What Skyrim and Fallout Tell Us About Starfield’s Next Updates

Bethesda’s most recently released open-world RPG, Starfield, is a massive game, bringing to life the fantasy of being a space-faring adventurer – unfortunately, however, along with the game’s massive scope comes plenty of bugs, oversights, and other issues, which are compounded by the game’s seemingly slow update schedule. In the couple months following Starfield‘s release, the game has received four minor patches, all focused on fixing bugs, improving performance, and perhaps most pressingly, adding an FOV slider to the game’s options. However, to deal with some of the bigger issues, Starfield might be due for a more major update.

Starfield is, of course, far from the only Bethesda game to have a large amount of bugs on release – past titles in The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series have given the studio’s games a reputation for being buggy, especially at launch. And, on some level, bugs are unavoidable for games with the kind of scope that Bethesda RPGs typically have, as it’s nearly impossible to catch and fix every bug in game with thousands of complex interactions while still releasing the game in a reasonable timeframe. However, with Starfield‘s post-launch support being surprisingly minimal so far, it’s worth taking a look at how quickly past Bethesda RPGs got to their major updates.

Starfield’s Update Schedule Is Slower Than Skyrim’s & Fallout 4’s

Unfortunately, almost two months since the game’s launch, Starfield has yet to receive a major update, with Bethesda only having released four small patches with various minor fixes, including the day one patch. By comparison, both Skyrim and Fallout 4 had already released two fairly major patches within a similar timeframe after their respective launches (though Skyrim‘s were also on the smaller side), with Skyrim being on its 1.3 version about two months after its release, and Fallout 4 being on the same version number three months after its release.

Aside from bugs or game-breaking quest progression blocks, some of which can even prevent players from finishing the main story, the game is also notably lacking in the kind of quality-of-life features that would be expected of open-world RPGs, and which would make many aspects of the game, like building custom ships in Starfield, much easier and less time-consuming. Changes like being able to see how much of certain types of ammo are in a player’s inventory while they’re shopping, or being able to adjust brightness at all without the use of mods, would greatly improve the baseline experience of playing Starfield.

Additionally, although Starfield has had a post-launch DLC expansion announced, titled Shattered Space, the game’s larger scope and slower update schedule may mean that it can’t release in time to match the DLC of Skyrim or Fallout 4, both of which had several expansions launch in the year following their respective releases, including expansions like Dawnguard and Far Harbor. While no release date has been officially confirmed, and further DLC expansions for Starfield have yet to be announced, if the game keeps its current pacing with regard to updates, the wait for Starfield DLC may be longer than for past Bethesda games.

Starfield Is (Hopefully) Heading For A Major Patch

In spite of the minimal update schedule and small patches, however, Starfield is likely gearing up for a major update, which, among other things, will hopefully fix most of the major quest progression bugs and add the long-awaited DLSS support for PC, which currently can only be integrated into the game through the use of mods. Although Starfield, as a single-player RPG, is hard to compare to Fallout 76, a multiplayer, live-service game, this would put the two games on a roughly similar update cadence, with both putting out several small patches before a bigger update with more substantial fixes and changes.

Additionally, though Starfield has received fewer updates and fixes than Skyrim or Fallout 4, the slower pace of patches could also be attributed to the game’s larger scope – unlike past Bethesda RPGs, in which players mostly only controlled their character, Starfield has an additional gameplay “mode” in the form of piloting a ship, and the game’s world is generally larger than past RPGs from the studio as well. With the game having taken seven years of development time to release, two more than the usual for Bethesda RPGs, a somewhat slower update schedule is to be expected, to an extent.

While Starfield has been touted as Bethesda’s least buggy release yet, the game still has several major issues, bugs, progression blocks, and quality-of-life features that are in need of improvement and fixing through post-launch support. Compared to past RPGs from the studio, like Skyrim and Fallout 4, the game is on a slower pace, but is hopefully gearing up for a major update akin to the numbered patches of Baldur’s Gate 3. Until then, however, Starfield remains a game with a huge scope and a matching number of issues.