We have some early impressions of how Starfield runs on PCs.
This, of course, goes without saying, but considering these impressions are coming out before Early Access, they are probably NDA breaking. We also just reported on a patch that Bethesda is working on that will be applied before the game’s actual official release, so it’s likely what’s observed here is going to improve by the time of that release.
With that in mind, we’ll discuss impressions on the game that were shared to reddit user Gao8e7, who then shared them over on reddit.
One reviewer is running the game on a Ryzen 7 3800x, RTX 2080ti @ 1440p build. Starfield settings have been placed at above high. This reviewer claims to be getting 45 to 60 FPS throughout the game. In outer space, and in the inner space of dungeons, that can go up to 60 to 75 FPS.
In this reviewer’s words:
“performance is smooth tho imo, haven’t touched settigns too much. no stutters as well.
game is pretty good, goty nominee for sure
also the tile thing is correct but it’s not a big deal, people blowing it out of proportion”
It’s hard to figure out what the tiles thing is, but this is the best that I can trace it. Todd Howard was interviewed by Lexi Fridman one year ago. Among the things they discussed was how Starfield used procedural generation. Todd made mention of how they came up with a new development technique to build planets, involving making tiles of landscape and wrapping them around the planet surface.
One of the early previewers of the game spread a claim that players would be stuck on a 1 kilometer terrain tile when they landed on a planet. This was apparently immediately disproven, as many reddit posts referring to this topic has been removed. The title of this one reddit that remains should prove the point: No we are not stuck in one of the 1 kilometer terrain tiles when we land.
Getting back to real impressions of the game, Gao8e7’s source believes that Starfield is certain to hit the 80s and 90s on Metacritic, but is a little concerned that the hype might have gone overboard. Again deferring to his words on this:
“nah i’d be surprised if it’s not in the high 80s or 90s. bethesda cooked with this one
space part is great, but again i think expectations were though the roof. if you liked what you saw in the direct and enjoyed past bethesda games idk why you’d be worried.”
Starfield will be releasing on September 6, 2023, on Xbox Series X|S and Windows via Steam. It will also be Day One on Game Pass.
