Featured Image Credit: Bethesda
Without question, Starfield is one of the most highly anticipated games in years and that anticipation only builds as its release draws near.
Bethesda claims that its sci-fi RPG has been decades in the making and now that PC and consoles are at the point of today, finally, the vision of Todd Howard and his team of talented developers can come to fruition.
Sure, as excited as we may be for the launch of Starfield in the coming months, we can’t ignore the elephant in the room and that's Bethesda games are often very buggy at launch. In fact, well over 10 years since its initial release and for better or worse, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim still has plenty.
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However, Starfield is Bethesda’s largest single-player project yet with not only the largest city the developer has ever created but also promises over 1000 planets to explore. That being said, only roughly 10% of those planets will have meaningful signs of life, apparently.
So despite knowing that Starfield will likely be riddled with bugs at launch, what else do gamers have to be concerned about? Well, as reported by Metro, at least for PC gamers, some are worried about the collaboration between Bethesda and PC hardware ‘experts’ AMD (Advanced Micro Devices).
Despite AMD SVP and GM, Jack Huynh announcing in a video that the company has worked alongside Bethesda to ensure that Starfield will be its best possible version on PC, and Todd Howard's apparent excitement, it still hasn't been well received by fans. At the time of writing, the trailer announcing the exclusive collaboration has 2.1k Likes and 4.9k Dislikes, which gives us an inkling that the news hasn't gone down well.
DLSS is massively superior to FSR 2, so I don't understand why Microsoft / Bethesda would sign a deal that will lock DLSS out of Starfield. These deals are simply anti consumer and won't help AMD sell GPUs. Build a better product instead 😐
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) June 27, 2023
AMD exclusive partner for Starfield 👎
— Vv (@ItsJustVV) June 27, 2023
FSR 2 only, bleh 🤮
Lower game quality is now a given. It's a also a Bethesda game, I was expecting bugs anyway, but this is just sad.
Hype 📉⬇️
Perhaps the main reason why fans aren't overly excited about this collaboration could be due to AMD’s stance on not offering support for Nvidia’s DLSS technology. It’s perhaps worth keeping in mind that AMD hasn't said whether or not it will support DLSS, yet.
We can only speculate as to why this is the case, but it might be safe to assume that it’s due to Nvidia being AMD’s fierce rival. As a result, it is feared by gamers that Starfield might not perform as well on PC as Huyng and Howard lead us to believe. Metro also notes that both The Last of Us: Part I and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor were games with exclusive AMD deals in place on PC, and both had a very troubled launch, to say the least.
Hopefully, come release, Starfield might perform well across the board, though I might be a little over-optimistic. In related news, Starfield was almost a PlayStation 5 exclusive and the lack of romance options in the game has left some gamers feeling concerned.
Starfield will be released for PC and Xbox Series X|S on 6 September 2023.
