Starfield Fan Finally Fixes One Of The Game's Biggest Missed Opportunities

Summary Starfield's limited background options disappoint fans looking for deeper role-playing experiences with minimal impact on the game's narrative.

Modder TechAngel85's "Quasar Career Solutions" adds buffs and new combat-focused backgrounds to increase role-play opportunities in Starfield.

Players can now experience more immersive and customizable gameplay with mod add-ons that encourage consistent role-playing choices.

Starfield may offer players a near endless galaxy to explore but when it comes to role-playing as a specific character, modders have had to step in to provide everyone with a more unique experience. Upon starting a new game in Starfield, all users will need to make a character and while the customization options are plentiful, the backgrounds and origin stories feel limited, especially when they have so little impact on the larger story. They also seem to be mechanically random, assigning skills to backgrounds that don't necessarily make sense; Why are Sculptors good at Medicine?

Fortunately, creator TechAngel85 over on Nexus Mods has come up with a solution to this arbitrary background skills with their mod "Quasar Career Solutions - A Background Overhaul," which does exactly what one would expect. The add-on not only adjusts starting skills to feel more appropriate to whichever background is selected but also encourages players to role-play more consistently by adding Buffs that incentivize players to stick to their origins. For example, Bouncer now grants +10% to Intimidation, Bounty Hunters receive +10 to their Ship Speed, and Diplomats gain an additional 10% experience from Speech checks.

Related Every Starfield Starborn Armor, Ranked By Style The New Game Plus mechanic in Bethesda's Starfield unlocks new Starborn outfits on different playthroughs, each with different stats and style.

Starfield Backgrounds Can Now Matter

A Shallow System Becomes Much Better

Custom Image by Glenn Bunn

To make things even more appealing, "Quasar Career Solutions" also adds several new Backgrounds to the game that are largely focused on combat. These include Combat Pilot, Heavy Arms, and perhaps most interesting Sniper, which allows players to adopt a stealthier approach to battle. Combat Pilot is also quite interesting in terms of mechanical buffs but given how infrequently players will engage in interstellar dogfights, it feels like somewhat of a limited option.

Starfield's Background options proved to be a real disappointment for Bethesda fans looking for a deep role-playing experience given how they hardly impact the game's narrative. Outside of the first couple of quests, the background options have no impact on the narrative and serve only as a way to assign initial starting skills. Players were hopeful that their choice of origin would have some consequence in the story or even just some slight changes to the dialogue options, but this ultimately didn't make it to the game.

Starfield's limited role-playing options have proven to be especially frustrating for fans of Bethesda's game given the studio's reputation for crafting open worlds that allow users to immerse themselves in another world. The sci-fi RPG offers plenty of planets to explore and investigate but in terms of the overall narrative and sub-stories, player expression is fairly limited. Fortunately, the modding community has managed to make the game slightly more open-ended with a wealth of excellent add-ons that encourage role-playing.

Source: TechAngel85/Nexus Mods