Starfield GIF Shows Big Facial Animation Improvements Over Fallout 4

gamerant.com:

It's clear by now that the upcoming release of Starfield is nothing short of a flagship launch for both Bethesda and Xbox, and that both studios consider it a crucial element of their respective 2023 lineups. With the first gameplay showcase having provided the players with a taste of what's to come, some have taken to poring over the shown footage to try and figure out how the game might behave in practice.

One particularly noteworthy detail about Starfield comes from Reddit user _eldrone, who decided to highlight the game's character rendering technology. They posted a short GIF that zeroes in on one of the characters' animated skin folds, facial animations, and skin wrinkles to compare it with Bethesda's previous mainline release, Fallout 4​​​​​​.

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Bethesda proudly announced that Starfield's character creator is its most ambitious implementation yet, but the buck doesn't seem to stop at mere customization. As _eldrone rightfully pointed out, the game features the most advanced face rendering technology Bethesda's had yet, which helps make the characters way more interesting and believable than they were in any of the studio's previous RPGs. In comparison, Fallout 4's characters look dated and have a general lack of fidelity, which isn't particularly odd considering the game's age.

What's particularly noteworthy is that all the characters in any given Bethesda game are effectively created using the game's character creation tools. This implies that the character fidelity boost is a baseline, systematic improvement that should apply to all characters across the board, including NPCs and player creations alike. It's also going to be interesting to see how