Starfield is nearly out on PC and Xbox consoles for those who have early access to the space-faring RPG, and reviews are officially popping up online. The game’s currently garnering favorable marks among critics, with most shook by how (mostly) bug-free Bethesda’s game surprisingly is.
Releasing on on September 6 (or a few days earlier if you splurge for one of its special editions) for PC and Xbox Series X/S, Starfield is Bethesda’s first new IP in 25 years. It puts you in the space boots of a lowly miner who stumbles onto an artifact that reveals visions of something lurking in the galaxy’s dark reaches. Not long after, you join a troupe of other artifact hunters in the organization Constellation, all searching for the meaning behind those strange, unsettling visions.
Starfield is a first- and third-person space-shooter (you can choose which perspective to play) set in a typically massive Bethesda open world. While the reviews are glowing, critics acknowledged how ho-hum its narrative underpinnings are and how lackluster its gunplay is—but the most surprising aspect of the game thus far is just how polished the Starfield feels.
Starfield is Bethesda’s most polished game
Critics thus far report very few bugs in their multiple hours with Starfield. VGC, for example, claimed to have encountered its “first real bug” about 40 hours in on PC, one that left an NPC as simply a floating head during a bit of dialogue. The Verge, on the other hand, said it ran into just a handful of bugs, purporting that Starfield has a level of polish that “no game from [Bethesda has seen] before.” Mashable wrote that the game is “surprisingly not very buggy,” while CNN reports that Starfield is “Bethesda’s least buggy game to date.” ButWhyTho, TheGamer, GameSpot, IGN, and PCGamer all state that while there are issues, Starfield is quite stable given Bethesda’s past. (Hi, Skyrim.)
Starfield still has some issues here and there
It’s not all roses , though, particularly for folks playing on console. VGC noted that the game was “significantly buggier” on Xbox than PC. Forbes said that it ran into “a couple more serious bugs” during its time with the PC version. Paste Magazine, playing on Xbox Series X/S, noted that Starfield had hard-crashed (or completely shutting down and returning players to the Xbox home page) at least three different times. Engadget, meanwhile, reported “chugging framerates, low-resolution set pieces, and roughly one hard crash every five hours” while playing on Xbox Series S. Siliconera ran into “a few minor visual bugs” on Xbox Series X as well, but said despite the occasional jank, it really does seem like Starfield is polished to a T.
There will undoubtedly be videos circulating in the future of the game breaking, and Kotaku has yet to play it to be able to report how it runs for members of our staff. I’m expecting to see a bevy of hilarious glitch compilations once everyone gets their hands on Starfield, but for now, it appears Bethesda has released its most stable game in years. That’s something worth celebrating.
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