Bethesda aimed for the stars with Starfield, a title that we continue to adore as it now makes its long awaited debut on the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro. Along with a slew of new content, this ambitious space-faring RPG is now all set to enthrall a whole new set of players, and have them coming back to its open-ended exploration and New Game+ loop time and time again as they try to experience all it has to offer.
We’ve spent a fair bit of time with the PS5 Pro version and came away quite impressed at every turn. But why is that? How has the title managed to have us visually immersed in a game we first played over two years ago? Has the PS5 port managed to keep the magic of the original version alive? We’ve got the answers to all of these questions and more as we dive into how Bethesda’s action RPG has managed to make its presence felt on a brand-new platform.
Let’s dive right in.
PS5 Pro’s Various Graphical Options
The PS5 Pro offers several options across different frame rates and graphical modes. For clarity, we tested Performance mode with an unlocked frame rate, Visuals mode at 30 FPS and 40 FPS, and Enhanced mode at 30 FPS and 40 FPS.
The Visual Mode prioritizes graphics by maintaining the highest resolution possible while preserving a high level of detail in special effects, lighting, and crowds. It was what we tried out first, and the results are solid. It hits its target framerate without a hitch while several details are quite sharp no matter what the game throws at the console.
Outdoor environments are quite well-detailed, with minimal stutter or pop-in while the textures remain rock solid. The lighting and image quality are impressive here, with the former working very well to illuminate scenes where it’s meant to, while the inky blacks of outer space were a sight to behold on a 4K TV. The glow from our ship’s instrument cluster was nigh on perfect, and things looked very good overall.
Take things indoors and the same level of visual quality continues to hold, making scenes look very authentic and immersive across the board. We were particularly impressed with the character models on offer, and the facial animations sync well with the voice work to make Starfield very immersive on the Visual Mode.
But for those of you looking for 60 fps and beyond, the Pro Performance mode makes everything smooth with some minor hiccups, even in the most intense battles either on land or in space. It does that by lowering the internal resolution but PSSR upscaling helps image reconstruction to deliver great on screen quality. As a result, the visuals don’t take too much of a hit, with everything we’ve said on the Visual Mode holding mostly true on this option. Fortunately, the few compromises (which we will talk about shortly) it makes aren’t going to make a huge difference to your moment-to-moment gameplay.
You’re going to see slightly lower-resolution textures but only if you’re really looking for them, pop-ins, while the detailing on certain surfaces does take a little bit of a hit. The Pro Performance Mode is going to keep those of you who aren’t worried about those trade-offs very happy indeed.
In both modes, the details on your character’s uniforms, weapons, materials, and ships are all solid, making Starfield truly one of the PS5 Pro’s stronger showings. It’s quite easy to get distracted from missions and just wander off to appreciate the on screen beauty, something we found happening to us all too often as we admired just how well volumetrics and atmospherics effects behaved in a variety of scenes irrespective of the mode we were playing it on.
It’s also impressive that the game maintained consistent performance across a variety of biomes and weather conditions, suitably switching up the lighting in scenes that required it, and adjusting quite well on the fly to ensure that both the image and performance we were getting were not only up to standard, with minor hiccups here and there.
And lastly, then there’s the Enhanced mode, which uses the PS5 Pro’s hardware to maximize visual detail and maintain the highest resolution. It’s the one we eventually stayed on, and we found it showed off the game’s great visual touches along with enhanced graphical paramaters.
Overall, each of the game’s graphical options and performance targets offer superb image quality and largely stable framerates, and you’re not going to be left wanting with any of them based on your individual preferences. We’d personally pick Enhanced, but we can also see plenty of players preferring Performance Mode.
But there’s another important question we must answer.
How Does It Measure Up Against The PC Version?
Let’s kick off the answer to that question with our setup. We tested the game on a Ryzen 9 5950X, 96 GB of RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, and an NVMe SSD. That configuration, well above the game’s recommended specs, let us run it all on the highest possible settings, and while the PC version of the game might outperform the PS5 Pro, the gap between the two is surprisingly small, especially in terms of image quality and several graphical parameters.
As expected, details and textures look ever so sharper on the PC, and the lighting effects do seem more pronounced thanks to the hardware bump, but both versions produce similarly clean images with the PS5 Pro’s PSSR working well to upscale images across modes.
Indoors, as well as during cutscenes and conversations, the differences between the two platforms are minimal. The same holds true in space, and also extends to terrain quality, shadow intensity, and crowd density. Loading times were similarly fast across the board, with both machines getting us into the game quickly and without any noticeable difference. Furthermore, character models and gear detail look largely similar on both the PS5 Pro and PC versions.
As noted earlier, Starfield does benefit from high-spec PCs, especially in terms of performance. But from a purely visual standpoint, the PS5 Pro version comes very close to matching the PC version running at its highest settings.
Is Starfield Worth It On The PS5 Pro?
If PS5 Pro is your only gaming platform, the answer is a definite yes. You’re going to enjoy it with a full suite of updates that have ironed out many of its early rough edges, and it’s a graphical powerhouse with great options depending on how you’re looking to experience the game.
Starfield makes great use of the PS5 Pro’s hardware and its DualSense features, to make the game look and feel incredible. Among consoles, we’d say that the PS5 Pro is the definitive way to experience the game. Considering that it’s such a small gap between the Pro and our PC, we’d say that it’s an excellent port and a potential gold standard for others to follow later down the line. With each of its modes performing as well as they do, the trade-offs between resolution and frame rate are managed well. Just give each one a shot and see what works best for you, just like how we found Enhanced to be our sweet spot.
If you’re thinking about diving in but have been holding off to see what the PS5 Pro version of Starfield has to offer, you largely have nothing to worry about. It looks great and performs well, making it a great addition to any library of games. Now, excuse us while we dive back into our playthrough, and continue an adventure that still impresses us.
