Summary
SomeStarfieldfans have recently taken to social media to bemoan the fact that so many kids in Bethesda’s space-faring RPG look alike. They perceive the problem as prevalent enough toreally ruin immersion inStarfield, having already produced several examples illustrating this child doppelganger phenomenon.
Bethesda’s role-playing games have long been lauded for their immersive worldbuilding, which is a key part of the lifelike sandbox experience that the studio is known for. And though some of its titles were better at delivering NPC variety—or the illusion thereof—than others, child characters were generally handled with enough diversity so that they rarely looked like obvious clones of one another. Their presentation peaked withthe ability to adopt kids inThe Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, which would have been severely lacking had Bethesda not been able to design a diverse cast of child NPCs.
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Some fans feel thatStarfieldis a notable step back in this respect, not least because of its tendency to reuse one particular appearance for several important kid NPCs. Elaborating on that criticism, Reddit user nicholasthehuman recently took online to share side-by-side images of Annie Wilcox, Cora Coe, and Sona, labeling Bethesda’s decision to reuse the same kid model for so many quest characters as “immersion-breaking.” Thousands of fans appear to be in agreement with their complaint, having recently voted to send the comparison to the front page of the r/Starfield subreddit.
While all of Bethesda’s past games reused similar NPC designs to some degree, they were historically better at hiding such practices, at least when it comes to quest NPCs. This particular complaint withStarfieldmight have also flown under the radar had the frequently repurposed model not been bestowed upon Cora, the daughter ofStarfieldcompanion Sam Coe. Due to that relation, Cora spends a lot of time hanging around the player’s ship, making Bethesda’s decision to reuse her appearance for multiple other characters that much more glaring.
SomeStarfieldfans chiming in on this discussion said even those similarities would have flown over their heads had Cora and Sona not ended up on their ship and in the Constellation Lodge at the same time. But seeing how Sona is tied to another popular companion’s quest, that ostensibly ended up being a pretty common experience. Nevertheless, Cora will continue complaining about having no one her age to socialize with even after Sona arrives at the Lodge, thus completely ignoring her apparent doppelganger and further exacerbating this immersion-breaking oversight.
As far as PC players are concerned, the newly surfaced complaint has a decent chance of beingfixed byStarfieldmodders. Though the game’s official modding tools still aren’t out, there are already plenty of character model swaps available to download, as such limited retexturing projects are fairly straightforward to put together.
Starfieldis available now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.
