bagskiii
Published
The game runs rather poorly without a certain mod installed, but once that mod is installed it runs and plays very well on Deck!
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dinput8,dbghelp=n,b" %COMMAND%
Not sure if "Changed the game's configuration file(s)" is the correct way to phrase it, but I did install a mod thanks to the YouTube channel "Grown Up Gaming", which forces DLSS Frame Gen and Upscaler to be used.
(Only applies to having former mentioned mod installed) Sometimes there can be odd visual artifacts with the mod and through my testing, running the game at 1280x800 causes the top and bottom of the screen to act up. 1280x720 fixes this problem so really not an issue at all. Vanilla game has no visual artifacts as far as I'm aware.
Unmodded, DD2 really struggles on the Deck. On average, it'll run 20-30 FPS and sometimes dip down to low 10's. Fortunately, there is a work around by following a mod installation process on YouTube by a channel called "Grown Up Gaming". Installing the mod is definitely not straight forward but if you follow each step the guy in the video gives, the mod will just work, and oh is it glorious. With the mod I jumped up to 50-60 FPS average. It's a little janky here and there but it makes the game actually very enjoyable to play on Deck.
I cannot stress this enough that if someone is looking to have a good time playing this game on the Deck, you will find it, but only after jumping through a few hoops.
Just look up "Dragon's Dogma 2 frame generation on steam deck" on YouTube and look for Grown Up Gamers tutorial. It'll be worth the time and hassle getting it set up, especially considering it only takes a few minutes.
If you don't want to install the mod, I don't recommend playing this on the Deck. It's a bad experience even for those who aren't nitpicky about performance.
Since the last ProtonDB report for this was 2 years ago and seems outdated, figured I'd make an updated report
Game runs perfect out of the box with maxed out settings. It's certainly a game that is perfect for the Deck and honestly the most preferable way to play it.
With some easy to apply tweaks, Starfield runs great on the Deck! The main issues concerning performance are in New Atlantis and Akila City.
Some changes to the graphic settings preset .ini's, as well as some graphical tweaks in the StarfieldCustom.ini file.
There's a new setting at time of making this report that states when it's toggled, it will enable one to seemlessly use both controller and M&K inputs at the same time. This would be a useful feature for setting the right trackpad to mouse or any other assortment of keybinds to the Deck's buttons, but all this setting does from my testing is stop controls from working at all. This forced me to force-quit the game and re-toggle the setting from the main start screen.
Recent updates have made Starfield run quite a bit better on Deck through the use of upscaling tech and much needed optimizations to the game on Bethesda's end. To further increase performance (30-50 FPS on ANY planet/dungeon), one can lower the graphics seetings to bare minimum and set render resolution to 50% (Which looks better than one would expect thanks to AMD's FSR 3.0).
Another thing to DRASTICALLY improve performance is to install the Steam Deck Essentials .ini files off of Nexus Mods. I chose the "Balanced" preset and get a fairly consistent 45-60 FPS, excluding New Atlantis and Akilla City, unfortunately.
Though the game is playable out of the box, Deck users should consider looking for ways to bypass its poor optimization by either installing Steam Deck specific tweaks or editing the .ini files themselves. 50 FPS is what I run on average, but even with the tweaks applied, major cities and some POI's exteriors can cause dips down to 30 FPS.
Overall, not a bad way to play Starfield at all.
