"Hard" vs "Soft" Scifi in Starfield?

[RIPP1138]

lol I guess there's a raging debate over on r/Starfield about what constitutes "real" scifi, "hard", "soft" whatever.

Jesus Horatio Hornblower Christ, people. Y'all sound like a bunch of stupid teenagers arguing over what genre a band belongs to. "No its progressive melodic metal!" "No! Its grindcore!" "ha, its black death metal!" "losers, its hardcore punk!"

I mean, FFS, Scifi is an evolving, very all-inclusive term that means basically ANYTHING not "real" in the sense that it couldn't happen in reality. Magic, wizards, aliens, warp drive, Just stop already.

Yeah, that's me over there at Scifi Review and people trying to be gatekeepers and sorters like they're the fucking hat from Potterverse.... just tick me off.

What say you? I'm ready for some good respectful debate on the subject, but "neener neener you suck no you no your mom" type of crap won't be tolerated, and that goes across the entire site.


....

I'm ready for some good "hard" scifi in that we need a good physics based space engine. I'm also ready for "abilities" and aliens with super powers and "magic" (remember, any sufficiently advanced technology etc. etc.) to be a thing. There's no reason it can't be a combination of both.

[Sankari]

Doubt it, Bethesda likes to go with the flow. Didnt Todd himself say, this game has Bethesda's "DNA" in it.

[Adeimantus]

... or, to take a leaf from Bacon or even Newton, one might say "any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from Science". (Seriously, when those cats weren't doing respectable "Natural Philosophy" their... ahem... "other enquiries" were nothing if not empirically driven and they genuinely believed that that shit might work.) One could easily imagine a plausible Sci-Fi scenario within 'Starfield' where, "cargo-cult"-fashion, humanity attempts to get alien-tech. to work by performing "ceremonies" or "incantations" for lack of any better ideas... and perhaps succeed!

That said, realistically, figure 'Starfield' is going to have to be recognizably "hard". Not necessarily 'Martian' or 'Lady Astronaut'-hard, but at least to an Iain M. Banks level. There are a lot of games out there which are adventures/RPGs in a "Sci-Fi"-setting; if that is all this is to be, might as well dust-off the old 'Starfox' games... it is a crowded field. Aside from that, figure they (Bethesda) will want to put at least some blue water between 'Starfield' and their usual fare: To truly nail-down a third durable "franchise" (Gods, one hates that word!) it needs to be outstanding... an obvious lack of "handwave-ium" in the mechanics and lore would do that handily.

Anyways, do not know what your personal definition of hard-vs.-soft might be... for oneself, generally think that anything based on current physical theory, however extended, qualifies as "hard"; Bucciere warp-drives or gravitational-wave scanning would be fine at the absolute limit... using "tachyons" to produce a game-ish "slow-time" ability would not be.

(P.S. First post here... for what it is worth, wouldn't be able to distinguish "Dark Metal" from "Math Metal" to save ones' life. Sadly, tend to listen to 'Iron Maiden', 'Alestorm' or 'Necrogoblicon' when in a metal-mood... guess am probably a barbarian.)