Summary
One prolific Bethesda modder released aStarfield"Potato Mode" mod that crushes the game’s textures to the point of possibly making it playable on some older PCs. The mod surfaced online ahead ofStarfield’sfull-fledged release.
While Bethesda’s space-faring RPG will offer mod support, its official modding toolkit won’t be available at launch. And though the developer has yet to reveal when exactly the kit will release, the lack of official tools hasn’t stopped enthusiasts from coming up withStarfieldmods before the game has even left early access. NexusMods hence already boasts nearly 600Starfieldmods, with more of them being added on a daily basis.
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That growing list of customizations now also includes the so-called Potato Mode from one BulwarkHD, a fairly prolific developer with over 40 Bethesda game mods to their name. True to its name, Potato Mode compressesStarfield’stextures to a 128-bit size, thus making the RPG somewhat less resource-intensive to run. The act of crushing the game’s textures unsurprisingly makes it look significantly smudgier, but that’s a trade-off that some might be willing to make if their PCs are just belowStarfield’s minimum system requirements.
It’s worth noting that texture resolution is just one of many factors affecting any given game’s performance footprint. Volumetric lighting, particle effects, fog, and other types of eye candy can all be just as demanding to render individually as high-resolution textures. TheStarfieldPotato Mode does not attempt to tweak or disable any such visual effects, so anyone looking to give it a try should keep their expectations in check. In fact, its very creator claims that the mod was largely intended as a joke, albeit one that might indeed help “a couple [of] people.”
Given its scope, this mod could primarily be useful for improving the game’s frame rate on GPUs with less than the recommended 8GB of VRAM. It won’t help with the fact thatStarfieldneeds to be installed on an SSD, as that requirement has nothing to do with graphics. Some players who already gave the mod a spin reported that it works better when paired with a modified StarfieldPrefs.ini configuration file which disables intensive graphical options such as reflections and global illumination by setting them to zero.
The modding community has a long track record with optimizing Bethesda’s games for hardware that’s much weaker than the developer’s recommendations. However, until the company actually releases its official mod toolkit, its promise ofStarfieldbecoming a modder’s paradisewill remain on hold.
Starfieldlaunches September 6 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
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