Starfield Director Todd Howard, the man behind The Elder Scrolls and the latest Fallout games after Bethesda acquired the franchise, is easily one of the most acclaimed video game designers in the industry. He received many personal awards, including the honor of being inducted into the AIAS (Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences) Hall of Fame six years ago for his many contributions to the industry. The following year, he got a similar ‘Industry Legend’ award at Gamelab Barcelona.
It is therefore not at all surprising to see him featured on Bloomberg TV alongside Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer to talk about the newly released Starfield, which already exceeded one million concurrent users on the first day.
The interviewer pushed a question from the readers: why didn’t you optimize the game on PC? Howard said Bethesda did, and suggested a hardware upgrade may be in order for those who feel the performance isn’t where they’d like.
We did, it’s running great. It is a next-generation PC game. We really do push the technology, so you may need to upgrade your PC for this game, but it’s got a lot of great stuff going on and the fans are responding awesome.
In our review, we didn’t find too many issues with the PC performance, though of course, it is no news for a new Bethesda game to be heavy. Even the console performance on Xbox Series S is rather stable, albeit limited to 30 frames per second, compared to previous Bethesda releases.
That said, PC gamers have plenty of ways to improve their performance, from adjusting the .ini preset files to using various mods, such as the NVIDIA DLSS 2 and Intel XeSS mod and the NVIDIA DLSS 3 mod. You can read about all that in our Starfield tweaking guide.
The Starfield Director was also featured in other interviews about the game’s debut. Speaking to BBC, he mused on the benefits of being an exclusive game in terms of public renown and ease of development.
When you’re making something exclusive then the more you can focus. You know this is the hardware or the thing people are playing on, so the ability to focus on that always yields a better product. You do want people to be able to access it of course. But being with Xbox means there is an ease of access for us and I’m told we’re expecting more people playing this launch than anything we’ve ever done before, and that’s despite the success of our previous games.
I do also think people attach brands to certain games. When you think of Zelda, you think of the Nintendo Switch, and I think there are times when that can be a real benefit.
In a chat with NPR, Howard said the ending of Starfield’s main quest might prove to be a bit controversial among fans.
I do think the ending of the game might be a little controversial. We ask a lot of questions. We don’t provide a lot of answers. Because I think we want a lot of those answers to be in you.
Bethesda’s new game will doubtlessly be talked about for many years to come, between official updates, expansions (the first one already has a name, Shattered Space), and mods of all kinds. Stay tuned for all the latest on Starfield.
