So my Labor Day weekend plans were "clean the garage" and "finally return that Amazon package that's been sitting by the door since July." Instead I spent about eleven hours since Friday staring at a loading screen with a little swirling galaxy on it, because Starfield's early access dropped September 1st and I am, apparently, a man with no self control.
Quick context if you somehow missed the run-up: Bethesda's big new space RPG, the first entirely new universe from the Skyrim/Fallout team since 2011, went into "early access" Friday for anyone who paid the extra $30 for the Premium or Constellation edition, five full days before the regular $69.99 version unlocks on the 6th. I did not pay the extra $30 for cosmetic reasons or bonus content. I paid it so I could play a video game on a Friday instead of a Wednesday. Make of that what you will.
The preload alone was an event
I queued the download Wednesday night on Steam and it sat there claiming 89GB, then 112GB, then settled around 125GB once everything unpacked. My internet is fine, my SSD is fine, but I still watched that progress bar for the better part of an evening like it was a football game. If you're still running this off a spinning hard drive, by the way, don't bother, Bethesda's official line is SSD only, and having felt how much streaming this game does between areas, I believe them completely.
The frame rate thing is a real complaint, not internet whining
I've seen people online dismissing the Xbox Series X 30fps cap as nerd rage over nothing, and I get why, plenty of great games run at 30. But this one has you doing a lot of fast atmospheric flying and ship combat, and the drop from the 60fps I'm used to on PC is noticeable in a way that actually affects how you play, not just how it looks. There's no performance mode option at all right now. Xbox players are stuck with it. On my PC I'm getting a locked 60 at 1440p on a card that's a couple years old now, so at least that side of things is solid.
Okay but is it good
Yes, mostly, with an asterisk the size of the Milky Way. I've made a character, done the opening mine sequence, joined Constellation, and gone and poked around three planets so far. The loading screens are the thing nobody warned me about hard enough, you fast travel, loading screen, you land, loading screen, you walk through a door into the next room, loading screen. Skyrim had this too and I forgave it because it was 2011 and everyone's PC was made of tin foil. It's 2023. I don't love it.
The planets themselves are a mixed bag in exactly the way the previews suggested they'd be. I landed on one moon that was just gray rock for as far as I could see, with a single scannable rock formation and a dead ship, and I stood there for a second going "that's it?" Then twenty minutes later I found a pirate outpost with a genuinely great little firefight and some environmental storytelling that made me stop and read every terminal entry, which is the kind of thing Bethesda has always been weirdly good at even when everything around it is jank. It's a game of huge peaks and pretty flat valleys, and there are apparently a thousand of these planets, so I assume the ratio holds.
I haven't touched outpost building or ship customization yet, which from what I hear is where a lot of the real time-sink lives, so ask me again in a week.
Also, small tangent, but does anyone else's Xbox controller drift start acting up the second a game demands precise aiming? Mine's maybe eight months old and I'm already side-eyeing it every time I try to snipe something in zero-g. Not a Starfield problem specifically. Just a me problem, apparently, at the worst possible time.
Anyway. Full release is Wednesday for everyone else, Game Pass included, so if you've been holding off you don't have long to wait. I'll probably have opinions about the main quest by then, assuming I ever get through a loading screen fast enough to reach it.