Starfield - Xbox Series X/ Xbox Series S - Performance & Graphics Breakdown

foreign expectations are enormous for bethesda's latest title Starfield it promises a Galaxy spanning adventure with a wealth of content and hundreds of planets to explore few games come anywhere near this kind of scope and fewer still come with a high level of content quality and gameplay flexibility that Bethesda typically offers but that's not to say there haven't been concerns top of Mind are technical worries with prospective players perturbed by the potential for bugs and frame rate hiccups bethesda's prior console efforts haven't always arrived in stable form and those games were orders of magnitude smaller than star field so today we'll be taking a first look at Starfield evaluating its basic technical makeup on Xbox series X and S with the more in-depth look at its Graphics technology arriving in the coming days from John alongside Alex's review of the PC release so can Starfield hold up alright on its console platforms of choice and how does the series s fare relative to its more powerful sibling [Music] foreign the good news is that Starfield is actually a very consistent and stable experience on consoles across about 20 hours of play so far I encountered no obvious bugs or other glaring issues which is something I certainly couldn't have said for the launch versions of Fallout 4 or Skyrim Starfield has been delayed several times but you get the sense that those delays have probably been for the best as the final article is a smooth experience that's worth diving into right on release I can't speak for the entire game of course but I really didn't see anything that would give me pause the graphics are excellent as well with a high level of detail great post-processing and some beautiful environmental artwork this came as a bit of a surprise and I do think the game exceeds bethesda's prior work by a large margin check out Jon's upcoming Graphics tech review for more on this topic but this is by no means a bad looking game it's not always a stunner but it is an accomplished effort especially considering its incredible scope some significant compromises do become evident however the world is highly segmented and frequently interrupted by loading screens which is a bit of a holdover from bethesda's earlier games I didn't exactly expect the seamless experience but the frequent cutaways occasionally though not often massed by short animations definitely annoy on consoles the other key concession comes down to frame rate both Xbox series machines Target a 30 FPS update with no higher frame rate options available but outside of those issues the console versions do manage to equip themselves quite well with smooth stable and detailed Graphics diving into both Xbox series versions here at a glance we're getting a very similar experience on both consoles with even the weaker Series S looking quite good there are some definite differences though when you do look closely draw distances on Series S see a bit of a cutback series X has more to offer here with extra bits of geometric detail like crappy outcroppings and stones that render out into the far distance foliage seems a bump too with dense shrubs and knee-high grass on Sirius X larger chunks of environmental detail like big rock faces and trees render about the same across the two platforms though so in Broad Strokes the series s and X do look quite similar it's just the incidental details between those larger features that do look downgraded on the weaker machine and only at ranges that are fairly distant from the player texture detail does typically look quite similar indirect match ups in the same spots at close range I couldn't spot any obvious differences between the two platforms series X and S both get very detailed artwork here at a distance there do seem to be some differences with series X using better MIP Maps than the S though this isn't hugely noticeable most of the time textures at oblique angles also resolve with more detail on the ax though this could just be a byproduct of the resolution differences between the games even the X does still look a bit blurry here I did notice a curious difference in the terrain rendering When comparing these two platforms the ground surface itself just looks different between two machines even at close range it's not obviously Better or Worse on one platform or another it's just that the terrain takes a slightly different shape with a different mix of textures this doesn't change from run to run so the seams related to a settings difference between Series S and X there is some difference in the placement of smaller geometric elements between runs though suggesting that these elements are randomized to some degree Shadows get small cutbacks on Series S comparing the two versions side by side the S features softer Shadow maps that don't resolve quite as much detail as the series X version I couldn't spot this difference in every location but I did notice a small reduction in quality here in some head-to-heads foliage Shadows look more noticeably graded though this series X doesn't produce a very clean result here either probably the clearest visual difference between Series S and X comes down to the cube app rendering Starfield relies on Cube Maps which appear to be updated frequently in real time for its Reflections and on Series S these have a very low resolution series X doesn't look amazing here but the resolution on S looks to be about a quarter of what series X is handing in this isn't going to be super noticeable in every shot but anytime you see Reflections in game they will be much lower quality on series ass so those are the differences that I was able to pick out in basic visual settings between the two Xbox series consoles the basic gist is that both machines look similar on the surface though Series S sees a range of cutbacks to distant detail shadows and Reflections which don't make a huge impact but are noticeable I would say on top of those distinctions there is a split in resolution between the two systems series X achieves a 4K output while Series S seems to come in at about 1440p with both systems reaching those targets with the help of amd's fsr2 up sampling technology that means that the final image looks like it's 4K or 1440p respectively but the game is up sampled from lower resolutions by combining data for multiple frames on series X the game is rendering internally at 1440p while on Series S the game is rendering internally at 900p it's possible that Dynamic resolution could be in use here but every shot I counted indicated those resolutions in practice both consoles deliver a sharp and clean resolve during typical play and both look very good on a 4K television set you can see a bit of aliasing and Shimmer in areas of fine detail that fsr2 struggles to resolve cleanly though these look very similar on the two machines of course the series X does look somewhat sharper and manages to resolve pixel precise detail at 4K but Series S is no slouch it just appears a bit softer and suffers from a bit more aliasing I didn't really notice reconstruction issues on either machine in most areas and the game's motion blur does a good job of hiding any flaws in action that might otherwise be visible from a visual perspective Starfield is a very good experience on both current gen Xboxes you're getting an attractive version of the game with solid underlying settings without any glaring compromises or issues series s in particular holds up very nicely with fewer cutbacks than we typically see nowadays on the pint-sized console but visual quality is only half the picture so how does performance hold up Bethesda has a bit of a checkered past when it comes to console performance in their RPGs the infamous rimlag issue on Skyrim's PS3 version comes to mind where the game suffered from very poor performance once the player's save file grew Beyond a certain size Fallout 4 had more conventional issues with generally inconsistent frame rates at launch both problems were later patched but dampened the launch experience so I came in with somewhat measured expectations for the initial version of Starfield testing with the day one patch installed the overall gameplay is surprisingly solid Starfield basically hits a lock 30fps for just about everything you do during the game combat is rock solid as is exploring the various planets you can throw some pretty intense combat in large open environments at the game and it won't register any complaint whatsoever this applies equally to both Series S and series X which perform identically here but there is one substantial caveat two of The Game's cities namely new Atlantis and Aquila are prone to occasional performance problems when running around these areas we do sometimes see a smattering of dropped frames including some significant stutter most of the time these areas run just fine at 30 FPS but there are issues for sure new Atlantis seems to be the most impacted in my experience which makes sense as it is the largest city area available in Starfield I also recorded a couple of one second pauses once on both Xbox consoles while traversing this area of the new Atlantis Spaceport it was pretty egregious but this was the absolute worst I saw during my time with Starfield so Starfield performs well enough especially judged by the standards of bethesda's Prior efforts outside of occasional issues in cities the game delivers a very solid 30 FPS update that 30fps frame rate target is probably going to earn a bit of ire from players but given the complexity of the world as well as the CPU heavy performance profile of the piece version I think the 30fps target is totally understandable the motion blur also helps to smooth out the 30fps update to some degree and renders with a high sample count and no apparent artifacting I do wish that there was an option to lengthen the virtual shutter speed a bit though for a more pronounced effect as the blur tends to be a bit subtle at the moment and for those who don't like the effect it can be turned off in the game's settings from a technical perspective star field is probably the most polished RPG that Bethesda has ever shipped it's largely a bug-free experience that proceeds with mostly unblemished performance and it looks great to boot bethesda's games are massive titles with a ton of complexity and potential interactions and getting Starfield to this level of polish at launch is an impressive accomplishment you get the sense of the game's 10-month delay probably helped quite a bit on this front the game itself is also very good this is more or less the game as advertised a massive Bethesda RPG that takes place over multiple star systems in the vastness of space it's a lot like Fallout 4 or Skyrim but instead of walking through a contiguous land mass you navigate the game largely through a planetary travel interface a la Mass Effect 2 or Eve online between cities and Landing zones so star field scope is immense though that does come with certain caveats planetary X exploration isn't terribly exciting given the procedurally generated land masses with repeated content if anything I think reduced scope might have helped deliver a more carefully curated experience in line with recent Bethesda Fair Savvy players will be able to navigate through the game's main quests faction quests and other named quests while keeping their interaction with the procedurally generated elements to a minimum but I do think the typical one map structure of Prior Bethesda games is perhaps a better overall approach that said I have really enjoyed my time with Starfield and I'm bound to play it quite a bit more as the year closes out it's a super polished genuinely fun Bethesda RPG even the combat feels great and the main content of the game is in very good form it helps a lot that the typical advice when contemplating playing a new Bethesda RPG to wait six months or so for bugs to be ironed out doesn't seem to apply here at all Starfield is a great name an experience with solid performance and great visuals across both of its console platforms if you enjoyed this video please like subscribe and press the bell for YouTube notifications check out the patreon at digitalfoundry.net for exclusive and Early Access content and to get in touch use social media thanks for watching

Channel: Digital Foundry

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Length: 13min 24sec (804 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 31 2023