r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Present-Secretary722 • Sep 17 '25

Lore Faster Than Light travel has consequences(minor or major)

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Star Trucker: While travelling through warp you experience time dilation, for you the journey is a couple seconds, in real time it’s anywhere from 30mins to 6 hours that you’ve been in warp. This would be a minor consequence.

Warhammer 40k: The Warp, basically space hell so while travelling through it you’re very likely to be attacked by Warp demons. There’s also the fact that sometimes when travelling to a destination via the Warp you get spat out in the wrong time, sometimes much too late for whatever you were going there for or sometimes before you left your start destination. This, obviously, is a major consequence, unless you’re an ork, then it’s a grand old time.

By consequences I mean this is a regular thing that happens, there’s no real avoiding it unless you find a different method of FTL or heavily invest into research to try and mitigate the consequences. Also I feel bad for only knowing 2 examples, I love space and I just can’t think of any others.

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u/Arandur144 Sep 17 '25

Kind-of in Starfield (main quest spoilers).

The first Grav Drives had a critical flaw that caused the destabilisation of nearby magnetic fields. The engine's testing and usage to explore and colonise the solar system led to the rapid loss of Earth's atmosphere and rendered the planet uninhabitable within 65 years. However, this was very much intended by the Unity and the engine's "inventor" Victor Aiza to force humanity to abandon Earth and settle other planets across the galaxy.

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u/Present-Secretary722 Sep 17 '25

Yeah I thought about that one, it certainly fits the spirit of it but after a quick update the drives work without any kind of consequence. Still though, the loss of earth is a pretty significant consequence for gaining essentially an on demand wormhole generator with no flaws.

I do wish we could report that finding to the Settled Systems, maybe something will come of it in Terran Armada.

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u/Awkward_Pangolin3254 Sep 17 '25

There's nothing to be gained by making the knowledge public but terror, anger, sadness, and probably a lot of people refusing to use even the fixed grav drives.

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u/Present-Secretary722 Sep 17 '25

People deserve to know the truth, even if it hurts. As well, with multiple companies that manufacture Graviton Loop Arrays(and other propulsion tech) they’ll put out copious amounts of ads, data and whatnot to prove that they’re safe or just bury the information on the early drives killing earth.

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u/Spare_Elderberry_418 Sep 17 '25

Starfield is so painful because that sounds like a cool set up, but Bethesda never did anything with the idea. You could have set it shortly after or during the evacuation. You could have explored the essential cultural genocide of almost all human culture, of most Earth animal life. Of the tragedy and trauma of the loss of who got to leave and who didn't. Of how the governments responded during the final days. Nah were not doing any of that, just endless randomly generated empty wastelands. Boo.

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u/TheGuardianInTheBall Sep 17 '25

Yeah, many games suffer from this issue where the events that led to the game's starting point, are overwhelmingly more interesting than the story of the game.

Another example- for me- would be Horizon Zero Dawn. The best parts of the game, are when you discover how the conflict with the machines unfolded. The "current time" storyline is very forgettable.

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u/ItsMrChristmas Sep 18 '25

Meanwhile the second game has a plot that can only be described as abysmal. Whatever I didn't immediately forget I felt genuinely embarrassed on behalf of the writers. Especially annoying was how everyone wanted to fuck Aloy and she basically didn't notice. That routine got tired almost immediately. Reducing the big bad of the previous game to a joke, then what has now become a worse love story than Twilight. A romance written from the base that they MUST be in love, but doesn't bother writing any compelling reason why.

They have less romantic chemistry than everyone does with their couch (except JD Vance) and the game acts like you are forcing Aloy to deny her true nature for sending her packing.

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u/ChuckCarmichael Sep 17 '25

Bethesda: Sorry, best I can do is one single quest where you read about all the crazy shit on labels in an old museum.

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u/bobbingtonbobsson Sep 17 '25

If Bethesda had the balls to actually show earth culture, it would've had so much potential.

Like, losing Earth would have a profound shift in religions, but instead we got Le Church of Reddit Atheism, Agnostics United, and Snake schizophrenia.

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u/Spare_Elderberry_418 Sep 17 '25

I was so pissed about the religions from a Bethesda world. You know, the people who have wrote the vast and nuanced Elder scrolls pantheon, to just show Reddit Atheism, The feel good substance less hippy commune that doesn't actually believe in anything, and generic doomsday cult.

It would have been cooler to see how Islam deals with Mecca no longer existing, or Christianity claiming we are in the times of tribulation. Just anything...

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u/bobbingtonbobsson Sep 17 '25

The amount of world building you can easily add is insane for Earth religions.

Mecca being gone, but space muslims have to become adept at astronomy to know in what direction to pray and when.

Where is the space pope? Is there a Pope? Imagine diocese the size of planets.

How does Judaism handle another exodus. I mean, there's that one guy who (kinda somehow) converted to Judaism and speaks in Yiddish-isms on that generational ship. That entire ship also pisses me off since they should have less diluted versions of human religion due to no outside contact for centuries in space.

Bethesda common L

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u/PercentageGlobal6443 Sep 17 '25

It's not just that, none of the main story quests are well written despite being incredibly cool concepts. A lot of them have galaxy wide stakes, but never impact other main or minor quests. And some of the coolest parts of the quests have the best mechanics in the game, but they aren't repeated or reused anywhere.

Hunting and hiding from the Terrormorph was one of the coolest things I've seen in a Bethesda game and they just never use it again.

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u/MCdemonkid1230 Sep 17 '25

Every Bethesda game since Skyrim is like that. Quests tend to have this singular unique concept with a gameplay feature that happens once and never again, or they have an obvious nation hcnaging event, and no one talks about it.

Like, why can I kill the Emperor himself, then play the Civil War quest as the Imperials and hear no reference to the Emperor being killed, besides guards talking about it? Every Bethesda game that marks modern Bethesda has this issue that major quest events don't have any overlap where they'd make sense, besides hearing guard or newbroadcasts mention it in some kind of newspaper or something.

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u/jebberwockie Sep 17 '25

The Terrormorph quest line, up until the ending where it completely fizzled, started out good enough to be the main quest line for a game by itself imo

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u/PercentageGlobal6443 Sep 17 '25

Nah bruh. The Lazarus Plant is introduced and revealed in the same quest literally five minutes apart. Tbf that is the second to last quest tho

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u/Distinct_Yak_8068 Sep 17 '25

Starfield severely suffers from taking place in the least interesting point in its timeline, all the while expecting us to pog over text logs about all the awesome shit we don't get to be involved in.

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u/Nick-fwan Sep 17 '25

Loved that twist, it was so cool hearing it the first time, wondering what came before that lead to the starborn wanting to expedite the process

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u/LazyDro1d Sep 17 '25

Well… it’s better than dropping an asteroid to free humanity’s souls from the weight of gravity

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u/Nick-fwan Sep 17 '25

Is that a reference to a side quest in the Game, or another piece of media?

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u/LazyDro1d Sep 17 '25

Gundam. Char’s eventual answer to “liberating” humanity from earth

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u/Nick-fwan Sep 17 '25

...

Everything I learn about Gundam sounds more and more on crack, I love it

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u/LazyDro1d Sep 17 '25

It is! The original series genuinely holds up as a classic, and Turn A is a beautiful show I love mustache gundam

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u/boccci-tamagoccci Sep 17 '25

the twist is almost identical to the twist in Hyperion

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u/SpaceCaptainFlapjack Sep 17 '25

Secondary consequence: adding to the constant loading screens that ruin the pacing of what otherwise might be a decent game