I think it would be cool if Starfarer's narrative followed a structure of branching missions and stuff driven by the player's failure or success. Or if it was entirely emergent, as in a roguelike. Sometimes a game creates its own stories and characters - how many of you haven't grown ridiculously attached to your soldiers in xcom, or ascribed some horrible, nasty personality to a randomly spawned lich in dungeon crawl, and so on? Given the fact that AI captains are supposed to have personalities, there could be at least some of this, down the road.