Starfield players are finding themselves increasingly at odds with the game's loading screens, which many would argue border on excessive for a 2023 video game launched exclusively on new-gen hardware.
Here at GAMINGbible we're big fans of Starfield. Heck, we even gave the RPG a rare 10/10 in our review, but I do have to admit the loading screens are... a bit much.
Take a look at our full Starfield review below!
A lot of noise has been made about Starfield's approach to space travel, with many expressing their disappointment it's not as seamless as something like No Man's Sky. Obviously most of us understand why this is the case: most of Starfield's content is hand-crafted, rather than procedurally generated. Zipping between planet to planet with no loading screens would be quite a feat, even for a new-gen game.
The issue is more... everywhere else. There are loading screens between getting on and off your ship, loading screens going into most buildings, loading screens when you get in an elevator - they're bloody everywhere. It's a little immersion breaking, to be completely honest, and players are really starting to notice quite how many there are.
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"Starfield feels like it’s regressed from other Bethesda games," writes Reddit user No-Dust-2105. "This game isn’t open world, it handles the map worse than Skyrim or Fallout 4, with those games you can walk everywhere, Starfield is just a constant stream of teleporting where you have to be."
"The most exciting thing about making your own ship was that you could then travel through space with it," agreed Sonnenkreuz14 "But the only thing actually happening is you are basically stationary and teleporting to different planets, not actually using it as a spaceship."
A third added: "I like the game a lot and assume I'm going to spend 100 hours in it by the end of this year, but the space vehicle layer is a baffling design choice. Why is it there? I'm just fast traveling between everything anyway, and not by choice. There's just no mechanism that makes space flight feel like an organic and necessary layer of interactivity for the player."
Still, it looks like Starfield has a much better chance at netting Game Of The Year than Hogwarts Legacy, so there's that.