Murkmire Empty Nest Aberration corpse rotates like a compass

shadowcep

In Murkmire on the Empty Nest quest, the Aberration that dies before you start on the trail to Blight Bog Sump leaves a corpse that rotates to point towards you as you move around it. I only encountered this yesterday on my first playthrough of Murkmire but it is clearly a long-standing bug, being noted in the UESPWiki article on the Aberration. The description there is "When you move around it, its body will turn while it's in the mud so its head can face you, like the needle on a compass always being compelled to point north. Its head will also move to follow you."

This is illustrated in the minimal report The sliding dead posted here in November 2018.

I would have used /bug to report this but I've only found out about that now I'm out of the game.

shadowcep

I long ago noticed (and now ignore) a similar effect when standing in a field of flowers, say, and they will rotate in a block to keep facing me as I turn on the spot. This doesn't affect items like backpacks or chests, only "background" (the sort that could get suppressed on lower graphics settings). Perhaps the Aberration's corpse has been wrongly set to be like background instead of like items?