Todd Howard recently revealed the reason that Bethesda's open world games tend to be so large on release, typically packed with hundreds of hours worth of content. The prolific game studio has garnered a reputation for the sheer scale of its new game releases, often bursting at the seams with new content. While the launch of Starfield featured a main story that could be completed in under 20 hours, the game offers a plethora of side content between quests and planets to explore. Now, Todd Howard is sharing the reasoning behind Bethesda's huge worlds.

Massive in-game worlds with tons of content have become a staple of Bethesda since the company's early days, often packing significant side content into its games. Skyrim boasts multiple major questlines aside from its main story, with players able to get involved with the many guilds and other groups throughout Tamriel. Fallout 4 similarly features a wide variety of different things to do in-game, adding new content like building settlements, an in-depth dialogue system, and plenty more. Todd Howard is now equating the games' size to a lack of cut content from Bethesda.

As reported by Insider Gaming, during a recent interview with BAFTA, Todd Howard discussed why Bethesda games tend to be so massive in scale. According to Howard, Bethesda games often end up being so large due to Bethesda's policy to "cut very little" from its games in development. Howard goes on to refer to Bethesda games as often being "irresponsibly large," and credits the "creativity in the games" from the many different staff members as being something that sets Bethesda's titles apart.

Howard also goes on to explain Bethesda's design process for games and how the studio goes about creating its huge worlds. He explains the studio's design philosophy as wanting to create a world that is "believable that it is or was real," while also putting a heavy focus on giving players full agency to play the game how they want. Howard also stresses the "curiosity" within its game design, looking to pique fans' interests with different in-game hooks to encourage players to keep coming back to Bethesda's games.

Todd Howard's discussion on Bethesda's sizable games comes at an exciting time for fans of the studio. The developer is gearing up to release its first major DLC for Starfield tomorrow, with Shattered Space set to bring a major expansion to Bethesda's newest IP. Starfield: Shattered Space will add new story content focused around House Va'Ruun, alongside a plethora of new equipment and more planets and star systems for players to explore. Bethesda's philosophy surrounding its games will surely continue to see the company push out massive blockbusters with each new release.

Posted: Oct 04, 2024 1:45 pm
Related Forum: Xbox Forum

Source: https://gamerant.com/todd-howards-bethesda-games-large-cut-starfield/