Confused about the ending...SPOILERS

[Mister Shan]

So is this basically a new game plus mode? Infinite new game plus? But you lose all your guns and inventory and resources??? So lame that there was no big narrative payoff....This feels really gimmicky.

I had a lot of unfinished quests and have a save point before I went into unity. Should I go back to it and just continue my play through if I just wanted to explore. Or is there any kind of benefit of playing as the star borne, like a new story thread?

I remember when the game came out, gaming journalists claimed the game just "starts" when you complete the single player game and recommended doing that first. I would just like to know what that benefit is...because a new game plus mode doesn't sound that mind blowing.

[RyBo]

Honestly the way they did it was brilliant compared to others. It's not something you even need to do but doing so leads you down the path of the protagonists. There are a few added dialogue options and your reintroduction into Constellation comes with a dialog twist. That's not including the other random variations which are fun but again not something you have to do.

I'm a fan of not having things locked behind a new game+ while also having incentives to do so if I fire the game up after a few months and want to keep a particular character.

Spoilers...

The player embodies three main characters or there own path by completing the main quest.

The Pilgrim, Hunter, Keeper Aquilus and you...

The only way to level up your Starborn Powers and your Starborn Guardian Ship are by going through Unity.

Hunter goes through Unity as fast as possible to gain power. Generally means murder hobo playthroughs.

Pilgrim goes through to enlighten himself and others. Generally means doing all the main faction quests or in other words the standard play through.

Aquilus picks the Universe they are in. Generally players who don't want to lose everything and are more or less satisfied with the play through.

You do you...

[Neo]

Basically going into ng+ just allows you to start a new play through without losing all your levels and perks. Yes you lose your stuff, but your character is preserved. There are also variant universes too which spice things up a little.

And going into ng+ gives you the opportunity to level up your powers even more. But you don't have to go through unity, you can delay it for as long as you wish. Or never go through it at all.

[Sauriel]

another thing to look out for is everytime you do go through to a new universe, enemy damage scales up a little each time, and get more hp, i think, up to +10, where it stops. It will scale up to max as if it were an upper difficulty level bracket, like if you play on easy, it would be medium diff on ng+10

[Mister Shan]

Originally posted by Neo:

Basically going into ng+ just allows you to start a new play through without losing all your levels and perks. Yes you lose your stuff, but your character is preserved. There are also variant universes too which spice things up a little.

And going into ng+ gives you the opportunity to level up your powers even more. But you don't have to go through unity, you can delay it for as long as you wish. Or never go through it at all.

Yea it sounds pointless. This seems to me like a No Man's Sky type gimmick. I would rather it had a much tighter game with a better engine and better story. In theory, like no man's sky, this sounds awesome though. If the game didn't feel so empty and bland, having infinite possibilities would be super interesting. Or if the combat at least was super cool, being able to just play with builds infinitely would be cool. But that's not this.

[EricHVela]

It does seem gimmicky to me. Some people love the way it was handled via lore reasons. The lore reasons feel weak to me. They felt to me more like excuses than actual story-rich reasons.

I felt no compulsion to play a new universe to find Unity again and again. It felt to me like a pointless loop with no goal that could ever be reached.

Chasing down a rogue Starborn through multiple universes for the player's Starborn to eventually outmaneuver and defeat? There's an achievable goal that could encourage playing through multiple universes until they got it right.

There's already a game for a comparable mechanic in a much, much smaller scale (but still more closely matched in amount of content, and SF's outmatched by the other smaller game's complexity per loop). That other game, however, restarts on failure with aspects altered by events in the prior loop. So, there's a familiar theme with significant differences, and it's difficult to make comparisons beyond what's superficial, but the point is that there's a goal that's achievable by repeating and the repeats aren't so static as to be nearly identical each time since they're altered by player actions.

The loops on SF have almost no significant differences from prior loops outside the Lodge, and prior loops have only one known consequence in one very specific loop. It makes the actions in each universe pointless.

[Met A Demon Once]

I have done a NG+ so many times that I do not even think of it anymore.

I think the important point is to find a universe you like and stay there.

[StillNinja]

Originally posted by Mister Shan:

So is this basically a new game plus mode? Infinite new game plus? But you lose all your guns and inventory and resources??? So lame that there was no big narrative payoff....This feels really gimmicky.

I had a lot of unfinished quests and have a save point before I went into unity. Should I go back to it and just continue my play through if I just wanted to explore. Or is there any kind of benefit of playing as the star borne, like a new story thread?

I remember when the game came out, gaming journalists claimed the game just "starts" when you complete the single player game and recommended doing that first. I would just like to know what that benefit is...because a new game plus mode doesn't sound that mind blowing.

ng+ does several things. It resets everything but you'll have to do all the main quests if you want some of the best ship upgrades that are only unlock in the main quest. If you skip it you cannot get those upgrades. Theres new dialog options and new end game enemy characters. It essential lets you replay the game and you can rp differently without losing character progress.

The game gets harder each ng+ up to 10 I believe.

Tbh the game is so overwhelmingly unfinished that ng+ just doesn't do much. If it was finished how it was meant to be then ng+ would bring a lot more.

[Joseph The Space Nord]

There's no huge payoff? You just learned that the multiverse exists and you can travel through it and become in immortal race called starborn. And of course it's a gimmick it's a new game plus.

[Mister Shan]

Originally posted by StillNinja:

Originally posted by Mister Shan:

So is this basically a new game plus mode? Infinite new game plus? But you lose all your guns and inventory and resources??? So lame that there was no big narrative payoff....This feels really gimmicky.

I had a lot of unfinished quests and have a save point before I went into unity. Should I go back to it and just continue my play through if I just wanted to explore. Or is there any kind of benefit of playing as the star borne, like a new story thread?

I remember when the game came out, gaming journalists claimed the game just "starts" when you complete the single player game and recommended doing that first. I would just like to know what that benefit is...because a new game plus mode doesn't sound that mind blowing.

ng+ does several things. It resets everything but you'll have to do all the main quests if you want some of the best ship upgrades that are only unlock in the main quest. If you skip it you cannot get those upgrades. Theres new dialog options and new end game enemy characters. It essential lets you replay the game and you can rp differently without losing character progress.

The game gets harder each ng+ up to 10 I believe.

Tbh the game is so overwhelmingly unfinished that ng+ just doesn't do much. If it was finished how it was meant to be then ng+ would bring a lot more.

Yea it just feels unfinished. I never really thought the story telling was good in these games, but the freedom of exploring and making crazy choices what what I felt was what made it fun. However, that was was like 20 years ago practically. I feel like this is a step back as the world is just not fun to explore and the novelty of being able to make choices in a game has kinda worn off. I at least would hope at least if they were following the same formula we would get the next level version of that. This ain't it.

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

If you like the idea of a multiverse and seeing all the variations on the Lodge content, and if you care about the Starborn abilities and equipment and if you want to steadily increase the game's difficulty with each loop (a part of NG+ that's sometimes overlooked) it's great imo.

But of course, if none of that matters to you or you simply don't find it interesting, then there's obviously no compelling reason to pursue it. The beauty of it is, you don't have to do it. You can stay in your starting universe, totally oblivious to those story elements, and just ignore the main quest and live your life.

I'll be honest, as much as I love Starfield, the main quest is my least enjoyed aspect of it. I spend most of my time just living and working jobs and homesteading and the like. That's the beauty of it for me. The fact that you can kind of pick your poison in that way. And you can totally just stay in the original universe and do that.

[StillNinja]

Originally posted by Mister Shan:

Originally posted by StillNinja:

ng+ does several things. It resets everything but you'll have to do all the main quests if you want some of the best ship upgrades that are only unlock in the main quest. If you skip it you cannot get those upgrades. Theres new dialog options and new end game enemy characters. It essential lets you replay the game and you can rp differently without losing character progress.

The game gets harder each ng+ up to 10 I believe.

Tbh the game is so overwhelmingly unfinished that ng+ just doesn't do much. If it was finished how it was meant to be then ng+ would bring a lot more.

Yea it just feels unfinished. I never really thought the story telling was good in these games, but the freedom of exploring and making crazy choices what what I felt was what made it fun. However, that was was like 20 years ago practically. I feel like this is a step back as the world is just not fun to explore and the novelty of being able to make choices in a game has kinda worn off. I at least would hope at least if they were following the same formula we would get the next level version of that. This ain't it.

There's no real consequences for your choices. At most you' ll lose an item or a companion, it defeats a lot of replay ability. Theres barely any weapons and the gun play is very average. The main faction quests are pretty good but that its. Theres 1 quest for the cooking skill tree, there's no quests base/fleet building.. Theres huge sections of the game just missing, at least 1/3-1/2 of the map has no POI's, they are just filler, I'm talking general areas of the map too. Not individual worlds. Neon has half it's building in an elevator (just not finished). New atlantis is bare bones, the well is decent though.
The game was just not finished, they spent nearly a year after development stopped just putting what they had together in a way that somewhat works.
Shame, game has great potential.

[CurrySpirals]

Yes, it’s a NG+ mode with some variations. I don’t normally care about NG+, but I did enjoy doing a second play through with Starfield. May do a third, after Shattered Space.

That being said, I would do your first run at your own pace. Rushing through the game is not recommended, the “it doesn’t really start until NG+” comments are misleading, imo.

[Jarsonne]

Originally posted by Mister Shan:

So is this basically a new game plus mode? Infinite new game plus? But you lose all your guns and inventory and resources??? So lame that there was no big narrative payoff....This feels really gimmicky.

I had a lot of unfinished quests and have a save point before I went into unity. Should I go back to it and just continue my play through if I just wanted to explore. Or is there any kind of benefit of playing as the star borne, like a new story thread?

This NG+ won't progress at all the main story.

This NG+ can has some special stuff but it's behind RNG so you'll never see much new stuff.

Make a NG+ is worse than a replay because you with a replay can try play the game with a new build approach, when the NG+ makes the game becomes a long grind, quite bad for Rpg.

So try a bit one NG+ then load back before, finish your play, start a new play with a different build, there's many possibilities.