I finally sat down today and read the entire
Starflight manual cover to cover. I have to say - and this is not a unique thought by any means - but
HOLY CRAP manuals used to be finely crafted works of art. I don't mean the thing is pretty, but it's 1/2 novella, 1/2 sci-fi D&D-like manual. It's just amazing.
It's easy to understand when you place this manual next to the game, which the developers developed innovative fractal tech to build the star system and its planets, how this game took
years to create. It's just jaw dropping how finely balanced it all is. And if someone played this without the manual backdrop, well what a god damned shame that would have been.
I realize now that I kind of screwed up my original crew and will go fix that tonight. Crew creation (and character development) is essentially non-existent in this game. It's more about the back story and making sure you've got the right race(s) on board to deal with this and that, I think. Frankly I could probably go all-human and train them up and be just fine, but that would feel a bit boring. I'll pepper 1-2 alien races in there and leave the rest as backups.
I do sort of dread my near future: it looks like I'll need to do days of mindless mining missions to earn gobs of money to shore up my spaceship. It's pretty evident after reading through all of this that if I get impatient and just go for it, I'm going to die and will have wasted my time.
I'm so used to just jumping into games and winging it. But SSI and EA of old have brought me "back down to Earth" over the past year and trained me to take my time and read through these amazing documents. Starflight's UI is
extremely intuitive on the Amiga and easy to use (albeit it feels a touch slow on my currently stripped down 7Mhz, but it's not a bad thing). And I've gotten around and done quite a bit as it is. But I sensed I was only scratching the surface of this game and, now, realize I was right. This game is
massive and deep. I can't believe it fit all on one disk!
Really impressed so far. This might be one of the most impressive games I've played in some time, especially when I take its age, sophistication and organic vastness into consideration.
It's probably going to take me most of the summer to finish this thing - if I even do finish this thing. We'll see how it goes.
- Front cover of the Starflight manual by Electronic Arts.
- The narrative passages in the Starflight manual are extremely enjoyable to read and really provide a lot of backstory and depth to the overall experience.
- This is not a paper insert. This manual is must-read, and worth the time spent.