Todd Howard has revealed in a new interview that Bethesda has plans for as much as five years’ worth of content for Starfield.
Interestingly enough, this came up in Todd’s conversation with Ted Price, who happens to be founder and president of Insomniac Games. Of course, there are no hostilities to be found here, as Ted invited Todd over for an episode of his Game Maker’s Notebook podcast.
As reported by Dexerto, this is what Todd said about Starfield’s length:
“The one thing I have noticed is that more games are played for a long time. That creates an expectation. When I’m going into something new, how does this compare with a mature game that I’ve been playing for a while?”
The website How Long To Beat rates Starfield’s story to be lasting 20 ½ hours, and for the main story and side quests to last 60 hours. However, if a game like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is filled with layers of dense maps with many points of interest, Starfield has a near infinitesimal amount of things to do.
Different planets have multiple landing points, with each of those with something to do. Different parts of gameplay, such as assembling ships, add even more layers that players can spend hours on. While Nintendo found their way into open world games very well, it was Bethesda that mastered that formula to great critical acclaim first. Now, they are at a point where you can spend hours playing Starfield without progressing all that much on the main game.
But Todd understands that their fans have a huge appetite for gameplay. This is also particularly true when one considers that these same fans are going to have to be satisfied before Bethesda can finish The Elder Scrolls 6. And so Todd explains that they have a timeframe to keep working on Starfield, that would be almost as long as it takes them to make their other game.
In Todd’s words:
“People are going to ask, what does Starfield look like in three months, what does it look like in six months, a year, two years, three years, four years, five years? We’ve learned that that’s going to happen so let’s be ready for it, make the most of it, and embrace it.”
Starfield is now available to play on Steam and Xbox Series X|S. It is also on Game Pass for PC and consoles.
