Starfield players are already tired of all the loading screens: "I'm shocked by how many there are"

(Image credit: Bethesda)

Starfield early access is finally available to everyone with a Premium or Collector's edition, but after such a long wait, a lot of players are bummed to be spending so much time staring at loading screens.

Starfield reviews on the whole have been generally very positive, despite just falling short of matching the universal acclaim of Bethesda's 2011 opus, Skyrim. Still, with a trillion galaxies worth of anticipation leading up to release, it's only natural for some players to find certain things disappointing. Loading screens in particular seem to be an early pain point, judging from a multitude of threads on the topic that have been popping up on the Starfield subreddit throughout launch day.

Here's just one example:

So many loading screens from r/Starfield

Most of the complaints around Starfield's myriad loading screens note that they're plentiful but brief. I haven't had the chance to play the game myself yet, but I was able to corroborate with two different colleagues that this bullet list of loading scene triggers from Redditor daedelus82 is accurate:

Get in ship (load screen)
Go to orbit (load screen)
Select somewhere to jump (load screen)
There’s no hyperdrive animation or anything to give the feeling of travel, just fades to black and you appear at destination stationary.
Select place to land (load screen)
Enter a building (load screen)
Walk a few rooms in the building (another load screen).

"I expected loading screens, but I’m shocked by how many there [are], and there total lack of trying to disguise them," they added.

It's worth clarifying that, while interplanetary travel isn't seamless in any case, there is a way to jump to different planets without having to open up Starfield's boring map and fast travel.

As explained in this here Reddit thread, and again corroborated by a colleague who's playing the game, your ship has a scanner you can pull up and interact with to trigger a mini cutscene that'll show you actually space-traveling to a planet and landing, which might be a little more immersive than just a black screen between locations. Again, not at all seamless, but a potentially less immersion-breaking option.

For everything else happening on launch day and beyond, be sure to check out our Starfield launch live blog for the most up-to-date coverage.

After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.