At Summer Game Fest 2022, Todd Howard revealed long-awaited gameplay footage for Starfield, Bethesda's newest game promising to be "Skyrim in space", but the game has been drawing comparisons to one of Skyrim's worst graphical features. In terms of its environments, Starfield looks quite good and capitalizes on current-gen improvements to graphical technology. However, one area that needs improvement is the same area Skyrim had an issue with: character animation.
Starfield is an upcoming space exploration game from Bethesda. Following Bethesda's Elder Scrolls and Fallout RPGs, Starfield is a massive open-world game. Starfield will have over 1000 planets to explore, each fully explorable in a customizable spaceship. There are many cultures and factions that the player may interact with, with many NPCs to talk to. With such an expansive game, some have compared the upcoming game to No Man's Sky and Skyrim, and while this is a compelling mix, the comparisons aren't always positive.
Skyrim's character graphics were fine 11 years ago on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox One, but two generations ahead of that, after games like The Witcher 3 raised the bar, the landscape looks rather different. While the environments look great with the improvements made on current-gen consoles, character modeling and animation still look a little bit too much like the Bethesda fans are familiar with. Hopefully, Skyrim's glitches will not carry into Starfield, but some of the visual stiffness seems likely to remain. The textures may be improved, but the rigging in Starfield still exhibits a sense of age in movement and expression that has plagued Skyrim more as the years have worn on.
Starfield's Character Animations Are Too Much Like Skyrim's
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim was impressive in its environmental design and presentation, and remains a good-looking game, but much like Oblivion and Morrowind before it, its character animation often left a lot to be desired. Skyrim's characters move with an irregular stiffness and hold constant, grim expressions no matter the circumstances, giving them a very robotic feel. There is still stiffness in Starfield's NPC characters' movements and facial animations that anyone who has played Skyrim for a lengthy period can easily pick up on watching the footage released so far. As Starfield has thousands more dialogue lines than Skyrim, this problem may be pervasive, but fortunately, Starfield's improvements (such as the ability to move eyebrows) is a big improvement over Skyrim's facial animation technology, though whether it will come along far enough by launch not to feel familiar remains to be seen.
This stiffness can be seen in Starfield's combat as well. When hit with small-caliber bullets, enemies don't seem to react much if at all. Like in Skyrim, the enemy gets hit and has little reaction most of the time outside of a burst of blood. While that's certainly not an issue limited to Skyrim, it's still disappointing not to see a bigger leap in character animation.
It should be said that even if Starfield truly is just "Skyrim in space", Skyrim was an immensely enjoyable experience that still holds up over time. While the lack of polish in some of these areas may be a bit disappointing, the overall gameplay and promise of beautiful cities and wild regions to explore is exciting. Additionally, Starfield has learned from Skyrim's world and environments, and they look great with next-gen improvements. So while Starfield may look a little too much like Skyrim when it comes to their characters, it still looks like it will be a good time.