Starfield bugs are all part of the experience, according to Bethesda

Bethesda's Pete Hine is very aware that Starfield has bugs, but has defended the game, noting a priority of freedom over making something "safe, less buggy."

It's something of a running joke that Bethesda's games are filled to the brim with bugs. The developer's last major entry (I'm ignoring Fallout 76, that's a whole different mess) Fallout 4 even had some game breaking ones, and all these years later it's still not perfect. Starfield is no different, of course, even if it's faring a whole lot better than previous Bethesda games. But according to Bethesda's Hines in a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, the developer puts wanting to "lean into player freedom" above anything else.

"We embrace chaos," Hines said. "We could make a safer, less buggy, less risky game if we wanted to. But what we try to lean into is player freedom. Yes, there's going to be some little things here and there where your companion might stand a little too close to you sometimes, yet the freedom you get, and the things that happen because of that, we absolutely love and embrace. Of course there are bugs. But does it take away from your experience? Or do you have a consistent, fun game that you just can't stop playing and experimenting with?"

Honestly, though, so far it's looking like Starfield is pretty solidly built, so any bugs that are there don't seem to be ones that are causing many players too much grief. Whether it's fun or not, that's not for me to decide for you… but our Starfield review did give the game 4/5 stars, so it can't be all bad.

Of course, there is one major flaw that no amount of bug fixing could ever make up for - it seems like all dogs in the world (universe?) of Starfield are extinct, which just doesn't seem like very good game design to me.