Starfield Patch Fixing Its Sabotage Quest, Which Many Players Couldn't Finish Due to a Missing Journalist

Bethesda Game Studios has teased what players can expect in Starfield's next update, with the upcoming patch emphasizing quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes.

In a thread on X/Twitter, Bethesda Game Studios made a thread highlighting some of the changes coming to Starfield. The update will be available on March 6 via the Steam Beta before a full release at a later date.

The most notable fix will address a bug in the "Sabotage" quest for the Ryujin Industries. The bug in question caused an NPC required to complete the quest to not spawn in the location. Bethesda previously tried to address this bug in update 1.8.86, released last November, but some quickly pointed out that the NPC failed to spawn after installing the patch.

We also tracked down the elusive David Barron, who had mysteriously been unavailable at the SSNN for many players in "Sabotage."

Other fixes include an issue causing the player's head to turn left while sprinting and some issues preventing Starborn Temples from appearing… pic.twitter.com/3vBsL3RCAv

— Bethesda Game Studios (@BethesdaStudios) March 1, 2024

Other patch highlights include:

• Adding facial expressions in photo mode;
• Improvements to the scanner that will allow you to use it to monitor the in-game world when harvesting resources; and
• A quality-of-life improvement that makes missions active when you set course on an inactive mission.

The latest update comes over a week after the February patch was released, where it introduced a number of changes to Bethesda's sci-fi action RPG, most notably AMD's FSR 3 and Intel's XeSS supersampling tech support.

The support for Starfield is part of Bethesda's plan to have "a steady stream of updates about every six weeks" to address various issues in Starfield. Bethesda previously teased additional fixes and improvements, including adding city maps and "new ways" of traversing.

In our review of Starfield, which we awarded a 7 out of 10, we said: "Starfield has a lot of forces working against it, but eventually, the allure of its expansive roleplaying quests and respectable combat make its gravitational pull difficult to resist."

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.