Core Gameplay Changes & Improvements

While striving to be a Total Conversion, Star Wars Genesis also fixes, improves, and builds upon many vanilla aspects of the game. This serves as an overview of all those changes as well a deterrent for those referring to Star Wars Genesis as simply a “reskin” or “coat of paint” of Starfield with the same flaws. While that may have been true a few versions ago, it’s completely untrue now.

Note: Some of these changes are part of future confirmed update (as in they’re implemented and ready, but not in the current version). As I update this list live, I’ll add a symbol next to those and remove that symbol for when it does reach the live version.

New Unique Locations

What was Starfield’s main issue? A vast but empty galaxy. It was repetitive. Star Wars Genesis attempts to address that by adding new unique experiences across the galaxy. You can now spend countless hours on new standalone planets, exploring its unique creatures, enemies, environments, and POIs.

  • Tatooine and Mos Eisley
    • A new planet features new creatures and planet-specific POIs including gang/civil war conflict zones and Imperial/Tusken camps
    • A new functional neutral city with unique vendors, NPCs, companions, loot, and more
  • Kestro City
    • A converted planet featuring a fully functional Imperial city with unique vendors
  • Mandalore
    • A converted planet featuring unexplored ruins that grant access to rare armor and a forge
    • Provides the player a new gameplay and armor progression system, involving the use of beskar ingot contraband to craft armor upgrades
  • Tython
    • A converted planet, featuring a unique “Ancient Highlands” biome and “Old Megalith” POI that you can visit and train your force powers from a lone Jedi Temple Guard in exchange for a certain currency
  • Clone War Remnants
    • Scattered hand placed battlefields and crash sites across the galaxy from the Clone Wars, encouraging people to explore to gain access to unique armor and weapons.
  • Force Nexuses and Temples
    • Hand placed temple ruins and nexuses across the Galaxy, granting unique buffs when interacted with. Similar to the concept of standing stones in Skyrim
    • Buffs include but are not limited to; reviving the dead, disarming enemies, increased endurance, increased speed, etc.
  • Hoth
    • A converted planet, featuring 3 new unique biomes (Frozen Dunes, Glacial Tundra, and Frozen Sea)
  • Mustafar
    • A converted planet, featuring 4 new unique biomes (Molten Rock Plains, Lava Sea, Obsidian Mountain Ranges, and Scorched Wastelands
  • Saleucami 
    • A converted planet, featuring 4 new unique biomes and a settlement a player can optionally call a home (or destroy in a related quest)
Overhauled Locations
  • Coruscant
    • A converted city, featuring countless new functional shops, NPCs, companions, and more
    • Find loot hidden throughout the city
    • Enter the city through the alternate scrapyard hangar, where you can avoid getting caught with a bounty by navigating around the heighted Imperial security
  • Nar Shaddaa
    • A converted city, featuring new verticality, increased signage variety, and lights
    • The Spaceport has been converted into a floating city instead of a shipping platform, with a cyberpunk junkyard aesthetic and a skyline that stretches beyond the visible limit
  • Dantoo Town
    • A converted city, featuring a newly added functional lake and river running through the city, essentially turning it into an “Oasis”
    • The city boasts dozens of explorable house interiors without any loading screens.
    • Countless new trees, light sources, and other natural environmental assets have been added throughout the city
    • Custom weather for the city to fit the new “Oasis” environment
    • Find new standalone companions such as a Wookie, Bounty Hunter, and pet
Main Story and Faction Quests

Starfield has a severe writing problem. While I am not a professional writer like Emil Pagliarulo (lead writer of Starfield) claims he is, I am definitely more in touch with the modern gaming audience than him. Emil’s core design around writing in videogames is that you should keep it “simple and stupid” since players are essentially “going to skip through it anyway”. That flawed reasoning is why Bethesda’s storytelling has fallen short over the years compared to modern RPGs.

It’s the reason why I’ve opted to completely rewrite the stories in Starfield rather than just reskin it with a Star Wars theme. There is simply no way to fix these stories without rewriting every single conversation and voiceline in them AND editing the actual quest. Below is a synopsis of each story rewrite with the additional features mentioned.

  • Main Story: A race against time against the Yuuzhan Vong, an intergalactic species that are after ancient artifacts in order to ensure success for their impending invasion. This story has real stakes. As soon as you encounter the Vong for the first time, you’re compelled to continue until it’s over.
    • Additional bosses handplaced across the main story and temples
    • Formidable non-boss enemies with new combat abilities and scripts
    • Additional research and crafting mechanics that fit right into the story
    • Additional dialogue variety reference new gameplay features and locations
  • Rebel Questline: Work undercover for the Rebel Alliance as a mercenary to stop a Partisan threat. In this story, you will be forced to choose between what you consider to be the lesser of two evils.
    • This quest features less essential NPCs than the original quest. When infiltrating an Imperial Medical Facility, you have the choice between stealing an ID card, killing the owner of the ID card without anyone seeing, or simply killing everyone in the facility.
  • Imperial Story (WIP): Enlist in the Empire and investigate the origins of the Rakghoul virus re-emergence. This is a proper investigation story that foreshadows certain aspects of the main story.
    • This story will have a much more serious tone compared to the original story. You are working for an evil regime here, not some utopia government.
  • Shadow Collective + ISB Storyline (WIP): You are a criminal that is forced to work undercover for the ISB and join the Shadow Collective, where you will attempt to find and obtain the Darksaber. Who will ultimately end up with the darksaber and gain control of the Mandalorians is up to you. Will you betray?
    • This story will have more two different endings.
  • Lorebuilding: Beyond the above stories, many references to the timeline of this new but familiar galaxy are seen throughout the game. You are not required to read this timeline in order to understand it, but is there for those who wish. Spoiler warning of course.
Standalone Stories

Star Wars Genesis plans to feature many original Star Wars stories created by brilliant writers and mod authors. Recently, one was added to Genesis

  • Deserter Storyline: Investigate a settlement in a distant planet that may be being used by Imperial deserters. This quest features three unique endings, each with their own consequences and benefits.
Unique Bosses

The best armor in a game should feel rewarding to acquire. It should be unique and it shouldn’t be handed to you for free. In Star Wars Genesis, the best armors in the game are acquired from either killing bosses or from complex crafting.

  • Fight a banished Yuuzhan Vong warrior in the midst of the exploration portion of the main story, keeping you on your toes
  • Fight a full heavy beskar Mandalorian Bounty Hunter in a companion side quest
  • Optionally fight a renowned Bounty Hunter on Nar Shaddaa, and acquire their unique weapon
  • Fight Sith Lords on their home planet of Korriban, hidden across multiple tombs and unique locations (V9/V10)
  • Fight a Rancor in the depths of Jabba’s Palace
  • Fight a Krayt Dragon in Tatooine, and use their scales to craft the it’s unique armor.
Realistic Combat and Balancing

To avoid the poorly balanced mess of vanilla Starfield and its bullet sponge enemies, Star Wars Genesis features a custom balanced unleveled game world with an emphasis on realistic and grounded combat. While both you and the enemies die in a few shots, character customization and build variety has increased. You start off weak and poor, and can slowly elevate yourself to near demi-god status with efficient armor, weapon, and skill usage.

  • Enemies drop all the weapons and armor they’re carrying when they die
  • Armor and Perk Build matters more than levels, as you now gain only 1 health per level.
  • Armor defensive values are now custom balanced around a lore-accurate Armor Hierarchy, which can be seen here
  • Weapons are now more deadly, with their base damage, ADS, and hip-fire accuracy boosted.
  • Perks that increase ADS and hip-fire accuracy have been reworked to actually noticeably improve accuracy to near 100% at max level
  • Improved and Smarter Enemy AI with more aggressive tactics based on faction and increased accuracy
  • Improved First-Person Reticles
  • Revamped Bounty and Witness System (if all witnesses are killed, then bounty goes away)
  • Smarter and more tactical enemy AI
    • Enemies will use cover more often and swap between different covers
    • Enemies will now try to flank you
    • Enemies will attempt to suppress you
    • Enemies will try to overwhelm you
  • A complete Stealth Overhaul, reversing Bethesda’s new “anti-stealth archer” mechanics where killing a person results in everyone within 200 feet to instantly know where you are.
    • Lowered the inhumane detection cone of NPCs
    • Lowered the amount of noise made when sneaking
    • Reduced NPC detection radius while sleeping
    • Increased death reaction distance based
    • Enemies no longer see you through walls
    • Your proximity near enemies impacts how well they can hear and see you (yes the vanilla game does not have this mechanic)
    • Lighting and shadows now affect your stealth (yes the vanilla game does not have this mechanic)
Immersion and Roleplay
  • Joining a specific faction allows you to enter their premises without any aggression.
  • Attacking a faction’s enemy within the vicinity of the friendly faction will no longer grant you a bounty.
  • Reduced Crime Report radius
  • Killing EVERYONE within a vicinity of a crime wipes the bounty, as there are no witnesses left to report it
  • A backpack is no longer necessary to breathe in non-atmospheric locations
  • No Lung Damage while wearing an enclosed helmet
  • You now use weapons while using your scanner
  • Rebel ships do not spawn in orbit around Imperial Planets. Imperial ships do not spawn in orbit around Rebel planets. That means if you have an Imperial bounty for example, you are generally safe in Rebel space.
  • Capital ships set pieces are placed around the orbit of core planets
  • Shooting gatherable resources breaks them
  • Certain NPCs have harsher dialogue with the player, instead of the goody two shoes cliche that Starfield has with every single NPC.
Food and Drink System – HP Regen

Instead of keeping the cliché Bethesda food/drink gimmick where you eat 562 pieces of cheese to heal back to full HP, a new food and drink system has been added.

  • All foods give a 30 minute buff that boosts your HP regen along with the item-specific buff such as increased damage, stamina, etc
  • All drinks give a 30 minute buff that stacks separately from the food buff that also boosts your HP regen along with the item-specific buff that the drink has
Ship Combat
  • Dramatically increased ship boost and recharge rates, so that ship combat is much faster paced and deadly
  • Introduced the concept of Ship Ramming, where you can destroy or severely damage both your own ship and the enemy ship by ramming into them
  • Increased asteroid density in wild space
Loading Screens
  • Intergalactic loading screens replaced with hyperspace cutscene
  • Seamless fast travel from surface map with no loading screens (200-250 meter range)
  • Seamless fast travel from scanner with no loading screens (200-250 meter range)
  • Instant fade back animations and removal of keyboard input lock
Weapon and Armor Variety

Vanilla Starfield has many armors and weapons that are called different things but use the exact same Armor mesh/model. Star Wars Genesis aims to address that. As of V8, we have quadrupled the Armor variety present in vanilla Starfield and nearly doubled the weapon variety

  • Each individual named Armor has it’s own unique armor model/mesh
  • Certain NPC’s have their own unique standalone armor
  • Certain areas of the Galaxy have handpicked unique armors placed in it.
  • Specific NPCs and sub-factions that re-used armor now have their own unique standalone armor
  • Civilians now use Spacesuits from their own unique pool of 11 Armors, rather than the repetitive Spacer or Miner pool
  • Factions now have subcategories of factions and NPCs, each with their own unique armor pool in the dozens
  • Most unique vanilla weapons have been replaced with completely new weapons
  • Countless new unique Armors available at vendors
  • Unique capes, hoods, and other small cosmetics available to be crafted
  • Factions have their own unique lore accurate arsenal
  • Multiple blaster bolt colors (red, yellow, blue green)
Cosmetics

Spacesuit, Helmets, and Backpacks. That is all the customization that vanilla Starfield has, and it’s obviously too limiting. I have created a very detailed cosmetic and addon system that adds countless new “slots” that the player character can utilize to create their own unique look. Some of these provide unique perks and resists, while others are simply purely cosmetic. A detailed explanation on how armor resist works in Genesis can be found here.

  • All cosmetics are purchasable at the Apparel Vendor on Coruscant. Unique cosmetics from specific bosses are planned to be added.
  • Capes/Cloaks/Scarfs have their own slot
  • Hoods have their own slot
  • Waist Addons have their own slot
  • Masks have their own slot
  • Each shoulder has their own slot
  • Each ankle has their own slot
  • Each thigh has their own slot
  • Cybernetics have their own slot that won’t work on some armors
  • Invisible backpacks and helmets that keep their functionality are also available
Black Market
  • Find a secret black market weapon vendor on Coruscant with a daily rotation of illegal weaponry, giving you a reason to visit the city often. Some weapons such as the Amban Phase-Pulse Blaster are much rarer than other illegal blasters.
  • Find a secret black market armor vendor on Coruscant with a daily rotation of stolen/looted armors and helmets. This vendor’s inventory serves as a great place to put stuff that doesn’t quite fit the timeline, such as Old Republic Trooper armor.
Procedural Generation

Starfield’s points of interest and procedural generation are one of the most controversial aspects of the game. 121 total POIs in vanilla Starfield is not nearly enough to make the game not feel repetitive across thousands of planets. Star Wars Genesis addresses the POI system by both adding onto that list and revamping the procedural generation of the game

  • 5 additional factions spawn in existing POIs, each with our unique arsenal and armor (Rebel Alliance, Stormtroopers, Hutt Cartel, Pykes, Militia/Partisans)
  • 26 “Restricted Mining Sites” POIs, defended by the Empire with lootable “Potent Kyber Crystal” contraband
  • Kyber Crystals have a random chance to spawn on every planet, rewarding a skill point for every 3 collected.
  • Rare Credit Chests have been scattered at the end of POIs that can only be opened with a Credit Transfer Module
  • Each unique POI has a cooldown when encountered. This makes it impossible to see the same POI within hours of playing
  • POI density has been greatly increased on populated planets and remained the same in desolate planets.
  • 150 additional POIs have been added into the existing POI Pool
  • 100 additional Biomes have been added into the existing Biome Pool
  • All vanilla biomes have had their flora density increased
  • Bigger Trees, Rocks, and other Exotics to further increase planetary variety
Crowd Overhaul

NPC crowds in cities have nearly tripled in variety.

  • Over 20 different droid variants have been added to all crowds
  • Over 20 different alien races have been added to all crowds
  • Over 15 variations of Mercenaries have been added to all crowds
  • All civilians (non-mercenaries) have tripled outfit variety and all rainbow colored outfits have been removed
  • Countless handplaced NPCs with set schedules, animations, and patrol routes have been added to further increase the density of cities in a meaningful way
Ships and Vehicles
  • Hand-placed unique ships hidden across numerous locations
  • 5 additional vehicle/speeder variants, with boosted functionality and proper steering/controls
  • No Weapon Power or Count Limits
  • No Engine Power Limits
  • No Reactor Class Requirement
  • No Minimum Landing Gear
  • No Shield Limit
  • Buildable Crew Slots
Animations
  • Improved 3rd person animations for pistols
  • Improved lowering and raising of weapons
  • Immersive Mantle Animation Speed
  • Improved and realistic Ragdoll Death Physics
  • Removed Flailing Animation while falling (especially when using Jetpack)
  • Improved Melee Combat Fluidity by increase Melee Relax Time to 30 seconds
  • Increased first person slide distance
  • Running speed reduced to ~87% of vanilla, so it uses the ‘jog’ animation over the ‘run’
  • ADS speed reduced to the same speed as walk
  • Sneak run is ~20% faster, sneak ADS is now the same as vanilla sneak walk
  • You can now run while blocking with a melee weapon
Economy

To avoid the Bethesda game stereotype where one can become unfathomably rich within the first hour of the game, the entire economy of the game has been redone.

  • Selling prices of countless items have been reduced
  • Prices of unique armor and weapons has been greatly increased
  • The monetary rewards for missions and other tasks has been greatly increased
  • Reduced Ship Registration Cost to reward ship theft
  • Increased credit rewards for Bounties and other activities
  • Increased contraband sources and incentive
Textures and Visuals

Due to the obvious VRAM and computing power limitations that consoles have, Starfield has very poor textures for a Triple A modern game release in 2023. There are also many questionable design choices regarding Visuals they have taken. These have both been addressed.

  • Complete Environmental Overhaul to 2k/4k Textures, with close to no hit on performance besides VRAM usage.
  • Complete Climate Overhaul (Starfield vanilla planets only had a single weather option for some reason)
  • Upscaled Effect Textures (Smoke/Fire/Projectiles/etc)
  • Color Corrected World featuring handmade LUTs
  • Enhanced Lights and FX
  • Enhanced Clouds and 8K Galaxy Map
  • Improved Vanilla Flashlight
  • Astral Lounge Overhaul (actually looks like a club now with mist and alien strippers)
  • Nearly double the amount of Art variety (Bethesda reused the same art for square and landscape paintings)
  • Improved facial textures (hair, skin, eye, eyebrows, eyelashes, teeth, scars, freckles, lips)
  • Improve shadows and draw distance
  • Improved NPC crowd textures and eye colors
  • Improved female body textures
HUD

Due to being released alongside consoles, Starfield has a very poor HUD/UI for PC users. It also treats the player as if they are dumb. You don’t need 3 notifications being spammed on your screen telling you that you can’t breathe without a helmet in space. This is all addressed.

  • 120 FPS Menus
  • Animated and simplified Holographic Radar Overlay
  • Holographic Scopes
  • Improved Star Map
  • Enhanced Player Healthbar
  • Compact Inventory UI
  • Expanded Power Menu
  • Zoomed Out Flight Camera
  • Unified ADS Camera and FOV
  • Sleek Ship HUD
  • Improved Font
  • Cleaner Scanner HUD
NPC and Civilians
  • Realistic NPC behavior, such as more observant guards, greetings, blinking, conversations, and movement
  • The two vanilla children faces have been replaces with 20+ different human and alien variants
  • Countless new and unique companions, with some being fully voiced
  • Over 70 NPC’s reworked to have schedules and sleep cycles across all major cities
  • Functional Droid replacements for shopkeepers outside of regular schedules
  • Companions and Followers now match your Spacesuit settings
  • WIP Crew Overhaul, giving each named and recruitable Crew member their own unique armor and clothes
  • The coloners and settlers found in remote planets now have tripled armor variety
  • Children can equip armor
Skills and Powers
  • No more repetitive NG+ grind just to level up your powers. Find a Force Trainer on Tython that will train your abilities in exchange for a certain currency
  • Improved vanilla powers (Force Wave/Push now causes ragdoll and pushes farther)
  • Force Lightning
  • Additional powers beyond the vanilla limit, such as resurrection and disarm
  • Semi-permanent buffs boosting various aspects of your character
  • Removal of skill challenge requirements
  • Revamp and simplification of weapon perks:
    • Battlefront Specialist: Increasing damage dealt by all blasters
    • True Aim: Increasing accuracy for all blasters
    • Keen: Increasing Critical Hit Chance on all blasters
Research

Something that always irked me with the RPG-like progression in Starfield was the redundancy in it. Why do I have to level Gastronomy up to be able to RESEARCH how to make meatloaf. That is an unecessary extra step. The research table could be utilized in a much more interesting way, and I did just that.

  • The Food research category has been replaced with a Biotechnology category that is utilized during the main quest. Bosses that you kill during the main quest reward you with a unique “shell” that you must first research and then use that same shell to craft the armor at the new Biotechnology Station
  • The Pharmacy research category has been replaced with an Exotic Metallurgy category. For now, that category includes Beskar Forging, which can be researched up to 4 tiers, with each new tier allowing you to further upgrade the armors at the Mandalorian Forge on Mandalore
Jetpacks

The vanilla Starfield boost pack feels terrible to use. All boost packs have been converted into a proper jetpack that can both hover and ascend.

Character Creation
  • Alternate Start
  • Countless new hairstyles and beards
  • Countless new species to choose from
  • Playable Droid skins buyable from vendors
Sound Design
  • Increased Music Variety beyond the vanilla limit (nearly double)
  • Unique Ambient Cityscape sounds for each city (Bethesda reused the same ones in different cities/locations)
  • Increased variety of Artifact Cutscene Dialogue
  • Replaced non-binary player voice with that of a Trandoshan (non-binary voice was just default)
  • Muting of annoying and spammy sounds
Ships
  • Handplaced custom ships hidden in plain sight to be found and acquired
  • Removal of ship building limitations, such as size, reactor limit, weapon limit, and more
Engine Fixes

Fixing the mess of Creation Engine 2

  • Player Expression & Facial Animation Fix
  • NPC Headtracking & Makeup Fix
  • Spacesuit Helmet Flashlight Fix
  • Weapon Swap Stuttering Fix
  • Sprint Stuttering Fix
  • Crowd NPC Eye Ambient Occlusion Fix
  • Sprint Headtracking Fix
  • Neon Entertainer Logic Fixes
  • Laser wounds don’t cause bleeding
Community Patch Integration (and other Vanilla Bug Fixes by modders)

Fixing the vanilla game as much as possible.

  • Perk fixes
  • Follower logic fixes
  • Animation Fixes
  • Locational Fixes (floating items, unobtainable items, etc)
  • Dialogue Logic Fixes (characters discussing stuff that never happened or isn’t possible anymore)
  • Quest Fixes
  • Faction vs Faction logic fixes
  • Invisible mesh fixes

Final Remarks

I did not make this page to ego the developers of Starfield and claim that I made a better game than them. None of this would be possible without the foundation they have built. However, that does not mean I am not allowed to criticize and point out the flaws within it. I do not think Starfield is the worst game in the world, but its safe to say that majority of people were rightfully disappointed in it, including me. It could’ve been a much better game with very minimal effort from their point.

Whenever I make a video for a big Genesis release, there is always an elephant in the room for any new people stumbling across it for the first time. That elephant in the room is that the game being used as a foundation for the mod is Starfield. The amount of people that are immediately turned off from that fact, significantly outnumber the people that like Starfield. That is just the reality of how things are and so the elephant has to be addressed.

I feel like I have to remind people that while this is a free mod, it requires the purchase of a game and dlc that not many people own and is currently sitting at 58% and 30% positive reviews on Steam respectively, amounting to $100 total. They have a right to know what they’re paying for.

I’d also like to point out that Starfield could still have a redemption arc, and I hope it does. I do not pray for the downfall of this game. I am relying on Bethesda to eventually release an animation framework and other much necessary tools so that Genesis can be advanced further. I hope their expansions in the future actually improve core aspects and limitations of the game, rather than just add another pointless narrative like how Shattered Space did. If No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk 2077 can do it, then Bethesda has no excuse, especially with the amount of money they’re making from scamming console players with their paid creation store.

Star Wars Genesis