Only thing holding me back from pre order is PC performance and just performance in general. Imo Bethesda games on PC don't play well. So I have been holding out hope reviews before release can tell me. PC ports have been terrible this year :)
I'm in a similar situation. I want to see how (if?) it runs on a steam deck before I decide where to buy it. Otherwise I'd have already pre-ordered it.
Same boat here. I've been mad interested in Starfield since it was announced, but my Deck is now my primary gaming device. I need to make sure it can be modded to a stable 30FPS before I buy it.
Let's not pretend that just because Bethesda started out as a PC developer that it means the games run well. I still can't get a stable frame rate on Fallout 4 in all areas, shit I still can't get a stable frame rate in Oblivion due to the game's own optimization being a bottleneck. Their games are very moddable, but their huge amount of content and dynamic mechanics have clearly made it difficult to optimize.
Hopefully the game will run decently, but I doubt it'll be a totally seamless and smooth experience, though I'd love to be proven wrong.
Looks basically as expected from the official trailers! Cool to see more backgrounds; I think I’m going to go with Explorer but it’s gonna be hard to choose.