When you first played Cyberpunk 2077, were you most interested in the fantasy side of superhuman advancement? Are you passionate about making yourself more like a machine than a human? Do you want to biohack yourself into a robot from a sci-fi legend? Then you might like the “cybernetic” background in Starfield.
“Robots? Mere toys,” is the official description of the class — as Bethesda found out in the massive Starfield deep dive it rolled out for us back in June. “Neural amplifiers? Good for indoor tricks. The Colonial War may have provided veterans with implants and upgrades, but you’ve seen a better future. Human and machine in one.”
That’s a great selling point — who wouldn’t want to reinvent themselves like the overzealous creature in Mass Effect? – but how exactly does choosing to be this new metal man hybrid affect gameplay? Does it make playing Starfield more like Cyberpunk 2077? Maybe.
You (probably) won’t be using a mantis blade or anything, but if that’s the character background you choose for your space Bethesda adventurer, you’ll have some pretty neat upgrades from the get-go.
The course will provide you with three entry-level skills:
- drug – Health kit healing increased by 10%.
- robot technology – You deal 10% more damage to robots and turrets.
- laser – Laser weapon damage increased by 10%.
In fact, these upgrades seem to have the same Fallout perks, just with a different, more space-like flavor. Chances are, as you go further up the skill tree of your chosen background, you’ll get access to more exciting and weird stuff (extendable arm blades, anyone?) But, as far as I’m concerned, I’d go for the For more narrative reasons, play “Cybernetics”.
Depending on which background you choose, you can unlock unique dialogue options in missions, and you have the opportunity to walk down paths locked by other classes. I hope “cyberneticians” get involved in some human/machine mind-body fusion work that would otherwise be locked up by “chefs” et al.
The wording of the class descriptions also gives us insight into how mods work in this universe; “neural amplifier? Good for parlor tricks” seems to imply that brain implants could give you mild “psychic” or “teleportation” abilities (Mass Effect ). In fact, only Colonial War veterans were also given these implants, suggesting that the technology is new. Or, at least, still experimental.
At the cutting edge of this good (and possibly bad) technology? That’s the risk/reward I’ve come to expect from an RPG.
However, I still have some questions about these mods: are they visible on characters? Do they affect the user interface? Will they get a simple 10% upgrade buff throughout the skill tree, or will they get something more… experimental?
We’ll have to wait until the Xbox Series X/S and PC versions of Starfield launch on September 1st. You can read all about Starfield here.
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