I think SC:O would actually make a very good console port. I have to be honest though and say that the story felt a lot shorter than Star Control 2. It also felt a lot more static. Each alien faction had basically like a 2 or 3 step quest chain and that was it. There weren't really very compelling narratives and a lot of quests just dead-ended. Like bring us hyperdrives and 100 francium. OK I did that and then they said thanks, gave me some RU and that was it. There was not actual expansion of the human sphere of influence. Help free some Trandals from the Overmind. OK did that, and then nothing really happened.



If you do a side-by-side comparison with a quest from SC2 like the sleuthing involved in understanding the origins of the Mycon and how that interwove with the destruction of the Syreen homeworld, and compare that to say the Pinthi origins and the Mowlings sickness... I think SC:O does not hold up well. There's just a stark difference in the robustness of storytelling. I don't know if this was an intentional design decision for the sake of being able to sell this season pass, but it really didn't sit well with me as a long-time fan of the series and an early backer of this game. The lack of emotional depth in the storytelling was pretty obvious as well. Compare the rebellion of the Yehat to the Mu'Kays allowing humans into their alliance or the Pkunk's reunion with the Yehat to the Trandals freeing themselves from Overmind control. It's seriously night and day here in terms of how epic the stories feel in their scope. The trandals freed from the overmind didn't even have any story. It was like OK we're free now and we are trying to reconstruct our culture, so bring us some artifacts. And then they just sit around their system doing nothing. Even after we brought them artifacts telling them they used to have a proud warrior culture. That is not interactive and exciting. That feels like a game half-finished.



Can understand from a business perspective you guys are really just trying to pour in enough money to get the engine built and then slap a serviceable enough story that you can move enough units to get more money to flesh out this franchise, but yeah, I think there were some design decisions in there that could have been left out which could have saved money for more story. For instance, the planetfall lander aspect is just really tedious. I loved the way it worked in SC2. It was a quick drop down, run all around to pick up the minerals, shoot some funny looking critters and bounce. It took maybe 30 seconds to a minute tops.



SC:O because it has a lot of weird terrain features. If you're moving around in a zoomed out view you keep running into trees or falling off cliffs etc and you waste a ton of time watching your lander roll around. It makes what should be a 30 second run turn into 5 minutes or more. Exploring a new star system in SC2 would take maybe 10 minutes. Exploring and fully exploiting a new star system in SC:0 takes 30 minutes or more. It makes it INTENSELY tedious. I don't know if your design guys have sat down with a stop watch and compared the experience in the two games but this difference in time makes a tremendous difference in the fun factor of exploiting a planet.



You guys 95% most likely won't change this because you've already spent money on it, but the tediousness of the planetfall experience will probably stop me from purchasing any sequels to this game. And upping the bounties on ships doesn't really change that as it's not all that fun to just sit around and farm ships for RU once your main ship is upgraded enough. It's a no brainer in terms of difficulty and is just another time sink. It's not an enriching experience.

So yeah, I'm not sold on this season pass. For me, I would need to see a radical change in the way planet exploration works. It doesn't have to be the SC2 system, but it sure as hell can't be the current SC:O version either. And I would have to see some proof of much improved storytelling and much more intricate quests to put more money down. Just feels like there was not a lot of work put into finessing the fine details and thinking carefully about the player experience. There are plenty of indie games out there with deep deep stories and smaller budgets and shorter development timelines. I don't think the goal here should be putting a bunch of money into graphical and art resources. It should be story. This was never a game that was going to stand on the beauty and immersiveness of its graphics. So why time and money was spent on making the planets 3-D which really does nothing but create more tediousness for the player is beyond me. Would have been far better served spending those resources to create more aliens, deeper more impactful stories, and more intricate and branching quest chains.



In another thread I mentioned the game felt like it played on rails, and Brad responded by saying "There are quests where can choose the fate of entire species." But the question is what species? Certainly not any of the major factions in the game. If you're talking about one of those random tiny alien civs that's local to one star system and all they've got is a little mini-portrait and a nondescript backstory then it's hard to really take that comment seriously. I sincerely hope you don't consider that level of content as proof of SC:O being a live universe. It's pretty much a completely inconsequential decision to the game as a whole. Whatever you choose has little to no bearing on any other aspect of the game.



So in summary, am hoping Brad will give some indication of whether the planet exploration system will be overhauled and how focused the team is on creating better storylines. That will determine whether I continue to buy content in this franchise. And from the reviews I see on steam, I think that's the general consensus of customers who were not happy with the product they received.