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The main story of Starfield, Bethesda’s upcoming spacefaring R.P.G., will be around thirty to forty hours long, according to Todd Howard.
In an interview with IGN, Howard spoke about the game’s quests. He said that it will be longer than the likes of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4.
“This one’s ending up a little bit longer [than our previous games] and we may tune that some still. It’s more quests, so it might be 20% more than our previous ones.”
If you ignore the side quests and stick doggedly to the critical path, Howard said that Starfield “might be in the 30s, maybe 40” hours in length.
Bethesda showed off the new game at the Xbox and Bethesda Showcase, a couple of nights ago. Some found the reveal slightly underwhelming, and what made some people nervous was the fact that the game features one thousand planets to explore. This made a lot of people think of the disappointing No Man’s Sky.
On the subject of its many planets, Howard said:
“We’re also careful to let you know that’s what [that procedural content] is. So, if you look at space, you know there are a lot of ice balls in space, so that was one of our big design considerations on this game is, ‘What’s fun about an ice ball?’ And it’s OK sometimes if ice balls aren’t—it is what it is.
“We’d rather have them and say yes to you, ‘Hey, you can land on this.’ Here are the resources, you can survey it, and then you can land and spend ten minutes there and be like, ‘OK, now I’m going to leave and go back to the other planet that has all this other content on it, and I’m going to follow this questline.’
Starfield is out in 2023.
