Club Benefits
More than two and a half years after its September 2023 debut on Xbox and PC, the sprawling galaxy of Starfield is finally explorable on PS5, and I could not be happier. I greatly enjoyed this game when I played on my Xbox Series X back at launch, and I’m having a blast returning to its world on PS5 Pro.
It’s fair to say that Starfield, the latest RPG experience from Elder Scrolls and Fallout developer Bethesda, is a divisive title. Even at launch, my (former) colleague David Meikleham wrote that he’d “never bounced harder off a Bethesda game,” and you don’t need to search gaming forums far to find gamers expressing their intense disappointment. There’s also no escaping the fact that Starfield has not enjoyed the stickiness of Skyrim or Fallout 4.
Now that it’s landing on PS5, alongside a new DLC and its largest update yet (Director Todd Howard warns not to call it Starfield 2.0), a wave of new players can traverse the settled systems, bringing Starfield back into the conversation.
Article continues belowPerhaps, this is a hot take, but I think this is a sci-fi RPG experience not to be missed. The intergalactic setting is absorbing, the “NASA-punk” aesthetic is very pleasing, and the quest writing is strong. There are unavoidable bumps in the road, sure. But I can overlook the flaws in favor of everything Starfield does well. Here’s why I think Starfield has earned a second chance on PS5.
The secret to enjoying Starfield on PS5
I think the biggest barrier to entry to enjoying Starfield is the need to cast off the traditional mindset players have when experiencing a new Bethesda game. Take Skyrim, the common advice is often to complete the mandatory introductory quest, and then ignore the main story in favor of exploring the game’s impressively large map and just seeing what you stumble upon.
To get the most out of Starfield, I strongly advise you to do the exact opposite. Forget exploration. It’s not the game’s strong suit with a star map cluttered with barren planets stuffed with cut-and-paste points of interest and bland filler objectives. Focus almost entirely on questing. When I’m playing Starfield, I always have an active quest that I’m following. It’s here that Starfield shines brightest, and it’s here that you’ll find the lion’s share of worthwhile content.
For clarification, I’m not just talking about beelining the main quest, either. Like most Bethesda RPGs, Starfield offers a suite of faction questlines that contain the game’s most thrilling missions. You can join six factions (seven if you purchase the Shattered Space DLC), which range from the galaxy-defending UC Vanguard to the space-pirate group the Crimson Fleet. You can even work for Ryujin Industries and engage in a little corporate espionage.
These faction quests are some of the best Bethesda has ever made, and they can be further supplemented with the many interesting standalone side missions that have you doing everything from discovering a Batman-type vigilante to resolving a dispute between planetary neighbors. With your map marker always pointing you in the direction of a mission, it’s hard to get too hung up on Starfield’s repetitive exploration, because you can just ignore it.
Players seeking content, content, and more content will also find an abundance of it here. If you don’t mind completing similar tasks dozens of times and collecting endless resources for crafting, there’s a whole outpost system to wrap your head around. This lets you colonize numerous planets. And you could lose hours in the game’s deep spaceship-building system.
Quantity over quality is not necessarily a strength, but considering the current darling of the gaming world is Crimson Desert (a game so vast that you can spend 50+ hours in the starting zone alone), it’s clear that many RPG players aren’t satisfied unless a game can become such a time sink that it borders on a second job. Starfield totally meets that brief. You could play this for months.
Starfield on PS5 isn’t the perfect port
While I’m delighted to have an excuse to return to the world of Starfield and re-experience my favorite faction quests for a second time, I have been a little let down by the quality of Starfield’s PS5 port from a technical perspective.
I’m a framerate-above-all type of player, so I have opted to play in the dedicated “Performance” mode, which the game recommends if you desire a 60 fps target. Even with the trade-off in image resolution, Starfield on PS5 Pro does not maintain a locked 60. The dips aren’t so bad as to spoil the experience, but I’ve definitely endured more than I’d like. Things get particularly bad in larger cities or when quickly moving between zones.
Furthermore, hard crashes appear to be a problem plaguing many a PS5 playthrough. As noted, Starfield’s PS5 release coincides with the new “Free Lanes” update, which expands your options while flying your ship between planets. Rather inauspiciously, the first time I attempted to use the new “cruise” feature, my game locked up. And it did the same the second time I tried it. This Reddit thread suggests that crashes aren’t entirely uncommon.
Considering the PS5 port comes nearly three years post-launch, with a wealth of patches baked in, it’s certainly frustrating to be grappling with technical hiccups in what should be the definitive console version of the game. Hopefully, there is a PS5 patch or two in the pipeline. But, putting these blemishes aside, I maintain that Starfield is a game worth experiencing by anybody with a fondness for Bethesda’s unique brand of RPG goodness.
In my eyes, it certainly doesn’t deserve the intense, often vitriolic, backlash that has followed it since launch. There’s a lot of good stuff here, and if you’re craving a game that lets you feel like a hero traveling the stars to complete odd jobs and universe-saving missions alike, there’s little else like Starfield.
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