Did you know the Terrormorph Anomaly in the Londonion mission seems to be psychically dominating the other Terrormorphs there? Hear me out on this.
There are two extra Terrormorphs in the arena at the end of the Londinion mission. If you use the satellite dishes to free the thralls, these other two Terrormorphs attack the Anomaly, and ignore you. You might expect that they'll turn on you after the fight is over right? They're Terrormorphs, they're savage killing machines.
You'd be wrong.
Those two Terrormorphs stay friendly to you after the Anomaly is dead. I don't know if this applies to the other Terrormorphs in the mission, but considering you have to kill them to proceed (barring console commands), I haven't tested this.
But, the fact that the Terrormorphs stay friendly... really makes you think about intelligent the Terrormorphs actually are. Now, could it be a Bethesda oversight? Maybe. But consider how good Bethesda is at environmental storytelling. All the random encounters that aren't explained to you and you have to figure out the story through context clues.
Maybe the Terrormorphs were being controlled by the Anomaly. Maybe just the ones on Londinion... Maybe all of them.
In addition to that, there is actually a third way to end the UC questline. You can decide to sterilize the heatleeches, essentially removing their ability to turn into Terrormorphs. The option exists in the files, and from references, it might not actually be cut content, just a coding mistake that prevented the option from being available. There is at least one mod on Nexus that restores it.
But think about what that ending might be equivalent to, if indeed the Terrormorphs are more intelligent than they appear. You'd be cutting off the natural growth cycle of a sentient/sapient species, condemning them to a life in their adolescent stage at best.
Maybe that's why they cut it, or left it out.
Idk, just some thoughts I had after running that mission again.
Me, playing Starfield for almost 32h, killing Heatleeches left and right, finally got to the UC vanguard quest. So Spoilers ahead for that quest.
Still here? Ok. At your own risk then.
I see a Heatleech turn into a Terrormorph right before my eyes.
Hadrian asks to talk to me about it, so, of course that the first thing I say is "what the fuck is a Heatleech?" because the awe and shock in everyone's face is priceless.
When I get into battles I like to play music in the background so I’ve made it Bail just constantly had headphones in/puts them in when they’re about to get into a shooting match.
okay i admit, i’m actually enjoying this game a lot now. it was super boring at the start, and underwhelming, but if you ignore the main quest for a bit and start doing your own thing... lockpicking and stealing stuff... joining a gang.. it got fun