Despite its indisputable success, Starfield is the subject of numerous complaints from PC players. The game does not escape criticism made about its optimization and its more than questionable performance on certain configurations. Todd Howard, director of the game, responded to these criticisms.
Bethesda’s virtual space opera is off to a flying start, that’s undeniable. However, it is far from being free of defects: rather archaic design due to an aging engine, minor bugs, crashes or freezes. On PC, the question is more thorny, since it is true that the game is very demanding in hardware resources and requires a rather excessive configuration compared to the result on the screen. During an interview given to Bloomberg Technology, Todd Howard gave some advice to disgruntled players. His response is quite sharp, as you can hear in the video at the bottom of the article.
An answer that couldn’t be clearer
The reporter present during the interview, Ed Ludlow, put the question very clearly to Todd: “ I have a question for you that many players have: why didn’t you optimize the game on PC? » The director did not shy away and responded rather directly to the interviewer: “ Um…we did it though, and it runs great. It’s a next-gen PC game, and we’ve really pushed the technology to the limit. Maybe you should upgrade your PC to enjoy the game! »
This statement did not please everyone, as many players are experiencing in-game performance issues. Bethesda shared the minimum and required configurations in June, and yet they have not changed one bit. iota on the game’s Steam page. Even if some mods are already available to optimize the game, the result is not always satisfactory and cannot replace proper optimization prepared in the studio.
A next-gen game, really?
If Todd Howard defends his baby and presents him as a “ new generation game ”, it is difficult to fully consider this statement as honest. If Starfield offers some truly unique and aesthetically successful panoramas, it still suffers from the age of the game engine on which it is based. The Creation Engine 2 is an evolution of the Creation Engine Skyrimwhich is seriously starting to date.
We can clearly see that the studio has pushed this engine to the limit, and the result on screen sometimes takes us back 10 years. And not just from a visual point of view. A completely strawberry AI, NPCs with a strange appearance and completely buggy behavior, a physics engine with unexpected reactions and too many loading times. From a structural point of view, we are very far from a new generation game, and Bethesda relied a little too much on its achievements.
Todd Howard is frank, we can’t take this quality away from him. On the other hand, brushing aside criticism as quickly as he did during this interview is unlikely to give him good publicity. Especially with unhappy players. A large part of the community that loves the studio’s games is eagerly awaiting the future. The Elder Scrolls VI For years. But according to the information currently available, this will also be based on the Creation Engine 2. Not really reassuring.
Sources: Gamergen, Bloomberg Technology on YouTube
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