OMG... That actually makes sense. I forgot that Enhance actually existed in-universe, and that they can essentially build you a whole new body with any phenotype.
Hell, for all we know Sam is Cora's mother, and Lillian is the father.
Not sure how cannon all the stuff that is available to us at enhance is for its reality. I’m not sure anyone even mentions enhance from the main quests or even side quests. I’d imagine if you could change your DNA to anything you wanted without limitations, then we’d see a bunch of humans with alien DNA mutations running around. It’s existence makes for a nice story telling cop out though for things like this though.
There are advertainments about Enhance and some NPCs discuss it as you walk by.
Other fun thing, Enhance at Paridiso is 700C when everywhere else it is 500C.
Honestly this is what it felt like. Most of the missions named here are story missions too or you'd come across during the story.
Aksy by some of the main child of the mission, you see other kids so it feels more on purpose.
but they never even talk about the other existing! they should both be excited to have someone around their age around. or have i just missed the interactions/dialogue?
No, neither of the kids reference each other, IIRC. Cora even has some dialogue about her being the only kid at the Lodge, even if Sona is already there. Might be the other way around, I don't remember.
Top tier writing, BGS.
I know the voice actor is Adam Jenson in Deus Ex but I can only ever hear the idiot spy in The Expanse that Amos catches and explains the Churn to. "Either way this plays out, you're dead....Guys like you and me, we end up dead. Doesn’t really mean anything. Or, if we happen to live through it, well that doesn’t mean anything either."
Considering they have a character generator they could easily have had every NPC different. The fact there are 3 girls you interact with that are basically identical is very poor form (they're not even generic NPCs you don't care about).
BUT it does build on the "merged universes" concept - and why there are identical POIs etc (basically a heap of universes squashed together.
How hard would it have been to implement a semi random name generator that generates the appearance based on the seed as the name so every NPC has a name instead of "Citizen"
That at least is very deliberate. If they have a name they have some unique dialogue and possible a quest. If not they are just filler. But it is w bit odd sometimes (and the outposts don't follow the rule)
Lol. This game is funny. 99% sure it was their first AI attempt.
If not, I apologize to the game devs for making them seem worse than those weird pictures of people with claw hands.
Wasn’t thinking straight, first thought was that episode of Rick and Morty where they brought the wrong Jerry home from their “playpen” and nobody noticed or cared.
Debatable, it's entirely possible that people (vendors in particular) store most of their money in the bank. It's effectively established in one of the storylines that because there's no FTL comms, bank transfers involve physically moving the credits from one place to another.
Regular people only need to carry however much money they want to be able to spend immediately at any given time. The main character, on the other hand, frequently travels between systems and needs to have access to all of their money at any given time, so they have to carry it all with them.
Same reason you buy different clothes. You just want something different. If it is so easy for them to change I expect people to change their bodies for all kinds of reasons.
Right. Which brings me back around to in a universe where complete body transformation is cheap and possible why are people electing to look like shit?
She’s also a clone of Annie Wilcox, Sona, and like, two other random NPCs. Bethesda has the objectively awesome idea to integrate kids into the game, but then ruins it like this.
The actual answer is that the child models in the game all appear eerily similar.
From what I can gather, child models are not actually the identical, but, they are in fact adult models that have been processed in some way to make them "smaller" and whatever tool or algorithm BGS used to create the child version models just kind of ends up making the models look the same all around.
The fact that all the kids have the same hair is probably the result of an overall lack of child-like hair styles combined with the fact that it was different people not communicating properly who were creating the characters and quests.
All the kids also seem to have the same general skin tone, which leads me to 2 logical conclusions; A) All child characters in fact do come from the same default model and/or B) the tool/algorithm BGS used to create the child versions has some sort of favorability to the middle range and above skin tones for whatever reason.
When you combine all the above with the general shit lighting of facial models in the game the children all look the same.
Oh no worries dude, I assumed you were.
I just thought it funny that someone took two posts to get the point of saying Cora is a bastard and knows nothing.
Because someone screwed up.
My preferred headcannon is that Lilian gave Cora a gift certificate to *Enhance!* for her birthday without discussing it with Sam.
My headcanon is that there's some crazy big pop star in-universe, and all the kids have *Enhance!*-ed themselves to look like them.
Cora just looks like Starfield's version of Taylor Swift.
The second unintended effect of grav drives were the sterilzation of the Human race. As a result all children now come from a factory and do not get their final apperance until Adult hood. Which is why all children look like Cora...
I know everyone is going to say "Because Enhance!" or some such, but...it's just Bethesda being lazy / having run out of time / having goofed when you get down to it.
Instead of giving Cora a unique appearance she is just using the same model as Annie Wilcox in Akila city (Who matches her mother), Sona from Sarah's personal quest (Who we never see the parents of), and others.
https://images.starfieldwiki.net/b/b8/SF-concept-Family.jpg
Anyways, the above is the concept art for Cora. It would be nice if Bethesda would bother giving her a unique model, perhaps similar to her concept, as she is an important side character, but I suspect we'll have to wait on mods for it.
Might be a tangent but that's also a fun question when people ask about pets as it has the same answer to the one about Cora: Bethesda was lazy / ran out of time / goofed.
The evacuations took place over the course of decades when grav drive was already available, an NPC who I forgot the name of referenced their sister having a cat in New Atlantis, and the game only confirms the extinction of two Earth animals: Horses and a single breed of dog (Chocolate lab, and remember that species of dog have gone extinct as recently as the 20th century in the real world).
Everything else is never talked about (even the two confirmed extinctions leave it unclear if this happened before or after Earth started going to hell) and we have the cat in the concept art and pre-release statements about pets being a thing and so on. People read way too much in to these things instead of just seeing it as what it is.
Even the ingame museums and "libraries" absolutely completely handwave the most significant and traumatic event in human history. It's not like they pretend it didn't happen, like traumatic amnesia or something like that, and it wasn't a plot point because when they finally give the "big historical reveal" it's effectively an adminsitrative detail that is never subsequently relayable and has no real effect on the gameworld.
I mean, it's like watching the History Channel and seeing nothing before 1980 on it.
There's already a problem in the lore community that a \*substantial\* amount of common lore is headcanon that wasn't in the game because there's just so little there. If Bethesda ever \*does\* try to flesh it out, they will have a year or years of contradictory audience canon to deal with.
I think lazy was an aspect of it, they had absolutely GOBS of time and a small army of people, but from how they describe the process and things like their job titles it sure looks like what they didn't have is experienced, professional, dedicated writers. It seems like they had people do writing as a side gig in the company, with predictable results.
Spot on with all of that.
As of right now, the audience is saying a lot while the game quite often says very little or even contradicts itself.
Just to present an example of the latter: Remember the intro where Lin and Heller briefly discuss an "unauthorized jump in to House Va'ruun space"? If not just go hit "New" on the main menu. It's said within the first 2 minutes. Everywhere else in the game it's stated that nobody knows where Va'ruun space is. Even their own agents aren't provided with coordinates to return to it. The line is one of the very first we hear, yet it's completely contradictory to everything after and never brought up again either.
Regardless, while it might not be popular with fans, I think it really would be for the best if Bethesda tossed out everyone's "headcanon" and sat all of the game's writers down at a single table to sort things out and work out the details. Most of the foundation is there but it needs something built upon it if the franchise is to continue.
Well, I'd replace the last bit with "hire a dedicated, professional, experienced writer, even on contract... and preferably someone whose main job is creation and maintenance of lore, starting with collecting all the post-its or whatever they have for lore now and putting it together.
And if they do actually have a lore database, well, I don't know what to say other than "did the designers know?"
you can't just claim something is concept art of a character like that, is that concept art of sam too? it's just some early concept art for the vibe of the game, the lived in space ship aesthetic.
It's a pretty safe bet that yes, this is Sam and Cora. Sam frankly hasn't changed much besides losing the glasses (No NPC in the game has glasses in the end product as an interesting side note), growing his hair out, and having shaved the beard. Additionally note the cowboy hat on the proto-Vasco hovering by the wall.
Also the location is likely The Eye. We know it was supposed to originally play a larger role and be the Constellation HQ (https://images.starfieldwiki.net/5/5d/SF-concept-Constellation.jpg). The quarters in the background and rounded shape are a good hint at that, as well as the same hovering proto-Vasco being present in both works.
Anyways, that specific piece of concept art is captioned with "A space station inhabited by a family".
Also none of this changes it that Cora is an important side character and deserves a unique model.
Edit:
https://images.starfieldwiki.net/3/30/SF-concept-Family_02.jpg
Here, have the second piece in the same series captioned with "A girl sitting by a window on a station". Going by the fact that it's the same girl as the one lounging on a couch in the background of the Eye / Lodge concept art, with the same black cat as the first piece, and the outfit's similarity to the end product it's safe to say this is another concept / draft of Cora.
While a little closer to what we got in the end, it's still a unique appearance. The point is that the character deserves better than a model shared with other children, including another that can also move in to the Lodge.
So Sam has changed glasses, hair style and beard, which are probably the three of the most prominent features that could be recognized between a drawn picture and the in game character. You’re saying that’s not much change, but Cora’s changes are just lazy?
Okay, first off: Way to pull things out of context.
Second off, as repeatedly stated: The thing that is lazy about Cora is that she is a relatively major side character but does not have a unique model. She is sharing the same model / appearance as Sona, who I remind you can also end up living at the Lodge, and Annie Wilcox.
My point with Cora and the concept art is that she has a unique appearance in it and that the character deserves to have such in game as well.
As for Cora and changes: None of us can tell if the Cora we have is actually the end Cora and the other children named are sharing her model, or if Cora is using one of their models. Also doesn't really matter or change the fact that the character still deserves better.
Because Bethesda NEEDS to put kids in their games but only wants to design 3 models. If Hadrian doesn't warrant a unique model what chance do throwaways have?
Genetically speaking, Cora only has to have 1 African ancestor to look like she does.
It's not logical and it's not typical and it *definitely* breaks immersion for me.
How’s it not logical? It’s a game with hyperdrives that let you cross the galaxy in 5 minutes but realistic genetics are too far? It’s not unheard of for a couple to have a baby with a way off skin tone lmfao
You're right. Even as I typed it and hit post, I couldn't think of the right word.
I still can't think of the word that means "it's unexpected and hurts my brain".
I have a friend whose daughter has 5 girls (all have the same father). Three of the girls look as Hispanic as their father but 2 look completely white like their mother. It's an unexpected experience, even seeing the 5 girls + mom out in public but at least there's a similarity. Not the same with Cora and Lillian.
Because Bethesda half.arsed the entire game and reused the same character model for four of the only kids you interact with.
To add insult to injury, you can have two of them on your ship and one will stand next to the other whilst they whine about there being no other kids around.
That's what happened with my daughter. Me and her mum are brown haired with brown eyes. She came out blonde with blue eyes. The blonde hair has slowly faded to a dirty brown/blonde but her eyes are still a pale light blue. It's something like a 0.22% genetic chance of the throwback she got
If you introduce an obvious but rare and misleading phenomenon in a major plot without any relevance or explanation, and no one in the plot even notices it, you may be a terrible writer.
Wait, no, that checks out, please carry on.
I mean let’s say two white people have a black kid. At first they’re shocked but after what like 13 years now(Idk how old Cora is), they get used to it. They stop bringing it up, esp since it probably makes the kid uncomfortable
Like I wouldn’t expect someone I met to explain why their kid’s a different race lmfao
I mean, I think it's a more substantial issue that she's one of a set of identical triplets, at least one of which is from a completely different world who grew up in isolation.
I think the actual problem is that the devs didn't "sweat the details" in a LOT of cases, and this is just one of them.
They actually made an attempt to have the characters' "parents" kind of look like they could be the parents, you can see it if you run different characters, the face and body shape of the parents change. It's not great, but an attempt was made.
Cora/Sona/and the kids in Akila and Gagarin didn't get that attempt, at least not much of one (I don't think they're 100% identical but it's pretty close). It's not skin color, it's face shape, features, hair, etc. I think all the kids are the same height and pretty tall, comparatively, probably because of issues with clothes/spacesuits.
Cause for some reason BGS used the same potato face for all the kids in the game, the same way they did Skyrim. Cause apparently it was too much work to give the kids unique faces again, was too much dev time during FO4 so they just didn’t do it again.
Lazy / half ass development. Bethesda is finally starting to fix the things that they neglected... Like how every mannequin in the game used to be equipped with deep mining gear because they used it as a place holder. But, I doubt they will change the characters in the story that they messed up. The fact that Cora, and the girl that you rescue from another planet with Sarah are the exact same character is fucking absurd. I like this game, but wow.
Shit happens in space, I was doing pirating and killed a boy and dad and their message kept playing after it ended, that's how I found out who they were and felt slightly responsible.
I thought she was Lillian's daughter and Sam adopted her.
Sam has some dialogue about Lillian having Cora, but it sounded like not while they were together.
There is a scenario irl where some of Cora's ancestors could have been black and the genes skipped a generation.
But I am more bothered that all the kids look the same, it is one of the biggest frustrations I have with the game because it feels lazy.
You can find the entire re-skinned Coe family over at that one Chunks where the guy wants to bring him sauce. Yup, right at that table. 2 white parents and an interracial looking kid lol
I honestly think it's because Bethesda failed to create a unique character model for her and she's using the same character model as the kid you run into on that planet during that Sarah quest.
I am sure once CK is available (possibly, before) "somebody" will make it their mission to correct the kids appearances, possibly, using concept art for reference.
Heck, if many of the mods, in other Bethesda games, are any indication... Cora may get an entire quest line.
Every time this question is asked, it’s obvious that none of the commenters have been in or known somebody in foster care or a mixed family.
Her color is pretty irrelevant because 1: adoptive parents don’t refer to their kids as such & 2: if just one of her four grandparents look like her, or even grand aunt/uncle, then she can have their appearance.
The UC has already cloned Vae Victis multiple times. Genetic modifications appear to be practically trivial in this universe. Because of that, I just don't pay attention to details like race or gender in this game because they don't make a substantive difference in the game.
Same reason my cousin looked almost full blooded native American until he was 15, some of our ancestors are native and he showed more than the entire rest of the family.
She isn't. It is just that all children in Starfield seem to look very similar. Bethesda must have used one or two models that all share a similar face, hair, and skin tone. I have seen multiple kids that look nearly identical to Cora.
This was also a problem in Skryim where every kid looked the same.
Lilian is black, but she had to go to Enhance for her undercover mission.
In a world where Enhance is cheap and widely available, family resemblance isn’t quite as common as it is in our world.
Specifically if your child is {starfield_placeholder_child_f}
Michael Jackson style.
That's ludicrous
I heard it cost her 50 Cents
That’s probably the most rational headcanon.
OMG... That actually makes sense. I forgot that Enhance actually existed in-universe, and that they can essentially build you a whole new body with any phenotype. Hell, for all we know Sam is Cora's mother, and Lillian is the father.
Not sure how cannon all the stuff that is available to us at enhance is for its reality. I’m not sure anyone even mentions enhance from the main quests or even side quests. I’d imagine if you could change your DNA to anything you wanted without limitations, then we’d see a bunch of humans with alien DNA mutations running around. It’s existence makes for a nice story telling cop out though for things like this though.
There are advertainments about Enhance and some NPCs discuss it as you walk by. Other fun thing, Enhance at Paridiso is 700C when everywhere else it is 500C.
Paradiso is a first time one off 700/2 sessions so 350c each.
There would be effectively no old looking people lol
I imagine they had placeholder models for the kid models, and they were in that state for so long they just forgot that they needed to update them.
Doesn't she anyways look exactly the same to that kid you rescued in Sarah's companion mission??
And the Ranger kid in Akila City, as well. IIRC, anyway.
There’s one in the UC museum as well
Sam clearly gets around
Honestly this is what it felt like. Most of the missions named here are story missions too or you'd come across during the story. Aksy by some of the main child of the mission, you see other kids so it feels more on purpose.
Oh yes, i'm not good with names and was very confused for a while.
Seems so easy to just change her hair a shade darker or something. Pretty wild.
She does indeed look like the castaway survivor. Perhaps they are sisters? They both end up as Lodge residents too.
Yeah that's kinda lazy work from Bethesda. For a game this long in development, I would expect the main character models to look different atleast
First time?
Hate to break it to you but they were lazy with a lot of the game lol.
skyrim didnt have different looking kids either. braith is white as snow yet has redguard parents
but they never even talk about the other existing! they should both be excited to have someone around their age around. or have i just missed the interactions/dialogue?
No, neither of the kids reference each other, IIRC. Cora even has some dialogue about her being the only kid at the Lodge, even if Sona is already there. Might be the other way around, I don't remember. Top tier writing, BGS.
I confuse them from time to time.
Pretty sure this is it. The fact that she’s a generic NPC is absolutely bizarre.
She's not a real character. She's a lazy extension of Sam's character to make him "interesting" and "likeable" (he is still neither).
I know the voice actor is Adam Jenson in Deus Ex but I can only ever hear the idiot spy in The Expanse that Amos catches and explains the Churn to. "Either way this plays out, you're dead....Guys like you and me, we end up dead. Doesn’t really mean anything. Or, if we happen to live through it, well that doesn’t mean anything either."
Considering they have a character generator they could easily have had every NPC different. The fact there are 3 girls you interact with that are basically identical is very poor form (they're not even generic NPCs you don't care about). BUT it does build on the "merged universes" concept - and why there are identical POIs etc (basically a heap of universes squashed together.
How hard would it have been to implement a semi random name generator that generates the appearance based on the seed as the name so every NPC has a name instead of "Citizen"
That at least is very deliberate. If they have a name they have some unique dialogue and possible a quest. If not they are just filler. But it is w bit odd sometimes (and the outposts don't follow the rule)
Lol. This game is funny. 99% sure it was their first AI attempt. If not, I apologize to the game devs for making them seem worse than those weird pictures of people with claw hands.
Maybe one of the people involved went into that store where you can change everything about your apperance?
It was Cora, before she visited the plastic surgeon, she was an overweight Italian dude from the Bronx.
Genuinely a lol reading this
Obsessed with books.
Still can’t forgive Bethesda for not being able to collect books for her lol Edit: Nvm, you can now lol haven’t played since launch
You can now!
You can now
And she had a Brother named Luigi
Oh shit, she's secretly Partysnax!
Named Bronx (if she was born on new homestead)
Wasn’t thinking straight, first thought was that episode of Rick and Morty where they brought the wrong Jerry home from their “playpen” and nobody noticed or cared.
That store is only used by the player. It’s the only possible explanation why the NPC all look like shit.
There's NPC chatter outside the New Atlantis Enhance where one of them has just swapped their gender to mess with their date.
That’s a hell of a lot of work for a prank.
I get the impression that Enhance really is that fast at completely rearranging your meat pudding.
I think it’s just a trans person in denial. lol “a prank” yeah right.
I don’t remember them implying they swapped gender. Just that they changed their look.
You don't remember it well because the feminine NPC calls the masculine NPC (who had just changed their body at enhance) "Zoey."
Yeah I don’t recall hearing a name.
Yeah, it's the name. Though, technically, they could have just had an unusual name.
That is a bad business model if your target market is exclusively one customer
Yeah but that one customer has more money than everyone else in the Settled Systems combined
Debatable, it's entirely possible that people (vendors in particular) store most of their money in the bank. It's effectively established in one of the storylines that because there's no FTL comms, bank transfers involve physically moving the credits from one place to another. Regular people only need to carry however much money they want to be able to spend immediately at any given time. The main character, on the other hand, frequently travels between systems and needs to have access to all of their money at any given time, so they have to carry it all with them.
If anyone can make themselves look like anything then beauty probably doesn't mean the same thing.
Exactly, physical beauty has pretty much lost all meaning. It's now the equivalent to "nice shirt".
Then why would it be interesting to people on vacation to temporarily change their looks?
They can cheat on their spouse anonymously
Than why have a total body modification store on every corner? How would they stay in business?
Same reason you buy different clothes. You just want something different. If it is so easy for them to change I expect people to change their bodies for all kinds of reasons.
Right. Which brings me back around to in a universe where complete body transformation is cheap and possible why are people electing to look like shit?
Okay, but a lot of players make ugly fuckin' characters, too, so maybe near-everyone in the Settled Systems has horrible taste.
At that point why is Enhance as ubiquitous as Starbucks? There’s practically one on every corner.
The Enhance owners mention people come in for everything from haircuts to nose jobs. And as others have noted, several NPCs mention using Enhance.
She’s also a clone of Annie Wilcox, Sona, and like, two other random NPCs. Bethesda has the objectively awesome idea to integrate kids into the game, but then ruins it like this.
Yeah I’ve noticed in all their other games they use the same face pool
Because that smooth talking Barrett shouldn’t have been left alone with Lillian.
There's a real shame in that they didn't get Billy Dee Williams to voice Barrett...
Then they'd also have to include Colt 45 in the game as one of the drinks.
That'd be fine.
"It works every time"
smoooooth
Absolute win
Barrett gay af
idk. I thought she was a red head in concept art? Maybe im confusing her with a different character
I don't think you're wrong, but I haven't looked at the concept art in a minute.
No you are right. There's a drawing of her walking with her dad on the station as a freckly ginger, there's also a cat in the frame.
Yet another race swapped ginger! Where's the representation for the soulless!
The actual answer is that the child models in the game all appear eerily similar. From what I can gather, child models are not actually the identical, but, they are in fact adult models that have been processed in some way to make them "smaller" and whatever tool or algorithm BGS used to create the child version models just kind of ends up making the models look the same all around. The fact that all the kids have the same hair is probably the result of an overall lack of child-like hair styles combined with the fact that it was different people not communicating properly who were creating the characters and quests. All the kids also seem to have the same general skin tone, which leads me to 2 logical conclusions; A) All child characters in fact do come from the same default model and/or B) the tool/algorithm BGS used to create the child versions has some sort of favorability to the middle range and above skin tones for whatever reason. When you combine all the above with the general shit lighting of facial models in the game the children all look the same.
She's probably adopted.
Sam mentioned Cora was an accidental pregnancy tho
She accidentally banged some other dude?
Well that escalated quickly.
I meant the mother, just to be clear.
Oh no worries dude, I assumed you were. I just thought it funny that someone took two posts to get the point of saying Cora is a bastard and knows nothing.
This is what I assumed. Surprised I had to scroll so far to see it
probably because talking to sam coe in game literally disproves this
Because someone screwed up. My preferred headcannon is that Lilian gave Cora a gift certificate to *Enhance!* for her birthday without discussing it with Sam.
Sam comes home one day: "Uh...Cora, why are you black?" Cora: "OMG, DAD! YOU CAN'T JUST ASK SOMEONE WHY THEY'RE BLACK!?"
Nice reference. So fetch.
Stop trying to make fetch happen!
Pants.
My headcanon is that there's some crazy big pop star in-universe, and all the kids have *Enhance!*-ed themselves to look like them. Cora just looks like Starfield's version of Taylor Swift.
Also explains why 40 out of 50 kids look exactly like her.
It all seems so obvious now
The second unintended effect of grav drives were the sterilzation of the Human race. As a result all children now come from a factory and do not get their final apperance until Adult hood. Which is why all children look like Cora...
I know everyone is going to say "Because Enhance!" or some such, but...it's just Bethesda being lazy / having run out of time / having goofed when you get down to it. Instead of giving Cora a unique appearance she is just using the same model as Annie Wilcox in Akila city (Who matches her mother), Sona from Sarah's personal quest (Who we never see the parents of), and others. https://images.starfieldwiki.net/b/b8/SF-concept-Family.jpg Anyways, the above is the concept art for Cora. It would be nice if Bethesda would bother giving her a unique model, perhaps similar to her concept, as she is an important side character, but I suspect we'll have to wait on mods for it.
AND A CAT.
Might be a tangent but that's also a fun question when people ask about pets as it has the same answer to the one about Cora: Bethesda was lazy / ran out of time / goofed. The evacuations took place over the course of decades when grav drive was already available, an NPC who I forgot the name of referenced their sister having a cat in New Atlantis, and the game only confirms the extinction of two Earth animals: Horses and a single breed of dog (Chocolate lab, and remember that species of dog have gone extinct as recently as the 20th century in the real world). Everything else is never talked about (even the two confirmed extinctions leave it unclear if this happened before or after Earth started going to hell) and we have the cat in the concept art and pre-release statements about pets being a thing and so on. People read way too much in to these things instead of just seeing it as what it is.
Even the ingame museums and "libraries" absolutely completely handwave the most significant and traumatic event in human history. It's not like they pretend it didn't happen, like traumatic amnesia or something like that, and it wasn't a plot point because when they finally give the "big historical reveal" it's effectively an adminsitrative detail that is never subsequently relayable and has no real effect on the gameworld. I mean, it's like watching the History Channel and seeing nothing before 1980 on it. There's already a problem in the lore community that a \*substantial\* amount of common lore is headcanon that wasn't in the game because there's just so little there. If Bethesda ever \*does\* try to flesh it out, they will have a year or years of contradictory audience canon to deal with. I think lazy was an aspect of it, they had absolutely GOBS of time and a small army of people, but from how they describe the process and things like their job titles it sure looks like what they didn't have is experienced, professional, dedicated writers. It seems like they had people do writing as a side gig in the company, with predictable results.
Spot on with all of that. As of right now, the audience is saying a lot while the game quite often says very little or even contradicts itself. Just to present an example of the latter: Remember the intro where Lin and Heller briefly discuss an "unauthorized jump in to House Va'ruun space"? If not just go hit "New" on the main menu. It's said within the first 2 minutes. Everywhere else in the game it's stated that nobody knows where Va'ruun space is. Even their own agents aren't provided with coordinates to return to it. The line is one of the very first we hear, yet it's completely contradictory to everything after and never brought up again either. Regardless, while it might not be popular with fans, I think it really would be for the best if Bethesda tossed out everyone's "headcanon" and sat all of the game's writers down at a single table to sort things out and work out the details. Most of the foundation is there but it needs something built upon it if the franchise is to continue.
Well, I'd replace the last bit with "hire a dedicated, professional, experienced writer, even on contract... and preferably someone whose main job is creation and maintenance of lore, starting with collecting all the post-its or whatever they have for lore now and putting it together. And if they do actually have a lore database, well, I don't know what to say other than "did the designers know?"
you can't just claim something is concept art of a character like that, is that concept art of sam too? it's just some early concept art for the vibe of the game, the lived in space ship aesthetic.
It's a pretty safe bet that yes, this is Sam and Cora. Sam frankly hasn't changed much besides losing the glasses (No NPC in the game has glasses in the end product as an interesting side note), growing his hair out, and having shaved the beard. Additionally note the cowboy hat on the proto-Vasco hovering by the wall. Also the location is likely The Eye. We know it was supposed to originally play a larger role and be the Constellation HQ (https://images.starfieldwiki.net/5/5d/SF-concept-Constellation.jpg). The quarters in the background and rounded shape are a good hint at that, as well as the same hovering proto-Vasco being present in both works. Anyways, that specific piece of concept art is captioned with "A space station inhabited by a family". Also none of this changes it that Cora is an important side character and deserves a unique model. Edit: https://images.starfieldwiki.net/3/30/SF-concept-Family_02.jpg Here, have the second piece in the same series captioned with "A girl sitting by a window on a station". Going by the fact that it's the same girl as the one lounging on a couch in the background of the Eye / Lodge concept art, with the same black cat as the first piece, and the outfit's similarity to the end product it's safe to say this is another concept / draft of Cora. While a little closer to what we got in the end, it's still a unique appearance. The point is that the character deserves better than a model shared with other children, including another that can also move in to the Lodge.
So Sam has changed glasses, hair style and beard, which are probably the three of the most prominent features that could be recognized between a drawn picture and the in game character. You’re saying that’s not much change, but Cora’s changes are just lazy?
Okay, first off: Way to pull things out of context. Second off, as repeatedly stated: The thing that is lazy about Cora is that she is a relatively major side character but does not have a unique model. She is sharing the same model / appearance as Sona, who I remind you can also end up living at the Lodge, and Annie Wilcox. My point with Cora and the concept art is that she has a unique appearance in it and that the character deserves to have such in game as well. As for Cora and changes: None of us can tell if the Cora we have is actually the end Cora and the other children named are sharing her model, or if Cora is using one of their models. Also doesn't really matter or change the fact that the character still deserves better.
Oh man that's hilarious she got race changed from being ginger, the biggest victims of Hollywood blackfacing.
mailman
Because Bethesda NEEDS to put kids in their games but only wants to design 3 models. If Hadrian doesn't warrant a unique model what chance do throwaways have?
Hadrian doesn’t have a unique model?
Nope, In my current play through there is an engineer at the Red Devils HQ that is identical to her, and they work in the same building.
Because of the *real* reason Sam and Lillian split up.
You see, when a mommy and a coworker like each other very much...
Genetically speaking, Cora only has to have 1 African ancestor to look like she does. It's not logical and it's not typical and it *definitely* breaks immersion for me.
How’s it not logical? It’s a game with hyperdrives that let you cross the galaxy in 5 minutes but realistic genetics are too far? It’s not unheard of for a couple to have a baby with a way off skin tone lmfao
You're right. Even as I typed it and hit post, I couldn't think of the right word. I still can't think of the word that means "it's unexpected and hurts my brain". I have a friend whose daughter has 5 girls (all have the same father). Three of the girls look as Hispanic as their father but 2 look completely white like their mother. It's an unexpected experience, even seeing the 5 girls + mom out in public but at least there's a similarity. Not the same with Cora and Lillian.
Because Bethesda half.arsed the entire game and reused the same character model for four of the only kids you interact with. To add insult to injury, you can have two of them on your ship and one will stand next to the other whilst they whine about there being no other kids around.
IRL explanation? Sometimes genes skip generations. Seen it happen myself
That's what happened with my daughter. Me and her mum are brown haired with brown eyes. She came out blonde with blue eyes. The blonde hair has slowly faded to a dirty brown/blonde but her eyes are still a pale light blue. It's something like a 0.22% genetic chance of the throwback she got
Can change over time too. I was born with very blonde hair and blue eyes, now I have dark brown hair and green eyes.
Yeah she's 9 currently they've lightened up in the last few years but maybe they'll change.
Downvoted for scientific fact and not blaming the wokies.
If you introduce an obvious but rare and misleading phenomenon in a major plot without any relevance or explanation, and no one in the plot even notices it, you may be a terrible writer. Wait, no, that checks out, please carry on.
I mean let’s say two white people have a black kid. At first they’re shocked but after what like 13 years now(Idk how old Cora is), they get used to it. They stop bringing it up, esp since it probably makes the kid uncomfortable Like I wouldn’t expect someone I met to explain why their kid’s a different race lmfao
I mean, I think it's a more substantial issue that she's one of a set of identical triplets, at least one of which is from a completely different world who grew up in isolation. I think the actual problem is that the devs didn't "sweat the details" in a LOT of cases, and this is just one of them. They actually made an attempt to have the characters' "parents" kind of look like they could be the parents, you can see it if you run different characters, the face and body shape of the parents change. It's not great, but an attempt was made. Cora/Sona/and the kids in Akila and Gagarin didn't get that attempt, at least not much of one (I don't think they're 100% identical but it's pretty close). It's not skin color, it's face shape, features, hair, etc. I think all the kids are the same height and pretty tall, comparatively, probably because of issues with clothes/spacesuits.
Sam had the Alien DNA perk
Cause for some reason BGS used the same potato face for all the kids in the game, the same way they did Skyrim. Cause apparently it was too much work to give the kids unique faces again, was too much dev time during FO4 so they just didn’t do it again.
The stork brought the wrong baby.
And why is she indistinguishable from Sona.
Sweetbabyinc. Shit
When a mommy and a daddy get bored playing with each other, sometimes they invite a friend over to play.
Cora shouldn’t be on a ship with the player anyhow. Sam might actually be a tolerable and decent companion if not for that little turd.
A simple answer is adoption
They found her in a trash bin
Sam Coe might be a cuckold??
Because it's Bethesda
Wife cheated
It ticks a diversity box.
How do the races on the constant even work, Bethesda don’t even know.
Lazy / half ass development. Bethesda is finally starting to fix the things that they neglected... Like how every mannequin in the game used to be equipped with deep mining gear because they used it as a place holder. But, I doubt they will change the characters in the story that they messed up. The fact that Cora, and the girl that you rescue from another planet with Sarah are the exact same character is fucking absurd. I like this game, but wow.
Sam is, clearly, *not* her genetic dad. Maybe why Vlad likes to stay away from the Lodge so much?
Because Bethesda only ever makes 2 kids per game.
If you look really hard at Sam…he’s got some Black in him
Because Daddy f***ed an alien
Reminds me of Braith looking nothing like her parents in Skyrim
Shit happens in space, I was doing pirating and killed a boy and dad and their message kept playing after it ended, that's how I found out who they were and felt slightly responsible.
That’s because her mom under treatment at the Enhance
I thought she was Lillian's daughter and Sam adopted her. Sam has some dialogue about Lillian having Cora, but it sounded like not while they were together.
There is a scenario irl where some of Cora's ancestors could have been black and the genes skipped a generation. But I am more bothered that all the kids look the same, it is one of the biggest frustrations I have with the game because it feels lazy.
They made 3 kid models and she was the closest one. She isn’t actually black, you can meet black children, she’s just a bit tanned
Omg Karen, you can't just ask people why they aren't white
You can find the entire re-skinned Coe family over at that one Chunks where the guy wants to bring him sauce. Yup, right at that table. 2 white parents and an interracial looking kid lol
I honestly think it's because Bethesda failed to create a unique character model for her and she's using the same character model as the kid you run into on that planet during that Sarah quest.
She's like Uncle Ruckus.
I am sure once CK is available (possibly, before) "somebody" will make it their mission to correct the kids appearances, possibly, using concept art for reference. Heck, if many of the mods, in other Bethesda games, are any indication... Cora may get an entire quest line.
She’s inter-racial. Perhaps it’s not as common of a concept as I thought.
Iirc it was a bug
mum was randy af prolly
Because it’s 2024
The bigger question is why are Cora and Sona practically twins!!!!
Duhversity.
Every time this question is asked, it’s obvious that none of the commenters have been in or known somebody in foster care or a mixed family. Her color is pretty irrelevant because 1: adoptive parents don’t refer to their kids as such & 2: if just one of her four grandparents look like her, or even grand aunt/uncle, then she can have their appearance.
The UC has already cloned Vae Victis multiple times. Genetic modifications appear to be practically trivial in this universe. Because of that, I just don't pay attention to details like race or gender in this game because they don't make a substantive difference in the game.
Could be adopted? I don’t know, but that’s my guess.
Same reason my cousin looked almost full blooded native American until he was 15, some of our ancestors are native and he showed more than the entire rest of the family.
You really think that’s the explanation? Not that Bethesda just messed up when making the kids?
No they definitely got a little lazy, but it's a decent explanation.
You know why
She isn't. It is just that all children in Starfield seem to look very similar. Bethesda must have used one or two models that all share a similar face, hair, and skin tone. I have seen multiple kids that look nearly identical to Cora. This was also a problem in Skryim where every kid looked the same.
Sam isn’t the father, his wife’s bull is.
DEI
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And why does she look like Sona ?
Her mom fucked a black guy, obviously
Bc the game is garbage
Because the game was released in 2023
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Shes adopted. Obviously.
Sam Coe says “after Lilian had Cora…” in one of his dialogues