With a title like “All That Money Can Buy”, it was obvious that the sixth main quest in Starfield was going to go a little off-track, and its third-quarter twist left me grinning with glee as I prepared to Die Hard my way through a sci-fi skyscraper. I didn’t have Bruce Willis’s vest or Reginald VelJohnson as my backup, so it wasn’t a perfect callback to everyone’s favorite Christmas movie. But there was a building full of ‘enemies’ and a monologuing villain just waiting for me to listen to his spiel.
And in case I got lost I had a voice in my ear, helpfully pointing me in the direction of the nearest air duct. What could possibly go wrong? Bethesda, that’s what could go wrong. And five minutes after launch, I was sitting on a steam pipe, sobbing into my space beer.
The problem with this otherwise perfect setup is that while Starfield has switched a lot of things up, Bethesda’s AI companions are as clueless and ham-handed as ever. And despite my best efforts, what should have been a stealthy dose of vent exploration turned into one prolonged firefight. Even Die Hard’s shoeless protagonist got a break.
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I knew something was off when I saw the size of the tower’s vents. Movies and other media are often mocked for depicting air ducts as:
a) able to support the weight of a person, and
b) wide enough that your average action hero can comfortably crawl through them.
But the vents of this building, a skyscraper in the city of Neon, were big enough that a person could walk through them and not bang their head. What logical reason could they have to be that huge? It’s almost as if Starfield doesn’t trust its NPCs to crouch to avoid smacking their heads. Oh, wait…
The NPCs I had in tow were moneybags Walter Stroud (voiced by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Armin Shimmerman) and Lin, my former supervisor. While Walter was absolutely not optional, it was my choice to bring Lin along. I’d already found myself calling Lin ‘Lydia’, after Skyrim’s clumsy NPC, which should have been another red flag.
Things were going smoothly right up until the gunfire started.
I hadn’t actually checked that Lin and Walter were behind me, I’d foolishly assumed they were following me, that I wasn’t dealing with Lydia 2.0. Instead, I heard a muffled “Here we go!” from Lin, followed by the sound of space-bullets flying. Why muffled? Because, as it took me a moment to realize, the action was happening on the opposite side of the wall.
While I’d been sneaking around in the vents, Quark and Supervisor Lydia had blundered right into the main office, immediately getting the attention of every guard, security robot, and worker within a six-mile radius. And since even the guy who refills the coffee machine was armed, it didn’t sound like it was going well.
Just to rub it in, my earpiece blared to life with the helpful message that “Security is on full alert. No point slipping through unnoticed now. You’ll have to fight your way to the exit.” Thank you, I really hadn’t noticed that, between the murderbots and the screams of terror.
One quick reload later, I tried again. And again. And again. Each time, I inched my way through the full-height ‘air duct’, glancing backwards. And each time, my companions declined to venture after me. Then they got all surprised when security tried to ventilate their ridiculous faces.
Maybe there was an option to make them stay put, but there was no way I wasn’t bringing Stroud to that confrontation with his business rival. Then, quite by accident, I caught the pair of them suddenly spawning in the room.
The horrible truth was revealed. It wasn’t that they’d walked all the way around, as I first thought, Starfield had dumped them right in the open. I thought I’d had it bad with Skyrim’s trap-activating housecarl, but I’d have taken her over this pair of teleporting buffoons.
I’d gone from being John McClane to the world’s most heavily armed babysitter. Gunning down employee after employee, I stumbled across the contact who’d started this whole mess. He was in bad shape but knowing my companions’ lack of competence, he probably shot himself while cleaning his pistol.
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Several gunfights later, I reached my goal. It was a blessing this wasn’t Skyrim because I’d have Fus Ro Dah’d my helpers off the rooftops. Several times. When I eventually caught up with Hans Businessman (after a lot of office-based gunplay), I let them draw his force’s fire while I sat in the air duct, chilling. Well, until one of his team thought to look in there, but I got some peace.
Was this all a limitation of the Creation Engine? Quite probably and I don’t blame Bethesda for that. There’s still plenty to love about Starfield. What I do blame them for is setting up such a promising mission (who doesn’t like industrial espionage?) and then sinking it with shoddy AI.
Please, Bethesda, know your limits. I’m happy to watch NPCs spend three hours eating an apple or talk about space crabs. But if you’re sending me to Space Nakatomi Plaza, let me leave them and their single collective brain cell at home.
