Starfield vs Cyberpunk - Cutscene Comparison 

Whoever did the scoring for Cyberpunk deserves an award. The game uses its music masterfully to set the tone for whatever scene is happening. It just adds so much atmosphere to the game.

Love that people are saying “well duh it took 3 years for this” starfield fans, this scene hasn’t changed since launch

cyberpunk: YOULL PAY TWICE BECAUSE I SAID YOULL PAY TWICE 🤬😡 starfeld: nuh uh 🥹 things have changed 😅 i need double 😄

getting a gun shoved in your face by a borderline cyberpsycho surrounded by his underlings vs some guy with a librarian voice going “nuh uh”

You cant compare a 10 year old game to cyberpunk ! Oh wait ...

Cyberpunk 2077 not only has better animation but is much cooler as a game than starfield.

Cyberpunk Weapons Dealer: Unhinged Cyborg Maniac Starfield Weapons Dealer: mildly assertive HR representative

Wow you could REALLY feel the tension in that STARFIELD cutscene, it's almost like I was there in person being bored. Cyberpunk could learn a thing or two.

The great thing about cyberpunk is there are no cuts in the 'cutscenes.' Its part of the reason as to why the story flows so smoothly. No loading screens to take you out of it as well as detailed animation that sets it apart.

Cyberpunk: Immense acting and drama over a tiny robot Starfield: silent bland discussion over mysterious super-material

Another thing that’s interesting is that you can tell just by observing Dum-Dum’s body language that when Royce pulls his gun, Dum-Dum is surprised and doesn’t pull his own piece out right when he’s supposed to. He sees Royce’s gun come out, then seems to pull his gun towards Jackie as an afterthought. To me, that little detail of Dum-Dum’s delay implies that Dum-Dum actually had fun geeking out over the Flathead to V and Jackie, and seeing them as a threat is something he does only because he knows he’s supposed to be loyal to Royce, not out of any personal animosity towards the two. It goes to show that Dum-Dum cares a lot more about messing with snazzy, top-of-the-line tech than actually fighting for Royce. All of that I could tell just from the fact that CDPR decided to be really detailed about his body language for a few seconds of mocap. Bethesda doesn’t hold a CANDLE to CDPR.

The less intimidating negotiation in Cyberpunk vs The most threatening moment in Starfield

It's hilarious how these cutscenes are so similar and so different at the same time

Just listen to how the soundtrack raises the tension or sets the mood in most Cyberpunk cutscenes.

Starfield’s voice acting sounds like it was done by chagpt

I swear that scene with the Maelstrom was and is still so iconic and memorable to me. The music, the setting, dialogue, and characters add so much tension. Also helps that the voice acting in 2077 is seriously good in a majority of the cutscenes

Even the voice acting is miles ahead on cyberpunk

When I restarted a play through of Cyberpunk with the 2.0 after not touching the game for more than a year I still remembered Jackie, Mysty, T-Bug, Viktor, Dexter De Shawn, Johnny, Rogue, Judy, Panam, River, Goro, Hanako, Delamain, even Brick, Royce and Dum-Dum and many more and what happened with them. I stopped playing Starfield after 80h, less than three weeks ago and I can't remember the name of one NPC, not even the name of the group my character was in.

Ironic how in 2020 people were making fun of Cyberpunk and now Cyberpunk is being used to make fun of Starfield, it's come full circle.

To be fair, Cyberpunk 2077's writing and cutscenes have always been one of its most stellar points, and they use the first-person perspective to great effect in storytelling. The game's issues have always been on the technical level with how it ran, the bugs, etc., and even then I still feel like its problems were way overstated by people, leading to many missing out on the good that the game had since day 1.

There's so much visual storytelling going on in Cyberpunks cutscenes that are really easy to miss. When Dum-Dum is demoing the Flathead, the garage doors open up behind him and you can see Royce (the guy you were expecting to meet) jacking out from a net-running chair and looks over to realize what's going on, and he quietly watches to wait for his moment to intervene. It's something I didn't notice on my first playthrough.

To be honest, I think CD Projekt RED has one of the best writing and directing departments in the world. Yes, also better than Netflix, Marvel, etc...

The thing is, Cyberpunk can get rid of its bugs tomorrow but Starfield will be shitty forever

I’m glad that Cyberpunk is getting the renaissance it deserves. It was a Diamond in the rough when it released, and it’s amazing to see the progress that’s been made on it with phantom liberty.

The music and voice direction in Cyberpunk alone make it superior. Also how it handles the first person camera work during the cutscene. The characters in Cyberpunk all have detailed animations and reactions to everything going on. It’s a cinematic experience, whereas Starfield is just three bozos in a room barely moving or showing any semblance of emotion in their faces or voice work.

I swear every line of dialogue I have heard and experienced in starfield feels like it was written by a shitty AI. Cyberpunk however......just amazing.

The difference between the quality of the voice acting, scene composition, and character choreography is night and day. It's like watching a movie vs watching a tv show on like....the CW.

I remember just driving in cyberpunk and I arrived at a gig and sat in the car to finish a song on the radio and just looked around. everywhere you look theirs another little detail and the setting just immerses you

And funny how both scenes are suppose to be super tense but due to Beth's design it holds no tension at all. With Cyberpunk, your choice will matter on how the meeting will go making it far more tense since the wrong choice might lead to a outcome that you did not want. In Starfield, plenty of choices to pick from but none of them matter at all.

What strikes me the most is the fundamental issue of Bethesda dialogue here. A lack of conflict in dialogue. Conflict is what drives narrative aspect of any media, an exchange between characters almost always NEEDS conflict to be engaging. Even simple things such as choosing between two dishes to order in a cafe instead of immediately agreeing on one.

I have several friends who started playing Starfield and jokingly ridiculed me for holding off because I wanted to save for Phantom Liberty instead. Who's laughing now! Damn, they got ripped off.

For all the issues Cyberpunk had at launch, one thing is really telling of how good the story and cutscenes are. I still remember this mission even 3 years after playing it.

I'd like to think Starfield's writing was done entirely by AI. But we all know that's not true. The writing was likely done by people who think a social life is hanging out on reddit all day, arguing with strangers.

Cyberpunk is truly great now. Gorgeous, immersive and fun as hell.

You always feel like such a badass when you shoot Royce. The way V just casually says "Bang" and then pulls the trigger, followed by taking cover behind the couch before the Maelstrom can react... Meanwhile starfield is just "Alright. Fine. Take it." with no strings or feeling of pressure. There's no fucking it up in starfeild, but the music in Cyberpunk brings it to, and dare I even say past, Detroit: Become Human's "The Hostage"

Man, for someone called Dum Dum, he sure knew how to sell me that Flathead.

Is amazing how Bethesda managed to make a a bad ass game about space guns and aventures boring

God , the starfield bits almost had me falling asleep ...

Can't stress enough just how obsessed I am with the Cyberpunk genre in general now...

Cyberpunk is just dripping with personality with every character you speak to Starfield feels like you’re talking to bots

Cyberpunk has amazing environmental story telling. It reminds me a lot of half life 2.

One word argument on why the cyberpunk scene is better: "Bang."

I've been saying since the beginning that despite the bugs cyberpunk has been criminally underrated. Reviewers never seemed to be giving credit to the unbelievable amount of state of the art quality writing, animating, sound design, and voice acting that went into the NPC interactions in Cyberpunk. Sure the combat was funky and the driving was funky and the crafting was useless, but just play through the game like you're enjoying a movie and even the smallest side quest brings entertainment at a level no other games match.

The tension ambient music in Cyberpunk just makes the scene way better. Like you feel you're on a totally hostile place considering how the Maelstrom is.

Nah don't worry, todd said it himself. Starfield is a "next generation" game!!!

The key focus is the animation, you can tell cyberpunk went all out on all its animations, whereas starfield really did not. Also the entire scene is just much more immersive in Cyberpunk.

This isn't even the 2.0 version of Cyberpunk which makes it even crazier.

There's something hard to explain about this scene. I've been to several big (HUGE, 1000+ players) LARPS and the tension of walking into Maelstorms feels very similarly to me being in a hostile territory, a place where I can get immediately killed if I say or look at something wrong. Fucking incredible.

I still think one of Cyberpunks best tools for making cutscenes intresting is the lack of locking you into place, V is a human being so regularly you can have V walk around in conversations, you can actually Role-play is a Role-playing game, have V walk around like their nervous, have V draw first, hell some missions will let you shoot first and ask questions later, oddly enough V being their own person actually adds to the ability to role-play in a Role-playing game, it means you can get to know and understand how V would act in situations, you'll still be making the choices but how V actually is rather independent, V is a character you both get to make and is already fleshed out My most recent V was a talk first corpo past woman who was great with tech, net running and rifles, having a character be a person while also giving players free roam to make that character act a certain way is INCREDIBLY impressive Like the clip shown in this video was from a street kid character, Corpo or Nomad V wont do some mysterious drug, but Streetkid would because they've probably done that drug before! Also theres just the fact V by default is actually rather smart, they're quick on their feet, a good planer, know weapons inside and out, depending on the life path they're even smarter in specific areas, Corpo V was part of Arasaka's counter intelligence in the Americas, Nomad V has all the knowledge to survive out in the badlands and did it alone for awhile and Street Kid is Street smart, understands the more intimate parts of night city and its gangs. Cyberpunk is a good Role-playing game because V is a good character to role-play as due to their flexibility Having a fully customized character in starfield kinda sucks because you're not going to hear their voice, their personality in gameplay, when V attends Jackies funeral it makes sense, V knew this person, Jackie was their one true friend and now hes gone and V is once again alone for a bit, its what makes V into a Solo, they can't handle loosing someone else, not again. I could literally never see my character in starfield attending a funeral or having a bond with someone before you actually played, I would never be able to have that conveyed to me through voice, through looking around a room nervously as I read a passage from a book and make a small speech about my dear dead friend. Starfield just isn't a good Role-playing game, most Bethesda games aren't because the characters aren't super strong, voice acting is wonky and your own character doesn't even have a voice and you're so rigidly stuck just looking at people in the eyes, who the hell just sits down and stares someone in the eyes while talking about anything, Cyberpunk knows thats bizarre so it lets you look around and walk, make a conversation feel like a conversation.

Basically, Office meeting vs High stakes high tension transaction.

When DumDum told me "now couch, plant it" I did. Took a lot of digging to make a hole big enough, and a hell of a lot of watering in...but now I have a beautiful couch tree that blossoms every spring.

that whole sequence in cyberpunk was really well done. very tense. whoever wrote that sequence seems like they had first hand experience with sketchy situations, the dynamics of it. it all felt very true to life.

As someone who's been playing Cyberpunk since launch, it's wild to see it being compared to other games as the example of what a game *should* be, when back in the day all the comparisons were *against* it.

Cyberpunk 2077's setting atmosphere is more dark and daring,while Starfield's is just safe

this single handedly convinced me not to play starfield.

Man Stardfield has no soul as a game anywhere, it feels like Discovery channel made their first game

Animations, stakes, emotions, dialogue s, the soundtracks. Cyberpunk 2077 all the way 🎉🎉🎉🎉

One has high tension high stakes scene the other has what exactly......? Note starfield took 7 years to make.

I never regretted pre-ordering 2077

The good writing done by Cyberpunk is also heavily emphasized by the insane job the studio did with the anime adaptation, which was also extremely well done storytelling wise

Choom. That was a word direct from Cyberpunk that i regularly see being tossed around now and then to refer to friends, hell, ive seen it amalgamated with current lingo like "oomfie", transformed into "choomfie". Aside from sounding extremely silly, you know what that tells me? That tells me that Mike Pondsmith CDPR made a setting, *not just a game but a setting*, that was so immersive that people walked out of it with lingo they can use in daily life. Because unlike Starfield, Cyberpunk was written by human beings who live lives to write games and not write games to live lives.

Scary ominous cutscenes: -Cyberpunk "Actually scary nervraking and awesome" -Starfield " Looks like my every boring day at work..."

Cyberpunk already had a really intense start with Maelstrom. The music, the scenery, they really get across the feeling of the setting. And the acting is just WAY better.

You can feel the tension in one and feel yourself drifting off in the other.

My god Starfield's font looks like they hired an 8 year old who watched a CSS tutorial online

The music really make or break scenes like these. The music of Cyberpunk just implies that shit about to hit the fan. While Starfield is deader than a grave

Starfields dialouge sounds like 2 AI models talking to each other

Cyberpunk also gives you the option to zoom in on peoples faces. The micro facial movements tells you a lot about a persons personality/intentions. Meanwhile, at Bethesda...

I never thought I'd live to see the day where Cyberpunk is used as a positive example, just goes to show you how hard the team worked on fixing the game to make it realize its potential.

Played Cyberpunk 2077 yesterday for the first time and… what a game ! Impressive

best part is that all the cutscenes are there since launch, and it is always this good!

The most amazing thing about this particular maelstrom mission is there are so many ways it can pan out. Gotta be at least 6 endings to it from going on the rampage as soon as they let you in the front door, to killing royce to helping royce. Most missions even the smaller ones are designed with multiple styles of play in mind, from running in shooting to stealthing it.

In Cyberpunk I just played this scene for the first time, and of course my outcome to the end was significantly different but by God i could feel the addrenaline of the situation and felt the tension and unease. But watching the Starfield situation, a game i refunded just before release, im glad i refunded that garbage.

Cyberpunk has better facial animations despite these characters missing most of their faces

Cyberpunk just dominates Starfield in every way, shape and form.

Im so glad people are finally coming around to see how good CP77 is.

I get bethesda made a "highly-moddable game" but they could have at least just written a more interesting story, even fallout 4 is more interesting and that's on the low-end of bethesda game stories

The biggest difference here isn't just graphics, it's things like direction, blocking, and lighting design. Cyberpunk has great pacing and lighting to heighten the feeling of tension and the feeling that this deal could go very sour very quickly at anytime. It introduces new narrative and visual elements at a verb deliberate pace in order to slowly ratchet up the tension to a decisive boiling point and it really does make you feel on edge, especially first time through. The blocking of the scene is very cinematic as well, the establishment of Royce in the background, and the subtle, missable reveal that he's been actually listening to this deal while being unnoticed the entire time at 2:38 is very cinematic and effective, though it keeps the player still more of less in the perspective of the actual character, it doesn't force it into a movie like cutscene, it still FEELS like a game. Starfield by comparison is the exact opposite of all this. The characters are extremely flat and bland, as is their dialogue, there's no tension, no emotional stake in what's going on in the scene. The blocking is incredibly lazy and feels like the character placement in the scene is just an after thought (which it almost certainly was knowing how Bethesda does blocking in general). The lighting is increibly boring and predictable, using unnatural colors to go with the nightclub setting but making them purple-ish to remind you "this isn't your dad's nightclub, this is a SPACE NIGHT CLUB!!!1!". It's all so incredibly boring, trite and uninspired it almost hurts to actually look at. You can get away with subpar graphics as long as your visual language and art design are good and work for what your going for. Star field has the exact opposite though. It has impressive enough graphical fidelity, sure, but it's art design is so shockingly lazy and dull that it doesn't even matter. It's like, would you rather look at a not so realistic and but incredibly aesthetically realistic landscape or an incredibly photo-realistic rendering of a doctor's waiting room? Most people are going to pick the first option I'd imagine. How bethesda doesn't get this still baffles me.

I think the main difference is how much the non-diegetic music adds to the tension of the cyberpunk's scene, but I think even if you played with music turned down, it would still feel tense because the emotions of the characters are clearly felt in their performances. That starfield scene would've been improved with a few more moments for your character to speak to let the tension build and risk of messing up the deal for being too confrontational. It also feels way too quiet for what seems like a club (havent played it so idk).

Cyberpunk is an awesome very immersive game. It's not only like being part of the story it's like actually living through it. Awesome game.

CDPR adds character to their games. Making them feel personal and intimate

Cyberpunk characters have so much life. The quiet talking missions are still fun because they are like watching a movie. Ive heard some people say a game on starfield's scale cannot make hundreds of dynamic scenes. However, cyberpunk is no slouch regarding content. It can easily go over 100 hours. If they have too much quantity to make quality, perhaps they made some bad choices.

I know I'm late to the party for this one, but there's something I want to bring up that I see so few people mentioning that makes the Cyberpunk scene so much better. To give some context, when I started watching this, I hadn't even touched Cyberpunk or Starfield. The scenes taking place and the context behind them was completely unknown to me. I've since played Cyberpunk (still not touching Starfield) and found out what the context was, but there's a reason I mention this. Even without knowing the context behind the Cyberpunk scene, I could understand what was being traded and why it was important. A highly advanced bot that could do some crazy stuff, climb around on walls, cloak itself to become invisible, maybe even have some super silent laser. Those were my thoughts back then and when I saw it, it looked like it was definitely a sought after item within the world. The tension around the conversation only strengthened that. The music played a good part in adding to that tension. I had a good idea why it was so important to both sides and why Maelstrom would be so against handing it over to you and would try to kill you for it. Even without playing the game, even without knowing the greater context that it's something needed for the heist on the biochip. In the Starfield scene, I genuinely didn't know what's being traded. Everyone's so calm and only mildly annoyed when they don't get what they want. It feels more like two kids talking about trading a pokemon card than anything else. I later found out the context behind this scene by watching another video. What's in that box is an advanced meta-material(?) that holds great deals of power and the two of them are talking about it like they're out on an ice-breaker lunch that was mandated by HR. The fact that even without knowing that even when shown an incomplete piece of the story, the Cyberpunk scene still made me excited and had me on the edge of my seat while watching it, is a testament to the quality of Cyberpunk's writing. That trade quest in Cyberpunk alone could easily have been made into a 30 minute short movie and would be lauded with praise. If you did the same thing with Starfield's quest, it'd put you to sleep faster than if you got tranquilized.

To be fair, after starfield's scenes, you can go to bed nicely, cause you are already half asleep. After cyberpunk's, you want MORE!

one thing I rarely find being mentioned is, how different Cyberpunk compared to CDPR's previous games. Completely new game with new assets, programming, animations, not to mention the themes and settings are polar opposites. Their first FPS game, their first take on guns, and arguably the first truly futuristic open world game. Meanwhile, Bethesda have been making the same Bethesda games for decades with minimal improvements.

It's not just the animation. I think the biggest, most obvious difference is the writing. It's leagues apart. Voice acting as well.

I always thought people judged to harshly Cyberpunk when it came out. Im glad its getting the love it deserves now.

Cyberpunk is the best game I've ever played in my life. Never have I ever enjoyed a game as much as CP, everything from the game design, scenario, ambiances, cutscenes and the lore is an absolute banger

I swear morrowind had characters with more personality than Starfield does. And thats saying a lot considering interacting with morrowind npc's is almost entirely text based.

The atmosphere of Cyberpunk 2077 in some areas give some of these cutscense weight & danger where as Space Skyrim is just...."hello have you been to the sky district?"

Cyberpunk 2077: 🔫🦾💀⚠️ Starfield: 🤵🏻🫶🏻🤵🏻💼

the most dangerous thing in the cyberpunk cutscene: the borged-up maelstrom gangers the most dangerous thing in the starfield cutscene: falling asleep

This is what happens when you don't censor yourself to high hell I mean what the hell kind of deal was that? a CEO meeting a dock worker at a goof ass club for a piece of scrapmetal. Bethesda has missed the plot by so much that I don't even know if the modding community will even attempt to save it.

The saddest thing is that my 7 year old PC can run cyberpunk but not starfield, which is insane if you consider how much better cyberpunk looks.

Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty 2.1 just got even better. really blown away by the update and fixes

You have to give it to Bethesda: Making a game as empty, boring and outdated as starfield is truly an achievment. I am not sure if a game has ever bored me more. Of course I am in the wrong here, as Bethesda has already stated, that being bored is the players fault. I believe their argument was: "When the astronauts went to the moon, it was empty and vast, but they certainly we not bored." Thank you for your braindead wisdom Todd... I truly feel, that even Gollum and King Kong are better games than Starfield, at least they make you laugh.

Cyberpunk has so much more personality and style dripping out of nearly every aspect of the world and story. I rarely feel that in Starfield at all. Rarely even feel any sort of real tension in its scenes. Cyberpunk has had me on edge making me pick quick, uncertain decisions. All while the characters all feel so alive in every scene instead of just being stationary. It's genuinely so fucking good, I wish I could play it for the first time again

Even if all cyberpunks cutscenes arent always this good, it shows the limitations of starfields stiff game engine. Bethesda badly need to make a new one like what rockstar did with GTA 4. Starfields supposed to be next gen game yet cant even compare with cyberpunk of all games.

I remember the first time I played through the maelstrom section and when Royce slammed on the garage door I was actually so distracted with Dumdum and the flathead that I never saw him until he started yelling at you. It was genuinely a tense moment for me and gave me some panic as I thought it was going to immediately start a gunfight

Cyberpunk 2077 has the most immersive first person cutscenes I've ever seen tbh.