Bilawal Bashir 
Bethesda games are well known for their immersive worlds and world-breaking bugs, so the big question is will Starfield be buggy at launch? The answer is “probably.”
Bethesda’s epic space role-playing game is its biggest one yet in terms of both the amount of territory the player has to explore and the ambitiousness of the project. The size and scope of Starfield is allegedly larger than all the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games put together. This also means there will be more bugs in the game.
There is no such thing as a perfect game. Even critically acclaimed games like Baldur’s Gate 3 need huge patches to deal with bugs, performance issues, and other issues. The chances of Starfield launching with no bugs are slim to none. That doesn’t mean the space epic will be riddled with glitches, though.
Starfield is Bethesda’s least buggy game
According to accounts from gamers and media members with early access to the game, Starfield is Bethesda’s least-buggy game in years.
A number of players have secured themselves early access copies of the game and review copies of the game are already out to media members. Though the game isn’t perfect, the consensus is that the game runs much more smoothly at launch than previous Bethesda Game Studios titles. This tracks with some of the talking points about the game from Bethesda and Microsoft during its development.
Microsoft Game Studios head Matt Booty bragged that the game was in a much more polished state than the likes of Fallout 4 or Skyrim. That powerful statement was made back in June and since then, Bethesda had additional time to iron out any bugs or glitches.
“Working with Todd and the team, I see bug counts and, just by the numbers, if it shipped today, this would have the fewest bugs and Bethesda game ever shipped with,” Booty said.
Starfield has seen constant leaks including gameplay footage, leaked patch notes, and plenty of other information. Players deciding whether to buy or pre-load the game have gotten a much closer look at it than Bethesda intended.
This hasn’t necessarily been a bad thing, however, as the game has been heralded as “amazing” by some of those who got the game earlier than they should have been able to. These individuals have also co-signed the notion that the game has significantly fewer bugs than one would expect from a Bethesda game.
Starfield’s day-one patch addresses bugs
Bethesda has already released a substantial 15-GB day-one patch to address several issues with Starfield. The patch is applied to preloaded copies of the game automatically on both PC and Xbox. The leaked patch note has 28 fixes for things including performance, graphical bugs, gameplay issues, and story glitches. This patch will likely make Starfield even less buggy than the version the leakers were playing.
Leaked footage uploaded on YouTube shows textures and objects popping, which led fans to worry about the condition of the game. The videos have since been taken down due to copyright claims. The official gameplay footage uploaded by Bethesda also had some notable issues including framerate drops and bugs, but these are apparently not significant. Starfield’s early access starts soon, for Starfield Premium Edition owners.
