As Starfield developers begin to depart Bethesda after the release of the studio's massive RPG, some fans are despondently casting their minds forward to the eventual departure of studio lead Todd Howard.
28.09.2023 - 15:25 / gamesradar.com / Todd Howard / Ted Price / Howard / Howard Says
Bethesda boss Todd Howard says Starfield was designed and built for longevity, even more so than RPGs like Skyrim or any of the modern Fallouts, with the studio already considering how the game will evolve for years and years to come.
In a Game Maker's Notebook interview with Insomniac Games CEO Ted Price, Howard weighs in on the discussion about the ever-escalating scale of games, which was amplified by Baldur's Gate 3 launching back-to-back with Starfield. Price asks if games really are getting too big and wonders who's driving this "need for more complexity."
"I think it starts with the developers," Howard responds. "It has to, right? I think it starts with technology. You're seeing new hardware, you're wanting to use it in new ways, you're looking at demos going 'we could do this, we could do this, we could present it in this way.' The scale of games, I think, I'd have to go back and look. How big were things before? The one thing I have noticed is, because more games are played for a long time, they're 'live,' the ability to update them over time creates games that people are playing right now that have been around for a long time, gotten years and years and years of updates, and 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?"
Howard describes the scale of Starfield as "irresponsible," partly owing to its setting. The team was "always trying to fill it given how much space is in space." And to the surprise of no one, just as he's done for the past several years, he also revisits Skyrim.
"Even a game like Skyrim – which if you look at it at launch was still a really, really big game – if you look at it today with add-ons and mods it's a much bigger game. It's still a game that's played 12 years later in large numbers for us. I think if you look at your audience, they get used to a game and they usually want to plus-one it. They want to add XYZ, and the developers, we usually do as well."
Howard reiterates what Bethesda's teased in previous Starfield updates: the studio's actively looking to polish and add features in response to player feedback. But even compared to Skyrim's legendarily long tail, Howard says Bethesda is in it for the long haul with Starfield, both with updates and mod support.
"This is a game and it's intentionally made to be played for a long time," he affirms. "One of the things we've learned from our previous games, from Skyrim, from Fallout, is that people want to play them for a very long time. So Starfield, I would say, was the most intentional, going into it, that this is a game people are going to play for a long time. How do we build it such that it is allowing that in a way
As Starfield developers begin to depart Bethesda after the release of the studio's massive RPG, some fans are despondently casting their minds forward to the eventual departure of studio lead Todd Howard.
Starfield has been out for about six weeks, and as the dust settles on the honeymoon period, some players are finding that the spacefaring RPG just doesn't have the staying power of Bethesda's previous games, most notably Skyrim.
Just before Starfield came out, the game’s reviews were dropped, and a consistent theme was seen within them. Specifically, these game reviewers kept talking about the amount of hours they put into the game overall, not just with the main storyline but within the whole game. Some of the reviewers had put in dozens of hours, and a few had put in over a hundred to two hundred hours into Bethesda’s new title! What that showed was that no matter what kind of gamer you were, you would have quite the adventure ahead of you. As we know now, that was by design.
Starfield was «made to played for a long time».
Bethesda Game Studios’ Starfield launched last month and received praise from critics (check out our review) and players. However, with more than 1000 planets, extensive ship-building and several activities, the space-faring RPG’s journey is only beginning.
Starfield director Todd Howard has said that Starfield was intentionally made to be played for a long time.
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Bethesda boss Todd Howard reckons many games are some sort of RPG nowadays, which is partly why Starfield doubles down on the studio's classical role-playing style to stand out in the crowd.
Starfield director Todd Howard says that Bethesda's sci-fi RPG was «intentionally» designed to be played for a long time and that he expects to still be working to update the game for the next five years.
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We’ve seen some truly lengthy video game experiences over the years. For instance, Bethesda is a development studio known for creating some big RPG experiences. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a prime example of a game that continues to see big numbers over a decade after being released into the marketplace. Recently, Todd Howard, the game director behind Starfield, commented on long video games. Starfield is just the base right now, as we can see this game thrive for several years.