Starfield is out on PlayStation 5, and customarily Bethesda stilted character expressions aside, it’s a gorgeous space epic that’s sure to visually please, especially on PS5 Pro courtesy of PSSR. Performance is a bit uneven, particularly in big settlements, but by and large, it runs smoothly. Not a bad showing at all.
There’s just one problem. The game’s got crashes. Let me emphasize, this isn’t a universal thing. At least, it doesn’t seem so. But nor is it a few isolated cases. Big voices in the gaming community are backing up the crash claims with conundrums of their own.
“A Constellation Of Issues”
“The game crashes a fair amount,” says Digital Foundry’s Oliver Mackenzie in the group’s (delightfully exhaustive) overview of Starfield on PS5. “I ran into this crash for instance,” he explains at one point in the above video during a trip through hub city new Atlantis. “Just roaming around. The game basically becomes totally unresponsive and needs to be restarted. And I had this happen across several modes on PS5 and PS5 Pro.” Linneman classifies it as “new behavior” to him, which is to say, it wasn’t something he’d encountered on Xbox Series or PC.
Digital Foundry’s experience should speak volumes. The folks at DF have made careers out of analyzing games frame-by-frame on so many levels; they’re never going to make this stuff up. But there’s proof positive that it’s affecting more than just them. Like this Push Square article, for instance. Or the below Reddit thread:
…Which might be a bit extreme, truth be told, as the user claims to be experiencing crashes “every two minutes.” That’s rough. But they’re hardly alone in proclaiming crashes on PS5, even if most players don’t seem to be quite so down-on-their-luck as all that. The whole situation invites the obvious joke (which Digital Foundry even made!) about how it’s a return to classic console Bethesda. Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas ran so notoriously poorly on PS3, after all, that there are mods which turn those deadly discs into in-game weapons now.
Here’s hoping Bethesda gets things shored up, because Starfield might have its fair share of fundamental flaws, but it’s still a fun game with plenty to offer space junkies like yours truly.
