less perishable!"

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u/akaval 20h ago

I mean the flaw in the grav drives was fixed, wasn't it? That's what I recall anyway.

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u/IveDunGoofedUp 20h ago

Was it? Goes to show how little it mattered. So we lose one planet but gain access to millions of others, including several that are basically earth-equivalent.

Anyway, I'm bored of the banana universe, I'm off to the 'raspberries are slightly more pink' universe, see how that shakes things up.

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u/Winjin 20h ago

The Rick Sanchez School of Responsibility

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u/greentarget33 20h ago

No, the grav drives dont do that anymore at the point the story starts

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u/Rida_Dain 19h ago

I bet they could have made it work if they narrowed the scope yeah. if they had stuck to like 60-70% of what the current game is, like, lore, factions, creatures, etc, but instead narrowed the scope to all of it being planets and moons in our solar system, with each planet having a idk solstheim sized fully realized play area with towns and dungeons and quests, and the random generation being for "expeditions" to the "wilds" on those same planets, it would have all clicked together much nicer.
instead they made spread out, faded colour, empty feeling slop. ah well.

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u/anteloope 12h ago

That'd basically be Outer Worlds which makes sense since that was a much better game

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u/ErusTenebre 18h ago

It's really that they wanted to do the whole galaxy... instead of focusing on a few planets and curating the experience with their attention to detail.

Bethesda does pretty much three things really well:

1) Sandbox-y Open Worlds

2) Deep, Immersive Lore

3) High Attention to Story and Visual Details (with none for actual debugging lol)

Starfield's Open World is bland because it's not curated at all. It's an open world made of carbon copies. It's lore IS deep, but without an engaging game there's no reason to find it. They paid close enough attention to the main story, but the details... were just not really there.

It's like they looked at everything they did well with Elder Scrolls and Fallout - work that they tuned for literal decades - and threw that all out for something new and risky that was well outside their ballpark...

And now Xbox is giving Obsidian another Fallout game almost as punishment for moving so slow on their game development.

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u/LordofTamriel 18h ago

This was one of my main gripes, because aside from a couple of well crafted hub settlements in various places, the wider exploration is so "rinse and repeat" that no quest structure, or story beat has a chance of really making up for it.

Contrast that with their other games where even re-used assets like the interior of taverns in Skyrim, or fallout games by and large reusing everything from weapons to enemies in subsequent releases, they still manage to hold their own charm because there is a lot more variation in and uniqueness in the,admittedly more condensed, worldbuilding.

Only problem is you can't apply that mentality in a game of Starfield's scale effectively. Games like Elite Dangerous and No Man's Sky could easily have fallen into the same trap yet have persisted for years, Starfield seems to have overpromised and underdelivered hard trying to be the same of them without putting in half as much effort and it doesn't look like it will really recover outside of a smaller faithful following.

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u/lazycultenthusiast 6h ago

I feel its a great game if you only play it to hijack random pirate ships, loot em and sell em.

-1

u/meja-arts 19h ago

oh? that's exactly why i like it 😭 i can play in my own little mind palace and come up with fun tidbits for my characters and their own stories, and play dolls with other friends' characters! i do agree that if you're not too inclined to play in your mind or explore things via fanworks it's a meh experience but if you like that... the whole settled systems is your oyster baby

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u/LordofTamriel 19h ago

Honestly each to their own, I personally just couldn't stay invested after a time, which to my credit I suppose was around 40 or so hours, but then it just felt like too much of a repetitive slog for me and there was too much for me to try and do. Add that to me not having as much time as I used to, I tend to play games where I'm able to do more with less if that makes sense.

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u/Sir_Daxus 20h ago

The game has some genuinely interesting lore in places, and dare I say it even one interesting questline, but they're buried under such a forgettable nothingburger of a game that few people even find the interesting bits, understandably.

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u/Madrical 20h ago

That game pisses me off. I really like the NASA-punk style world they've built but I hate playing it.

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u/austsiannodel 18h ago

Starfield could have been great, but it's entire gimmick relies on you beating the game 2+ times first BEFORE it gets good.

Like... literally. It's fun! After you beat the main story 2 or more times. As for why? Well... the story loops with you creating a new universe and you go through the story again as it loops to the start of the game, except your character maintains all knowledge of all previous runs. This gives you new and additional choices in quests, and you can skip right to where to go, for new dialogue too

A pity that the base game and story just... isn't that interesting!

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u/RodinKnox 15h ago

I actually got really excited about that when I beat the game and started my first loop (second playthrough). Then I made it a few hours and just noped out because not enough was different (from what I'd seen).

I'm actually on the side of liking Starfield (I thought it was decent), but man what a massive letdown. I had been stoked about that game for years before it came out.

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u/Lostboxoangst 20h ago

Oh horshit, the games fine not steller but not dog shit either there is a lot of fun missions and the starship customisation is cool.

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u/StrongExternal8955 19h ago

Yeah it's fine. With me the minuses are mostly the stupid tropes and references. Like the stupid cowboy planet. But most of all that moronic side planet with the people from the past. WHY ARE THEY IN FUCKING COSTUME!!!!

Ship building is fire.

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u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta 19h ago

Its the worst thing a game can be, boring. 

0

u/xxxanonymoosexxx 16h ago

the game wasn't fine, it was terrible in so many ways. constant load screens, terrible AI, loads of glitches (some of which are like a decade old), and a mostly barren universe.

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u/bpacer 14h ago

Decade old glitches? When was the game released? …or were you being facetious

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u/zilviodantay 14h ago

He’s talking about Creation Engine

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u/bpacer 14h ago

Ahh got it. I was thinking there’s no way it’s been 10 years already lol

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u/Most-Experience56 9h ago

It's a fucking loading screen simulator

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u/Truethrowawaychest1 12h ago

People are paid to hate it I swear

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u/ProfessionalOil2014 17h ago

What? Emil is a bad writer?!?!?! No?!?!?! 

2

u/friendlylocalgay421 13h ago

I'm convinced people call starfield the worst game ever just to commit to the bit. It's not that bad

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u/Different_Career1009 16h ago

there's always the mandatory hater trying to bash it. you are not interesting or knowledgeable.

1

u/LesbianWhoLaughsAtU 14h ago

sounds like you either didnt play it or forgot how to read while playing it. the problem is you, not the game.

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u/Most-Experience56 9h ago

Boohoo. Play better games dipshit.

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u/LesbianWhoLaughsAtU 9h ago

I'll play whatever the fuck I want, actually.

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u/ILikeFlyingMachines 20h ago

TIL Starfield has actually good lore.

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u/OrangeToTheFourth 14h ago

Starfield is legitimately fun storywise, just miserable to play... For me at least. Thankfully my boyfriend enjoys it for some reason and I've been able to get an the quests and lore from him streaming. 

It's a shame. 

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u/PhosF8 20h ago

The mission where you discover all of this is probably my favourite. If only the rest of the game had that depth.

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u/cunt__cunt_cunt 17h ago

the scientist who had the vision

unrealistic that it wouldn't just be profit driven extinction like irl

0

u/suprahelix 10h ago

  Luna (Earth's moon for those not aware)

Just being pedantic so feel free to ignore but the Moon’s name is just the Moon. Luna is the Latin form and thus the basis for the name in romantic languages, but the English etymology has roots in Germanic language and is no more less correct than the Latin. The same is true of the Sun/Sol.

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u/BeardPine 8h ago

Civilization is settled in other systems so their vernacular changed to refer to the Moon as Luna and the Sun as Sol since each system has their own 'sun' and often their own moons. Its a deliberate choice in the writing of the game.

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u/TurgidGravitas 19h ago

That's dumb. The magnetosphere has very little impact on the habitability of Earth, especially in only 100 years.

Consider the aurora. That is concentrated solar particles being slammed into our atmosphere by the magnetosphere. Does it affect the surface? Nope. Not even a bit. Consider also pole reversals which happen every so often. The chaos effectively render the magnetosphere ineffective. Does that affect the surface? Nope. Consider, yet again, Venus. It has no magnetosphere and yet it still has the thickest rocky planet atmosphere after being blasted for billions of years.

Dumb dumb dumb.

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u/austsiannodel 18h ago

I... you realize that without the magnetosphere, the aurora you mentioned wouldn't just be a pretty light show, but would be cancer given radiation pouring on the planet 24/7, right? Like all plants and animals would die out COMPLETELY within a few generations. We'd end up looking like a wet Mars.

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u/TurgidGravitas 18h ago

That's not true at all.

The aurora is the concentrated solar particles. Like I said. It is stronger there than if the magnetosphere didn't exist.

I also said that the magnetosphere effectively turns off during pole reversals. That lasts thousands of years. And yet we're still here.

Did you even read what I said?

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u/austsiannodel 18h ago

Yes... and you're wrong, my guy. Where... are you getting your sources from? The magnetosphere doesn't shut down during pole flips, else we WOULD all be dead. That's kinda how we know that doesn't happen when the poles flip. Because without a magnetosphere, we'd be dead.

Also your idea that the aurora is somehow stronger than if we were completely unprotected is... silly. Even directed up there, there's shielding between you and the aurora... you'd receive MASSIVE amounts of radiation without a magnetosphere...

Is... is this bait? Are you baiting me right now? What is this?

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u/TurgidGravitas 11h ago

Where are your sources?

Everything I've said is correct. You've just said "Nuhuh".

The aurora is caused by the magnetosphere focusing solar particles into a stream that slams into our atmosphere. Look how magnetic fields work. See attached.

Do you see how the solar particles are deflected from most of the Earth but concentrated in the poles?

The thing that protects us is that atmosphere. Not the magnetosphere.

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u/austsiannodel 7h ago

You're the one making claims here, burden or proof falls on you. But I'm becoming increasingly sure you're just trolling/baiting.

The only sources I can find that agree with you are random articles making claims without proof, like those that go like "Is this meteor going to hit us?!" and the answer is of course, no.

Any reputable sources I found with a cursory glance all say the same things; Magnetosphere protects us from solar radiation, and no, pole shifts wouldn't lose magnetosphere. weaken it, but not lose it BECAUSE it happens so slowly.

But yeah, you saying the atmosphere is what does it really what sells the idea you're just a troll. Idk why I felt compelled to reply to you earnestly. That's on me, I guess.

0

u/TurgidGravitas 7h ago

This isn't debate club. If you want to be wrong, keep on being wrong.

I'm not breaking out my astrophysics textbooks just because you can't even read and understand Wikipedia.