Starfield: Should you take the United Colonies Native trait?

At the beginning of Starfield, you are tasked with selecting three different traits in the character creator. These traits range from getting an Adoring Fan to basically worship you to dealing more damage when your health is low.

However, there are also a handful of traits, such as United Colonies Native, that establish a background for your character.

The United Colonies Native, Neon Street Rat, and Freestar Collective Settler traits all determine where your character grew up in Starfield. If you go with the Neon Street Rat trait, then your character grew up in the city of Neon on the planet Volii Alpha. Selecting one of these traits will give you some special dialogue with other characters in the city and galaxy, which could affect the outcome of some quests.

Picking the United Colonies Native trait

Since you are only able to select one of the background traits, your decision does carry some weight. Although, truth be told, there isn’t much benefit to selecting any of them.

With the United Colonies Native trait, you will be able to pick special dialogue options when speaking with certain characters. These characters are usually a part of the United Colonies faction, but you can also pick extra dialogue options when talking with other NPCs in the city of New Atlantis.

These dialogue options are marked with the “United Colonies Native” and usually come up when a character is speaking about the history of the faction. However, in my experience, these dialogue options didn’t truly lead to anything substantial in the conversation. Even when picking the special dialogue, I still wound up with the same result that was achieved by using the standard dialogue options.

Related: Starfield: How to complete the Distilling Confidence mission

The one other boon to selecting one of these traits is you gain better mission rewards when participating in quests for that specific faction. I didn’t notice a huge discrepancy in the rewards, though. At most, you will receive some extra credits and XP for completing missions for your faction.

Is it worth it to pick the United Colonies Native trait?

In all honesty, I believe you can spend a trait spot more wisely than selecting United Colonies Native or the other background traits.

Of course, if you know you’re dead set on riding with one of the factions, such as the United Colonies, Freestar Collective, etc., then I think it can be worth it for your character to unlock that faction’s background trait.

After all, this is a roleplaying game, so why not roleplay to the max in Starfield? Regardless of your choice, though, it won’t have a huge impact on the story.