Earlier this week, we got our first deep-dive look at Bethesda’s sci-fi RPG Starfield in action, and while the general reaction has been very positive, there has been some controversy over the fact that the game will be locked at 30fps on Xbox Series X and S. Microsoft has identified this as a “creative choice,” and yet, many have continued to wonder aloud why Bethesda couldn’t just drop the game’s resolution and give us a 60fps Performance mode.
Well, we may have an answer on that from the guys at Digital Foundry. They did some pixel-counting on a scene running on Xbox Series X and found it was running at an internal resolution of around 1296p and then temporally upscaled to 4K. While most “4K” modes on console use some sort of upscaling, 1296p is a fairly low native resolution, around 60 percent of true 4K, meaning Bethesda has less wiggle room to deliver a mode that runs at a consistent 60fps and a reasonable pixel count. You can check out the DF guys’ full Starfield analysis below, provided you have around 45 minutes to spare.
As for why Starfield is running at 30fps and a relatively low internal resolution, Digital Foundry speculates the game is may be CPU-bound due to its large array of interlocking systems. For instance, much like Skyrim, objects in the game have persistence – the showcase included a clip of somebody piling numerous sandwiches up on a table – and keeping track of all that stuff across an entire in-game galaxy, well, that takes some processing power. Starfield isn’t skimping on the visual polish either, offering up real-time global illumination, high-detail assets, and other modern effects.
In other words, 30fps really does seem to be a creative choice in this case. Unlike in the past, this isn’t a case of Bethesda building a game on janky, poorly-optimized tech. They choose to push boundaries in terms of complexity and visual fidelity, and, well, that comes at a cost. As Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom recently showed, if that all comes together, resolution and framerate aren’t the be-all, end-all.
Starfield touches down on PC and Xbox Series X/S on September 6. What are your thoughts on the creative and technical choices Bethesda are making with the game?
