Starfield (PlayStation 5)
Bethesda Game Studios · Bethesda Softworks
“The PS5 version of Starfield arrives two and a half years late, with all the DLC, most of the patches, and the same fundamental problem the original launch had. Which is Starfield. It is still Starfield. PlayStation owners now get to experience the specific disappointment Xbox owners had in 2023, which is at least democratic.”
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The Review
Starfield on PS5 is the complete edition of a game that is too big to fix and too expensive to abandon. Every major patch, every expansion, every quality of life update is in the box. The DualSense implementation is actually thoughtful. Adaptive triggers for weapon recoil feel genuinely good. The light bar shifts with shields and radiation. It is the best version of Starfield that has ever existed, which is a sentence that keeps getting shorter every time you think about it.
The fundamental problem is that Bethesda designed this game around the idea that you would want to generate a thousand planets procedurally and explore them. The players demonstrated in 2023 that nobody actually wanted to do that. Every planet is an empty grey rock with a single point of interest and a copy-pasted outpost. Three years of patches have made the outposts slightly more varied. Three years of patches have not made the space between them feel less like math.
The PS5 port itself is solid. Loading times are fast, the game runs at 60fps in performance mode, crashes are rare. Bethesda learned from the Xbox launch and arrived this time with a finished product. The irony is that 'finished' Starfield and 'broken' Starfield are closer to each other than anyone wanted to admit. The game was never going to become the thing people hoped it would be. It just became a more stable version of what it already was.
What It Nails
- +DualSense integration is the best implementation Bethesda has ever shipped. Adaptive triggers for ship weapons are worth the wait.
- +The complete edition includes every expansion and quality of life update from the Xbox/PC versions. No piecemeal DLC purchases.
- +Performance mode holds 60fps in most zones. Load times are dramatically shorter than the 2023 launch.
- +The Shattered Space expansion is genuinely strong, and PS5 players get it day one instead of waiting a year.
What It Botches
- -The procedural planet system is still tedious busywork pretending to be exploration.
- -Space travel is still fast-travel dressed in a loading screen costume. You cannot actually fly between planets.
- -The main quest writing is still Bethesda doing its 'faction rivalries and vague prophecies' routine at a time when everyone else has moved on.
- -The character creator is still janky and the dialogue animations still look like two mannequins having a contractual meeting.
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Who It's For
PlayStation owners who missed Starfield the first time and are curious whether it was worth the noise. Bethesda loyalists who will play any open world RPG the studio puts out. People who enjoy the Bethesda formula for its own sake.
Who Should Skip
Anyone expecting Mass Effect-level writing, No Man's Sky-level exploration depth, or Elite Dangerous-level space sim. Anyone who played Starfield on Xbox or PC and thought 'nah'. PlayStation owners with Helldivers 2 and Death Stranding 2 in their library who are looking for a reason to not play either.
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