Highlights
- Starfield has earned high praise and is one of the top-rated new game releases of 2023, but it does have some flaws, including a late-game issue with the scanner freezing momentarily when brought up or put away.
- Despite the technical improvements, Starfield still suffers from audio/visual bugs and glitches common in Bethesda games. However, the scanner issue is more of a nuisance than game-breaking.
- It's unclear what exactly causes the scanner problem, but it seems to occur after completing the bulk of the main story content and faction quests.
- Starting a New Game+ run seems to fix the issue.
Starfield has earned rave reviews and is now one of the highest-rated new game releases of 2023, but that doesn't mean it's entirely without flaws, and in fact, one of the game's problems isn't apparent until very late into the experience. Prior to launch, it was said that Starfield would be the most-polished Bethesda game, and based on what's been said by reviewers, the game has certainly lived up to that promise.
Starfield reviews have been mostly positive, with the game standing out as one of the highest-rated new releases of 2023 so far. But even though Starfield performs a lot better than Bethesda's previous games from a technical standpoint, it still has some issues that will hopefully be ironed out in future updates. Besides comical audio/visual bugs and glitches that are commonplace in many of Bethesda's game, Starfield also suffers from a much more annoying issue, though it's certainly not game-breaking and more just a nuisance.
After playing Starfield for about 50 hours, an issue started to occur with the scanner where whenever it was brought up or put away, the game would freeze for a second. It's not enough to drastically impact one's experience playing Starfield, but it does make everything feel a lot less smooth. It's unclear exactly what caused this issue, but it didn't start happening until after the main quest and all the faction quests were completed. Starting a New Game+ run seems to fix the problem.
Past Bethesda games have sometimes had an issue on certain platforms where they perform worse the more they're played, and it's possible that this is what is going on with Starfield and its scanner. It's also possible that the issue is due to something else entirely, and it's just a coincidence that the problem started after having completed the bulk of the game. More testing will definitely need to be done to get to the bottom of it, but hopefully it's something that can be patched out.
Now that Starfield is out in early access, many more gamers will be able to play the game for themselves. In turn, this may mean many more people will start running into this problem as they beat Starfield's main quest and start clearing out its endgame content. With more people playing the game, there's a greater chance fans will get to the bottom of this odd technical issue and hopefully that will make it easier for Bethesda to fix it in a patch.
Starfield launches September 6 for PC and Xbox Series X.