FUN FACT: This was Jeremy’s first podcast!
We both had a few audio issues with this episode so apologies for some of the audio.
Thank god for Izotope, it definitely helped me fix some of it.

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – Intro
00:26 – Jeremy Commuted To Work By Plane
04:07 – Working With Dennis On The Werewolf
06:26 – How The Animation Tools Evolved From Skyrim To Starfield
08:43 – Mocap Use On Skyrim/Jeremy Used His Own Mocap On Skyrim DLC
10:35 – Animating Hands/Hardest Things Animating
11:54 – Jeremy Was Known As The Gun Reloader Animator Guy
14:06 – Non-Combat Animations
15:20 – Non Humans Were Key Framed Not Mocapped/Only 7 Animators On Skyrim
16:55 – Bethesda’s Management System In The Old Days Doesn’t Scale Well
18:50 – Bethesda Expanded Too Fast For The Culture To Remain The Same/Team Sizes
20:15 – Starfields Roadmap Required A Massive Team
21:45 – Rockstar’s Level Of Polish/Downsides Of Large Teams
24:00 – Animating Procedural Generated Content
25:00 – Jeremy’s Thoughts On Todd Howard
28:50 – Jeremy Changed From A Full Time Employee To A Contractor Part Way Through Starfield
30:00 – Pros & Cons Of Remote Work/How Covid Impacted Starfields Development
32:15 – Microsoft Acquisition
33:15 – Modding Community
35:20 – Bethesdas Feature Creep Culture
36:30 – Why Jeremy Left Bethesda
39:10 – Games Are Costing Too Much To Make/Layoffs/Dev Salaries
43:15 – Larian Studios/Growing Studios Gradually
44:45 – Q+A – Why Slo Mo Kills Were Removed From Starfield
45:45 – Q+A – How Does An Animator Go About Animating A Mythical Creature
47:00 – Game Jams At Bethesda/Originally There Was A Mad Max Motorcycle In Fallout 4
50:00 – Many Vehicles Made For Starfield That May Still Be Added/Vampire Lord In Skyrim
51:30 – Pros & Cons Of Bethesda Migrating To Unreal Engine 5/Creation Engine
57:52 – It’s Easier To Make Realistic Graphics Than Stylized Graphics
1:00:25 – Elder Scrolls VI/Gameplay Is More Important Than Anything Else
1:02:10 – Bethesda’s Culture Is Great/Game Devs Who Have Never Shipped A Game Due To Layoffs
1:04:30 – Jeremy Asks Kiwi For His Thoughts On Xbox Multiplatform Strategy/Gamepass & Game He Played Most In 2024
1:08:30 – Closing Comments/LinkedIn Is Facebook 2.0

I know that animating for videogames is incredibly hard, but Starfield has some of the worst facial animations I’ve ever seen for a AAA game studio, straight up uncanny valley material.

Another “former” Bethesda employee…? …we live in sad times.

Awesome.

As you do more of these with folks who worked on Fallout/ES and then Starfield, can you dig into the Waterfall dev to Agile dev migration, how product management changed from one approach to the other, and maybe ask some personal opinions on what they liked/disliked from Agile vs Waterfall?

It always seems like folks approach Agile products with Waterfall expectations and this has always been kinda wacky to me given some of the feedback i’ve seen on Starfield since launch. I’d love to hear more about what folks behind the product think of the changes in approach, how that helps and hindered them, and what that means for the product long term.

And keep up and damned good work!

I’d be curious to know if they ever grab the really good Modders and give them more robust tools, or bring them on in a contract capacity or anything… it seems like a low-cost no-brainer, but maybe not.

Fun fact; People in Starfield still run around like string puppets. The animation on NPCs and allies has not improved at all from the PS3/360 era. At all. Same with facial animations. I enjoyed Starfield, but those animations were really, really embarrassing. And deleting this comment does not change that.

The games community is the most destructive force in the market. The media uses toxic methods in reviewing, either not realizing or not caring that they are torpedoing their own industry. For instance with Starfield, they chose to be so visceral complaining about a game that they put 500 hours in, and then complain because there are micro-transactions after they killed the sales. I’ve tried so hard explaining what happened to Photography and Videography, and how the culture at the top killed the whole darn thing (relatively). It seems to fall on deaf ears. The Modders are guilted into creating for Free, but YouTubers can profit from talking about said “free” mods… ugh. Rinse and repeat with all nuances of the games culture.

ngl some of the anims were pretty bad in f4
but they weren’t too bad

As a former BGS employee I demand to you to take interview with me

This guy was cool! Talented vet artist but really down to earth — and I agree with him, gameplay is king

Watching this before some clickbait site take it out of context.

Thanks a lot for the video!

It is great you have all these BGS devs but it also saddens me that they are all former BGS developers. They have, definitely, lost so much great talent.

Looking forward to this one – looks like another good one! Thanks again Reece

Jeremy, was Starfield deliberately more “clean” compared to something like elder scrolls? Was this a theme decision?

Let’s gooo!!