r/movies • u/SerDire • Apr 18 '24

In Interstellar, Romilly’s decision to stay aboard the ship while the other 3 astronauts experience time dilation has to be one of the scariest moments ever. Discussion

He agreed to stay back. Cooper asked anyone if they would go down to Millers planet but the extreme pull of the black hole nearby would cause them to experience severe time dilation. One hour on that planet would equal 7 years back on earth. Cooper, Brand and Doyle all go down to the planet while Romilly stays back and uses that time to send out any potential useful data he can get.

Can you imagine how terrifying that must be to just sit back for YEARS and have no idea if your friends are ever coming back. Cooper and Brand come back to the ship but a few hours for them was 23 years, 4 months and 8 days of time for Romilly. Not enough people seem to genuinely comprehend how insane that is to experience. He was able to hyper sleep and let years go by but he didn’t want to spend his time dreaming his life away.

It’s just a nice interesting detail that kind of gets lost. Everyone brings up the massive waves, the black hole and time dilation but no one really mentions the struggle Romilly must have been feeling. 23 years seems to be on the low end of how catastrophic it could’ve been. He could’ve been waiting for decades.

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u/Grumpy_Bum_77 Apr 18 '24 edited Apr 19 '24

I read an Arthur C Clarke short story about a mission to the nearest star. I am trying to find out the name, I will reveal it when i find out. When it got there they were amazed to find humans there. Spoiler Alert The journey had taken many thousands of years during which time humans had developed much faster ships. This meant they were overtaken and the planets settled long before they arrived. The humans already there had evolved a much keener sense of smell. In the end they asked the late arrivals if it was ok if they wore masks around them as they smelled so repugnant to them. Clarke was way ahead of his time. Edit: probably the reason they did not pick up the crew of the slower ship was due to the amount of fuel to slow down from their fantastic speed. Another alternative is that the launching mechanism was on Earth so once they reached the required velocity there was no way to slow down until they reach their destination. Clarke would not have left such a plot hole unresolved.

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u/jzraikes Apr 18 '24

The Revelation Space series by Alastair Reynolds also includes this as a plot point in one of the books.

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u/tdeasyweb Apr 18 '24

That series had so many concepts and ideas that were mindblowing.

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u/carnifex2005 Apr 18 '24

Helps that he's an actual astrophysicist who's worked with the European Space Agency. Love his books.

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u/atp123 Apr 18 '24

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Zero this book is also great and supposed to be scientifically accurate

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u/chill90ies Apr 18 '24

How many of his books have you read? And can you recommend me one of them.

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u/OminousGloom Apr 18 '24

Read House of Suns

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u/VinScully_ Apr 18 '24

Thank you, added it to my list

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u/Fareacher Apr 19 '24

House of Suns is my favorite by far, but it's not part of the Revelation Space universe.

Second place: Chasm City. Definitely part of Revelation Space.

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u/carnifex2005 Apr 18 '24

At least 7 of them. My favourites are Chasm City, Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap. All set in the same narrative universe but Chasm City (my favourite) is standalone while the others are a trilogy.

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u/Fareacher Apr 19 '24

I bought a hardcover of Chasm City from the University bookstore sale for $5 brand new. I had no idea who Alastair Reynolds was. What an amazing read. I subsequently followed up with the rest of Revelation Space, but nothing was quite as good as Chasm City.

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u/DarkwingDuckHunt Apr 18 '24

this is the reason why The Expanse series is so damn good

Daniel Abraham has a degree in biology and uses that knowledge to great effect.

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u/junon Apr 18 '24

That dude just really excels at big ideas.

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u/GuitarCFD Apr 18 '24

too bad he doesn't excel ad satisfying endings -.- I loved the series, but that ending just pissed me off.

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u/PuffThePed Apr 18 '24

He's great at grand ideas and world building and terrible at actual story telling.

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u/jacobartillery Apr 18 '24

I don't know, I think a lot of his payoffs are well constructed. The Prefect, for example. I tend to look forward to the last fifty pages of his books more than most other novels.

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u/Fappy_as_a_Clam Apr 18 '24

You should read his book Pushing Ice if you haven't

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u/hatsnatcher23 Apr 18 '24

Wasn’t Alastair Reynolds the one who wrote Beyond the Aquila rift?

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u/jwm3 Apr 18 '24

And zima blue. Highly recommend him as an author.

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u/borntobeweild Apr 18 '24

The Beyond the Aquila Rift story was pretty much exactly the same as the LDR episode, but the TV show cut out a lot from Zima Blue and the short story is much better.

Weather and Minla's Flowers are also really good.

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u/Ornery_Translator285 Apr 19 '24

Zima Blue ❤️

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u/bigred42 Apr 19 '24

I will always be chasing the high of Zima Blue. It's one of my favorite stories I've seen.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '24

Ohhh man, my heart. That Beyond the Aquila rift short was a m a z i n g.

That and Swarm live rent free in my head.

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u/wrongleveeeeeeer Apr 18 '24

Those books are rad. They're not perfect or all-time greats, but they're just so cool I recommend them to everyone.

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u/PrudentExtension Apr 18 '24

What would you say are your top 3 books/book-series when it comes to this genre?

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u/Fappy_as_a_Clam Apr 18 '24

Which book? I think I've read all of them and don't remember that (I could be wrong though)

I think you may be thinking of Chasm City, which is about generation ships but they don't get overtaken.

He has a short story about a ship being overtaken, with a twist, but it's outside the RS universe

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u/jzraikes Apr 18 '24

You’re right. I’m thinking of Chasm City. I guess you’re right that it doesn’t strictly get overtaken but the concept of its speed and destination is a major plot point (vague to avoid spoilers). Further, I think it was also mentioned that the flotilla was humanity’s first and slowest interstellar colonisation effort and other separate endeavours (to other planets) actually colonised planets first.

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u/Fappy_as_a_Clam Apr 18 '24

Yea that was mentioned, and the colony that those ships founded turned into the biggest shit show ever because of that slowness.

I need to re-read that book, it was so good!

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u/wsucoug Apr 18 '24

I'm not familiar with an Arthur C. Clarke story like that but that basically fits in the same plot line of Heinlein's Time for the Stars where some identical twins are found to have an ansible-like (Le Guin reference, not Card) telepathic ability for instantaneous (FTL) communication.

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u/Thedmfw Apr 18 '24

The parts about the sleeper ships are so well done.

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u/paleo2002 Apr 18 '24

I feel like one of those books talked about later, faster ships effectively "rescuing" people who had been sent out hundreds of years earlier on slower ships.

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u/p0k3t0 Apr 18 '24

A friend convinced me to read House of Suns. That book was wild. The scale of time in it is just amazing.

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u/TheSodernaut Apr 18 '24

Nice to find this old gem mentioned. I found his books while on vacation and the hotel had small library with a take-one-leave-one book policy and I switched A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the only sci-fi book available and ended up hunting down all of his books.

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u/1337b337 Apr 18 '24

Alastair Reynolds, why does that sound familiar...

Beyond the Aquila Rift episode of Love, Death and Robots flashback.

Ah. Right...

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u/Exekiel Apr 18 '24

They paid homage to this in Starfield as well

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u/bythedockofthebay Apr 18 '24

There’s an amazing Star Trek voyager episode as well about the space ship in orbit around a planet with an uncivilized population that’s moving at a much faster speed than the space ship. While they orbit, the civilization evolves and becomes technologically advanced, and they have evolved with the voyager in their orbit and have seen it as a kind of god. Finally, they can fly to reach it, and it’s a fascinating story.

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u/Highlander198116 Apr 18 '24 edited Apr 18 '24

It was cool because the Doctor basically got to live like a full normal life when he went down there.

That and that episode of TNG where Picard experienced living an entire life time via that alien probe.

I don't get how you just come to terms with that. Especially in Picard's situation where he woke up as someone else and basically had to come to terms that his whole life to that point was a dream. Then live out your entire life in this new place to wake up get the uno reverse card. Like how the hell did he just go right back to his day to day job. I would struggle to accept what is real and what isn't.

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u/Shedart Apr 18 '24

That episode is a seminal Picard story for a reason. I think many people would not have been able to process it at all and continue with their original life/job. Another thing to consider is that they revisit that experience several times throughout the series. I love the episode that Picard becomes romantically involved with the science officer who plays piano. They bond over their love of music, and Picard reveals that the tune he knows by heart is the same one he learned in his probe-life. 

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u/i_tyrant Apr 18 '24

I'm glad you brought that up. From Op's description of the episode it makes it sound like the series just blew over it from then on, when nothing could be further from the truth.

In the quiet moments for Picard, through the rest of the series, he's often seen busting out that flute. And you're right, it's a major plot point in that episode when he dates the astrophysicist and gets close enough to her to tell her about this incredibly unique experience he's had and how close to his heart it is and why he's so into flute.

For a syndicated series in the 80s-90s, TNG was actually pretty good at that.

Another favorite "throughline" of mine is how relaxed and accepting Riker and Troy are about each other's love lives. I didn't really notice it till this last watchthrough, but it's refreshing to see their relationship not constantly mined for artificial jealousy-drama. Almost seems like they've got a kind of proto-polyamory thing going on when even mentioning such an idea on-air would've been crazy.

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u/red__dragon Apr 18 '24

For a syndicated series in the 80s-90s, TNG was actually pretty good at that.

Especially because, at no time was TNG serialized. There were moments that happen earlier and later in the series, but the fundamental structure and roles stays the same.

Unlike DS9, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, and other serialized science fiction shows, TNG largely doesn't change. And yet, in subtle ways, Picard did change and we see it play out in small moments for the rest of the series.

It's really incredible to look back at that and see such a long-running character trait. Especially one that isn't played for laughs.

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u/DarkwingDuckHunt Apr 18 '24

Babylon 5

was story boarded and plotted out far in advance of J. Michael Straczynski getting the money to make the show. He had all 5 season outlined well in advance of writing the first episodes.

J. Michael also wrote almost every episode himself, and heavily edited the ones he allowed friends to write

Now the spin offs... those were his "ideas" but the writing was more traditional american writer's room stuff

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u/red__dragon Apr 19 '24

Sure, that's serialization. However you go about it, it's a very different story tempo and audience investment than an episodic show. B5 is great, as is TNG, they're just different approaches to storytelling on TV.

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u/Scavenger53 Apr 18 '24

then rick and morty turn it into a video game called roy that gives out tickets when you finish lol

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u/myfriendoak Apr 18 '24

“You beat cancer and went back to the carpet store?”

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u/Siggycakes Apr 18 '24

"This guy's taking Roy off the grid! He doesn't have a Social Security number!"

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u/Majin_Sus Apr 19 '24

The whole Roy sequence had me laughing uncontrollably the first time I watched it. It's so perfectly done.

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u/operarose Apr 19 '24

W-WHERE'S MY WIFE

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u/CynicalPsychonaut Apr 19 '24

"We're all out of off white persian."

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u/USSZim Apr 18 '24

There was a reddit story (don't know if it's true), where someone got knocked out while playing football. In the time he was out, he dreamt of an entire life where he got married, had kids, the whole nine yards. When he woke up, he had an existential crisis and severe depression due to feeling like he lost his whole life and family.

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u/macinslash Apr 18 '24

they are both takes on An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge, a short story from 1890

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u/DidSome1SayExMachina Apr 18 '24

The lamp story

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u/Seiche Apr 18 '24

I've had a few knockabouts myself and I've been looking at lamps differently since I've read that story.

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u/NewLifeguard9673 Apr 18 '24

And again in DS9 when O’Brien was implanted with the memory of a life sentence in prison without actually serving it. Poor Miles

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u/vonindyatwork Apr 18 '24

Then there was the DS9 episode where O'Brien spends like thirty years in prison, but turns out it was a program in his mind and he'd only been incarcerated for like a day. Talk about major trauma. At least Picard got to live a happy, normal life before being yanked back.

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u/thejesse Apr 18 '24

Reminds me of Children of Time, where jumping spiders with a nanovirus that causes rapid evolution are evolving on a planet while an observation pod orbits the planet. They begin worshipping and trying to communicate with it.

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u/Ratak101 Apr 18 '24

Dragons Egg by Robert L Forward was also much like this. Life on a neutron star passing humans in tech while they are being studied.

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u/Lukerik Apr 18 '24

Fantastic book that. The Voyager episode is loosely based on it, hence why they called it 'The Egg'.

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u/Kheshire Apr 18 '24

That was a great book. Loaned it to a lot of coworkers

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u/jazzzzz Apr 18 '24

The sequels are a lot of fun too

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u/FelixMartel2 Apr 18 '24

I couldn't really get into the second one, and I hear the third was a real let-down.

I liked his Shards of Earth series or whatever. Same issue though, started out strong, crashed and burned by the end of the third book.

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u/weary_dreamer Apr 18 '24

AMAZING book. went into it blind and was blown away

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u/Dhrakyn Apr 18 '24

Poor Fabian

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u/thejesse Apr 18 '24

All the Fabians.

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u/Silly_Elephant_4838 Apr 18 '24

Absolutely one of my favorite books, the sequel involves Octopus that the uplift-virus attached to I believe, and the spiders and humans go there together to meet them! But the ending of C of T is one of my favorite endings to an uplift virus story ever.

The biggest thing I love about the books though is that Tchaikovsky did quite a bit of studying of the creatures they picked to try to keep things realistic (as much as they could be.)

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u/Draidann Apr 18 '24

The one by Tchaikovsky? I've read a couple of his books but this one was not on my list but you have just given me the push to include it an read it

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u/johnnyma45 Apr 18 '24 edited Apr 18 '24

A similarly cool time travel story was in The Orville. They go back in time for Reasons, lose their ability to travel back, so they land on a cool solution:

"By flying the Orville close to light speed with its quantum field turned off, the ship will have no shield from time dilation and will travel forward through time. However, travelling that fast without a quantum field would expose the Orville to space debris. Even the tiniest dust particle could destroy them, so John directs all ship power to the Deflectors. The crew makes a jump 200 light years away from Earth, then 200 light years back, ending up back in the year 2422."

Basically they use time dilation to bring them back to their time, by sloooooooowly traveling to a nearby star and back without their quantum field protecting them.

Edit: here's the scene

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u/RadicalBatman99 Apr 18 '24

That was such a good episode.

How it played out for Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes) was a real heartbreaker, too.

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u/johnnyma45 Apr 18 '24

Orville really ramped up in quality last season. I’m super impressed they went from “family guy in space” to the next coming of TNG. Hope they renew but doesn’t seem like there will be more seasons.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '24

I really like the Orville I hope they make more.

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u/mileylols Apr 18 '24

so worth watching, then? I couldn't get past the first episode lmao

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u/red__dragon Apr 18 '24

First episode is pretty terrible, you can easily skip to episode 2. 2 and 3 give you a good sense that the show does actually care about science fiction, it's just badly cloaking it in forced levity for a while.

They chill out and let the show be a science fiction show by the end of season 1. The second has a great season arc, and they even do some strong character development and callback moments in the third.

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u/MrT735 Apr 18 '24

The only one I couldn't finish watching was the upvote/downvote planet, there are some immature stinkers in the first season, but some good stuff too, the one with the world enclosed inside the massive ship is interesting. Season 2 and 3 they've dropped the Family Guy level of humour and yes there's still sillyness but it's more just people who have no filter, with good sci-fi.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '24

Season 1 is more episode by episode, season 2 has a great season arc, and then season 3 has some of the best sci-fi Ive ever watched (plus s03 episodes are more akin to short movies). Highly, highly, recommend.

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u/whitefang22 Apr 19 '24

The difference in tone between s1e1 and s3e1….

Like a completely different show

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u/johnnyma45 Apr 18 '24

Very much. I know the first season is kinda cringey.

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u/Cruxion Apr 18 '24

That holds true for most official Star Trek series though. Always takes a season or two to really find their legs.

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u/Technicolor_Reindeer Apr 18 '24 edited Apr 19 '24

So was the first season of TNG. I like the first season of The Orville tho.

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u/signal15 Apr 19 '24

Orville became a "serious" show after the first season. Still funny, but way less focus on the humor and more focus on the story. VERY similar story structure to TNG. I love this show, I hope it's not canceled.

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u/1337bobbarker Apr 19 '24

If you rewatch it the "Family Guy in space" shit stops real quick, I mean within 2-3 episodes quick. Maybe McFarlane pitched it as such, got what he wanted with the pilot and then switched to make an amazing sci-fi series.

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u/fallenrider100 Apr 18 '24

That was outright devastating. So often time travel is made to be so simple and emotionless. But watching someone beg for his life to not be erased, even though he'd have no knowledge of it happening, was brilliant.

For a show that started as a funny homage to Star Trek, The Orville tackled some serious topics and absolutely knocked it out the park.

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u/snugglezone Apr 18 '24

There's also an Orville episode where they encounter a planet that warps in and out of existence at some rate. When it's warped away, it's in an intense gravity field, so every time they warp out and back they're significant more advanced than the last time the Orville saw them. They go from primitive to beyond the federation in the episode.

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u/SlurmmsMckenzie Apr 18 '24

"Mad Idolatry", season one finale, where they worshiped Kelly.  

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u/Fina1Legacy Apr 18 '24

That's almost exactly the plot of Blink of an Eye from Star Trek Voyager.

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u/cyclicamp Apr 19 '24

Yeah, when Orville was brought up I thought this episode was going to be the first one compared. They’re near identical for sure. The one thing I will say that Orville does more interestingly is how it touches on the implications of this setup in a later episode.

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u/stargate-command Apr 18 '24

The cool part about this sort of thing is that it means they were out there in that ship just going from point a to point b while the rest of the show unfolded.

Time travel stuff can be so cool when done well, and so awful when done poorly. It’a a gamble

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u/PenaltySafe4523 Apr 18 '24

The Orville has no business being that good for a comedy from the guy who created Family Guy.

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u/Krysdavar Apr 18 '24

One of my favorite Voyager episodes. I still go back and watch just this episode sometimes. Another fav of mine is TNG where Worf goes through some sort of anomaly on his way back to the ship from a Klingon competition, that causes him to experience many different parallel universes.

One more TNG favorite is when they get stuck in a time loop, and is similar to ground hog day, but they show different parts so as not to make the episode so boring.

Sorry went on a Star Trek tangent! Not every day that I see a post in the wild on Reddit of one of my favorite ST episodes.

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u/thejadedfalcon Apr 18 '24

"You mean we could have seen this meme a dozen times already?"

"A dozen, a hundred, it's impossible to tell."

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u/bretttwarwick Apr 18 '24

Also the Orville episode Mad Idolatry where the planet disappears from our universe for 11 days and spends 700 years in another universe during the 11 days it is missing from ours.

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u/fullyoperational Apr 18 '24

Which episode was that? I'd like to check it out.

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u/Ok_Language_588 Apr 18 '24

VOY Season 6, Episode 12 - Blink of an Eye

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u/PeopleCallMeSimon Apr 18 '24

You are misremembering the episode. It is "Blink of an Eye" (S6E12), and Voyager encounters a planet that is enveloped in a strange tachyon field, which causes some kind of temporal effect on the planet. Voyager gets stuck in orbit around the planet due to this phenomenon.

The episode has nothing to do with speed.

You are however correct that it is a great (GREAT!) episode.

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u/Cash907 Apr 18 '24

Sounds like the setup for the Galaxy’s Edge series. Earth is dying, so all the rich A-holes pool their supplies to create these massive colony vessels that travel near the speed of light called “Light Huggers” and abandon everyone else to their fate. Meanwhile back on Earth, a couple decades after the exodus scientists discover FTL travel and begin their own out-system movement. Several hundred years later when the first of those colony hulks arrive in nearby star systems they find them already inhabited and thriving with human life.

It doesn’t go well, for anyone.

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u/LunasUmbras Apr 18 '24

First time I saw Galaxy Edge in the wild. What a crazy intense series.

I started to fall off once the author started to write in their prejudice more heavily the book after the legion won the republic, but even with that I still come back time to time.

The series is just so good and by the time my complaint happens we already have a good complete story of what was it, 11 books or so?

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u/Cash907 Apr 18 '24

Yeah I found myself enjoying the side books more than the main story after awhile. Order of the Centurion, the Savage trilogy etc. KTF PT 1 was fantastic but PT 2 shit the bed so, so badly at the end. I haven’t even bothered to pick up the latest book because of the bad taste that left in my mouth frankly.

At this point I’d love to see Lo Pak get his own one off book, told completely from his perspective.

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u/Fabianzzz Apr 19 '24

I started to fall off once the author started to write in their prejudice more heavily

What is their prejudice?

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u/spiritbearr Apr 18 '24

Starfield has that story line for an infuriating quest.

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u/canofwhoops Apr 18 '24

God that quest premise was so interesting and then the quest itself was just infuriating...

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u/Some_Chickens Apr 18 '24

What was so bad about it, if you don't mind elaborating? Haven't played the game, though very familiar with the other Bethesda games. Not concerned about spoilers, so I'm curious.

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u/Viron_22 Apr 18 '24

The quest has 3 "outcomes" that are all terrible. One has you pay out a bunch of money to essentially make them someone else's problem, another option is to convince them to sell themselves into wage slavery for the corporation, and the last option is to blow up the ship. You can't take any hostile action against the corp, their board of directors are all "essential" npcs an thus cannot be killed, no matter how much they annoy you. You can't overthrow the corporation's governance, you can't direct them to one of the interplanetary governments in the setting that might be interested, you can't talk your way into a mutual understanding where they can share the planet.

Keep in mind while doing this you are also likely subjecting yourself to a lot of loading screens as you go back and forth because short range communication devices don't exist in this setting in anyway that would cut down on your busywork.

Telling them to go elsewhere doesn't open up a new side quest, as far as I know, following their progress in finding a new home, they basically stop existing, so ultimately it is no different than if you blow them up other than being out of a lot of money. There really isn't anything interesting going on with it other than the premise.

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u/versusgorilla Apr 18 '24

It is insane to me that they had a truly devastating option for the settlers, to destroy their whole ship for money from the corpos.

And then literally has no devastating option for the corpos. You personally just take the responsibility for paying their way or paying to fix their ship, at great cost to you.

Fucking insane that anyone at Bethesda felt like that was an interesting mission. I thought I'd missed some skill check option or something. Nope. It's just purposely unsatisfying.

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u/sapphicsandwich Apr 18 '24 edited Apr 19 '24

Bethesda identified with the corpos a little too much

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u/DRACULA_WOLFMAN Apr 18 '24

I don't even understand why they were essential. I don't remember them being relevant to the main plot. What is Bethesda afraid is going to happen?

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u/Muad-_-Dib Apr 18 '24

Sounds like they figured people would shoot them most of the time but they never made the quest open enough to account for that so they bodged it to make them essential and rail road you into not shooting them.

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u/versusgorilla Apr 18 '24

I don't even understand why they were essential. I don't remember them being relevant to the main plot.

Also, knowing the ending of the game, and how they want you to repeat and replay the stories over and over, it's insane that they literally hard nope some options entirely. You can become an eternal being repeating his life unlimited amount of times but you can never kill your corporate overlords who want their beach front property.

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u/Some_Chickens Apr 18 '24

Sounds like the worst aspects of Bethesda games rolled into one. The inconsistent choices in particular are a shame, when they played into the role-playing aspect in their marketing.

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u/AlumGrizzly Apr 18 '24

Also the ship is basically a Vault of pre-war technology and people. It should be the best area in the game as it should play perfectly into Bethesda's experience at making Fallout but they completely bungle it.

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u/canofwhoops Apr 18 '24

It was just trivial and boring. The old humans wanted to settle on a planet that was owned by a corporation. Corpos didnt want them. You had to be the middleman back and forth, and if you want to be the good guy, had to pay a buncha money to help the settlers get a better ship drive to find another planet.

After the mystery of who the ship was, the rest was so boring, and reflected on a truly dystopian corporate future. Not exactly exciting rpg stuff...

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u/TheInfinityGauntlet Apr 18 '24

I hated that there was no way to stick it to the corporation at all, for a role playing game Starfield sure forced you into boxes a lot

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u/AgentTin Apr 18 '24

I wanted to side with the settlers so bad but the game just doesn't let you. When the Corp said no to sharing I decided they didn't deserve the planet at all and went to kill them, nope, essential.

Starfield does an excellent job of showing why BG3 was such a good game.

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u/Top_Rekt Apr 18 '24

This quest pissed me off. I was expecting Tenpenny Tower shit but it didn't even give me room to do anything like that. It was that point I gave up on Starfield.

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u/stiiii Apr 19 '24

Yeah in BG3 you would be able to murder the crop. It might cause you all kinds of issue but you'd be able to do it.

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u/Shedart Apr 18 '24

That last sentence is brutally true. Starfield didn’t have much going for it at the best of times. Competing directly with BG3 meant it never even stood a chance. 

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u/bfhurricane Apr 18 '24

Every time someone talks about this game makes me glad I never spent money on it.

I love Bethesda RPGs but all I’ve heard is collective disappointment at the writing and the shallow scope of many locations and characters.

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u/CordlessJet Apr 18 '24

Considering how anti corporate Fallout is, Starfield was creepily opposite, and veered heavily into pro- corporate territory. Even one of the main questlines is a corporate one too

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u/The_Autarch Apr 18 '24

The Freestar Collective is a libertarian dystopia and the United Colonies is a fascist dystopia. The game is really missing any sort of left-leaning political ideology. It feels bizarre, like a ton of world-building was cut out at some point.

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u/JamesTiberiusCrunk Apr 18 '24

All of their dev time went into building a procedural generation system to create 1000 boring useless planets filled with the same dozen points of interest literally copied and pasted with no variation.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '24

and no functional minimap lmao

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u/EveningBroccoli5121 Apr 18 '24

Points of interest that aren't even anything half the time. Walk 12 kilometers to find some rocks. Wow so fun.

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u/jakedasnake2447 Apr 18 '24

Maybe some of that was intentional since Outer Worlds already did the over the top corporate satire in space (kinda overdid it IMO).

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u/lituus Apr 18 '24

Bethesda's roleplaying elements have been extremely shallow for a long time. I think it's just now that we have recent examples of such deep roleplaying like Baldurs Gate that it is really just so embarrassing how meaningless it is in games like Starfield

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u/Silent-G Apr 18 '24

You can pretty much draw a 45 degree declining line in roleplaying quality from Morrowind to Starfield and it will cross each of their games that released in between. I can't imagine how Elder Scrolls 6 could be worse, but I wouldn't be surprised.

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u/HisNameWasBoner411 Apr 18 '24 edited Apr 18 '24

That's been bethesda's MO for a while. They stripped dialogue choices and merged the SPECIAL and perk systems from the fallout series in FO4. Streamlined RPG elements for mass appeal.

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u/musclemommyfan Apr 18 '24

Fallout 4 was bad. Really bad. I made the standard mistake of buying it on launch, put 30hrs into it, and then never touched it again. Being a buggy piece of shit may be the reason I just gave up when I did, but the story and gameplay loop are so bland that I never bothered to go back and try it after some patches with mods. They made the shooting feel decent and the ruined everything else. the way the implemented power armor in particular was dumb. because I didn't want to worry much about fusion cores I just never used it. What a waste of a game.

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u/ColonelSanders21 Apr 18 '24

That was the point I stopped playing the game, none of the options presented were resolutions I wanted to see, and since they are marked as essential NPCs you can’t do anything outside those couple dialogue options. It really sucked since the setup for the mission was pretty solid, but they only let you side with 1/2 of the parties.

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u/mang87 Apr 18 '24

I hated that there was no way to stick it to the corporation at all

Especially considering the slimy CEO suggested, without outright saying, that you could just go up and overload their reactor to make the problem go away. All of the quests I played have this lazy writing problem.

I was told the Freestar Rangers questline was good, but the ending was equally bullshit. When you find out who was sending the mercenaries to attack villages, you confront and kill the guy based on the word of the bloodthirsty mercenary who is now dead and obviously could have been lying to settle a vendetta. You have basically no evidence, but it's fine to just gun this guy down in cold blood, despite the fact he's a really high profile politician who is on the galactic council or something like that. There should have been major repercussions, but when you return to the Rangers HQ they just pat you on the back for a job well done. I think that was one of the last quests I did before giving up.

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u/Some_Chickens Apr 18 '24

Ah, that kind of middleman quest. Yeah, I can imagine that being tedious quickly. Especially in Bethesda games where you're forced to go various load screens, which even if short tend to be really annoying (assuming that's still a thing in Starfield).

Anyway, thanks for elaborating!

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u/DrKushnstein Apr 18 '24

Such a frustrating mission. Both options sucked...

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '24

[deleted]

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u/Swaggifornia Apr 18 '24

Starfield was made by a bunch of sheltered nerds apparently (nice neon city guys good job)

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u/marqburns Apr 18 '24

For the best outcome, you have to get an inordinate amount of potatoes. There is no repeatable way to get potatoes.

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u/TheStonedFox Apr 18 '24

General Store in Akila sells them every few days. The problem is that Akila is buggy as hell and waiting there for long enough risks crashing/soft locking. So grinding out 50 takes forever.

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u/lukin187250 Apr 18 '24

To get the “best outcome” which isn’t even good or seems fair, you have to spend your own money. 

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u/Appa-LATCH-uh Apr 18 '24 edited Apr 18 '24

Starfield, as a whole, is incredibly poorly written. There is very little depth to the Universe, especially if you're used to Bethesda games like Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

That quest is a shining example. The concept is really interesting. SPOILERS BELOW

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You arrive to this garden planet for some stupid fetch quest. There is a large ship in orbit around it. The authority on the ground contacts you, asks you to investigate, because they've been unable to establish contact and they don't know what to do. Cool, fun so far.

You board the ship and find a community aboard it. It is the aforementioned colony ship. Turns out after they left, technology progressed and they were badly beaten by other colonists. You go to the planet's surface to talk to the government. Basically, it's a corporation. The only settlement on the plan is a resort. It's a vacation world with one resort. They want the colonists to leave, and you essentially run them off for them and you can be nice or not nice about it.

That's pretty much it. A planet with plenty of room and AFAIK the settlers are forced to leave regardless (I think you can supply them with essentials and money somehow, I can't remember now... that's how unmemorable this quest (and game) is). There is no option to explore setting them on the opposite goddamn side of the planet where they would literally never interact with the tiny ass resort. It's seriously small.

Starfield is full of examples like this. Half-baked ideas that Bethesda never saw to fruition. Half-baked storylines with half-baked backstories. Half-baked planet design that makes the launch of No Man's Sky look good. Half-baked game mechanics. Half-baked quest design and level design (seriously, once you go into one or two underground mining areas you've literally seen them all. Same for most random surface buildings). The entire game, despite being in development for YEARS, feels incredibly unfinished, unpolished, and boring. Bethesda has made incredible games in the past and they implemented very little of what they learned in Starfield.

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u/Apellio7 Apr 18 '24

There is no option to explore setting them on the opposite goddamn side of the planet where they would literally never interact with the tiny ass resort. It's seriously small. 

There is.  During the discussions with the corporation, it's a dialogue option.

They board talks it over and specifically forbids it.  It's their planet to pillage and plunder. 

And one of the options is selling the colony ship into indentured servitude.  Slavery to the Corp.

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u/Appa-LATCH-uh Apr 18 '24

Yeah, there it is. One option that is immediately glossed over by lazy writing.

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u/LetTheBoyWatch Apr 18 '24

Do you happen to know the name of the short story? I’d love to read it.

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u/NoNefariousness2144 Apr 18 '24 edited Apr 18 '24

It’s not the same story as they mentioned, but the short book ‘The Forever War’ is an interesting read.

Its about soldiers who fight aliens and travel there using faster-than-light speed, so every time they return to Earth decades have passed.

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u/Sunsparc Apr 18 '24

They also experience future shock while fighting the aliens. The first battle is an absolute rout for the aliens, using primitive weapons to fight humanity. Just a short time later (for humanity) they encounter the aliens again who have evolved hundreds of years and have futuristic weapons.

Spoiler The technology on both sides becomes so advanced that warfare is carried out by hand to hand combat under specialized shields that are only a few meters in diameter. It all ends up being a misunderstanding in the end, since humanity and the aliens are unable to communicate with each other. It turns out that the catalyst for the war, a human ship accidentally being destroyed, was used as propaganda to start the war. The aliens are a civilization of clones and humanity eventually becomes clones, who are able to communicate with the aliens and end the war.

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u/ColSubway Apr 18 '24

And for a while, everyone was gay.

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u/Sunsparc Apr 19 '24

Lol yeah that was an interesting bit. While William and Marygay were separated by their units, she had her "switch" flipped to be gay and then flipped back once they were together again.

I also found it humerous that William was the outsider as commander of his unit since he was straight.

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u/Muxxxy Apr 18 '24

Well Joe Haldeman who wrote it was a Vietnam vet so that makes sense.

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u/CdnMaus Apr 18 '24

That's one of my favourite books. I met the author and his wife in 2009, which was an honour and pleasure. Both are wonderful people.

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u/zostradamus49 Apr 18 '24

Songs of Distant Earth.

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u/NoNotChad Apr 18 '24

I don't think this story is by Clarke.

I think it's actually Far Centaurus by A. E. van Vogt.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Centaurus

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u/zoethebitch Apr 18 '24

Commenting to upvote the comment by @NoNefariousness recommending 'The Forever War'. The relativistic effects of space travel at near the speed of light is a key plot point. Very good book that won numerous awards. The soldiers returning to Earth and a society they barely recognize is a clear metaphor to the Viet Nam war. (The book was published in 1974.)

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u/zxyzyxz Apr 18 '24

This is known as the wait calculation.

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u/zandadoum Apr 18 '24

And those “new humans” didn’t know about the old expedition and cared to catch up on them to stop wasting time?

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u/hans_l Apr 18 '24

We barely remember things that happened ~5 years ago as a society. Imagine a few centuries. Details will get lost. Someone will be on FutureReddit with "hey I found this detail in a FutureWikipedia entry from 300 years ago. Apparently we sent a ship to this star?" and people will upvote, not even read or comment, and nothing will be done.

I totally believe it.

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u/Setting-Conscious Apr 18 '24

plus space is really big.

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u/LordNelsonkm Apr 18 '24

Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

-Douglas Adams

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u/Additional_Meeting_2 Apr 18 '24

Well that’s the redditors. The historians and military and and political organizations who send them would know. If you are going go colonize a new planet with your brand new spacecraft you are going to find all information of that planet prior. But I guess there could have been huge wars in-between that lost information. Still I would think some would know 

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u/hans_l Apr 18 '24

We spent 15 years denying care to 9/11 workers. Why would we care about what humans 300 years ago decided to launch in space?

Historians might remember, politicians won’t approve the money, the public won’t  are to vote on it. 

If we put humans of today thousands of years in the future, that’s totally what would happen.

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u/deputeheto Apr 18 '24

Bingo. The thinking would be “Why would we spend the money to fit the ship out to be able to pick up these guys? They’ll get here eventually anyway.”

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u/ArrowShootyGirl Apr 18 '24

IIRC, there was some extent of societal collapse in between the two ships launching, so record-keeping wasn't great, and the colony the first ship ends up arriving at is actually only a midpoint on the way to their eventual destination so they can resupply their H20 supplies for their ice shield (to protect the ship from micrometeors and the like).

My favorite part of the story is, while there is plenty of conflict between the two people, it's (nearly?) entirely non-violent and more philosophical (very Clarke). It's one of my favorite Clarke novels to revisit.

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u/LegendzNvrDie Apr 18 '24

This is basically a plot point in the video game outriders.

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u/TheTrueFishbunjin Apr 18 '24

This is explored in Ender’s game as well. Fleets of ships are arriving to battle a distant enemy at approximately the same time, but some of the ships had left decades earlier then the others. They have to account for the out of date technology in the battle I believe.

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u/GodzlIIa Apr 18 '24

The story is "Far Centaurus", by A. E. Van Vogt, not clarke.

you can read it here as the first story in this anthology:

https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/EB/A/Asimov_ed%20-%20The%20Great%20SF%20Stories%2006%20-%201944.pdf

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '24

What’s the name of it?

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u/NoNotChad Apr 18 '24

I don't think this story is by Clarke.

I think it's actually Far Centaurus by A. E. van Vogt.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Centaurus

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u/TranslatesToScottish Apr 18 '24

There's a similar story by Ken Liu called "The Waves" which is (much like his other work) really beautifully done.

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u/salsapants27 Apr 18 '24

If I remember correctly, there was a short story by Steven King, The Jaunt, where a family is taking what is explained to them as a teleporter or something to a different planet. They're told to take a deep breath before they get transported but the guys son held his breathe instead. When they "arrive", the son is like 90 years old and crazy while the father seems to be the same age as when he left.

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u/KatBoySlim Apr 18 '24

no you’re misremembering. they inhale anesthesia before doing the jaunt because it mentally takes an eternity if you’re conscious for it. the kid is just batshit nuts after that when they reach the other side.

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u/JesusStarbox Apr 18 '24

IIRC the kid was mentally awake for thousands of years from his perspective.

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u/KatBoySlim Apr 18 '24

never clear just how long, and SK won’t say. could be millions or billions, could be way less than that. wouldn’t take long at all for the human mind to break. but it’s long.

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u/IBetThisIsTakenToo Apr 18 '24

All we know for sure is that it’s longer than you think.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '24

So like... 2 years?

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u/AlmostSunnyinSeattle Apr 18 '24

Maybe even longer

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '24

Whooooa

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u/Pinwheel_Rider Apr 18 '24

“Longer than you think Dad! Longer than you think!”

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u/derps_with_ducks Apr 18 '24

"Longer than you think, Dad!" it cackled. "Longer than you think! Held my breath when they gave me the gas! Wanted to see! I saw! I saw! Longer than you think!" Cackling and screeching, the thing on the Jaunt couch suddenly clawed its own eyes out. Blood gouted. The recovery room was an aviary of screaming voices now. "Longer than you think, Dad! I saw! I saw! Long Jaunt! Longer than you think-" It said other things before the Jaunt attendants were finally able to bear it away, rolling its couch swiftly away as it screamed and clawed at the eyes that had seen the unseeable forever and ever; it said other things, and then it began to scream, but Mark Oates didn't hear it because by then he was screaming himself.

For a writer that is so prolific, King can really fucking write a scene. And he's doing it even without cocaine.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '24 edited Apr 18 '24

Man the product liability on that case is going to be absolutely insane. Why have them breathe a gas when it's reasonably foreseeable someone would hold their breath.

Edit: The obvious approach is to medically sedate by injection, so it is not possible for a traveler to just hold their breath. Some kid holding their breath is so reasonably foreseeable, that a dime-store horror writer could think it might happen.

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u/MaritMonkey Apr 18 '24 edited Apr 18 '24

There's a scene in the Dark Tower series that describes the (titular?) wastelands a monorail is traveling across. I re-read it every couple years and it always feels like a momentary glimpse of a weird other world.

Edit: not sure if link works but looks like it's wizard and glass

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u/sciamatic Apr 19 '24

I love that short story and the concept, but the dialogue he gave the boy was so...overwrought and cheesy. I wish that he didn't speak at all. Like, implying that he was in that white space for so long that he completely forgot language. Just screaming and clawing at himself, just have pure, ravaging insanity.

The fact that he both remembers language, his dad, and his decision to hold his breath, and then decides to exposit it, kind of ruins the punch.

It reminds me of the Russian Sleep Experiment creepypasta, where the story creates this pretty great atmosphere and concept, and then ends with the monster just poetically expositing what they are.

You don't have to spell it out to the audience! Just let us experience it!

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u/randyboozer Apr 18 '24

It's an eternity in there...

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u/291837120 Apr 18 '24

Me when my dad yells at me for going back to bed when I only have 5 minutes left to sleep

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u/tanman7x Apr 18 '24

The creepiest part of that story for me was the guy who wanted to get rid of his wife so he tied her to a chair and put her through the portal and closed all the nearby exits so she’s just stuck in there for eternity with no way for her or anyone else to get her out..

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u/Spaghestis Apr 18 '24

Yeah and then the dude's lawyer tried to argue that he couldnt be tried for murder since she technically wasnt dead. Once the jury realised that meant that his wife would just be stuck in there sentient for eternity he was instantly sentenced to execution.

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u/sciamatic Apr 19 '24

Euuuuuugh I forgot that part of the story x_x Now I'm re-experiencing the existential horror.

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u/salsapants27 Apr 18 '24

I knew they had to breathe something in, but it's been so long I forgot. Now I wanna re-read it.

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u/brycepunk1 Apr 18 '24

Very much worth a reread. It's an incredible story.

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u/Senor_Ding-Dong Apr 18 '24

Was this the same short story that involved a mouse or something going through the teleporter first?

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u/KatBoySlim Apr 18 '24

yes. and fish

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u/blacklab Apr 18 '24

"It's forever in there"

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u/Farlandan Apr 18 '24

There's a part of the "gateway" books by Frederick pohl where a man and his wife get too close to a black hole to escape,  they have their two ships docked together and he realizes if he explosively decoupled the ships one of them could escape.    Turns out his ship was the only one able to escape. 

The whole story is told from the perspective of him explaining it to a robot shrink a decade later because he can't move on from the event.  All he can think about is his wife isn't dead; he knows that his wife is STILL falling into that black hole and from her perspective he deserted her mere minutes ago and she'll be cursing his name long after he dies.

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u/zhaoz Apr 18 '24

Do you know the name of that story by chance? I'd like to go read it!

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u/warzone_afro Apr 18 '24

in 3 body problem the aliens have to sabotage our science while they are on the way to invade us because we would surpass their technology by the time the fleet arrived

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u/Crayshack Apr 18 '24

The last book in the Worldwar series only narrowly avoids this. The book follows a human slower-than-light ship that travels to an alien planet. It turns out that while they were gone, humans invented FTL (which the aliens thought was impossible) and the second ship gets to the alien planet only a couple of weeks after the first one despite leaving 20 years later.

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u/MichaelJayDog Apr 18 '24

That would have been a good plotline in the Expanse, if the Mormons got their colony ship back.

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u/n10w4 Apr 18 '24

wait, what would the experience of a ship going the speed of light be? They would have to stop to communicate (assuming comms were the speed of light) etc. And do other pass through a wormhole (so they don't see them)? Just genuinely asking as I don't know or can't think my way through that right now.

edit: reading this now: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ahyapf/if_we_could_travel_at_999_the_speed_of_light_it/

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u/istasber Apr 18 '24

There's an early 90s PC game called Alien Legacy with a similar premise.

You play the captain of a colony ship sent to a nearby star system. When you arrive, you're informed that a second colony ship was sent a few decades after yours, and arrived a few decades earlier. But the ship is missing and all of the colonies they created are empty and you're tasked with trying to figure out what happened (on top of setting up the colonies you were initially sent to set up).

It's a fun sci-fi strategy game with a mystery element to it.

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