I adjusted settings when it came out but it just kept freezing. Is it playable now?
I’ve been playing for a few days. Runs fine for me so far, no freezing or crashing (spits over shoulder and crosses himself).
Performance is not great in cities, but I find it playable. Otherwise I’m generally hitting 30FPS or close. I’m playing at all low settings, dynamic resolution, FSR2 with 85% sharpening, 8W TDP cap, 30FPS cap, no mods, stock hardware, stock SteamOS (stable branch).
Only real issue I have is audio crackling, and I’m not sure if that’s due to the game or SteamOS 3.5 (I occasionally have crackling in other games since the update, and it seems to be a known issue with 3.5… however, Starfield seems to have it worse).
How bad does it look with these settings? I have the game on Xbox but prefer the portability the deck offers.
It depends, because I’m using dynamic resolution.
Indoors or in areas that aren’t particularly busy (e.g. Hopetown/Hopetec exterior), it usually looks quite nice - I’d compare it to Cyberpunk 2077 at default settings on Deck. Crisp, clear, lots of detail.
In open and busy areas like Akila and New Atlantis, it’s a different story. It can get rather blurry. Sometimes in the wilderness as well. I’d say look up footage of the Outer Worlds on Switch (but make sure it’s footage of the fully patched version), and look especially for footage in cities and wide open outdoor areas. I would say it never looks quite as bad as that, but the worst case scenario is in the same ballpark. If you look at that footage and think “gross”, my Starfield settings are probably not for you, but if you think “I could accept that for handheld play”, it might be worth a shot :-)
Personally, I only find it annoying in so far as sometimes it can be hard to identify enemies or wildlife at very long ranges (which was also a problem I had in OW for Switch).
(Keep in mind that I’m playing with an 8W TDP cap - if you’re happy to go higher (less battery life) you might get less aggressive resolution scaling, but I haven’t tested that, since I’m just barely satisfied with the battery life I get now - it’s basically hitting the TDP cap at all times, and I get only ~3h.)