I downloaded Starfield on release day for the Xbox Series X. Like many, I rolled off it a few hours in, at level 8. The game was ambitious, with Skyrim vibes. But it was also stiff, with a stuttering frame rate that kept me from feeling like I was living in a new world.

But it wasn’t frame rate alone that convinced me to drop the game. After all, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (the game I dropped Starfield for) is also 30 fps. I stayed on in Zelda: TOTK and made it all the way to the end. Why didn’t the same thing happen in Starfield, a game I was anticipating nearly as much as the return of Zelda?

The answer is easy: for Starfield to mesmerize, the world must be convincing. And Starfield on Xbox wasn’t. When you’re actively distraced by too many technical shortcomings, you can’t commit your full attention to a fantasy world. You don’t come to a Bethesda game for puzzles and physics, you come to enjoy an alternate life at your own pace. If you aren’t immersed, the whole thing falls apart.

Well, this weekend, I finally upgraded my GPU to a 4090. And that, friends, made all the difference. On PC (with a top level rig), Starfield’s world is solid. Convincing. Fully realized. To be fair, the game is no more innovative or mechanically satisfying now than it was last October at launch. But with all the bells and whistles turned up, the game works. It’s so much better, I chose to abandon all prior progress and begin from scratch. And every session is now bringing me joy. I’m no longer feeling listless.

Things have changed in the open world RPG genre since Skyrim came out almost two decades ago: Cyberpunk 2077 set a new bar. And on PC, Starfield nearly meets that bar. It does not on console.

Cyberpunk 2077 is still the better of the two games, but when you’ve finished V’s adventures – Phantom Liberty DLC and all – Starfield does a great job of scratching that same “explore anyware, level-up like a god” itch.

There is still a lot of clunkiness. Dialogue is often leaden. Characters have dead eyes. Ship combat is too hard, until it becomes too easy. The user interface is a pain to navigate. But it’s fun. And on PC, at 4K, pushing 60fps or better, it’s the marvelous escape from the real world it was always meant to be. As processing power equivalent to a 4090 GPU becomes commonplace, and more people play this game, its legacy will improve. I’m just glad to be seeing today what everyone else will be seeing five years from now.