It’s only been a few days since Starfield is available and the gaming fans are already having a blast with the most stable and bug-free launch ever from Bethesda, developers of popular games like Skyrim and Fallout 4. Ahead of the full launch of the game, game director Todd Howard spoke to BBC and had a talk about Starfield, his most ambitious game ever.
Todd Howard explained the reason behind making a game this big, that took so much time to develop and is hundreds of hours long if gamers want to see everything it has to offer. Howard also mentioned that exclusive titles like this are the need of the hour and such launches take games to potential new players.
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Game Director Todd Howard Admits a Big Flaw in Starfield
Starfield is an open-world RPG set in the Settled Systems where the players get to explore an entire galaxy with around 1,000 planets and each has their flora and fauna. The game has received praise from fans and critics for its immersive storyline and stunning visuals, meanwhile, Todd Howard said that they did not expect Starfield to be this big and often wondered if they are involved in a troublesome situation. He said,
“{Starfield} ended up being much larger than anything we’ve done. At times we thought, ‘Are we in over our heads?'”
Considering the size of Starfield and everything that the game allows players to do, from character creation to ship and weapon customization and whatnot, it is not at all surprising that developers had their doubts. Howard said their vision behind Starfield was a game that players would invest a lot of time in and would play for years to come.
It is often a debate about how long is too long for a game and wouldn’t a smaller but better and more focused title would do fine. It should also be taken into consideration that not all players can access all the options that the game offers, so is it a smart choice to go for such large games?
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Todd Howard on Choice Anxiety in Long Games Like Starfield
Howard explained that he has learned only two things about gamers in his career, whether a player plays a single game for a long time or only plays for 10-20 hours but knows about all the other choices they could have taken. He said,
“But even if they only play for 10 or 20 hours, finish the main story, save the world then move on, they’ll have at least seen all the other choices that could have been taken. It means those 20 hours will be different for every player because they were exposed to so much choice – which impacted their appreciation of the story and experience.”
Long and time-consuming RPG games with tens if not hundreds of hours are returning to the gaming industry and this has been proven with the success of games like Hogwarts: Legacy, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and the recently released Baldur’s Gate 3.
These games give players several options with locations and missions. Howard also acknowledged that his games are often laced with such gameplay which is good but also has some disadvantages and Starfield has now joined the list of those games. He stated,
“At times I suffer from choice anxiety. But options are what I think keeps a game going in your head. When you put it down, you start thinking about when you can pick it back up. What am I going to do next? Or when you get distracted by choices in a game, and the hours go by, that’s when I start feeling good about a game I’m making.”
Howard continued,
“Things are always a bit of a mess during development, but you know things are starting to gel together when you go in to test something, and it’s late in the day and you’ve got to finish up soon, and you start playing. Next thing you know, three hours have gone by and you’re like ‘Oh my, I didn’t even know!’ That’s when I start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and I know we’re on to something.”
Todd Howard said that games like this immerse players for a long time and even if the choices sometimes feel like a distraction, they are what interests keep players hooked. Many of the gameplay elements in Starfield have been previously seen in other games but the freedom and the exploration that the game offers is what made it the biggest game release of this year and has certainly paid off the anxiety developers had. The players have been quite impressed with everything they have been provided and the game excels in giving a sense of adventure and discovery like no other.
Source: BBC
