There is quite a lot to explore in Atlantis. Some of the buildings I already have access to go inside, like the Lodge, to certain public areas of say the bank. In other areas of the city, I get a feeling I need to join a faction or find someone to be my way inside the building further.
While I’ve shown a little bit of the Lodge before I'd leave there was quite a lot more to explore. There is an entire second floor that is impressively large to the point I was starting to wonder if I'd get lost up there. Thankfully a lot of rooms connect and once you've been through it once it’s not that bad.
One game mechanic I have not even gone near yet mostly because I don’t have any skills in it is crafting. One of the rooms appears to be dedicated to crafting of some sort. I’ve seen quite a few different kinds of crafting machines around the game so far. It seems they limit you to crafting certain items depending on the device itself. I’m hoping I find somewhere that has everything in a single location.
This one in particular seems to be for crafting medical one-time-use objects. Most of the items required to craft I've yet to loot. It appears crafting is somewhat simple in this game which seeing how everything else is not shocking.
One room that caught my attention right away while being given a tour of the place was this bar. I was told I could have whatever I wanted “within reason.” It seems others have already beaten me to empty the place of all the good stuff. I find it rather funny there is a fire extinguisher on standby next to the bar itself.
Most of the upstairs space in the Lodge is filled with bedrooms. I was not expecting to be given my own. While I can’t customize it to my own needs. You can at least sleep in the bed if you need some time to pass in the game.
Once outside the lodge itself a couple of the buildings appear to be apartment buildings. Anyone I talk with keeps just telling me they don’t make the appointment. There also appears at least for now no one I can do so with. I do, however, get the strange feeling there will be further options I'll discover at some point for a bigger place to stay than the room I have at the Lodge.
There are also recruiting offices for the faction that controls this area. This seems to be quite a common theme anytime I land in any large city. Since I don’t quite understand the benefits and negatives of joining one of these factions, I've decided to remain neutral for the time being the best I can.
It’s also been interesting seeing how the time of day and other effects have on the city. There are quite a lot of NPCs out and about in New Atlantis. Most of them, however, appear to be rather worthless. Anything of interest tends to have its building for.
So far, the nighttime when the city is almost empty is my favorite time. There is this park greenspace in between the Lodge and the rest of the city. It is quite breathtaking in the late-night hours with the lights and dark sky overhead.
The city even has little information booths you can find around it to discover which of the three main districts a shop or business is in. I found these quite helpful when trying to learn my way around the place. I can only hope other cities have a similar thing.
While it’s fun to explore the outside at night I've found the different stores to be quite interesting. I was hoping the shops in this game would allow you to offload anything to them. While there are some general shops. Most of them only accept items that are related to what they are selling. The 5k base credits they all hold before they restock are a bit disappointing.
One thing I was not expecting is just how much detail the different building has. The doctor's office for instance has quite a lot of different equipment. The place also felt as cold as the doctor looked.
This place also works as well so if I need to cure something or need healing this place is always an option. I hate to think what they charge here but if I don’t have any other options there will always be here. Assuming I make it back to this planet alive to seek treatment in the first place.
There are also some food, drink, and coffee places as well in the city. I don’t see the point in spending money on very short-term buff items that give a small amount of health if that. I do, however, like the factor having a place like CJ’s has on the overall city itself.
One of the places I was quite excited to find was Centaurian Arsenal. At this point, I had a massive inventory full of weapons I wanted to offload. I also was getting quite low on ammo. I ended up selling a lot of stuff and buying up any ammo I could in this shop.
While there are many things and ideas I like about possible futures for humanity. One of them I'm not into that seems to be quite the repeating theme is food cubes of some sort. In this case, they are chunks which sound even worse than cubes. One can only assume this stuff was made in a lab.
Needless to say, I skipped over this place without a second thought. None of it looked appetizing. I don’t even want to know what the “meat” products they are selling here are made out of.
What I do know for certain is never to borrow money from Gal Bank! I walked on in there and the guy working at the counter offered me a job to collect debt. At first, he did not want me to hurt a single hair on someone's head. After some debts were collected it felt more like I was a bounty hunter and who knows if all those debts were even collected. These people were not as ethical as they were portrayed at the start when I first agreed to take on some extra work if I happened to be in the same solar system as the deadbeat who owed them money.
One cannot forget about the Starport in the city itself. Right next to the blue icon for the Ship Service Tech which sells ships is a terminal where you can sell almost any item you have. This will come in quite handy for quickly offloading goods. It’s a shame it also only has 5k credits on restocks.
From the Starport you can also just go down the stairs to the train and get taken to many different areas of the city. Once you have been to a location you can just fast travel to it in the future. Making the entire transportation network in this city is a bit pointless. I however prefer to take it for fun instead of using fast travel.
Final Thoughts
I do love it when a game has a proper city to explore. While there were many other areas of interest these just ended up being some of the first ones I checked in on. I was hoping I could go further into more of the buildings.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Starfield.
Disclosure: Starfield received for free through AMD rewards from the graphics card I purchased.