Bethesda, please fix the Starfield UI

If there’s anything you’ll be seeing a lot of during your Starfield playthrough, it will be Starfield’s UI. Unfortunately, every time you kill an enemy, use a digipick to open a container, or complete a quest, an ugly gray bar will pop up right in the middle of your screen to let you know you’ve earned experience – XP. Bethesda, please move it.

Bethesda has clearly put a lot of thought into Starfield’s UI on the whole, as we’ve seen with the revamped menu system which functions as your go-to hub in Starfield for skills, maps, your inventory, and even your ship. Starfield’s menu is much neater than Skyrim’s orbital menu, or Fallout’s Pip-Boy menu (though arguably Starfield’s menu isn’t quite as immersive as Fallout’s).

Even the UI outside of the menu has received careful consideration from Bethesda. The compass UI in the bottom-left corner gives you information localized to the planet or ship you’re standing on. It gives you an idea of what locations are nearby, what illnesses you’ve contracted, and how much stamina you have left.

On the right-hand side, you have your health, ammo, and the amount of boost you have left in each Boost Pack jump.

Both corners are sensible UI locations and pack a lot of information into a small space.

So why is there an XP indicator slap-bang in the middle of your screen whenever you earn experience? Not only does it block your view on enemies and environments, it can even obscure the ammo counter on your gun.

In previous Bethesda titles, XP would be displayed to the left-hand side when earned, or not appear at all. Constant pop ups are distracting, all the more so when they’re right down the iron sights of your Starfield weapon. Worse yet, trailers have demonstrated that each XP notification has to be displayed for about one or two seconds. However, you can earn XP faster than that, which creates a queue of notifications.

This notification queue means that the center of your screen could be frequently covered if you’re in the middle of an active battle, which is hardly ideal.

We’re not alone in feeling this way, with numerous Starfield fans on Reddit wanting a clean display, or at the very least an option to disable UI components.

As Redditor Xae-Blackrose commented “You’re not alone in wanting nothing in the middle of the screen.”

Bethesda, please make the XP notifications optional or toggleable. Otherwise, we’ll have to turn to Starfield mods to address it.

Should Bethesda make this welcome change, you’ll hear about it first if you follow Starfield Db on Google News. You should also check out some of the interactive tools we’re building like an interactive map for New Atlantis with the aim to make Starfield Db the greatest hub of Starfield tools out there.