Starfield Has Hundreds of Hours of Gameplay, ‘Like Skyrim in Space,’ Says Todd Howard

Starfield will have “100s of hours” of “hardcore RPG” gameplay when it launches late next year. This comes from Bethesda Game Studios executive producer Todd Howard, who spoke with The Telegraph (paywall) about how Starfield will compare to past games from the studio. He confirmed that we’ll get to see Starfield gameplay closer to release, saying that fans can expect a game that can be played from the first- and third-person perspective.

“It’s also a bit more hardcore of a role playing game than we’ve done,” Howard said. “It’s got some really great character systems – choosing your background, things like that. We’re going back to some things that we used to do in games long ago that we felt have really let players express the character they want to be. So I think when you see it being played, you would recognise it as something we made.”

Bethesda Game Studios lead artist Istvan Pely stated Starfield is “NASA-punk” and not necessarily something more unrealistic like Star Wars or Star Trek. Howard added that the studio wants fans to be able to grasp the reality of the game’s world and setting.

“So if you look at the ship – you can probably design a much sleeker ship 300 years in the future, right? But this has touchstones back to the current space programme,” Howard explained. “So in your mind, you can draw this line between them. Like there’s various guns the player has, and other weapons and things like that… but the more exotic ones feel exotic in the reality of the game versus not.”

What exactly players will need those guns to shoot, however, is a mystery for now. Still though, Howard promises that there will be alien races, saying that Bethesda Game Studios has “a way we approach” their existence with the more realistic tone in mind.

Meanwhile, Howard also spoke with Launcher, calling Starfield “Skyrim in space.” Bethesda managing director Ashley Cheng also shared her thoughts, saying, “For me, Starfield is the Han Solo simulator. Get in a ship, explore the galaxy, do fun stuff.”

Starfield was first officially unveiled in 2018 as Bethesda Games Studios’ next big single-player RPG, but little else was talked about at the time. Despite the lack of information on the project, fan excitement snowballed throughout the years following. It wasn’t until yesterday that official in-game footage was shown, including a release date of Nov. 11, 2022 on Xbox Series X | S and PC.