Starfield has been out for little more than a week, yet there are already more mods than you could shake a spaceship at. One of the newest additions to the ever-growing modding community is this—the Inner Monologue mod by Somnia.
Right now, it helps keep you in character by replacing all the immersion-breaking text tooltips that pop up in the corner with your own personal thoughts. In future, though, Somnia plans to make those thoughts even more personal to your roleplaying style.
"This mod is a simple fix, no weird external monologue telling you what you can and can't do," says the mod description. "Now it's your own inner thoughts. Much scarier."
I have to say I imagined something akin to Baldur's Gate 3's dark urge inner monologue from this description. A dark and foreboding voiceover that comments as to how useless you are when you try to unlock things that are above your skill level. Though as Somnia notes, "This isn't Baldur's gate, I don't have a silent dungeon master telling me what's up."
"When you think, you don't think in the 3rd person unless you're insane."
I'm not sure about you, but being deep in the D&D community I can confirm a lot of (mostly) sane people not only think in third person, but speak their thoughts aloud in third person, like the reincarnated Julius Caesar of improv gaming.
Still, the Inner Monologue mod is a great way to keep the immersion going. It's ideal if those little external thoughts feel jarring to you, and the examples given on the NexusMods page are pretty well written, too.
Somnia has gone through and painstakingly switched references to "you" as a character, to "I" in some interesting ways. For example, "The vendor doesn't have enough credits for this transaction. Would you like to trade anyway?" is changed to "They can't afford this, should I cut them a deal for what they have left?".
And "You cannot fast travel from here" is made to sound much more natural with "Something is holding me to this place, I can't leave just yet".
The mod's creator even plans to "make profiles to fit what sort of character you're roleplaying", which would be a fantastic way to make the game feel more personal. They also admit that it would be great to be able to pick your inner monologue in character creator, "Be it pirate speak, gamer speak, idiot speak, you name it."
A voiceover would be an impeccable addition, but hey, you can't have everything. Unless you are, in fact, a Roman Emperor who speaks about themself in the third person.
We’ve collected some of the best Starfield mods into a list, so head over there if you’re ready to be wowed by this strange modding community. My personal favorites include one that replaces Starfield cops with Stormtroopers, and the George Costanza character preset, because who wouldn’t want to act out Seinfeld in Starfield.
