Starfield is Bethesda Softworks’ biggest game yet in almost every respect, featuring an unprecedented amount of playable space, an inventive New Game Plus feature, and a record-breaking launch. The game took roughly seven years to complete—typical Bethesda games take around four—and is considered a true passion project on behalf of Bethesda director Todd Howard and the rest of the developers. In December 2023, Starfield was reported to see 1.2 million daily players, and had amassed somewhere around 12,000,000 players in total.
Although the game has been largely well-received (Screen Rant’s Starfield review dubbed it an instant classic), there has been plenty of discourse around the best way to approach playing the game; the main campaign is said to take 30 to 40 hours to complete, but ship customization, settlement building, and exploration offer players endless hours of activity. Todd Howard has weighed in on the subject himself, as has longtime Bethesda Softworks composer Inon Zur. Zur, who previously composed music for Bethesda games including Fallout 3 and Dragon Age: Origins, had this to say:
Inon Zur: I would say to players: Go out and explore. Don’t treat Starfield as something that you need to start and finish. Imagine that this is a world that you live in right now, and you live with, and this is where you go and you escape, and this is where you build your home, and this is where you create friends and enemies and relationships. This is the right way to treat Starfield, [as opposed to] a movie that you watch from beginning to end. It’s a very different approach in order to maximize what Starfield has to offer.
Why Beating The Game Isn’t The Most Important Thing In Starfield
Starfield’s campaign has been lauded by many as one of Bethesda’s best but, as evidenced by Zur’s comments, it’s far from the full vision the developers had for the game. The game is so big that it may be easy for players to miss some of Starfield’s best quests on a first playthrough, especially if they are laser-focused on completing the main story. Much of Starfield is optional, but that means that players may miss something that could be their favorite part of the experience. Zur spoke on that subject as well:
Inon Zur: Again, this is very individual, because some people like this area of the game [and] some people like this area of the game. The only thing I can say is that you need to play the game again and again and again to really hone in on what you like. I heard [about] people that started and played it and, after 80 hours or whatever, they finished the game, but to me, to finish the game doesn’t mean that they really experienced what Starfield had to offer yet. There are other elements that you need to dive into and develop that you cannot really do when you [just] finish the game.
Despite the massive amount of content already in Starfield, the developers are already looking past what’s in place. Starfield DLC expansions are on the way, with one, Shattered Space, set to expand the game’s story. Shattered Space is considered to be the game’s first story expansion, but whether or not players will need to complete the main quest hasn’t yet been revealed. In either case, the existence of Shattered Space proves that Starfield’s main story is not designed to be an open-and-shut case. Zur promises even more to come for the game:
Inon Zur: …it’s a game that you’re building a relationship with. You treat it, and it treats you back. It’s an ever-developing universe and, in fact, we are already working on lots of new content that is going to be inserted into Starfield. Imagine that we created a world, but now we’re starting to build stuff inside this huge world so that the level and the span of creativity in what’s going to happen in Starfield… we’ve just begun.
Ultimately, it seems like Starfield was designed to give players the tools to craft their own stories. In that sense, the vastness of Starfield helps ensure that no two playthroughs are alike. As Zur said above, that is a different approach; some games have main stories that provide something akin to watercooler moments among gaming communities, and Starfield gives players the chance to craft an experience almost entirely their own. Whether they want to or can put in the hours that constitute a ‘full’ Starfield experience, of course, is up to them.
