Starfield

Much improved, still not fixed. The April 2026 Free Lanes update gave space travel a point, widened the pool of points of interest and deepened ship and gear crafting. What it did not touch is the part people bounced off: planets are still procedurally generated and, as Game Rant put it in its post-update retrospective, "Planets are going to still feel empty", loading screens remain on doors and ships, and the main quest is unchanged from 2023 and still the weakest thing in the game. Steam's last 30 days run 63% positive against 58% lifetime — better, and still Mixed. Buy it for the ship builder and the sandbox, not for the story.

Source: Game Rant

Within a single star system, yes. The Free Lanes update on 7 April 2026 added Cruise Mode, and Bethesda's patch notes scope it precisely: "The player can now use cruise mode to travel in open space or to POI locations between planets inside a star system." You enter it once your ship is already in space, and arriving at a planet puts you in orbit — landing stays a separate action. Crossing to a different star system is still a grav jump. So it removes the fast-travel-only feeling inside a system without turning Starfield into a seamless space sim.

Source: Bethesda

It is the better of Starfield's two expansions, and still a contested $9.99. GamingTrend scored it 80 and said it is "worth the price" and that they enjoyed it more than Shattered Space — while listing "The best parts are all already free" as a con. That is the whole split: critics liked it, Steam players sit at 39% positive, and the common complaint is that the value landed in the free Free Lanes update rather than the paid DLC. It is short, combat-heavy and built around repeatable Incursions instead of a new city. Shattered Space, at $19.99 and 31% positive, is the weaker buy of the two.

Source: GamingTrend

Starfield reached PS5 on 7 April 2026. On PS5 Pro, Bethesda lists Pro Visual Mode at 4K targeting 30fps and Pro Performance Mode targeting 60fps, both PSSR-upscaled. Frame rate was never the real complaint — stability was. PlayStation Universe reported in June that crashing "has notably plagued the PS5 version of the game since launch in April", and Bethesda's 11 June 2026 patch targets exactly that, including a freeze when traversing a planet surface. No independent post-patch PS5 retest has been published, so treat the fix as reported rather than measured.

Source: PlayStation Universe

They cover most of the gaps Bethesda has not. StarUI rebuilds the console-shaped menus, a separate mod restores the field-of-view slider the PC version shipped without, and in July 2026 modder 0xBobby released Seamless Planet Takeoffs (SFSE), which strips the loading screen out of leaving a planet — still beta, and by the author's own account it masks the load rather than deleting it. Seamless landings are not coming: "It probably won’t ever happen, at least not from me." One catch before installing from the in-game Creations menu — Bethesda's support page states Creations disable achievements unless tagged "Achievement Friendly".

Source: Kotaku