I finished the Vanguard faction quest line and I have to say that it was quite good. One normally doesn't have high expectations for video game writing but this story actually did manage to surprise me a few times. You also get a very nice legendary space suit near the end. And the final reward is cool butOne of the main faction quests also sends you there. Not very early, but early enough.
...
Been playing every day since early access. Every day I find something new that impresses me.
umm... what am I supposed to do with an empty apartment? Does this game have some sort of Animal Crossing Happy Home designer mode that I'm not aware of? There's no reason to ever visit your penthouse if it's going to be empty throughout right?
And yeah, the game constantly has these moments that amuse/impress you. Either through systems driven game design or just thoughtful bespoke moments they've put in.
One random example is that I didn't know this game had different types of jetpacks. One of them boosts you up really high into the air. What I didn't know about that jetpack is that you need to boost slightly when you're about to land to soften your landing. So the when I first started using it I'd keep randomly getting afflicted by sprains when I landed and I couldn't understand why it was happening. It was only after it happened 2-3 times that I heard a companion telling me that I should try for a soft landing. Think about how much work went into this. Aside from implementing the sprain mechanic, they went to lengths of getting (presumably all) companion voice actors to record a line specifically to inform dimwits like me why I kept getting sprained. Such a tiny detail they thought of when they could have easily left out the entire mechanic.
One out of game thing that I realized is that when you launch the game it has just one black screen with some copyright stuff, the BGS logo animation and nothing else. They could have easily added animations for Zenimax, Xbox studios, middleware companies and what not but they didn't. They did this deliberately to not waste the players' time. The other game that had this this year was Hogwarts Legacy. That game had a 10-15 second shader caching cycle on every startup but when it's over they directly throw you onto the start screen. No studio logo, no Warner logo, no Wizarding World logo. Just respect your players' time and get them into the game as quick as possible. I really do appreciate this.
Yeah I constantly keep getting sidetracked in the game. I've been meaning to visit Akila and explore it and it's quests properly for 3-4 days now and I've not made it there because I keep doing something else. I did get the skills to increase your inventory capacity. A friend told me that I wasted my points and could have just modded that but... yeah, I can just mod everything and break the game completely. Give myself all skills and infinite credits and items. I don't want to do that. But yeah, having an increase inventory helps immensely.I keep getting sidetracked on planets, i'm off to perform a story rescue now and i've got good kit at least.
When i work out what weapons i really like i'll have more space in my inventory for things but at the moment all i take are weapons, plushies, ammo, plushies, meds, plushies, and any decent suits, packs or helms i find... and plushies.
One thing I do wish I could mod is the research and crafting system and specifically cooking because I find it very frustrating. I had mentioned that I wanted to do spacesuit research but that comes later in the tree so I thought i'll get gastronomy first. The problem with cooking is that first of all, cooking items go into your inventory in the aid slot and not resources. This is an issue because with other crafting you can just transfer all resources into your inventory and go off and start doing what you need to. With cooking you need to pick and choose which aid items are actually going be used in cooking. Also, there are some cooking items which go into resources anyway (like water, nutrients I think) and some even go into miscellaneous (like alien eggs). Secondly, there are times you don't actually know if you even have the right ingredients. Like for example, some research or recipe asks for poultry. There's no specific poultry item in the game that I've seen. So you need chicken but in which form? Do those cube things work? Do you need tinned chicken? Does synthameat work in it's place? Are eggs poultry? Because there's a different category of items that you can need called eggs. And what kind of eggs work then? Do those chunks work? Do you need tinned eggs? I really do want to do the research and crafting stuff but the UX is so hostile I just give up on it. I'd want a mod to clean this up a bit. Maybe colour code items in your inventory so you know which ones are for cooking or for weapon modding and stuff. And also add some kind of infinite storage in the Lodge basement.