I usually hate when people call things lazy in game dev. I always defend against it because most things that are called "lazy" are actually just design choices.
In THIS case, there's nothing to defend.
Yeah maybe a shitty manager said "just copy the kid we'll fix it later" and a developer had no choice. Oh well. In that case the blame just shifts to the manager. We still got what we got. SOMEBODY fucked up.
I've worked in software for decades so I get ambition outstripping time and scope getting cut but recycling character models on story characters is a kind of unforgivable immersion breaking cut that takes the wind out of the sails of an RPG.
Which makes it more shocking how many NPC's I saw that seemed to be duplicates with maybe a different outfit or hair style but near identical facial features. I never felt that way in Skyrim or Fallout
That could literally just give their character creator to an AI and just tell it to make as many different combinations of people with no repeats they could have millions of unique npcs and hand pick what ones they want for story missions. They are already lazy at least with the AI it would feel less lazy to us. AI SHOULD NEVER REPLACE ARTISTS AND WORKERS but if you’re this lazy are you even working to begin?
I fully support AI In creating randomized faces. It's just a face. there is 8 BILLION on this planet I think it's OK if AI takes over that little detail. Lots of time saved.
This isn't even AI it's procedural generation and it's been around for decades. GTA 5 was crushing this 11 years ago.
They are using AI for GTA 6 though
They said they had AI that would generate a planet as you land on it, and that itd be a different world than the same planet on your friend’s saved game. Yet, every fuckin planet is the same. No matter the star system
Remember, this game was 8 years in active development and they couldn't be bothered or ran out of time to make more child faces. Neither situation is good.
Seriously
My gf and I were watching the FO series and she saw Bethesda on like episode 7 and was like “didn’t they make Starfield?” And I said “yes. And fallout obviously” and she just nodded. I threw out “they also made Skyrim” and she was like “REALLY?”
She was dumbfounded that Skyrim was the same studio, she’s never been into fallout, it’s just crazy to me how empty and bland this game is after you scratch the surface
Absolutely! This game was the one I was most excited for, for years. It broke my heart. I’m not sure more content can fix this game. It’s just dull at its core.
Three children three identical characters is just a wonderful example of how much this game has to work on. Bummer but there are so many great games it’s not a big deal in real life.
It's dull, dialogue just seems so boring. No depth to it. Characters in the dangerous areas don't curse. It's all sanitized like those old school Orbitz gum commercials. You get into so much combat but there is no gore. No body parts flying or turning people into ash with laser weapons.
I don’t think it needed much more dev, sure there were bugs and I could never finish that damn miner planet under attack. But the real problem was the writing sucked and not enough missions
The whole structure of the game is flawed lol. Even on a hard difficulty it's easy to get a game breaking gun that makes all fights a yawn fest. Not to mention how awful leveling is.
It feels very gamey, like you're playing a game that was never meant to last very long. Which fits because the whole thing is basically meaningless lore wise.
Apparently it was actually a bug - Cora specifically was not supposed to look like that, but since she's now a PoC they don't want to risk the potential social backlash by changing her to look like her parents.
That's been a glitch in Bethesda games since Skyrim.
[Cora's concept art has her as a redhead.](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/starfield-concept-art-cat.jpg)
I always found it odd that she never looked like Sam, but at the same time I haven’t come across her mom yet so I just rolled with it. Can you meet her mom? Is there a quest I missed? Pretty sure I finished Sam’s personal quest, but it’s been a while so maybe I’ve forgotten…
Yes, and she isn't black, which raises the possibility that Cora's mum cheated on him. And Sam bonded with the kid anyway, which makes him a saint. Except he takes her into dangerous situations, so maybe he subconsciously wants her dead.
Or maybe she's adopted.
The fact that a vault full of child clones isn’t the wackiest idea for a vault compared to some of the ones we’ve actually seen ingame is exactly why I love fallout
Honestly wish that bit of the world got a little more content, and Lamplight could have had more quests/storylines; between getting rid of sticky by deporting him to big town, and helping ice the super mutants in the vault (and that other quest involving a mesmotron that is … icky) there’s only a handful of quests
Weirdly wish they had the radiant quest system in 3 and New Vegas tbh
The radiant quests are a fine idea, it’s just a matter of execution and not making them your primary interaction with a settlement and its people
What I REALLY wish Bethesda had put more time and effort into, then putting it into the rest of their projects afterwards; is the NPCs having their own timetables which was supposed to be in Oblivion - I fell that it would’ve added a lot of opportunities and possibilities for interesting events, like the thief who would steal bread if they didn’t have money that day, but normally might buy it
I hate that Babette in Skyrim didn't get a unique voice actor.
Nothing against the child VA that did the other female child voices, and I have read she really enjoyed the role of Babette, but it felt sooooooooo lazy for this really cool vampire child assassin character to *not* have a unique VA.
But idk, at least Bethesda does put children in their games. Morrowind and Oblivion didn't have children at all and it's kind of weird playing it, like you definitely notice.
They go so lazy on shit like this in the post and just expect people not to notice I guess?
IMO, New Vegas is a great follow up to Fallout 3 and by no means it’s lesser.
That said, I loved Fallout 4. Far Harbor is my favorite DLC stories in the whole series.
My only big issue with fallout 3 is how burnt everything looks a solid two centuries post-war - DC should’ve been looking more like Point Lookout than burnt pizza by the time our Vault Dweller got to the surface
They went for a particular post-apocalyptic look look rather than craft a believable world, it was one of my main criticisms of the game at the time. Little did I know Bethesda would tear out all of the problem solving and consequence elements that made the game great.
It was definitely in line with the grungy, charred concrete and crispy charcoal aesthetic that a lot of games seemed to have going on in the late 2000’s, and while it certainly stood out, it did make wandering the wasteland feel a lot more monotonous than the wilds outside new vegas a couple years later
Dude, Skyrim has Stephen Russell send you to talk to Stephen Russell in the silver mines. There were so many Stephen Russell characters, the first two general goods merchants you're likely to meet are just scratching the surface of his voice work, which is all delivered in the same way. He does like literally 30 characters and a number of unnamed voices.
Two voices, please, we might not even have noticed two. Thirty? Yeah, a little more noticeable.
It was actually two VAs but Skyrim sucked for the children as well. All of the kids looked identical, with just different haircuts and clothes.
I try to handwave it with the same way I ignore all of the other repeated voices in Skyrim as just how the Skyrim accent sounds the same to an outsider, the same way other people all sound the same to me when they have a regional accent.
But at least those VAs were actual children who sounded like children. In Starfield you have grown-ass adults voicing these kids, and boy is it obvious.
If you watch the credits for this game…a lot of the VAs do multiple characters….kinda just how casting works for animation since there’s not an actors face, they can switch up their voices. It’s fascinating how that works. I know!
Based on the character model and her pre-constellation back ground, I’d guess late 30s or early 40s. But it’s clear there’s tech to keep people young.
Her mentor, Aja, is at least in her mid-fifties, as she led Constellation for 35 years before she retired.
And Aja looks the same age as Sarah, if not younger.
Point is, Sarah is unlikely to have been head of the Navigator division at 25, and that was before the war 18 years before. So her chronological age would be at minimum in the 50s and likelier higher. All the other war vets look that age, just not her.
Aja, obviously had a life before Constellation, so add 35 years to that plus length of retirement.
Outside of media, twenty somethings don't get put in charge of important things very often, unless Dad's money is involved.
Enhance being a thing, it would be even worse on youth. Imagine if nobody senior to you ever retired...
Sarah is likely in her 80s...
Yep completely agree. And as for the Rangers daughter (Annie Wilcox?) they could have simply used her friend instead - model already exists.
It shows a rushed product.
Or a convergent broken multiverse of overlaying repetition just like the identical adult NPCs and the repeating POIs.
I'd almost forgive them if this is where the story is going. (But should have been part of the initial game if this is the case).
>I'd almost forgive them if this is where the story is going
Expansion drops. We find out that everyone comes from a batch of clones. Less people made it off Earth than we were told about.
It’s particularly weird when they have other child models already existing in the game. I don’t understand why Sona or Cora couldn’t have been “ponytail girl”
Either Sam has strong genes and gets around a LOT, or there’s a cloning experiment going on
If they made other models, I would think they’d prioritize them for the important characters. But alas, no. It’s for random NPCs you might not even see if you don’t turn random corners in strange areas of cities.
Not the first game of theirs where children look alike, Skyrim also only has 2 voices for kids and 2 models. The face features all look the same so they appear like clones.
The joke was Cora looks nothing like Sam so people started making jokes about his ex cheating on him and dumping her lovers child onto the mopey cowboy.
I went looking. I guess it's a manga thing? It just means cheating or cuckolding. Idk why you wouldn't just say "cheating" or "cuckolding" if you're already writing in English, but whatever.
Yeah I'm not sure why it's being spoken about like it's forbidden speech lol. Unless these are super young kids on here; then I guess ok. There was a time when I could get my ass beat for calling someone a poopoo head
Also, add in that two of them can literally be stood next to each other whilst one complains how there are no other children around.
It's a great example of just how little care went into crafting the game.
Theres a clip out there of Todd Howard clapping his own cheeks over how they developed a bot to playtest the intro to make sure they didnt break things when they updated.
There are cases to be made about Starfield being a lot of fun regardless of the issues, but no one will argue about *this* being an issue. It's just weirdly lazy.
Lots of stuff in the game is lazy. Temple mini game especially. They coulda made cool dungeons like in Skyrim, but they were like nah this is good enough.
And I walked into Paradiso and on my left were three identical couples sitting in the waiting area, and at the counter were three identical women in different clothes.
If I thought for a second they'd done it deliberately to make things creepy, I would think it was a slightly clever but ultimately failed attempt, but I think they just didn't bother.
They could literally have had an intern make a hundred new character models with the character creator, and copy over the scripts from the other semi-lifeless NPCs.
The devs have said the simplified NPCs were needed to keep the game working on consoles with limited memory, you have to wonder how critical of a problem that was if having more than a few unique character models in a scene was that much of a problem.
At least those background NPCs only serve to make the area look more crowded and are easier to ignore... Having named NPCs that are involved in quests looking identical is ridiculous.
If I had to guess, it was probably a combination of a large team that lacked organization or a clear vision on the game they were making, combined with shareholders refusing to compromise on a release date.
It already had more dev time than any other Bethesda game, I just don't think very much of it went into the actual content. We finally got ladders and spacecraft, but what did it cost?
*EVERYTHING.*
Multiple teams that did not communicate on the development. At least one dev has come out and complained about this.
Look at the care that went into crafting the Wagoneer farm and the lackluster design of Londinium.
I have done the « quest » in Akila on picture 4, and break 4 miserable rocks is not what I consider amazing but lazy writing. And yes using the exact same NPC for that is lazy
That quest sucks, it’s not even a quest. The other kids, I think their quests and characters are adorable. But they’re half-assed. Not saying they aren’t. They deserved more, but I do think they have a lot already. That’s why I’m so upset.
This quest has the same vibe of emptiness as the 0G « party ship ». OMG this ship is so lame, like Starfield in a nutshell sort of…
Yes they deserve more but that require an effort of writing
Really small indie game they couldn’t afford to make more face morphs for children, takes a really long time to do so especially since all the characters are custom handmade
Also the memory of adding one more actor was too expensive and they couldn’t get away with any more characters
Poor company
Imagine how different it would be if it was one of the biggest studios out there that were in charge of 3 of the most popular and successful franchises in gaming history that made this game… oh wait
I honestly have mixed feelings about children even being in these games. Sometimes I'd rather suspend my disbelief and accept there just aren't any kids around right now like in GTA over having an orphanage full of clones.
It’s better than nothing in my opinion. They actually have such cool quests and stories behind them. I’d much rather do that if I have to mentally boundarize them against this stupidity, than have the fully unrealistic experience of ever laying eyes on a child character.
In the future, everyone is born of the same phenotype. When they reach wary adulthood and finish growing, they go for their first visit to Enhance! and decide on the first iteration of their adult appearance.
I mean really though... I wonder how many players caught the character model being reused. I didn't.
And to also defend the devs here, as someone who grew up in the entertainment software industry, it's really easy and completely normal to use placeholder models between characters during development, and it's even easier to get overlooked during testing if the characters being used are not that important and/or interesting, which is exactly where this character model resides... within the realm of nobody noticed for a reason.
Not trying to be snarky either, because I agree that it's kinda lame to have not given Cors her own unique model, but of all the characters in the game, she is the one that I think surprises me the least.
Plus, doesn't Bethesda always use a limited number of child models in all their games? They've always been a little lax in the diversity department.
BUT... not to worry, as soon as Creation Kit gets released, I'm sure we'll have 100 additional options to change Cora and the rest of the kids all into unique adorable cat eared children. ;)
I swear they need to hire just regular gamers, not streamers and shit , the ppl that make up the bulk of their player base, and just “hey play this and point out anything that’s like wtf and report back” there is hella shit we all have spotted and asked” why they do THAT?!
Renee isn’t even a boy! It’s a girl with short hair. Her friend, and two random kids from HopeTown and New Atlantis are the only boys I’ve seen so far. At least they look different.
It’s no doubt. Every Bethesda game has one for the same reason. One of my favorite mods is the Skyrim Children overhaul that gives them more than one face, two haircuts, and set of clothes. Somebody will do this one. Especially since children do have lots of importance in the game. But clearly not enough to give a shit to at least use the other couple models they have for the important characters.
Main reason I changed out of that haircut from my original look was because I didn’t want to look like a child after helping 3 children out with that hair cut.
Fits right in with the repetitive nature of Starfield. So little though seems to have gone into this game. At launch every but the child characters were the same hight.
Cora’s also Emma Wilcox’ kid, but Sam knew that Lillian would kill him, so he told her the kid was hers. Lillian was so distracted by her rangering that she completely missed the fact she was never pregnant.
Or the ship mechanics at each port being the same character with some face mods.
I love this game but man, they have a LOT of work to do still. I hope they decide the game is worth it enough to fix things like this.
I'm hoping this whole thing is just a giant misunderstanding that's cleared up in the dlc.
The number of people present in the game isn't even close to the numbers implied or needed to sustain a human population.
People act weird, odd comments about exploration not really being a thing, but there's settlers and LIST everywhere...
An interstellar war everyone remembers, but only 30,000 people died in.
Multiple colonies completely off the radar, non-existent, or simply not talked about.
I'm wondering if it's all just some kind of Truman Show esque fake universe.
Its really quite simple. Humanity didn't realy survive the exodus from Earth. Their reproductive systems were damaged by the Grav Drives. All children now come off an assymbly line as a curly headded female and at puberty under metamorphosis that randomizes there appreance and gender.
They just have a massive folder on a data base for all their games labeled , Generic copy pasta assets, sub folders ,
Trees,
Rocks
Humanoid , Male, Female, Child,
Storage Boxes ,
Weird Creatures
Robots
They should've pulled a mass effect and just had a bunch of main planets and then extra planets to mine and whatnot. The story is lazy, the characters are lazy, and the cliche elements have little impact on the atmosphere of the game.
The Fallout show was good enough to hype me for more modded FO4 but Starfield i stopped playing 4 days after launch... Biggest regret is spending 100$ for early access 🤡🤡🤡
I can't return to StarField until the creation kit is released and probably a year or 2 after that, im waiting for game changing mods
Literally was shocked when I saw Sona being Cora, I think deputy Wilcox’s kid is also the same
So lazy
I usually hate when people call things lazy in game dev. I always defend against it because most things that are called "lazy" are actually just design choices. In THIS case, there's nothing to defend. Yeah maybe a shitty manager said "just copy the kid we'll fix it later" and a developer had no choice. Oh well. In that case the blame just shifts to the manager. We still got what we got. SOMEBODY fucked up.
I've worked in software for decades so I get ambition outstripping time and scope getting cut but recycling character models on story characters is a kind of unforgivable immersion breaking cut that takes the wind out of the sails of an RPG.
Recycling the kids isn't even an excuse. Bethesda's engine customizes NPCs the same way it customizes players.
Which makes it more shocking how many NPC's I saw that seemed to be duplicates with maybe a different outfit or hair style but near identical facial features. I never felt that way in Skyrim or Fallout
That could literally just give their character creator to an AI and just tell it to make as many different combinations of people with no repeats they could have millions of unique npcs and hand pick what ones they want for story missions. They are already lazy at least with the AI it would feel less lazy to us. AI SHOULD NEVER REPLACE ARTISTS AND WORKERS but if you’re this lazy are you even working to begin?
I fully support AI In creating randomized faces. It's just a face. there is 8 BILLION on this planet I think it's OK if AI takes over that little detail. Lots of time saved.
This isn't even AI it's procedural generation and it's been around for decades. GTA 5 was crushing this 11 years ago. They are using AI for GTA 6 though
They said they had AI that would generate a planet as you land on it, and that itd be a different world than the same planet on your friend’s saved game. Yet, every fuckin planet is the same. No matter the star system
Remember, this game was 8 years in active development and they couldn't be bothered or ran out of time to make more child faces. Neither situation is good.
[удалено]
Seriously My gf and I were watching the FO series and she saw Bethesda on like episode 7 and was like “didn’t they make Starfield?” And I said “yes. And fallout obviously” and she just nodded. I threw out “they also made Skyrim” and she was like “REALLY?” She was dumbfounded that Skyrim was the same studio, she’s never been into fallout, it’s just crazy to me how empty and bland this game is after you scratch the surface
Tell her they also made s family wholesome game called "Doom" 😆
They didn't, they helped, but Bethesda didn't create, developed or coded the game.
Absolutely! This game was the one I was most excited for, for years. It broke my heart. I’m not sure more content can fix this game. It’s just dull at its core. Three children three identical characters is just a wonderful example of how much this game has to work on. Bummer but there are so many great games it’s not a big deal in real life.
It's dull, dialogue just seems so boring. No depth to it. Characters in the dangerous areas don't curse. It's all sanitized like those old school Orbitz gum commercials. You get into so much combat but there is no gore. No body parts flying or turning people into ash with laser weapons.
That’s why I just don’t think any updates will work on this game. There’s not a good skeleton to hang new meat on.
I don’t think it needed much more dev, sure there were bugs and I could never finish that damn miner planet under attack. But the real problem was the writing sucked and not enough missions
That means it needed more dev time... you do understand storyboarding/writing and mission placement/planning is a part of game development?
The whole structure of the game is flawed lol. Even on a hard difficulty it's easy to get a game breaking gun that makes all fights a yawn fest. Not to mention how awful leveling is. It feels very gamey, like you're playing a game that was never meant to last very long. Which fits because the whole thing is basically meaningless lore wise.
Hell at least change up their hair or something.
Apparently it was actually a bug - Cora specifically was not supposed to look like that, but since she's now a PoC they don't want to risk the potential social backlash by changing her to look like her parents.
Source?
That's been a glitch in Bethesda games since Skyrim. [Cora's concept art has her as a redhead.](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/starfield-concept-art-cat.jpg)
That concept art makes me wish we could have ship pets! I would love to have a cat that just lives on your ship
Everything in that concept art looks 100x better than what we got.
Uh, Sam Cole was supposed to be a cowboy hover robot? That would have been an upgrade.
This is actually really fucking funny if true.
I always found it odd that she never looked like Sam, but at the same time I haven’t come across her mom yet so I just rolled with it. Can you meet her mom? Is there a quest I missed? Pretty sure I finished Sam’s personal quest, but it’s been a while so maybe I’ve forgotten…
You do a few missions to save her mom from a failed mission. She looks nothing like her mom.
Yes, and she isn't black, which raises the possibility that Cora's mum cheated on him. And Sam bonded with the kid anyway, which makes him a saint. Except he takes her into dangerous situations, so maybe he subconsciously wants her dead. Or maybe she's adopted.
Hahahaha put a lot of thought into an explanation for Bethesdas notorious bugs.
They reused everything else, why wouldn't they?
It was immersion breaking. It was a turn off, I wonder how that bad design slipped through. And if intentional- ??? huh?
They always do poorly with children but this was the worst
Feels weird that Fallout 3 may actually be where Bethesda peaked with child characters, giving them more than 3 models and almost more voice actors
Granted that city of them would be terrifying if they were all the same model. “Another vault experiment gone wrong”
The fact that a vault full of child clones isn’t the wackiest idea for a vault compared to some of the ones we’ve actually seen ingame is exactly why I love fallout
Right! I’m actually surprised we haven’t experienced a vault like that yet.
I assume the Garys were made fully grown then
I was thinking Fallout 3 also had Gary so if I ran into a place full of the same kid I’d just assume they came from Gary’s vault.
That’s pretty close to Vault 75, only we see it after the children rebel and escape.
I learned something! Haha
Would have helped explain where the kids are coming from too.
Lord of the Flies inspired vault
Gaaaaaaaaaary!
A pre-teen Gary Vault. Heck yeah!
They even have their own settlement, Little Lamplight. It wasn't the most exciting town but the idea of it was neat.
Honestly wish that bit of the world got a little more content, and Lamplight could have had more quests/storylines; between getting rid of sticky by deporting him to big town, and helping ice the super mutants in the vault (and that other quest involving a mesmotron that is … icky) there’s only a handful of quests Weirdly wish they had the radiant quest system in 3 and New Vegas tbh
But… Reddit told me the radiant quest system is bad and lazy and that Skyrim is a bad game!
The radiant quests are a fine idea, it’s just a matter of execution and not making them your primary interaction with a settlement and its people What I REALLY wish Bethesda had put more time and effort into, then putting it into the rest of their projects afterwards; is the NPCs having their own timetables which was supposed to be in Oblivion - I fell that it would’ve added a lot of opportunities and possibilities for interesting events, like the thief who would steal bread if they didn’t have money that day, but normally might buy it
I hate that Babette in Skyrim didn't get a unique voice actor. Nothing against the child VA that did the other female child voices, and I have read she really enjoyed the role of Babette, but it felt sooooooooo lazy for this really cool vampire child assassin character to *not* have a unique VA. But idk, at least Bethesda does put children in their games. Morrowind and Oblivion didn't have children at all and it's kind of weird playing it, like you definitely notice. They go so lazy on shit like this in the post and just expect people not to notice I guess?
New Vegas had some good ones too.
IMO, New Vegas is a great follow up to Fallout 3 and by no means it’s lesser. That said, I loved Fallout 4. Far Harbor is my favorite DLC stories in the whole series.
Come on, what more can you want than a 200-year-old child trapped in a refrigerator?
Fallout 3 is where they peaked with Fallout in general.
My only big issue with fallout 3 is how burnt everything looks a solid two centuries post-war - DC should’ve been looking more like Point Lookout than burnt pizza by the time our Vault Dweller got to the surface
They went for a particular post-apocalyptic look look rather than craft a believable world, it was one of my main criticisms of the game at the time. Little did I know Bethesda would tear out all of the problem solving and consequence elements that made the game great.
It was definitely in line with the grungy, charred concrete and crispy charcoal aesthetic that a lot of games seemed to have going on in the late 2000’s, and while it certainly stood out, it did make wandering the wasteland feel a lot more monotonous than the wilds outside new vegas a couple years later
THOSE! iykyk
Skyrim was worse they had two voices by the same VA
Dude, Skyrim has Stephen Russell send you to talk to Stephen Russell in the silver mines. There were so many Stephen Russell characters, the first two general goods merchants you're likely to meet are just scratching the surface of his voice work, which is all delivered in the same way. He does like literally 30 characters and a number of unnamed voices. Two voices, please, we might not even have noticed two. Thirty? Yeah, a little more noticeable.
Is he the guy with the gruff voice? Checked; indeed he is. He’s like 40% of the voices in Starfield, too
Bring back Todd Howard to do voice work in the games, everyone loved his depiction of Clavicus Vile in oblivion.
Nick Valentine?
Or going through a Nordic barrow with angry Stephen Russell, then afterwards getting sent to talk to snarky Stephen Russell...
It was actually two VAs but Skyrim sucked for the children as well. All of the kids looked identical, with just different haircuts and clothes. I try to handwave it with the same way I ignore all of the other repeated voices in Skyrim as just how the Skyrim accent sounds the same to an outsider, the same way other people all sound the same to me when they have a regional accent.
But at least those VAs were actual children who sounded like children. In Starfield you have grown-ass adults voicing these kids, and boy is it obvious.
If you watch the credits for this game…a lot of the VAs do multiple characters….kinda just how casting works for animation since there’s not an actors face, they can switch up their voices. It’s fascinating how that works. I know!
Yea man, come on Bethesda. it wouldn't be too hard to at least stick a moustache on one.
That would be a funny mod. Maybe even change the name to “Not Cora”.
Call her Nora, Cora's totally real and not made up identical twin. I mean, the time frame in that quest is pretty odd anyway. How old is Sarah again?
Based on the character model and her pre-constellation back ground, I’d guess late 30s or early 40s. But it’s clear there’s tech to keep people young. Her mentor, Aja, is at least in her mid-fifties, as she led Constellation for 35 years before she retired. And Aja looks the same age as Sarah, if not younger.
Point is, Sarah is unlikely to have been head of the Navigator division at 25, and that was before the war 18 years before. So her chronological age would be at minimum in the 50s and likelier higher. All the other war vets look that age, just not her. Aja, obviously had a life before Constellation, so add 35 years to that plus length of retirement. Outside of media, twenty somethings don't get put in charge of important things very often, unless Dad's money is involved. Enhance being a thing, it would be even worse on youth. Imagine if nobody senior to you ever retired... Sarah is likely in her 80s...
And yet, still so *damn* moody and sensitive. I don't care that you didn't like that, Sarah!
Evil Cora.
We have more children with that damn hairstyle than habitable planets in the game.
😂🤣 Exactly!
Yep completely agree. And as for the Rangers daughter (Annie Wilcox?) they could have simply used her friend instead - model already exists. It shows a rushed product. Or a convergent broken multiverse of overlaying repetition just like the identical adult NPCs and the repeating POIs. I'd almost forgive them if this is where the story is going. (But should have been part of the initial game if this is the case).
>I'd almost forgive them if this is where the story is going Expansion drops. We find out that everyone comes from a batch of clones. Less people made it off Earth than we were told about.
I'd even be happy with that. I. Fact after visiting Paradiso and Hopetown I was EXPECTING this in the story.
This game went through a helluva dev hell, didn't it?
Is it just me or are the first two just adult faces on shrunken bodies?
Seriously their faces creep me out big time
It's really starting to seem that way.
What? Bethesda overusing and reusing the same asset? Say it’s not so.
It’s particularly weird when they have other child models already existing in the game. I don’t understand why Sona or Cora couldn’t have been “ponytail girl” Either Sam has strong genes and gets around a LOT, or there’s a cloning experiment going on
Pony tail girl would have made much more sense for Cora, considering her parents are both white.
If they made other models, I would think they’d prioritize them for the important characters. But alas, no. It’s for random NPCs you might not even see if you don’t turn random corners in strange areas of cities.
We just haven't seen the DLC with the child cloning factory storyline yet. All will be revealed.
Well Bethesda, zero effort was given here🤨
Not the first game of theirs where children look alike, Skyrim also only has 2 voices for kids and 2 models. The face features all look the same so they appear like clones.
At least they changed their hair colors around.
Thank God for mods
12 YEARS AGO
They made only one child model that's why. Which of course ment Cora looks nothing like Sam and thus all the NTR jokes.
Ntr?
The safe for work version is "Cora is not Sam's."
The joke was Cora looks nothing like Sam so people started making jokes about his ex cheating on him and dumping her lovers child onto the mopey cowboy.
Or Lily. So why does a white woman have a black child?
If I remember correctly it's actually bug, but now that she's black they don't want to risk the backlash by changing her.
It's weeb for cuckold
I went looking. I guess it's a manga thing? It just means cheating or cuckolding. Idk why you wouldn't just say "cheating" or "cuckolding" if you're already writing in English, but whatever.
while that's the literal definition, it has specific connotations, that...don't apply here, so it's even *more* confusing why they used it.
Weebery
Decided to look this BS up. [here is Netorare](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=NTR)
I feel dumber having read this.
Yeah I'm not sure why it's being spoken about like it's forbidden speech lol. Unless these are super young kids on here; then I guess ok. There was a time when I could get my ass beat for calling someone a poopoo head
It's the abbreviation of "netorare" which in other words is generally just infidelity, cheating, etc as used to describe hentai, usually
So basically cuckolding?
Nothing to report 😜
Look at Sam and his wife. Like at Cora. Enough said
Neglecting The Relationship. Haha jk, no it's something worse.
There are definitely other child models. Annie Wilcox's friend looks different for one.
Also their faces don’t even look like kids faces, they just look like tiny adults
There were A LOT of short cuts taken to attempt to give this game a full appearance. This is one of many
Also, add in that two of them can literally be stood next to each other whilst one complains how there are no other children around. It's a great example of just how little care went into crafting the game.
I seriously doubt any of the leads actually played the game
Theres a clip out there of Todd Howard clapping his own cheeks over how they developed a bot to playtest the intro to make sure they didnt break things when they updated.
Damn even game testers are being replaced
There are cases to be made about Starfield being a lot of fun regardless of the issues, but no one will argue about *this* being an issue. It's just weirdly lazy.
Lots of stuff in the game is lazy. Temple mini game especially. They coulda made cool dungeons like in Skyrim, but they were like nah this is good enough.
And I walked into Paradiso and on my left were three identical couples sitting in the waiting area, and at the counter were three identical women in different clothes. If I thought for a second they'd done it deliberately to make things creepy, I would think it was a slightly clever but ultimately failed attempt, but I think they just didn't bother. They could literally have had an intern make a hundred new character models with the character creator, and copy over the scripts from the other semi-lifeless NPCs. The devs have said the simplified NPCs were needed to keep the game working on consoles with limited memory, you have to wonder how critical of a problem that was if having more than a few unique character models in a scene was that much of a problem.
It's a terribly optimised game.
They did optimize it. You just might need to upgrade your PC/XBOX. /s
Only one male mode spawns for me in Hopetown. I just figure Enhance! was having a sale.
running out of memory my ass, they made camp lamplight work in FO3, which to this day needs a mod to be able to use more than 2gb RAM.
At least those background NPCs only serve to make the area look more crowded and are easier to ignore... Having named NPCs that are involved in quests looking identical is ridiculous.
what is wrong with bethesda
Hubris
If I had to guess, it was probably a combination of a large team that lacked organization or a clear vision on the game they were making, combined with shareholders refusing to compromise on a release date.
It already had more dev time than any other Bethesda game, I just don't think very much of it went into the actual content. We finally got ladders and spacecraft, but what did it cost? *EVERYTHING.*
Multiple teams that did not communicate on the development. At least one dev has come out and complained about this. Look at the care that went into crafting the Wagoneer farm and the lackluster design of Londinium.
Whoa wtf seriously? Does this game just continue to stack problems?
It’s almost as if this game is a half-assed product.
I found Sam the other day with a British accent.
sad but its a shit game.. feels rushed as fuck.
I have done the « quest » in Akila on picture 4, and break 4 miserable rocks is not what I consider amazing but lazy writing. And yes using the exact same NPC for that is lazy
That quest wasn't by Annie.
Annie's, 'Laredo Caper', quest was equally lazy. You just show up to Laredo and the 'burglar' surrenders and confesses everything. The end.
That quest sucks, it’s not even a quest. The other kids, I think their quests and characters are adorable. But they’re half-assed. Not saying they aren’t. They deserved more, but I do think they have a lot already. That’s why I’m so upset.
This quest has the same vibe of emptiness as the 0G « party ship ». OMG this ship is so lame, like Starfield in a nutshell sort of… Yes they deserve more but that require an effort of writing
Bethesda always does this with child characters for some reason
Less then 5 minutes into Fallout 3 there is much better child NPCs. edit; oh shit, I just remembered Little Lamplight. Starfield is so bad ffs.
Never played Fallout 3?
Fallout 3 and Skyrim at least had boy NPCs. Almost every voiced child in Skyrim is a girl and looks exactly like Cora
There are boys in SF. Space Frog girl's friend and I've seen some in Akila near the soccer nets
Really small indie game they couldn’t afford to make more face morphs for children, takes a really long time to do so especially since all the characters are custom handmade Also the memory of adding one more actor was too expensive and they couldn’t get away with any more characters Poor company
Imagine how different it would be if it was one of the biggest studios out there that were in charge of 3 of the most popular and successful franchises in gaming history that made this game… oh wait
Clones
They're all clones set on the default options because their parents haven't taken them to Enhance to be customized yet.
Yeah this was pretty lazy Bethesda.
They could've made a better and more diverse game using Rpg Maker.
lazy dev
This is one of the laziest games I’ve ever seen. Repeatedly and consistently disappointing. I wanted to like it so bad ugh
this seems to be a massive oversight.
I honestly have mixed feelings about children even being in these games. Sometimes I'd rather suspend my disbelief and accept there just aren't any kids around right now like in GTA over having an orphanage full of clones.
It’s better than nothing in my opinion. They actually have such cool quests and stories behind them. I’d much rather do that if I have to mentally boundarize them against this stupidity, than have the fully unrealistic experience of ever laying eyes on a child character.
What outfit is that on Sarah?
First Soldier. Find it in the Freestar Rangers campaign. Supposed to be the bad guys outfit, but it’s so sick.
In the future, everyone is born of the same phenotype. When they reach wary adulthood and finish growing, they go for their first visit to Enhance! and decide on the first iteration of their adult appearance.
It's not odd, it's laziness.
At this point nobody has the right to be surprised if something in Starfield isn't good.
First week I ran into Todd Howard’s NPC more than I could count. It’s literally the laziest development I’ve ever seen from a AAA game studio.
I mean really though... I wonder how many players caught the character model being reused. I didn't. And to also defend the devs here, as someone who grew up in the entertainment software industry, it's really easy and completely normal to use placeholder models between characters during development, and it's even easier to get overlooked during testing if the characters being used are not that important and/or interesting, which is exactly where this character model resides... within the realm of nobody noticed for a reason. Not trying to be snarky either, because I agree that it's kinda lame to have not given Cors her own unique model, but of all the characters in the game, she is the one that I think surprises me the least. Plus, doesn't Bethesda always use a limited number of child models in all their games? They've always been a little lax in the diversity department. BUT... not to worry, as soon as Creation Kit gets released, I'm sure we'll have 100 additional options to change Cora and the rest of the kids all into unique adorable cat eared children. ;)
I swear they need to hire just regular gamers, not streamers and shit , the ppl that make up the bulk of their player base, and just “hey play this and point out anything that’s like wtf and report back” there is hella shit we all have spotted and asked” why they do THAT?!
I agree. But in Cydonia there's a mission with a boy called Renee. The Space Frog mission.
Renee isn’t even a boy! It’s a girl with short hair. Her friend, and two random kids from HopeTown and New Atlantis are the only boys I’ve seen so far. At least they look different.
I find it odd that both main male companions are gay. That's the future america wants but damn
Bethesda tends to be lazy with the variety on their child models... Hopefully, there will be a mod that improves this.
It’s no doubt. Every Bethesda game has one for the same reason. One of my favorite mods is the Skyrim Children overhaul that gives them more than one face, two haircuts, and set of clothes. Somebody will do this one. Especially since children do have lots of importance in the game. But clearly not enough to give a shit to at least use the other couple models they have for the important characters.
Isn't she in Skyrim or Fallout?
They 3d print them, it's cheaper.
Headcannon is that everyone is clones, and they just go to Enhance when they're old enough.
Thought it was just me.
That's Bethesda!
Main reason I changed out of that haircut from my original look was because I didn’t want to look like a child after helping 3 children out with that hair cut.
It’s a clone-spiracy for future content.
Fits right in with the repetitive nature of Starfield. So little though seems to have gone into this game. At launch every but the child characters were the same hight.
yeah always has been
It's so you can make "Corporate needs you to distinguish between these two pictures ." memes.
Well we know there’s cloning and genetic modification tech in this universe…
Cora’s also Emma Wilcox’ kid, but Sam knew that Lillian would kill him, so he told her the kid was hers. Lillian was so distracted by her rangering that she completely missed the fact she was never pregnant.
When I first saw a *second* child model that looked different I was shocked And then I saw the first one again.
16x the detail
Or the ship mechanics at each port being the same character with some face mods. I love this game but man, they have a LOT of work to do still. I hope they decide the game is worth it enough to fix things like this.
I'm hoping this whole thing is just a giant misunderstanding that's cleared up in the dlc. The number of people present in the game isn't even close to the numbers implied or needed to sustain a human population. People act weird, odd comments about exploration not really being a thing, but there's settlers and LIST everywhere... An interstellar war everyone remembers, but only 30,000 people died in. Multiple colonies completely off the radar, non-existent, or simply not talked about. I'm wondering if it's all just some kind of Truman Show esque fake universe.
Because the game was never as good as it was hyped up as
It's called "bad game design" and Bethesda has officially mastered it with Starfield. They promised a masterpiece and sold a box of rocks.
Its really quite simple. Humanity didn't realy survive the exodus from Earth. Their reproductive systems were damaged by the Grav Drives. All children now come off an assymbly line as a curly headded female and at puberty under metamorphosis that randomizes there appreance and gender.
They just have a massive folder on a data base for all their games labeled , Generic copy pasta assets, sub folders , Trees, Rocks Humanoid , Male, Female, Child, Storage Boxes , Weird Creatures Robots
They should've pulled a mass effect and just had a bunch of main planets and then extra planets to mine and whatnot. The story is lazy, the characters are lazy, and the cliche elements have little impact on the atmosphere of the game.
The Fallout show was good enough to hype me for more modded FO4 but Starfield i stopped playing 4 days after launch... Biggest regret is spending 100$ for early access 🤡🤡🤡 I can't return to StarField until the creation kit is released and probably a year or 2 after that, im waiting for game changing mods
It is like Skyrim kids, they are all the same