Bethesda’s Decision to Exclude DLSS and XeSS from Starfield Sparks Controversy
Will FSR 2.0 Be Enough to Keep Gamers Happy?
Starfield releases in the first week of September, but the preload is already available, since the game is well over 120GB on each platform. While playing the game isn’t possible at this point, delving into the game files can provide valuable hints about the potential experiences the game has in store.
A recent datamine by X user, Sebastian Castellanos has revealed some shocking information, primarily that Starfield won’t support NVIDIA DLSS or Intel XeSS. It’s worth noting that FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is absent from this conversation due to AMD’s role as the official PC partner for Starfield. Moreover, in recent weeks, you may have observed exclusive partnerships between Starfield and AMD components.
In this screenshot of the game’s directory, you can clearly see how both rival GPU technologies are ignored by Bethesda, with no reasoning being given. It’s true that implementing DLSS, or XeSS may require some work to be done by the devs themselves, but there’s no reason to leave them out.
Also, for people who’ve tried it out, they would know that FSR is simply not good enough when compared to DLSS. Even FSR 2.0 lacks behind in terms of raw image quality, and the overall experience.
To me, choosing only FSR 2.0 over all the other upscalers seems like a deliberate attempt to promote AMD. If Starfield supports FSR, it should be pretty easy to add DLSS, and XeSS. Sebastian, in his post also mentioned how there’s a tool called NVIDIA Streamline that makes this process of adding upscalers much more easy.
Right now, there aren’t any signs of other upscaling technologies being in the game. But we can hope that as time goes on, even after the game has been released, Bethesda will not shy away from implementing DLSS and XeSS. Given the scope of a game like Starfield, the integration of such things should be a topic open for consideration rather than ignorance, due to sponsors.
This is all we know for now, but rest assured that we will keep you updated as new information becomes available.
