The space exploration and travel aspect of Starfield was one of the biggest features that many players were looking forward to. Once the game arrived, however, it was made clear that players would mostly spend their time Grav-Jumping from planet to planet, unless they had tons of time to kill to fly the Frontier manually. However, Bethesda's latest RPG does a great job at giving plenty of other things to do and explore instead in its place.
There are key elements that still make even fast traveling around the universe and solar systems in Starfield worthwhile. Starfield's space combat, for instance, hardly disappoints, and being able to do the old sci-fi gimmick of diverting power to different ship systems still adds an important air to being a spaceship pilot. There are also plenty of encounters in space itself to find, such as special ships that will try to speak to the player.
Starfield's Special Transmissions From Surprise Ships
As Starfield has only recently been released, many players are doing their best to make their way through the game to discover all the secrets that it holds. As of this writing, not much is understood for certain about the mysterious ships that appear to greet the player after a Grav-Jump, but some have been noticed and made themselves prominent memories in fans' lengthy playthroughs of Starfield.
While there's a chance not every unexpected transmission from another ship will play out the exact same way, many of the smaller, randomized interactions seem to be to inject comedic humor into the quieter lulls of the overall length of the game. For example, some players may run into a ship with tons of tourist passengers on it who are curious about the day-to-day life of a real (in the game itself) heroic spaceship captain. Their questions differ from their thoughts on politics to if captains really do have a lover at every port, which can amuse some of Starfield's companions.
Why Players Missing Out on Randomized Transmissions is Easy and Tragic
Being able to interact with these vessels may distract from fans' main objective, but the interactions are short and sweet, such as the audio message players can receive from a teacher and her class while traversing deep space. However, the transmissions are usually signaled by a small clip of audio before the transmission screen appears. If fans are trying to quickly hop from one planet to the next, they can easily traverse the Star Map before they activate the interaction as a whole, and finding the exact ship and message again is incredibly rare to come by.
This means that either when players are getting tired of the moments where Starfield's main plot tends to drag, or when things get rather tense, they may miss out on some necessary comic relief specifically added to the game to help keep players interested. Listening to the transmissions is certainly worthwhile as some of them may affect the game at large, such as an insurance ship selling coverage for the Frontier, with options to actually pay them. Either way, a bit of fun dialogue certainly doesn't hurt after collecting multiple Artifact pieces for a good few hours.
Of course, this is if players want to hear these dialogues in the first place. Having an easy way to avoid the extra dialogue or the transmission screen is rather handy as sometimes fans either make a wrong jump or need to fast travel to one area to get to another. These sections may be funny, but they're entirely optional, which works great when it comes to allowing players to manage their time. As much as fielding tourist's questions as to what it's like to be a captain of a starship may sound fun, sometimes all players want is to play the game like it's Skyrim in space.
Starfield is available now for PC and Xbox Series X/S.