Modders Already Preparing to ‘Fix’ Starfield Months in Advance

I’m sure everyone knows at this point that the much-anticipated Starfield is set to release in the first half of 2023. With huge planets, more interesting weapons, and the return of RPG mechanics, there is certainly a lot to look forward to, but also a lot that’s being kept under wraps. Despite this, there’s one thing everyone is expecting. Bethesda and bugs go hand in hand, and its hard to imagine a game by the studio that doesn’t have a tonne of strange glitches and quirks. As they prepare to launch their first new IP in, well, basically forever, fans are preparing something of their own. Knowing how buggy Bethesda releases are (especially within the first few months of it coming out), a project has been launched to combat this. Over half a year in advance, a group project by the name of the ‘Starfield Community Patch’ has been launched by a team of modders.

The goal of this is to get everyone ready to find, report, and fix as many bugs as possible. While you could say this is overkill, it’s not exactly a bad idea to iron a good chunk of glitches out as soon as possible. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with being precautious, especially when it comes to the day one launch of a title. This is even more true considering how Bethesda’s track record includes the terrible state of Skyrim on PS3, and the more recent Fallout 76 on basically every platform. The buggy nature of these titles is almost inevitable at this point. It’s also nice to see the community and fanbase come together to try and make the next iteration of Bethesda’s formula as accessible as possible. The project has invited anyone to participate too, so it may be just another way for Bethesda fans to get together and talk (even if sometimes negatively) about the games they love.

This has caused quite a few voices on the internet to throw a lot of doubt on Starfield, with some even claiming it’ll be the ‘next Cyberpunk 2077’. CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk was one of the most anticipated projects in years, and it was full of crashes, bugs and pretty egregious game breaking instances that were left unpatched for months. If anything, this acts as a cautionary tale for other developers. If you launch something as unfinished, that’s how everyone is going to remember it. On top of this, it takes a long, long time to start the bug fixing process. This may be why Starfield was delayed to next year, with Microsoft knowing how important it is for their console. Despite all the pessimism, I remain a firm believer that Bethesda’s new IP will be an impressive step-up from the studio, as well as managing to recapture the magic of their earlier releases. In this vein, we can hope that this Starfield Community Patch project is used to fix some minor issues rather than being a crutch for the new IP. We’ll all see when Starfield releases at some point within the first half of 2023.