My next game, that I still haven’t titled, is a sci-fi date simulator. This is a bit of a contradiction. Date simulators are by their nature, set in a positive or at least neutral environment, while sci-fi, when it is done right, is generally set in a negative environment.

Above are three versions of the same character. “Alex Tagore” is a bio-female non-binary. who likes male clothing and blue male haircuts. The character is a random generated character originating in Watch Dog Legions (on the right), then I created a Daz version (on the left), then used the character a third time this past week in Starfield (using the they/them pronouns, as the game famously allows).

The fourth sci-fi video game that comes to mind is Cyberpunk 2077, which will be releasing a major DLC update at the end of the month. Of the three major releases, Cyberpunk 2077 is the only one that understands what sci-fi is all about.

Most of this year, I have been playing Watch Dogs Legion which is a game that generally failed in 2020 because the writers of the game understood sci-fi, but the publishers did not, adding a bunch of useless crap to the game after seeing how people were playing the game.

The REAL problem with the game was it was trying to be two games in one: a dark looter shooter, and a fun puzzle solver. Ubisoft released a game balanced for looter shooter mode, so that is how most people played the game, and it is not very good that way, which is why the game got poor reviews, and ultimately abandoned by Ubisoft in 2021.

When played in easy mode, with DLC hacks enabled on all players, the game can be played as the originally intended puzzle solver game, which is how I play it. It’s a hell of a lot of fun this way, way more fun than the game Ubisoft released. The puzzle solver plays the fascist / anarchist story much more subtly than the generic bad guy / good guy game that got released.

Somehow, Ubisoft didn’t want to offend real life fascists with an anti-fascist themed game. Cyberpunk 2077, developed in Poland, with a neo-fascist government in charge no less, stuck with the politics of the table top game written by Mike Pondsmith in 1988, which is why USSR is in Cyberpunk, the Japanese is in charge of the economy, and fascists and billion dollar corpos were always the bad guys.

This week, Starfield released, and while better than the Ubisoft version of Watch Dogs Legions, it unfortunately makes all the same mistakes: Badly balanced between two game modes, and boringly written to not offend politics and religion.

Good Sci-Fi is required to be offensive to be interesting. I love good sci-fi regardless of the “side” it takes. Right-wing sci-fi authors like Robert Heinlein and Ayn Rand can tell just as interesting of stories as left-wing sci-fi authors like Philip K Dick and Philip Pullman. Either way, a side must be taken. Centrist author Isaac Asimov understood this, writing the very religiously themed Foundation novels, despite being a real-life atheist.

Starfield takes a boring centrist theme. Very pro-capitalist in three different aesthetic flavors: futuristic, western, and a retrovibe that tries to impersonate cyberpunk. All three flavors have nearly identical origins with no controversial politics involved. Basically, “theme parks”. In fact, that’s how I think of them.

The western theme Freestar Collective, has more in common with “Westworld” without the sex, than its obvious influence “Firefly” without the sex. The misnamed “Collective” is just a word and very capitalist Cheyenne feels like Westworld filled with bad guys programmed to be shot. It just feels so fake, with no edge or emotion.

Alpha Centauri is the “Tomorrowland” version of the Freestar Collective, called United Colonies, and ruled by billionaires. The third world is the aptly named “Neon”, which is literally just the same thing with bigger advertising and different color schemes, like capitalism that went too far.

At least it is politically different, open to drug trade because the “drug” in question is made from fish that live on the water planet, but the consequences of the drug trade is street gangs which makes absolutely no sense. I really want to like Neon, but every mission feels boring and nonsensical, trying to be Blade Runner or Cyberpunk but with no soul.

I got three missions in Neon. One in the main story line that literally made no sense, another that felt forced with NPCs giving me jobs I could not follow, and a third one about a struggling shop owner trying to organize all the other struggling shop owners. This, to me, is a story that actually made sense!

The thing is, these three AAA games are teaching me what does and doesn’t work in sci-fi games. My original intent was to make a date simulator set in the future and ignore politics and religion themes, but that will make it a boring theme park like Starfield.

Not doing that!