Star Control: Origins - Star Control reboot from Stardock

[Unkillable Cat]

Dexter - the image you include only applies to the planet exploration - and honestly none of the four perspectives feel right. I tend to use the maximum zoom one, but that makes it hard for me to read the topography.

Day 3:

# I found the trading post Dexter mentioned at Eta Wendigo before reading his post. And honestly? Harvesting biologicals isn't worth it. In SC2 they're a seperate currency for the Infinitrons, here they're just another RU thingie.

# If there's anything in the game that fulfills the role of the Melnorme, it's the Precursor starbases and their HAL-esque AIs. Each starbase has something different to say, and as fragmented and nonsensical as it may sound, information can be gained from them.

# Exploring the Wendigo cluster for the Mu'Kay is a great way to find cool stuff and gain lots of RU, especially since it's in the opposite direction of the Scryve and their cronies.

# Pro-tip for planet landing: Study the planetary readout before launching a lander, especially the bottom-right box if it's present. Hover the mouse over any hazards and read the numbers, especially if one of them is maxed out... because the readout only goes up to 10, but the hazard itself can go higher than that, so your super-protected lander can still melt on highly irradiated worlds.

# Some of the descriptions for ruins/abandoned places are really neat. My favorite so far is the one where time flows backwards. Even the description text comes out in a backward order.

# The loading times for this game are silly stupid long. Just sayin'.

# Strangely enough the only running plot point that interests me is the Lexite one. I know where to go next for that, but I'm gonna wrap up the Wendigo stuff first, then check out Vega as suggested.

# More on the astronomy front: In SC2 four moons around a planet was the maximum possible for a celestial body. Not here. I've not just found planets with more moons than that, but moons with moons with moons. That's right, Moon-Moon is back and he's brought Moon-Moon-Moon with him!

# More funny and interesting planet names I've spotted: Minsc and Little Minsc, Bucholz (as in the actor) and Iolo. Also there's a Fwiffo system in the bottom-left corner and an Accolade system in the top-right. Has anyone visitied those and is there anything worthwhile there? (Yes/No reply only, no spoilers.)

# I am annoyed that after 25 years of technological advancements in gaming and computing in general, that someone can make a game sporting hundreds of systems with thousands of planets and just a piss-poor bare-bones system of being able to catalog and mark them. We needed a good notepad for playing Star Control 2 back in the day because we didn't have any alternatives. Why do we still need to do that today?

# Also, I can't seem to scuttle cargo from my ship like in SC2, where I would sometimes dump less valuable resources to make room for more valuable ones.

# One thing I forgot to mention - the first thing I did in SC:O was to check out the in-game encyclopedia. At that point in the game it's kinda spoilerish, it's best read after you've visited the Tywon homeworld. Sadly it doesn't seem to update itself with new information as I progress in the game, that would have been a really neat thing.

# I've been listening to the soundtrack for the game - and it's nowhere near as good as the SC2 soundtrack. Most of the tracks are of the "Oh-It-Reminds-Me-Of-This-Tune-But-The-Original-Is-Better" variety... most from SC2 obviously, but then there's one planetary that reminds me of this one.

Current opinion? This game is growing on me. Currently it sits comfortably as a 7-7.5 kinda game, but that can change. In either direction.

 

[Dexter]

Dexter - the image you include only applies to the planet exploration - and honestly none of the four perspectives feel right. I tend to use the maximum zoom one, but that makes it hard for me to read the topography.

It works perfectly fine in Star systems for the ship too, just press 1,2,3,4 and marvel at how the zoom changes. (1 is Autozoom while getting closer to planets, 4 is furthest out I think)

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Has anyone visitied those and is there anything worthwhile there?

You should definitely check out Fwiffo.

 

[Terra]

Played a little bit of this. First off I hit some weird issue where having a controller phyiscally attached to my PC disabled keyboard movement of the ship (had to disable both my controller & fightstick in devices to resolve this). So, great start.

Reminds me a bit of a less busy Space Rangers but with a greater focus on story I suppose. Not really feeling the resource gathering Mako missions tbh (also hit some bizarre performance issues when on the planet orbit screen, maybe affected by my frequent alt-tabbing, w/e). But overall, it's been okay so far, dialogue and story have been keeping me moving forward and combat is enjoyable enough.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

At last some alien aliens.

Spoiler

 

[Norfleet]

Also, why has this not been moved to the SPACE section yet?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Day 4:

# Grampy_Bone was right in saying I should go to Vega and Fwiffo. Fwiffo is fucking loaded, bring a large fuel tank and a larger, empty cargohold. Start with Fwiffo, then go to Vega on the way back.

# Fine-combing the Wendigo cluster for all the suitable Mu'Kay colony worlds nets you something close to a 24000 RU reward from them, on top of whatever resources you found and collected there.

# If you've received an invitation to "go talk to the boss", it's great to do that while traveling to Fwiffo, as you pretty much kill two birds with one stone by getting enough RUs for what 'the boss' wants.

# The backbone of this game are the Precursor starbases. Right now I'm just sorta guessing "Where can I find one of those things?" as I plot flight paths into the great unknown to find them. While they're incredibly useful, I must question if their presence and application was properly playtested, as currently they serve as

for following the Main Quest. I've yet to find a Precursor Starbase in an "out-of-the-way" area of the map.

# I was wrong about the Precursor starbases filling in for the role of the Melnorme. There's a race of bloated orange thingies with three eyes that claim to be traders called the Melnar (spelling?). Someone might want to consider updating his avatar soon.

Today was just spent grinding, tomorrow I hope to make some progress.

 

[Beastro]

At last some alien aliens bacteria and jellyfish.

Spoiler

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Oh, and because I remembered to do so this time:

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

At last some alien aliens bacteria and jellyfish.

Spoiler

Their speech patterns are at least slight variation from the usual; "Hi, we're a single profession with attitude", that game quite often offers.
For example there's the Measured that look like corals, but mainly talk bureaucratic pablum.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I knew it would be a good game, Stardock always delivers.

The other two has beens can keep reassuring themselves that they are still hardcore gamers when staring up at the ceiling in bed late at night, after having peddled complete and utter bullshit for 25 years.

Even for you, this is low effort.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I think there's a starbase near every homeworld. Makes sense I guess.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

On one hand this is Star Control, this should be a "no-brainer* decision and purchase for me, who has been championing the series for 25 years now and even bought a retail copy of Star Control 3 at full price (plus the novel) back in the day.

On the other hand my gut feeling tells me to hold off playing this, and I can't really explain why.

Perhaps these two points have some connection.

No, that wasn't it. I bought Star Control 3 because it was the edition that had the other two Star Control games included for free, so I got all three games on CD for a very acceptable price. It even came with extra goodies like the Ultimate Edition of the Star Control 2 map and a handy Strategy Guide to the game, listing all the 'good' systems to visit in the game.

That was before eBay and such, and since then I've acquired retail copies of the other two Star Control games as well, and these three games form an essential part of my boxed game collection.

I won't be playing Star Control tonight, I've spent most of the day trying to repair a tumble dryer and don't feel like flying one in space.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I finished the Drenkend quest to stop their attacks on the Mu'kay, even though it said to go back for a reward, the quest completed and there were no dialogues about it and no reward. Sad. At least the Drenkend aren't hostile anymore, so yay I guess.

Anyone have any good combat advice? I'm pretty much getting crushed constantly. The mothership is a pig right now and not very strong, other ships are hit or miss. The patroller is nice but it's a bit slow and it's gun is a pea-shooter, even if its very long range. The Mu-kay grasper is strong but it's hard to kill stuff without taking damage. The Tywom defender is fun but the drones are too inaccurate. I don't like any of the minelayer ships. The nomad ship was pretty good but I can't seem to reinforce it so I benched it rather than lose it. The Lexite ship is fast and strong but very fragile. Finally I got some -defender something that has a tractor beam and a super short range "infecter" gun. You grab a ship and basically vomit green plague goop all over it. It kills super fast but it's a slow and risky ship to use.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I have such a large mass of small expendable ships that I've somehow managed to keep together for a while now without losing a single one. Maybe it has something to do with my strategy of keeping distance from the enemy and grabbing as many power-ups on the battlefield as possible before engaging. My two current 'reliable' ships are:

# The Ure Strider. It's a bit slow and kinda unwieldy and its primary is a dumb fire missile (meaning you have to aim it) but it's secondary Plasma Burst will tear new assholes on most ships that venture too close.

# The Muaertreaze Fighter. It's a mine-layer and has low crew, but if you learn how and where to shoot that mine you can set ships up for a "one-two" combo of mining them so that they're stunned, then follow it up with the secondary repulsor blast.

Another ship that's done good for me is the Jebyoux Patroller, which is probably the ship Grampy_Bone is referring to. For those wanting to 'weapon up', there's a Scryve Cruiser for the taking in the Zeta Mus system.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Aaaannd I'm playing Star Control despite being dog tired.

I met the Mowlings. Holy Fucking Shit Brother Francis Fetch Me The Flamer. The HEAVY Flamer. Exterminatus is too kind for them. This requires a personal touch. Jeff is kinda fun to talk to, though.

Jeff: What you see is a projection. A variant of the anatomy of the beings who made me, plus some features I added in for fun. In reality, my body is not much to look at. Not with your eyes. My body, such as it is, exists in the first seven dimensions. Then I skip a couple. Then I exist in the next four.
Me: Why'd you skip those two dimensions?
Jeff: They make me look fat.

 

[karoliner]

Can you romance the aliens?

 

[LESS T_T]

Nearly 50K copies sold, six mini-expansions are coming: https://www.stardock.com/games/article/491316/star-control-origins---expansion-plans

Star Control: Origins - Expansion plans

Greetings! With Star Control: Origins out and having already sold nearly 50,000 copies after only a week of availability we are now ready to talk about...THE FUTURE.



We will be making an official announcement after version 1.1 (the big modding release) is available but we didn't want fans, especially those who are starting to finish the Origins adventure, to have to wait to know what's next.

Needless to say, we've gone back and forth on the best way to deliver new stories, quests and features to players in a way that fits in. Now, keep in mind, the base game will continue to be updated and improved for free. But obviously, new adventures and content are a different thing. So what's the best way?



We looked at 4 options. I'll list the 3 we rejected and why.

Option 1: Traditional expansion. This is what we've done with our other games. You make a single big expansion and release it. Fans tend to like these in our strategy games. However, the problem here is that this would mean waiting a year to continue the story in any meaningful way.

Option 2: DLCs. DLCs make sense in many ways but they have a lot of issues too. Many players will say that they feel "nickeled and dimed" when they see lots of little DLCs. We ran into this with Galactic Civilizations III where we'd just release a few DLCs per year. That sounds reasonable right? But after 3 years, there's now 12 of them and people get upset seeing all those DLCs.

Option 3: In-Game transactions. Believe it or not, a lot of people do like these. However, I personally don't like this.



So what's left? We look around at other adventure/rpg games and a Season Pass works the best. I won't get into too many details but the plan is to release 6 mini-expansions for $19.99. The micro-expansions will be released one at a time and they will add new missions, new characters, ships, stars, map areas, features, etc.

I wouldn't call these mini-expansions "episodes" because much of the content doesn't require that you have completed the Origins mission (plenty of it does follow the end of the Origins mission).

The first mini expansion would be made available in November and they'd continue on a set schedule with all of them and a general (non-spoilery) list of features that each one will bring.



When the first micro-expansion is installed, if you have finished the Origins story, the next stage in our multi-year story arc will continue. So after the "credits roll" you get a new cut scene that introduces you to the new state of the universe. On the other hand, if you have not finished the story or for those who have never played the game, they'll just see the galaxy a little more filled out. New side-quests, just a bit more "stuff" to bring the universe alive.

What will effectively happen is that players will have more and more paths to choose from in deciding how best to help Earth and have a richer, deeper universe to play in.

Please let us know your thoughts.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Please let us know your thoughts.

Uninstall.exe

Call me when they've finished developing the game.

There are only a handful of exceptions where I play unfinished games. This is not one of them.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Call me when they've finished developing the game.

Ah what's unfinished about it?

 

[Infinitron]

Stardock seem able to survive on seemingly small amount of sales. As far as I can tell he's quite pleased with that 50k for a game he spent 5 years making.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Stardock seem able to survive on seemingly small amount of sales. As far as I can tell he's quite pleased with that 50k for a game he spent 5 years making.

Assuming it's $40 a pop, he's close to making back the money he put down for the license in the first place.

Now he just has to get the last $50.000 and cover all of the other expenses as well...

Ah what's unfinished about it?

Six expansions yet to be released = Unfinished game.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/star-control-origins-review/

STAR CONTROL: ORIGINS REVIEW

"Rark! Halt your garbage vessel!" The captain of the hailing ship is an alien called a Drenkend who looks like one of those super-jacked kangaroos who has steroids for breakfast that has been surgically grafted on top of a Roomba. He's aggressive and aggressively stupid, and his species has been ordered to kill all humans on sight.

At the helm of humanity's first interstellar starship, I'm on a quest for friendly species who might help us in our fight with a galactic totalitarian. The Kangaroomba, on the other hand, just wants to start shit. Worse, every time I destroy one of these bozos, another one hails me and has the same conversation. It was pretty funny the first time. Now, not so much.

Moments after I destroy the Drenkend fleet, I receive an incoming hail: "Rark! Halt your garbage vessel!" It's yet another Drenkend, and I absolutely want to just die of boredom.

Galactic grind
With an entire galaxy full of star systems and exoplanets to explore, it's frankly unbelievable how shallow everything in Star Control: Origins feels. All of the same pieces of the 1992 MS-DOS classic, Star Control II, are still here: funny dialog, diplomacy, planetary exploration, space battles. But they come off as hollow imitations lost in the endless void of the grind.

For example, one of the most important jobs of my ship, the UES Vindicator, is gathering raw materials to bring home to Earth. The Vindicator is humanity's only interstellar ship, and keeping it running or building a second ship is going to take up a lot of resources. Finding resources is easy: fly into orbit around a planet, launch a lander, and drive around the surface picking up floating blocks of iron, aluminum, gold, etc. There are a lot of different elements, but they all just go into the big Tank O' Crap I sell back at Earth, so I didn't care if I was picking up argon or oxygen. If I could have used the elements to craft upgrades for myself, that might be another matter, but the resources-and-trade system here just isn't that deep.

Every planet is more or less the same—some are sort of gray or brown and some have trees and lakes—and the floaty, bouncy physics handling of the lander craft is an absolute horror. I get stuck on every little ridge and hilltop, and there's no joy or challenge to driving around an empty planet to pick up Space Cash. Landing on planets involves a simple keep-within-the-lines mini game that only lasts for a few seconds and is equally joyless. Exploring planets did occasionally make my framerate stutter and my landing craft explode for no reason, which was at least good for a laugh.

I'd be more than happy to ignore resource-gathering entirely, but I quickly found that I couldn't. Aside from exploring samey planets, there's a whole galaxy full of species to talk to and far-flung destinations to reach. I set out into the stars, looking to seek out new life and new civilizations. Maybe I could even build a federation! But journeys are also a terrible slog, a murderous trial by attrition. Every encounter with a pirate or enemy vessel chipped away at my ship, and it's impossible to repair or refit away from a space station. Winning fights wasn't good enough—I had to win them flawlessly, because every piece of damage would still be there for the next fight, and the next.

More than once, I pounded and fought my way to a destination system only to arrive in tatters and with no possible way to make it to the actual planet and the aliens I had been sent to talk to. The only way to fix this was to start the journey again but with more upgrades on my ship and friendly ships recruited for my fleet—and that meant I had to head back to the landing craft to farm some resources. God, what a shame.

The grind is so heavy that anything that doesn't feel like a grind feels out of place, as though the game is telling on itself a little bit. Holding the forward button to cross interstellar distances isn't fun, so just turn on the auto-pilot and the ship flies itself. The landing-on-a-planet mini game isn't fun, so a landing craft upgrade lets the lander fly itself. The combat can be really frustrating and repetitive, so an upgrade lets the ship fight battles itself. These options don't really make the grind any better, but with good planning and a little care, you can almost avoid playing the game entirely.

Alien clones
The real jewel of Star Control: Origins is the writing. There's snappy dialog everywhere, and each alien species is fantastically detailed and fleshed out as a distinct personality. The Tyvoom, for example, are sweaty worm nerds who are just desperate to have even one single friend. The Mu'Kay are adorable squids who exude joy and happiness (First contact with the Mu'Kay began, "Many playful splashes, unknown alien!"), but with a hard edge of self-delusional boredom. Any of these aliens and their jokes would fit in well with a Douglas Adams novel. They're that good.

At least, they're that good the first time. Again, the feeling of emptiness and shallowness seeped into my interactions with aliens. Everywhere I went, an alien would greet me identically, as if to say "Hello! Here are the seven jokes I can offer you." It wasn't long before I stopped hailing friendly ships to say hello, and I started ordering Fire At Will with enemy ships just to avoid having the same damn conversations again and again.

This is a real problem in a game that should theoretically be about diplomacy. I never got the feeling that I could offend an ally enough to turn them into an enemy or sweet-talk a pirate into letting me go without a fight. I was hoping for diplomacy tête-à-têtes like Picard, but what I got was like having an argument with the animatronics at Disney World.

The variety and depth of diplomatic options are, I think, where Star Control: Origins feels the absence of the original creators, Fred Ford and Paul Reiche, the strongest. It feels bizarre to say it, but that 1992 MS-DOS game was, first and foremost, a point-and-click adventure game where talking, wit, and character where the foundation of the entire project. Instead of talking and forging alliances, Origins pushes me to spend more of my time in repetitive grind-combat-grind cycles that don't have the same joy.

Red alert
There's one thing in Star Control: Origins that is worthy of unreserved praise, and it's the arcadey dogfighting of ship-to-ship combat. This is also where Origins lifted the most directly from the original—as a result, it's the most interesting and deeply varied thing Origins has to offer. When a battle starts, two ships are dropped into a space arena full of obstacles like electric storms, wormholes, asteroids, planetary gravity wells. Speed and momentum follow space rules: if you thrust forward, the only way to slow down is to turn around and thrust backward. Swinging around and around without time to fully cancel out velocity makes combat fast and chaotic, and there's a massive variety of ships and weapons to tangle with.

During my battles with the Drenkend (the robot kangaroos), different classes of ships used different weapons and tactics. The Zealot, a small, fast ship, would fly straight at me to use its single weapon: self-destruction. Carriers, on the other hand, launched wave after wave of boarding parties, small shuttles that would fly toward me and take a serious chunk out of my crew population if they made contact. Still other ships used more conventional lasers and sniped at me from a distance, and that's all within just one species.

Space combat is genuinely great, and the standalone Fleet Battles mode is the strongest recommendation for Origins entirely. Fleet Battles lets you build a fleet out of any number of alien ships and jump right into the action against local or online opponents. Free from the constraints of Story Mode's grind, losing a fight or winning by the thinnest of margins doesn't mean a trip back to the salt mines—just load up a new fleet and go again. Fleet Battles is a little hint of how much fun this game could have been, if only the rest of it had been rebooted with the same depth and attention to detail as the combat arena.

I don't think that Stardock deliberately set out to make Origins a grind. A grind is just what happens when you build an entire galaxy and fill it with only three things to do. That's the real tragedy here: If this game wasn't a grind, it would just be empty space.

THE VERDICT
60

STAR CONTROL: ORIGINS
An empty galaxy and endless grinding mar clever writing and engaging combat.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

That review follows the line of "Reviewer doesn't know how to play Star Control" that had been mentioned earlier, and justifies Wardell's message about How To Play The Game. You only go for the "Gobble up everything in sight" approach while you're still in the Sol system. Once you're out and exploring you only grab the valuable resources that are easily acquired, make a note of the ones that you'll have to come back to later, and skip the rest. This means that every haul you bring back will be quite valuable, and cut down on the grinding. This is also how it was in Star Control 2. The fact that the reviewer doesn't bother thinking for a moment here reveals to us that he's never played Star Control 2 either. At best he watched a few YouTube videos of a Let's Play of UQM.

Also, it's kinda important to get the names of the alien races right if you want your game review to be credible... but in the case of Star Control: Origins I can understand his mistake. For some reason it's really hard to remember the names of most alien races and notable characters in the game. The Scryve and the Mu'Kay and the Mowlings stuck with me for example, but the rest were just a bunch of "whatsits" and "thoseguys".

I recall mentioning this before, but I'll say it again: It's an absolute joy to dig into the design work of the alien species in Star Control 1 and 2, and then compare them to Star Control 3 and Origins. The design for alien races is based on three major points: Their name, their shape, and their color. You could also throw in their victory ditty and the tiny crew screen, but generally the other three are the focal points.

There are 14 races in Star Control 1, and only three of them have names that are longer than two syllables, and none longer than three. This makes the names easy to remember, even when one of the names has no vowels. The names are also easy to remember because of how they sound. Those words weren't pulled out of a random name generator, they sound like something a small child would come up with while learning to speak. (Adult: Say 'vroom-vroom'! Baby: 'Mmrnmhrm!') Two of the names are somewhat similar (the Ur-Quan and the Umgah) and this is where the other design points come in to help keep each race unique.

Each race has only one ship associated with it. This sounds illogical at first (especially to Stardock) but from the perspectives of design and identification it's ideal. What's more, each ship is visually different from one another. Let's have a short quiz: Who fly the big ball-like ship? What about the boomerang-shaped ship? Or the small saucer, or the flying sex toy? You may not remember their names, but you know who I'm talking about nevertheless. Ships are made to be structurally seperate to help people identify them. Even the tiny ships like the Shofixti and the Umgah have enough visual distinction that it's almost impossible to confuse the two of them.

But it doesn't stop there, now let's add in colors! Earthling Cruisers are mostly white and so are the Chenjesu Broodhomes. The Ur-Quan Dreadnoughts are green and so are the Umgah Drones. The VUX have a deep blue tint, and so does the Yehat Terminators, etc. Simple, identifiable color schemes help cement in the identity of each alien race.

Now let's add in the races (and their ships) from Star Control 2, which brings the total number of races to 25. Again, the longest name is only three syllables long, though a few aliens now have a longer 'full name' which is only used in conversations and lore-building, not in the bread and butter of Star Control that is the ship combat. And while more ships raise the chances of 'clashes' in identifying the various races, Toys for Bob really went out of their way to keep them seperate and unique. There are two Ur-Quans now? Yes, but one is big, green and fires energy bolts, while the other is big, black and fires shurikens. There are two ships that are T-shaped and fire lazers? Yes, but one is small and white, while the other is big and grey and has satellites orbiting it.

... now let's add in Star Control 3, and we'll see where it starts to go wrong. Several races from the prequels don't make a return appearance, but 12 new races are added instead. Here a core rule is broken with the names; the DakTakLakPak is a four-syllable name, but at least they're closely related syllables. The ships have distinct-looking shapes... when viewed in the game's '3D' view. In the standard 2D view we have several ships that are far too similarly shaped for them to be reliably identified. Lastly (and this is the biggest crime) the colors are no longer so vibrant and relevant. It's like all the ships have a metallic tinge over them, even the really colorful ones from the prequels. And the new ships are lacking in color. The Owa ship is green and the Ploxis ship is somewhat purplish, but the rest of them seem to fall into a mesh of grey, or earth-based colors at the very least.

And finally we get to Origins. The first problem right off the bat is that the Flagship looks generic and doesn't stand out, despite the red highlights. Another problem is that every alien race now has multiple ship classes, so many ships belonging to the Tywom just slip through the cracks of player's memories, just to name an example. The Tyvom Defender stands out because it's yellow and looks like its central design concept was a banana. The Mu'Kay Grabber (Gripper? Something along those lines?) also stands out because it looks like a white squid with tentacles, but all of their other ships look white and generic. I had trouble seeing whether certain ships belonged to the Mu'Kay or some other alien species that were visiting/trespassing. Stardock even took it a step further and mucked up another key aspect of the ship designs: That they're all exactly the same. By this I mean that you may end up fighting two ships of the same class, but they won't have the same weapons. Makes sense from a gameplay perspective, but from a game design perspective? Maybe not so much. At least Stardock had the sense to put the names of the ship's current weapon systems into the HUD, so you can know what to expect.

This mainstay of game design - to have its key characters be easily recognizable in apperance - can be found in games such as Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch... and yet while those two games may have started out with such bold ambitions, their dependency upon hats and costumes and such has pretty much destroyed any and all notions about keeping characters looking different and being easily identifiable.

Who would have thunk it? Turns out you actually have to think to properly design a game's visuals with an instant mass-appeal. Stardock put in a lot of hours on that front... but sadly not enough. Or too many. Either one of those.

Any further critique from me on Star Control: Origins will not come until after they've released all the expansions, and possibly also when the legal drama has ended. I'm guessing that's more than a year away. :/

 

[glass blackbird]

None of that matters since the writing in this game is fucking retarded