What do CD PROJEKT RED’s developers think of Starfield? Somewhat highly, it seems, as at least one dev, Patrick K. Mills, has taken to X/Twitter to defend Bethesda Game Studios and Todd Howard’s new open-world RPG after a critic claimed that the game looks worse than Cyberpunk 2077, calling the animations during dialog sequences “outdated” and “lackluster,” with “awful” camera angles. Mills, who is credited as Cyberpunk 2077’s senior quest designer, decided to be nice, explaining that Starfield is the way it is because it’s on a completely different scale, “mind-bogglingly” bigger than the game that CDPR released in 2020 but continues to improve to this day.
As much as I like Starfield, Creation Engine needs to go.
— Synth Potato (Ameer) 🥔 (@SynthPotato) October 1, 2023
Going back to Cyberpunk puts in perspective just how outdated Starfield's dialogue animations are & it is staggering, regressing to a rigid camera angle that was left behind in 2006 with Oblivion and entirely eliminating… pic.twitter.com/p7Y4TNgNYM
@SynthPotato: In the video I have for Cyberpunk, Judy actually has restless leg syndrome and constantly shakes her leg while sitting, details like that give NPCs life, Starfield does not have body animations in dialogue, aside from basic turns and the occasional generic hand gesture.
I’ve been really feeling more and more critical of Starfield after going back to Cyberpunk, with the constant load screens, awful dialogue camera and lackluster animations, It really upsets me how Bethesda refuses to move on from that garbage engine that was already outdated by 2015 with Fallout 4 and is an absolute joke in 2023, Object persistence is NOT worth losing everything else that makes modern games feel modern.
I like starfield a lot, so I'm not getting involved in the core criticism here, but I will say that the way they handle cinematics vs 2077 is not down to engine so much as it is tools and design. Related but not the same. https://t.co/l1rJNFlBoe
— Patrick K. Mills (@PKernaghan) October 2, 2023
Mills: They do some scenes that are staged in a more refined way, like meeting constellation for the first time, some quest sequences etc. But they have vastly more scenes with a revolving cast of characters and a mind boggling number of possible locations.
Every major scene in 2077 took literal years to make.
In starfield I can propose to like 10 different npcs and I can do it on any of a thousand different planets, you can’t do elaborate scene design like that, you’d be making the game forever.
Discussion (2 replies)
Join Discussion →I won't go on a rant about it but I would say that Starfield's animations are not great, acceptable but not great, and do look dated at times. Many said before release this game would have that typical Bethesda Skyrim/Fallout look and to some extent I do agree. There's a little bit more flare for sure but at moments it does end up feeling the same.
I remember having the same experience with Ubisoft games in the early-mid 2000s and getting bored with them for the same reasons.
In defense of all game developers, I'll say that I've seen issues with animations in every game I've played over the years regardless of the engine used and that after a while I just try to find the best position(s) to get them to look more natural. I don't know enough about them to critique in depth but I've seen situations with all where each display in some pretty awful ways. If I had to pick a favorite it would be The Witcher 3, but I'm not saying it was perfect, and I do like CP2077, and then also Metro Exodus. However, I've never played a game whose character animations were perfect. Recently I've been playing RE4 and while much of the game's visuals look better its animations are quirky as well.
The Last of Us 2's animations are far better than any other game I ever played.
As for Starfield it is just trendy to hate that game. I've completely zoned out when some "influencer" tries to trash talk it. It tells me more about the person than the game. They act as if it is supposed to be better at literally everything than every game that came before.
This reminds of the joke.
The bear says to the wolf :
- Hey wolf, let's beat up the rabbit!
The wolf replies:
- OK, but why?
- If he is wearing a hat then that's why, if he is not wearing a hat then that's why!
So they beat the rabbit as planned, and on the next day the bear tells the wolf again:
- Let's beat up the rabbit again! We ask him for cigarettes and if he gives us filtered ones that's why, if he gives unfiltered ones then that's why!
They go to the rabbit and say:
- Hey RABBIT! GIVE US CIGARETTES OR ELSE!
The rabbit says:
- Would you prefer filtered, or unfiltered cigarettes?
- Look at the bastard, he is not wearing a hat again!
Just as the rabbit Starfield can't win no matter what.