Surprisingly, it was the developer of Cyberpunk 2077 who recently defended Starfield against a player’s criticism.

A Cyberpunk 2077 developer has defended Starfield from a critic. According to the latter, the animations in Bethesda’s RPG are weaker than in CD Projekt Red’s game. The two titles are currently the most talked about games that present players with different fictional versions of humanity.

The lead designer of Cyberpunk 2077, Patrick K. Mills, defended Starfield against the critics, saying the game’s animations are not up to Cyberpunk 2077’s standards.

On Twitter, user SynthPotato said that watching Cyberpunk 2077 back showed them how outdated Starfield’s animations are. Mills responded by explaining that Bethesda and CD Projekt Red handle cinematics differently. According to the designer, Bethesda is not focusing on that. Instead, it is focusing its resources on giving Starfield players a great deal of freedom. Mills also claims that there are more scenes in the game. With a shifting cast of characters and “a mind-boggling number of possible locations”. As such, working on more elaborate animations meant the game could never be finished.

Mills says it’s legitimate that players want Starfield scenes to be more cinematic, but “there’s a price to pay”.

Starfield has been compared to Cyberpunk 2077 so many times that it has put extra pressure on players’ expectations. Mills concludes by saying that not every feature in a game can be executed to the same level. But this has very little to do with the engine used.

It is also worth bearing in mind that the two games are at different stages of their lives. Cyberpunk 2077 finally reached a mature state with the release of the Phantom Liberty DLC. Starfield, meanwhile, is still in the early stages of making a name for itself. While the base game already provides players with hours of entertainment, the soon-to-be-released DLC has excellent potential to add even more to the game.

Source: X

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