Highlights
- Fans are praising Starfield for its massive scope, enthralling world, and engaging side content, considering it a strong return to form for Bethesda Game Studios.
- However, Starfield's flaws become apparent when compared to other modern RPGs like Baldur's Gate 3, specifically in terms of NPC animations and character expression.
- Despite having more resources, Starfield's animation quality is far behind that of Baldur's Gate 3, showcasing how Bethesda Game Studios is trailing behind the rest of the AAA games industry in this aspect.
Since its release earlier this month, Starfield has been earning high praise from every corner of the gaming community. Fans of the game have cited its massive scope, enthralling world, and engaging side content as reasons to play the game, with many considering it a strong return to form for Bethesda Game Studios. Starfield is far from perfect, however, and its flaws can become apparent when it's measured against other modern RPGs like Baldur's Gate 3.
Starfield, for better or worse, features all the hallmarks of a Bethesda game. The sci-fi open-world RPG isn't doing much to reinvent the formula of other BGS games, which is something that many players have actually enjoyed. In some ways, Starfield feels like a more modern version of beloved games like Skyrim or Fallout 3, which is exactly what countless gamers have been clamoring for over the past decade. On the other hand, gaming expectations and conventions have changed drastically since the days of Skyrim, and even Fallout 4, and some players will likely be disappointed with the game's relative lack of innovation and evolution. Some may even argue that it can be argued that Starfield doesn't hold up against other modern games.
Baldur's Gate 3's Character Animations Make Starfield's Look Dated
There should be no doubt that Starfield's NPC animations are a significant step up from previous Bethesda Game Studios releases. Looking back at a game like Skyrim, NPCs exude robotic energy, moving little more than their mouths while speaking and generally lacking expressive gestures or body language. Fast-forward to Starfield and NPCs are much more expressive, but still far behind the rest of the industry, and Baldur's Gate 3 is evidence of this.
In the past, it was easy to wave away criticisms about stilted animations in Bethesda games by pointing to their massive scope; although classic Bethesda games like Skyrim and Fallout 4 had character animations that were rudimentary compared to their contemporaries, it could be argued that animation quality had to be sacrificed to provide players with the breadth of unique activities and side missions that those games offered. However, this justification doesn't work as well in a post-Baldur's Gate 3 world.
The scope of Baldur's Gate 3 is tremendous, with the main campaign taking up to 75–100 hours to complete, and finely crafted, expansive side quests providing even more gameplay and narrative content. Despite this, it has fantastic animation quality, with Baldur's Gate 3's superbly acted characters making believable facial expressions, gesticulating, and expressing themselves through body language.
Every NPC, no matter how minor, features these impressive animations, whereas Starfield has fewer NPCs with unique dialog, and the NPCs that can be interacted with have animations that don't come anywhere near the quality of Baldur's Gate 3's. It's worth noting that Starfield, especially after Bethesda's acquisition by Microsoft, had far more resources at its disposal during its development than BG3, which makes the comparatively poor animation quality even less excusable.
Comparing games can quickly become an unproductive exercise in futility; both of these games have their merits, and Baldur's Gate 3 isn't above criticism. One could easily argue that Starfield does any number of things better than BG3, so raising the issue of animations isn't meant to suggest that the latter is an objectively better game than the former.
Having said that, it's not unreasonable to expect a certain level of polish when it comes to a game like Starfield, which has been positioned to be one of the best-selling games of the year. Starfield is a great game in many ways, but Bethesda Game Studios is clearly trailing behind the rest of the AAA games industry when it comes to character animations, with Baldur's Gate 3 proving that games can have a dizzying scope without sacrificing character animation quality.
Starfield is currently available for PC and Xbox Series X/S.