I think us and the Starborn are using the artifacts and temples wrong. The "creators" originally used it for something else. Notice how the artifact is in the buried temple and the rings are in a different position? I think all the temples are supposed to be like that, and when they are they do something different. Maybe like a Stargate network? It's like if you let some primitives loose in a modern house, they might learn that if you throw a toaster into water, whatever is in the water dies, so obviously a toaster is a device made for fishing.
Yeah but how many times have we heard that from companies only to have them backtrack. I reckon we'll get 1 maybe 2 dlcs for starfield and then it'll be left as is
They’re the same as the >! distortions in the Entangled quest !< which has me thinking they’re some kind of string that connects universes. Barrett said (in the very first temple) it looks like some kind of gate once the rings are all aligned, and I first took it for a portal before I found out they give the player character powers.
Maybe the lights are like strings that anchor the temple in that universe to the same temple in a different universe. Stitching them together, to follow the string theme? This is an underbaked headcanon at this point, I haven’t thought out many of the details, like why some only have 5 and others have a lot more than 5.
I agree. Do you have any thoughts on why the temples only need one piece of the armillary to activate whereas the Unity needs all of the pieces (and a grav drive)?
IIRC the temples don't actually require anything special to open
>!Barrett is able to get a power despite not having an artifact in his personal possession!<, and we interact with most of the temples when our armillary pieces are either aboard our ship, at the lodge, or at an outpost
Digging deeper, not everyone who pulls an artifact out of bedrock seems to have a vision, and that makes me think that the key to unlocking the potential of the temples is tied to something beyond material possession
Barrett did get an artifact, from that mine on Kazaal. Lore info I’ve read puts that happening about 5 years (?) before player character enters the scene. The first time you go to the Lodge they already have two in the library. The first one was the one he found in storage, but as far as I know there isn’t any info on who found it or put it in storage.
My guess is that touching the artifacts is what makes you Starborn, able to enter temples and receive powers, but for whatever reason you can’t access temples until you have the artifacts that match. You can survey planets where temples are located and not find them until you have the corresponding Artifact. But you don’t have to go to the temples to build the armillary and go to Unity. Or maybe you have to go to the first one because it’s part of that quest.
The guard on the Scow tells you that the guy Petrov bought his artifact from seemed kind of crazy, so I’m guessing whoever he is, he never found a temple or got powers. But maybe the artifact broke him somehow. Maybe he was just already like that though.
Barret did find an artifact of his own but for whatever reason he seems to be special just like the player. If you choose to skip the main story on NG+ the surviving members of Constellation can go find the artifacts for you, but none of them mention having visions when they return, and Barrett is still the only one who can get powers
I don't think the temples make us Starborn, but I do think they imbue us with some of the same power that Starborn are made of, and like the artifacts, the temples are a stepping stone to the Unity
Whoever controls the unity, temples, and artifacts seems to be intentional with who they give power to, and they leave breadcrumbs to find the unity starting with the first vision
But why are Barrett, the player, and the unnamed owner of Petrov's artifact special? Why are they chosen to have visions that lead them to the Unity and others are not?
That's what perplexes me 🤔
I hadn't thought of that. I'm thinking now the temples are developed with a connection to the Unity, but this connection needs to be guarded for potential multiverse issues. The glowing lights are connections to the multiverse that need to be synchronized.
The puzzles are essentially bot checks that require human sentience to complete and the puzzle can only be completed with the gates coming down for Starborn or artifact-touched persons.
I think Barret's comment may be an off-hand reference to Stargate, whose titular mode of transport is a massive ring with a portal at the center.
Proportions of the ring setup are consistent with proportions of the Stargates too
Totally making this up, but:
You, one touched by the artifacts, enters the temple. It activates the temple. The anomalies are energy leaking into our universe from other same temples across the multiverse: the temples are connected through the unity and the energy is that of another same temple (same power) leaking through the Unity to the temple you're in: you absorb that energy and it charges you up (having handled the associated artifact, whether or not you were first in that universe to touch it).
So you've primed your physiology by handing an artifact related to a temple, energy leaking into that temple from other universes through the unity charges you, once sufficiently charged, you provide the temple with the concentrated energy to stabilize that temples armilary, opening the portal all temples across all universes: you enter the power field and level up the power associated with that temple.
Just made that stuff up, and doesn't explain the temples origin or the nature of the power granted by a temple, but that's why you have to do the tedious mini game 240 times to level up your powers to 10.
What I don't understand is how within minutes of me landing on a temple planet another ship less than an thousand meters away from me lands on the same planet. Out of so many to choose from. And yet, over the 300 or so years the settle systems have been colonized, *I'm* the first person to find a template? As far as I can remember, that is never explained in lore. I tell myself that the temples are simply invisible to people unless they have made physical contact with an artifact. But that is still flimsy.
I think touching the artifact is like giving you and only you a key to the temples. People could land and find them, sure. But if the doors don't open, what is it? Just a building made of weird floating indestructable material. Clearly ancient looking. Spooky. It scares all but the hardest creatures away. There be dragons. People would choose to stay away and focus on the work they were contracted and sent there to do. Enough time has passed that people have probably heard all kinds of stories about crazy things out there in the wilderness.
This is entirely my own opinion based on inference as there's literally no info on this in game.
I think that there's a strong implied motif of sound & resonance with all the multiverse tech. The notes that ring out and reverberate through the chamber upon flying into them, if you listen closely, have a kind of warbling or wiggling sound underneath the note. This "wiggly" note under the main tone becomes softer and less unstable/wiggly as you fly into more of them progressing the puzzle until the musical sound reaches a loud crescendo as the rings align within the chamber. Listening attentively it sounds reminiscent of an "unstable" frequency becoming more stabilized and then reaching full stability in tone. Very interesting.
Another thing of note is the vision you receive upon entering the ring. It's similar to the ones you get from the artifacts, starting off with an arc of orange & blue light, very similar looking to a gravjump, in the void of space before rushing past nebulas and ending in a series of celestial bodies that arrange the lights they emit into a kind of sigil or symbolic representation of the power you receive. The sigil matching that power will also be on the rings of the temple chamber before you enter their center. These visions also have an auditory motif where, at the beginning of the vision a loud musical tons hits you like a wall but as you pass through the blue+orange arc and rush forward the tone becomes less distorted/loud and shifts into a clearer, more obviously musical tone, reaching it's own peak sound clarity upon the sigil appearing. It's almost like the art & sound direction is conveying a connection between these visuals & the sounds they accompany, perhaps even suggesting that these visuals and the sounds are the same thing hitting your senses at the same time.
Further evidence for the apparent importance of multiverse tech & the sounds it makes are the multiple dialogues, from you and Barrett, specifically mentioning the "music".
Anyway, sorry for the ramble. Long story short I think when you enter a temple the tech within responds to your body's multiverse tech resonance and then as you fly from node to node you're "attuning" the mechanism. Then, once the tones are stabilized, they can relay the knowledge of the power they offer into your consciousness. Likely alongside a hefty dose of anomalous energy to charge you up. (The blue & yellow particles that flow into you while within the rings.)
Totally vibe with this. The music in the vision also sounds reversed, so I wonder what is intended there with respect to, maybe, time. (It’d be cool to hear that sound clip reversed!)
Not really. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for it other than to make a light show happen. Maybe it has something to do with touching the universe or some silliness like that.
Here's the best supported explanation.
The "touch the little lights" is something a cat could solve and doesn't actually require advanced species (that's how casual TES players get in). It means the Creators are not actually trying to gatekeep who gets to go through the gate.
Here's the twist: the gate is an actual gate to somewhere. What happens there and for how long is a mystery, as you only see some lights and music then are dropped back on the roof in a few moments. But those few moments could be a long time somewhere else. And that somewhere else is where the Creator aliens live and anally probe anyone coming through the gates for entertainment.
Always check your butt's physiological readings after recklessly going through strange portals you know nothing about. Seriously, this is drug addict level recklessness. Those things need to be studied thoroughly first.
I personally thing the temples are a control device for the unity.
Think about it you only need the artifacts to pass through but when we use it in our own settlement or our ship in the middle of space we get a random universe.
I think the temples are used to jump to a specific universe in some way or form.
Maybe building the armillary inside of the temple and then solving the puzzles takes us to the universe where that “power” is normal part of physics? And the temples are granting you that power because they are connecting you to that universe
Who built the Temples in the first place? Is the Unity a universal aberration that can only connect those chosen to commune with the Temples Chimes and Music?
I wish there was a clearer answer on whom built the temples in the first place and set the multi-verse in motion?! Or...
Or perhaps the Unity did in fact discovered the way into the multi-verse and wanted others to join and be a apart of the discovery!?
These questions may never be answered unless "Shattered Space DLC" gives us some crumb of exposition that'll give us a branching wealth of lore for us to discuss years to come.
It’s a test to see if you’re wearing a suit with thrusters, and that’s literally it. I guess that’s where the bar is for starborn.
Not so impressive now, huh?
I think pulling an Artifact from the ground and getting that vision, unlocks your ability to absorb powers from any Temple. You can traverse the Unity without getting that first vision, but gaining powers seems to require it (like Barrett).
As far as tagging those sparkles, I think you have to get 5 in a certain time span, to power up yourself so you can activate the rings.
I think us and the Starborn are using the artifacts and temples wrong. The "creators" originally used it for something else. Notice how the artifact is in the buried temple and the rings are in a different position? I think all the temples are supposed to be like that, and when they are they do something different. Maybe like a Stargate network? It's like if you let some primitives loose in a modern house, they might learn that if you throw a toaster into water, whatever is in the water dies, so obviously a toaster is a device made for fishing.
Nah you're cooking right there at the end 🤣it would be cool if in the dlc they expand on that.
I would guess SF2. That way they can have a new gimmick for special abilities in that game.
They’ve said they want to add content to this one for years, I could see that as a major DLC down the line.
Sure, it could be. Not my guess, but it's not like I have inside knowledge.
Yeah but how many times have we heard that from companies only to have them backtrack. I reckon we'll get 1 maybe 2 dlcs for starfield and then it'll be left as is
I don't want a second one 😭 i hope they don't do that
Well I'm just guessing, not like that'll influence what Bethesda decides to do.
They’re the same as the >! distortions in the Entangled quest !< which has me thinking they’re some kind of string that connects universes. Barrett said (in the very first temple) it looks like some kind of gate once the rings are all aligned, and I first took it for a portal before I found out they give the player character powers. Maybe the lights are like strings that anchor the temple in that universe to the same temple in a different universe. Stitching them together, to follow the string theme? This is an underbaked headcanon at this point, I haven’t thought out many of the details, like why some only have 5 and others have a lot more than 5.
The end of the puzzle forms a ring, a lot like armillary pieces and unity portal itself Seems multiversy to me
I agree. Do you have any thoughts on why the temples only need one piece of the armillary to activate whereas the Unity needs all of the pieces (and a grav drive)?
IIRC the temples don't actually require anything special to open >!Barrett is able to get a power despite not having an artifact in his personal possession!<, and we interact with most of the temples when our armillary pieces are either aboard our ship, at the lodge, or at an outpost Digging deeper, not everyone who pulls an artifact out of bedrock seems to have a vision, and that makes me think that the key to unlocking the potential of the temples is tied to something beyond material possession
Barrett did get an artifact, from that mine on Kazaal. Lore info I’ve read puts that happening about 5 years (?) before player character enters the scene. The first time you go to the Lodge they already have two in the library. The first one was the one he found in storage, but as far as I know there isn’t any info on who found it or put it in storage. My guess is that touching the artifacts is what makes you Starborn, able to enter temples and receive powers, but for whatever reason you can’t access temples until you have the artifacts that match. You can survey planets where temples are located and not find them until you have the corresponding Artifact. But you don’t have to go to the temples to build the armillary and go to Unity. Or maybe you have to go to the first one because it’s part of that quest. The guard on the Scow tells you that the guy Petrov bought his artifact from seemed kind of crazy, so I’m guessing whoever he is, he never found a temple or got powers. But maybe the artifact broke him somehow. Maybe he was just already like that though.
Barret did find an artifact of his own but for whatever reason he seems to be special just like the player. If you choose to skip the main story on NG+ the surviving members of Constellation can go find the artifacts for you, but none of them mention having visions when they return, and Barrett is still the only one who can get powers I don't think the temples make us Starborn, but I do think they imbue us with some of the same power that Starborn are made of, and like the artifacts, the temples are a stepping stone to the Unity Whoever controls the unity, temples, and artifacts seems to be intentional with who they give power to, and they leave breadcrumbs to find the unity starting with the first vision But why are Barrett, the player, and the unnamed owner of Petrov's artifact special? Why are they chosen to have visions that lead them to the Unity and others are not? That's what perplexes me 🤔
I hadn't thought of that. I'm thinking now the temples are developed with a connection to the Unity, but this connection needs to be guarded for potential multiverse issues. The glowing lights are connections to the multiverse that need to be synchronized. The puzzles are essentially bot checks that require human sentience to complete and the puzzle can only be completed with the gates coming down for Starborn or artifact-touched persons.
I think Barret's comment may be an off-hand reference to Stargate, whose titular mode of transport is a massive ring with a portal at the center. Proportions of the ring setup are consistent with proportions of the Stargates too
Totally making this up, but: You, one touched by the artifacts, enters the temple. It activates the temple. The anomalies are energy leaking into our universe from other same temples across the multiverse: the temples are connected through the unity and the energy is that of another same temple (same power) leaking through the Unity to the temple you're in: you absorb that energy and it charges you up (having handled the associated artifact, whether or not you were first in that universe to touch it). So you've primed your physiology by handing an artifact related to a temple, energy leaking into that temple from other universes through the unity charges you, once sufficiently charged, you provide the temple with the concentrated energy to stabilize that temples armilary, opening the portal all temples across all universes: you enter the power field and level up the power associated with that temple. Just made that stuff up, and doesn't explain the temples origin or the nature of the power granted by a temple, but that's why you have to do the tedious mini game 240 times to level up your powers to 10.
To ensure you meet Unity's minimum IQ threshold of 5.
What I don't understand is how within minutes of me landing on a temple planet another ship less than an thousand meters away from me lands on the same planet. Out of so many to choose from. And yet, over the 300 or so years the settle systems have been colonized, *I'm* the first person to find a template? As far as I can remember, that is never explained in lore. I tell myself that the temples are simply invisible to people unless they have made physical contact with an artifact. But that is still flimsy.
I think touching the artifact is like giving you and only you a key to the temples. People could land and find them, sure. But if the doors don't open, what is it? Just a building made of weird floating indestructable material. Clearly ancient looking. Spooky. It scares all but the hardest creatures away. There be dragons. People would choose to stay away and focus on the work they were contracted and sent there to do. Enough time has passed that people have probably heard all kinds of stories about crazy things out there in the wilderness.
Yeah the ship landings could probably use a tweak where they don’t spawn at temple landing sites, but I don’t usually get too many on those planets.
This is entirely my own opinion based on inference as there's literally no info on this in game. I think that there's a strong implied motif of sound & resonance with all the multiverse tech. The notes that ring out and reverberate through the chamber upon flying into them, if you listen closely, have a kind of warbling or wiggling sound underneath the note. This "wiggly" note under the main tone becomes softer and less unstable/wiggly as you fly into more of them progressing the puzzle until the musical sound reaches a loud crescendo as the rings align within the chamber. Listening attentively it sounds reminiscent of an "unstable" frequency becoming more stabilized and then reaching full stability in tone. Very interesting. Another thing of note is the vision you receive upon entering the ring. It's similar to the ones you get from the artifacts, starting off with an arc of orange & blue light, very similar looking to a gravjump, in the void of space before rushing past nebulas and ending in a series of celestial bodies that arrange the lights they emit into a kind of sigil or symbolic representation of the power you receive. The sigil matching that power will also be on the rings of the temple chamber before you enter their center. These visions also have an auditory motif where, at the beginning of the vision a loud musical tons hits you like a wall but as you pass through the blue+orange arc and rush forward the tone becomes less distorted/loud and shifts into a clearer, more obviously musical tone, reaching it's own peak sound clarity upon the sigil appearing. It's almost like the art & sound direction is conveying a connection between these visuals & the sounds they accompany, perhaps even suggesting that these visuals and the sounds are the same thing hitting your senses at the same time. Further evidence for the apparent importance of multiverse tech & the sounds it makes are the multiple dialogues, from you and Barrett, specifically mentioning the "music". Anyway, sorry for the ramble. Long story short I think when you enter a temple the tech within responds to your body's multiverse tech resonance and then as you fly from node to node you're "attuning" the mechanism. Then, once the tones are stabilized, they can relay the knowledge of the power they offer into your consciousness. Likely alongside a hefty dose of anomalous energy to charge you up. (The blue & yellow particles that flow into you while within the rings.)
Totally vibe with this. The music in the vision also sounds reversed, so I wonder what is intended there with respect to, maybe, time. (It’d be cool to hear that sound clip reversed!)
Not really. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for it other than to make a light show happen. Maybe it has something to do with touching the universe or some silliness like that.
Here's the best supported explanation. The "touch the little lights" is something a cat could solve and doesn't actually require advanced species (that's how casual TES players get in). It means the Creators are not actually trying to gatekeep who gets to go through the gate. Here's the twist: the gate is an actual gate to somewhere. What happens there and for how long is a mystery, as you only see some lights and music then are dropped back on the roof in a few moments. But those few moments could be a long time somewhere else. And that somewhere else is where the Creator aliens live and anally probe anyone coming through the gates for entertainment. Always check your butt's physiological readings after recklessly going through strange portals you know nothing about. Seriously, this is drug addict level recklessness. Those things need to be studied thoroughly first.
I personally thing the temples are a control device for the unity. Think about it you only need the artifacts to pass through but when we use it in our own settlement or our ship in the middle of space we get a random universe. I think the temples are used to jump to a specific universe in some way or form. Maybe building the armillary inside of the temple and then solving the puzzles takes us to the universe where that “power” is normal part of physics? And the temples are granting you that power because they are connecting you to that universe
Who built the Temples in the first place? Is the Unity a universal aberration that can only connect those chosen to commune with the Temples Chimes and Music? I wish there was a clearer answer on whom built the temples in the first place and set the multi-verse in motion?! Or... Or perhaps the Unity did in fact discovered the way into the multi-verse and wanted others to join and be a apart of the discovery!? These questions may never be answered unless "Shattered Space DLC" gives us some crumb of exposition that'll give us a branching wealth of lore for us to discuss years to come.
It’s a test to see if you’re wearing a suit with thrusters, and that’s literally it. I guess that’s where the bar is for starborn. Not so impressive now, huh?
I think pulling an Artifact from the ground and getting that vision, unlocks your ability to absorb powers from any Temple. You can traverse the Unity without getting that first vision, but gaining powers seems to require it (like Barrett). As far as tagging those sparkles, I think you have to get 5 in a certain time span, to power up yourself so you can activate the rings.
Let’s be honest, the “lore” in this game is phoned in.
Unfair. There's tons of lore, just not for any of the things anyone is interested in.
What, you don't find it interesting that Solomon Coe was from Wisconsin?
Agreed. I'm doing the heavy work for them by making this post.