Starfield is capped at 30 frames per second on consoles, and the planet is in uproar. Whether you’re playing on Xbox Series X or S, performance won’t go past that threshold. Worse yet, Bethesda has confirmed this was a choice. And you know what? It’s absolutely the right one.
Bethesda games are buggy, and also often unstable when it comes to console performance. This is coming from a girl who played both Fallout 3 and Skyrim on PS3, versions that became harder to play the larger your save files became. This happens the further in the game you get, so it basically turned into a single digit crawl through the open world with a vain hope it wouldn’t hard crash your console. It normally did, and we’ve gotten used to it.
Fallout 4 was an inconsistent mess upon release too, and felt like the straw that broke the Brahmin’s back for Bethesda’s gameplay formula. Things needed to change, or it at least needed to recognise that releasing half-baked products and hoping fans would one day pave over the cracks wasn’t the right way to do business. Starfield knows this, evidenced by multiple delays and a recent public showcase which seems honest in the ambition and restrictions of a game that is going to swallow up most of our lives. Apparently it has the fewest bugs of any Bethesda game at launch ever, and director Todd Howard is even out there talking about lacking features and the reality of populated planets.
There is an authentic openness to the conversation I didn’t expect, and that also concerns how it works on consoles. According to Howard, during testing they have been able to hit or even eclipse 60 frames per second at certain points, but it was inconsistent enough that a cap just makes more sense. To subject players to a performance level that reaches a higher average while fluctuating just wouldn’t be a very pleasant experience, and isn’t necessarily a mark against the power of our consoles. We only need to look at games like Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite to realise that.
Bethesda RPGs are made up of such massive worlds or so many moving parts that need to be operating concurrently, all of which have an impact on how things run. We fail to consider that, or we’re just spoiled enough to expect more than a game like this is capable of. Bethesda is being upfront about a game's performance for once, so let’s not waste that.
Besides, some of the best games in recent memory run at the same performance level and managed to achieve brilliance regardless, and that’s all thanks to great controls and expertly crafted art direction. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is one clear example, and Starfield isn’t the sort of game that requires the razor sharp reflexes afforded through high frame rate anyway. It’s all exploration, conversation, and focused combat encounters, and if it sticks to the 30fps promise I will have no complaints. If you do, there’s always the PC.