Honestly, not really. I think the intent is to establish that it's a combat-free game -- there's no one and nothing to fight or free, no empire to establish. Some dialogue and a few characters are influenced by the backstory, but I think that's about it. To be clear, that's a nice change of pace -- my biggest complaint about 4X games (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXtinguish) is that the first three are usually just window dressing for a game that's really about the fourth. It's nice to have different goals. This game doesn't really have much by way of explore/expand, though, and I think that's really what I'm looking for.