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0 As an avid space lover and someone who was relentlessly checking in daily on the Artemis 2 mission, Starfield on the PS5 surely did launch at the perfect time for me to return to.
Houston We Have A Problem
I first rocketed myself (no more space puns now, I promise) into the world of Starfield back in 2023, and sadly, it’s hard to say right now that the PS5 port has successfully stuck the landing. It looks gorgeous, sure, and playing on a PS5 Pro means you can max out the frame rate, but even with all of this at my disposal and decent-sized patches from Bethesda themselves, I still found Starfield quite tedious to play through as a result of frequent frame drops and game crashes.
If you’ve not yet played Starfield, it’s very much like most Bethesda titles. You’re the chosen one, you set out on an epic quest across vast landscapes, and you save the day. All sounds very heroic, right? Before NG+, you’re solely known as Spacefarer, then The Captain, and it’s your job to take off to other galaxies and recover what’s known as The Artifacts.
Gameplay
Before you can jet into space, however, you’re met and very quickly onboarded with the organisation that calls itself Constellation. Their core mission is simple: Commit to unlocking the mysteries of the galaxy and revamp the brand name along the way, as, sadly, in the year 2330, when the story takes place, Constellation is seen as nothing more than a shadow of its former glory.
If you’re someone who plays RPG’s to just stick to the main path, then Constellation is who you’ll be spending a lot of your time with as the primary quest line faction, uncovering secrets and mysterious powers along the way. You even have four romance options at your disposal via Constellation, if this takes your fancy. Who said space travel has to be lonely, eh?
If you do branch out into the wider atmospheres, which I highly recommend, with the vast amount of different planets to land on and scour for materials, you’ll have side quests galore at your fingertips. Become a peacekeeping force of nature with the United Colonies Vanguard. Offering up a lawfully good path filled with combat and exploration. Or if you prefer to put on your deputy badge and become the ‘space cowboy’ and take down lowly bandits, then the Freestar Collective is for you.
Pirates, In Space!
Prefer something more on the edge and dangerous? Then look no further than the Crimson Fleet. A dangerous alliance of space pirates, solely focused on causing chaos, looting, stealing, and killing. Typical pirate stuff. Finally, if the world of megacorporation is more your speed, then Ryujin Industries has your back. Become the master of corporate espionage as you take down your competitive rivals through stealthy hacking and manipulation.
Gameplay issues aside, as noted above, and with the additional Free Lanes DLC that launched with the PS5 version, as well as on the other platforms where Starfield is available, giving us the ability to freely cruise between planets and not have to deal with fading to black, I did ultimately enjoy my time revisiting Starfield and finding the new action figure collectables.
Graphics
I played on a PS5 Pro, and when the game ran well, it did look absolutely stunning. It’s just a shame that somewhat frequent frame drops occur when orbiting planets or traversing busy cities stacked with NPCs. When they did happen, it did take me out of the immersion. It’s certainly not launch Cyberpunk 2077 on base PS4 levels. But when you’re in the middle of a lengthy mission, and Starfield just decides to crash with little to no warning, it’s disheartening.
When all is said and done, Starfield remains a good game. I hope that Bethesda continues to take feedback on board and dishes out additional patches in the future. Bethesda games are no strangers to odd mechanics and bugs; in fact, they do tend to play on this ‘meme’ as a brand.
So, if you can look past all of this and embrace Starfield for what it is, a very Bethesda title, then you’ll be sure to have a good time exploring space, uncovering the secrets behind The Artefacts, having so much loot available to collect you won’t know what to do with it all, and finally, stepping into brand new ventures in NG+.
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