Take all those damn pencils out of your Starfield inventory, Todd Howard tells overencumbered pack rats

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.

Games have always existed in a numbers-obsessed industry. Sega vs. Nintendo defined a generation in the '90s, while today's comparatively mild console wars and monthly NPD reports keep sales figures near the forefront of games-related discussion. New monetization models require new metrics for success — monthly active users, player retention rates, in-game revenue, etc. — but one of the industry's biggest questions remains: What are the best-selling video games of all time?

Pete Hines, head of publishing at Bethesda Softworks and the second-most prominent face of the company that makes Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and Starfield, is retiring. Hines announced his departure from Bethesda on Monday after 24 years with the company, indicating that he was exiting the gaming industry.

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. 

Ahead of the launch of Starfield, Bethesda chief Todd Howard said there were over 1,000 planets to explore in the science fiction role-playing game. "From barren but resource-heavy ice balls, to Goldilocks planets with life,” Howard said during the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase in June. “And not just this system, but over 100 systems — over 1,000 planets, all open for you to explore."

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 director Todd Howard has said that Starfield was intentionally made to be played for a long time.

Starfield director and Bethesda’s Todd Howard has talked about how so many triple-A games these days incorporate light RPG elements into their design, and what this meant for how the team approached its newest game.

Bethesda Game Studio’s creative director, Todd Howard, wasn’t expecting our Starfield ships to be so damn cool.

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.

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.