Well, this is Confusing!

June 2024

When is an unintended consequence a direct result of an intended consequence that doesn’t go to plan? When you’re collecting snow globes in Starfield.

I shall endeavour to unravel that riddle in this post, but for some context, this week I’ve been feeling anxious. This (and I’m about to share some rather personal information), is largely down to being perimenopausal. I have nothing to feel anxious about…well, other than the polycrises that is climate change, Brexit, the after-effects of the pandemic, the upcoming election, the war in Ukraine, the cost-of-living crisis, and the fact that they’ve stopped making dark chocolate Bounties. 

To lessen this anxiety, I made the intentional decision to chill out and do some leisurely XP trawling / grinding in Starfield. I wanted to spend a couple of hours just bimbling around some planets, scanning for minerals, plant and animal life, and stabbing a few errant Space Pirates 50 levels lower than me for fun and loot.

After a few minutes, I felt bored and (sort of) agitated. I'd scanned rocks, harvested plants, and stabbed the aforementioned baddies, but this wasn’t producing the result I wanted. I still felt anxious, highly-strung, and guilty /angry with myself for feeling this way, as I had no tangible reason for feeling so twitchy. 

For no reason other than the thought just randomly popped into my head, I decided to start looking for snow globes. Starfield features a 'collect 'em all' series of side quest that involve visiting a number of landmarks on Earth and collecting snow globes from them. To do this, the player must fly to another intergalactic location, locate and retrieve / steal / buy a specific book, and the location of its related Earth-based landmark is added to the player’s map.

Just to confuse things, to find a snow globe that was hidden on Mars rather than on Earth, I first needed to visit Earth to find a book hidden at the now-derelict NASA Launch Tower. So off I duly flew, landing at the Launch Tower and armed with the knowledge that the book I need to find was in the NASA museum, hidden somewhere in the tower.

I’d been to the Launch Tower before, and while didn’t recall there being a museum, I assumed finding it would be easy enough. It was not. I spent over an hour and a half exploring the tower. I found a load of rooms and corridors, but after looking at floor plans on the internet and CONVINCED I had looked everywhere, I gave up, frustrated by my lack of progress (and angry at my stupidity). The Xbox was switched off in a huff and I retired for the night.

A minute or two later I noticed that my anxiety had gone. I had been so deeply focused in finding the book I needed, and so comically frustrated by my inability to find it, that all my cerebral energy had gone into the game, leaving no mental bandwidth to stew over my anxiety. Furthermore, once my game-based frustration wore off, I realised I had reached my intended state: relaxed and not anxious. An intended consequence that hadn’t worked for me became a positive unintended consequence with the same outcome as I had assumed the intended consequence would have.  

EDIT: I first visited the NASA Launch Tower several months ago, to complete an earlier quest. By completing this quest without exploring the whole tower, I had pressed a button and destroyed the museum in the process, so it was impossible to find on this trip as it no longer existed. Which means I can't get the snowglobe now, or complete the collection. AAAAAARGH!!!!!