I was pretty late to playing Skyrim’s Creation Club content. Honestly, I never really gave it a shot when it was released. It wasn’t until years later when the Anniversary Edition – containing all of Bethesda’s official “Creations” bundled in a single package – became available that I decided to go for it. Maybe I had been effectively desensitised to microtransactions by then.
While the work contained in Skyrim’s Creation Club is generally favourable, the biggest flaw is its delivery method. Content is presented in a jarring manner, to the extent that it’s painfully obvious when you’re playing a Creation, and not something that shipped with the game or its three core DLC. There’s hardly any voice acting, everything is communicated to you in the form of written notes, and there is little to no variation in the majority of quest design. The new weapons, spells, and armour are often immersive and memorable additions to your character, but the narrative separation between Skyrim and its Creation Club is prominent.
This isn’t a dedicated critique of Skyrim’s Creation Club, but it’s a comparison that came to mind while I was playing through “The Vulture”, Starfield’s first paid Trackers Alliance quest. There’s a lot more polish and complexity to this new Creation than anything I’ve seen in Skyrim, but does one quest ever justify a standalone purchase?
To begin tracking down the Vulture, you’ll need to be a member of the Trackers Alliance and accept the associated bounty at their headquarters. Once initiated, a recording plays aloud, informing us that the Vulture is wanted by the Freestar Collective for high treason.
The Vulture is described as a veteran of the Colony War, a brutal conflict waged from 2308 to 2311 between the Freestar Collective and the United Colonies, the game’s two primary governments.
The Vulture hasn’t been mentioned before, but he seems to carry a similar status to Paxton Hull, leader of The First, a renegade mercenary group consisting of Colony War veterans we take down in the Freestar Collective questline. Like Paxton Hull, the Vulture has a dedicated crew, rather than employing a generic group of Spacers or Ecliptic. Unlike Paxton Hull, the Freestar have decided to employ the Trackers Alliance rather than call upon their own Freestar Rangers. It’s not clear to me why this is the case, aside from the obvious fact that it’s cool to hunt down another space cowboy, and it fits into the Trackers Alliance per-mission model nicely.
The recording concludes by telling us the last known coordinates of the Freestar agent tracking the Vulture: an abandoned military outpost within the Narion system.
We arrive at the facility which sits within a large dip in a series of valleys on the otherwise barren planet. Where the last Trackers Alliance mission “The Starjacker” did its best to conceal its secrets, you can almost smell a trap waiting in this eerily vacant outpost.
Approaching the agent will initiate a brief conversation before he’s struck dead from a distant sniper shot. You guessed it, we’ve been ambushed.
Overall, it’s a fast-paced and hectic fight. Combat is an aspect of the game I feel Starfield does an incredible job with. I love that during the ambush, the occasional shot from the Vulture rains down from the distant cliff side, adding an extra element to the encounter that keeps you out of the open. It’s one of the few times I felt incentivized to take into account the environment and actually use cover, which is fantastic.
When the last of his followers is killed, the Vulture stops firing, and we take off after him over the hilltop.
As you hike up the mountainside and find the odd group of his goons waiting for you behind a wall of debris, it incites a feeling of wariness. I felt the need to check every corner and proceed with caution. This is another great example of how this quest takes advantage of setting and incorporates that into the gameplay.
After traversing the rough landscape, we’re led to the Vulture’s primary hideout, a cave containing a dozen more mercenaries, but to my surprise, no Vulture. At the end of the hideout, you can find a terminal that contains a record of “Paxton’s Vulture”. It turns out the Vulture is really just an operator for The First, Paxton Hull’s splinter group I mentioned earlier. I’m not sure if this allegiance was explicitly mentioned before this point in the quest, but the shock of this relation comes and goes. Personally, I would have preferred that the Vulture maintained his own group from the remnants of the Colony War. I feel it would have added to the divisive aftermath of the event, having multiple groups of standalone mercenary outfits, but there’s nothing objectively wrong with bunching these guys together.
It’s at this point in the mission that we see a surprising crossroad decision. If you have the correct Digipick skills, you can gain access to a record titled “Operation Silver Baron” on the terminal. The operation’s goal is to assassinate a Freestar executive in Hopetown, and the Vulture is the assignee.
If you took the time to read about this operation, you probably shared my reaction and hightailed it to hopetown, hoping to stop the Vulture. I don’t think we ever actually see or hear anything else about this supposed Freestar executive. We simply arrive at Hopetown, climb to one of the rooftops, have a quick showdown with the Vulture, and upon defeat, we get his armour and weapon.
Alternatively, there’s actually a different ending to the quest if you decide to go back to the Trackers Alliance and talk to KoiOS. The database-savvy robot will use what you learned from the Vulture’s hideout, and turn your attention to Paradiso where he believes the Vulture can be found. This leads to a completely different combat situation, but the result is the same. Find the Vulture, defeat the Vulture, take his stuff.
I have to give credit to the developers of this quest for including branching endings. Starfield needs more variety and choice, and I’m glad to see this executed to a degree in this quest. I think there’s also a possibility to involve the Crimson Fleet in the Vulture’s defeat, but this is something I’ll have to explore on another playthrough.
Once you’ve completed the quest, the Vulture’s Arboran Novastrike sniper rifle will absolutely become a mainstay in your loadout. It’s a particle beam weapon with massive damage output and range. I love the juxtaposition of such futuristic tech being in the hands of an old cowboy mercenary. The weapon is customisable with different modifications that alter its appearance, and it’s something I’ll continue to use into Starfield’s upcoming Shattered Space DLC.
If we are to use Skyrim’s interpretation of the Creation Club as a baseline, “The Vulture” has a far higher calibre of quality. This action-packed quest deviates from a linear quest delivery with moderate success, and rewards the player with memorable gear. The Novastrike sniper is fun to use and quickly became a consistent part of my gameplay, making it feel as if I am actively making use of those 700 Creation Credits I redeemed for this.
However, I’m not sure if other Creation Club content is necessarily a fair comparison. I still had a great time with this quest, but the price is excessive for, at most, one hour of gameplay (this also includes my time on notes for this write-up).
I think “The Vulture” is a great quest. If this was included in the free portion of the June update, we’d hear communal praise for its worthwhile rewards and coherent story. I’m not sure I would recommend this purchase to the average player, but if you’re eager for an extra dose of Freestar content, who’s to say it’s not worth it to you.