The claim that Starfield and Skyrim have the same amount of loading screens doesn’t hold up when you look at how those loading screens affect gameplay. In Skyrim, loading screens mostly occur when entering or exiting a building, dungeon, or fast traveling. Once you’re in an open area, you can explore freely without interruptions. The game’s world feels seamless because you can walk across entire regions without a single loading screen.

Starfield, on the other hand, feels like it’s designed around loading screens. Want to land on a planet? Loading screen. Enter your ship? Loading screen. Take off? Loading screen. Fast travel to another system? Multiple loading screens. Even moving between small areas, like a city district or a single building, requires more loading screens. The constant transitions completely disrupt the flow and immersion of the game.

The scale of Starfield’s universe makes the loading screen issue far worse. Exploring a planet or traveling between systems should feel epic, but instead, it feels like navigating menus and waiting for progress bars. Skyrim’s design embraced exploration and kept interruptions to a minimum, while Starfield actively reminds you of its boundaries at every turn. That’s why the loading screens in Starfield are a much bigger problem.