You’d have to have a heart of stone not to have been charmed by the re-emergence ofOblivion’s ‘Adoring Fan’ inthat big Starfield reveal. It’s the first thing that really groundedStarfieldfor me as a true-blue Bethesda RPG. you may show off as many star systems, mine as many space rocks, and show me as many barren rocky planets or spaceship battles as you like, but until you give me a delightfully goofy reference back to one of the goofiest characters in the history of the Elder Scrolls series, then you ain’t no Bethesda RPG to me.
Obviously, the Adoring Fan’s cameo is played for laughs, and the bit lands brilliantly, but there’s more to his brief appearance than just the dialogue that tickled my nostalgia buds. As Starfield’s Adoring Fan launches into his fanatical little monologue, something else struck me about the interaction:his weird animations!Yes, Bethesda have seemingly opted to keep things old-school and a little bit janky in the animation department for Starfield, and for me, as a veteran of Bethesda’s, shall we say,eldergames, it makes me feel right at home.
First up, just look at how the adoring fan’s superfast sprint across the courtyard comes to a sudden halt as soon as he comes into conversation range. No need for him to slow his momentum down or anything; it’s as if he suddenly locks—almostslides—into place, ready to talk. Now, the Elder Scrolls games have always been pretty progressive when it comes to respecting personal boundaries. Whether it’s a Dark Brotherhood assassin coming to kill you or an Imperial City guard looking to throw you in the clink, they’ll always stop a good 15ft away from you, and have a big ol’ chat to announce what they’re about to do (and potentially let you talk your way out of it). It’s a time-honoured tradition in Bethesda RPGs.
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Once the Adoring Fan gets into position, we enter the next strange stage of Bethesda RPG conduct: the trademark Oblivionpower-zoominto the face of the NPC you’re talking to (OK, admittedly, they cut straight to a close-up in the video, but with how close the camera ends up, it seems fair to assume there’ll be some kind of zoom-in). Bethesda really overdid that face zoom in Oblivion, propelling the first-person camera so hard and fast into the face of the NPC talking to you that it’s a wonder you didn’t break their nose with your head. It was intense, with the NPC’s moon-face taking up half the screen as they spoke to you, and has been the source of many a great ‘Oblivion dialogue’ spoof video over the years (like this absolute classic below from the LaFave Bros).
Skyrimmostly scrapped the zoom while keeping dialogue in a first-person perspective, while Fallout 4 shifted dialogue to a kind of third-person view where the NPC would be talking to your character just off-screen. Something about that just didn’t sit right, making you feel like a voyeur listening in on a chat between two NPCs as opposed to theBAM-in-your-facestylings of classic Elder Scrolls dialogue. Based on how close-up the faces are during dialogue in Starfield, it does look it’s reinstating a slightly toned-down version of the first-person Oblivion-style zoom, though I’m still waiting to see the actual transition take place.
Finally, check out those facial animations on the Adoring Fan. The vacant eyes, the stiffness, the eyebrows that seem to move independently of the rest of the face like the mouth of a nutcracker soldier. It’sperfect. To be fair, the faces of other characters we’ve seen the player speak to in Starfield don’t look quite as ridiculous, and it’s possible that they specifically hammed up the Adoring Fan for old times’ sakes, but I for one wouldn’t mind a bit of quaint old-school Bethesda jank.
Because let’s face it: Starfield isn’t going to be judged by the quality of its facial animations or the thrust of its main story. Those have never been the things that Bethesda RPGs end up being remembered for. If the game lands on those fronts, so be it, but the real definer of Starfield’s quality will be about how good a job it does of facilitating us to lose ourselves in its world, crafting our own bespoke cosmic tale that we get so embroiled in as to spend hundreds of hours in the game without even bothering with the main story. And yet, seeing Starfield retain some of the strange dialogue quirks of older Elder Scrolls games is super-comforting, in its own weird way reassuring me that Bethesda hasn’t forgotten who its audience is.
