Some of Starfield’s most boring-sounding quests are actually the most interesting ones in the entire game. Bethesda’s new action RPG set in space has a plethora of main missions and side quests that can be taken on while exploring the galaxies, and while some are immediately recognized as important, such as the main Constellation storyline, others may seem quite underwhelming at first. Even if players sign up to be part of the UC Vanguard in Starfield, the story starts with them being recruited and sent on a simple comms mission. Things change drastically upon arriving at the destination, but this is just an example of how misleading some quests are.
This article contains massive spoilers for Starfield’s Ryujin Industries side quests.
By misleading players, Starfield can deceitfully build up strong narratives, working on the premise of subversion of expectations. While the UC Vanguard questline may be the prime example of this, there is still another set of side quests in Starfield that does it in an even better fashion: Ryujin Industries. This company is one of the several megacorporations that rule the capitalistic universe of Bethesda’s RPG, and players may actually become involved with it, its operations, and its employees in a very unexpected way. While the Ryujin questline does seem boring from an initial standpoint, it actually turns into one of the best stories available in Starfield.
Ryujin Industries Questline In Starfield Sees You Become A Coffee Grabber
This mission starts off when players apply for the job of executive assistant at the company. In essence, they will be running errands all around, including picking up coffee for the staff. In fact, this is their first assignment after they have joined Ryujin Industries in Starfield. There is a great surprise lying in wait, however. At the local coffee shop, a disgruntled ex-employee called Tomo confronts the player, saying that he is going to kill them because they are unworthy of his old job. Players can persuade him to leave or kill him on the spot. Regardless of the outcome, this sets in motion a change at Ryujin Industries.
Ryujin Industries Quests In Starfield Are Actually About Corporate Espionage
Upon returning, the player’s mentor and recruiter in Ryujin Industries, Imogene Salzo, will comment on how the Tomo situation was dealt with. Regardless if he was killed or if he was convinced by the player’s honeyed words, Imogene will be impressed by their skills and promote them to junior operative. This means that they will no longer grab coffee for others, but instead be something of a corporate mercenary in Starfield, sent on special assignments that need a bit more discretion. Players will have to interfere with other companies’ plans, steal data, sabotage presentations, sway executives and investors away from Ryujin’s competitors, and, occasionally, rough some people up.
This is where players may notice that the Ryujin Industries side quests in Starfield take a drastic shift away from boring and trivial tasks like grabbing coffee and descend into a deeper level of corporate espionage. Imogene sends players on several assignments that benefit Ryujin in Starfield. The standard rule of procedure is to be discrete while working and not get caught – and if caught, not get traced back to Ryujin. Some of these assignments include stealing a piece of data from a competitor by hacking into a computer. Others are more troublesome and need the player to complete a side objective to get access to more information.
Players will even be sent on as an infiltrated agent who needs to convince some executives to drop a potential deal with a competing company. This mission is particularly interesting because if players dress up in the way they are supposed to and use the compelling arguments from their briefing correctly, they can have a great level of success that even grants them extra Credits in Starfield. The entire Ryujin Industries questline starts off as something pretty uninteresting but quickly becomes the absolute best opportunity for players to train their stealth, persuasion, and hacking skills, with an occasional dose of combat here and there.
Ryujin Industries Quests In Starfield Have Betrayals & Lies
At a certain point in the Ryujin Industries questline, players will discover that there is a potential mole leaking information from within the company, and nobody is immune to suspicion. All the main members of Ryujin need to be investigated and players are sent on a perilous and exciting mission in which they need to infiltrate the corporation’s main tower in Neon, undetected. There, they will need to venture around through several vent systems until they reach the specified office, install a hacking device, and successfully extract. This may just be the stealthiest mission in all of Starfield, and one of the best ones so far, too.
After they have successfully left, they will meet with hacker in control of the recently installed device, and they will process the data that was obtained. They will then reveal that a key character in the Ryujin Industries quests has some damning evidence against them, indicating that they may have betrayed the company. Players will need to find the character after exploring an area they are most likely not welcome in and finally confront them – only to find out that the character has an explanation that may involve yet another key character in the Ryujin questline in Starfield. If the storyline was not already entertaining, it becomes even denser.
The Ryujin Industries side quests take a step further, now into a tale of internal intrigue, betrayal, and lies. This makes the secondary storyline even more interesting and sets it farther away from what it seemed to be when the player was first recruited to grab coffee for top executives in the company. The rest of these side quests in Starfield are steeped in this tone for a fantastic conclusion later on.
Starfield’s Ryujin Questline Is The Equivalent Of Skyrim’s Thieves’ Guild
In some sense, the Ryujin Industries quests in Starfield are the equivalent of the Thieves’ Guild missions in Skyrim, another of Bethesda’s popular RPGs. The questline in the 2011 game also starts off in a fairly dull manner, but quickly transforms into one of the best ones in the game. Curiously enough, both Skyrim’s Thieves’ Guild and Starfield’s Ryujin Industries are focused on stealth, stealing, and a lot of intrigue.
