Every Bethesda RPG comes out with a few bugs. Skyrim wasn’t too bad at release, while Fallout 4 was rough — and New Vegas had arguably the most horrendous video game launch of all time. Yeah, Obsidian made that last one, but all three were using the infamously glitchy Creation Engine. Since Starfield utilizes the next-generation version of that engine, fans are already preparing for another messy situation.
The Starfield Community Patch (SCP) is a group effort from several modders looking to iron out any technical kinks once Bethesda’s spacefaring adventure releases. Thus far, the team is mostly putting together a core group that understands how these games are made.
“If you look at other large modding projects that exist out there today you’ll find that quite a lot of them have suffered from growing pains at some point during development,” SCP said via GamesRadar. “These problems often stem from questions around ownership, copyright, vision, etc. This is why we feel it’s valuable to use the time prior to the game release to nail down these details so that anyone who chooses to contribute to the project is aware of how it all works, what is expected, and how their submission will be shared.”
The SCP team is an ongoing effort, with numerous members exchanging ideas on Discord and Nexus Mods. Since Starfield uses Creation Engine 2, plotting out every potential problem is tricky, though not impossible. History illuminates essential details.
“Traditionally, Bethesda evolves the systems that make up its engine over time instead of swapping them out wholesale with each new game,” SCP continues via GamesRadar. “While [Starfield‘s] Creation Engine 2 looks to be a significant upgrade there’s no reason to think this trend won’t continue – you can still find relics of the Gamebryo Engine used for Morrowind in the Skyrim game data. If you’re eagle-eyed you can spot some snippets of the Software Development Kit the developers are using in the various Starfield trailers which strongly resembles the existing Creation Kit tool offered for Fallout 4 and Skyrim.”
Interestingly, the folks at SCP expect Starfield to be perfectly playable at launch. Given Bethesda’s comments regarding the massive scale and handcrafted elements, that’ll be a tall order.
Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.
