Starfield’s Main Quest Is About 20% Bigger than Previous Bethesda Games, Around 30-40 Hours Long

ign.com:

Starfield's main quest is about 20% bigger than previous Bethesda games such as Skyrim and Fallout 4, with Todd Howard saying that means it should take around 30 to 40 hours to complete – without stepping away to do side content.

Speaking to IGN after the gameplay reveal at the Xbox-Bethesda showcase, Bethesda veteran and Starfield director Todd Howard said the game's main story is longer than normal due to the sheer number of quests.

"This one’s ending up a little bit longer [than our previous games] and we may tune that some still," he said. "It’s more quests, so it might be 20% more than our previous ones."

While players mileage may vary, he added, with some taking longer than others to complete it, if the main quest of a previous game was pegged at 25 hours, Starfield's "might be in the 30s, maybe 40", Howard said. As a point of comparison, IGN sister site How Long To Beat estimates that the Skyrim Special Edition sees players take 25.5 hours to complete the main quest, while Fallout 4 takes around 27 hours.

Powering through the main quest isn't how Bethesda games are typically played, of course, with side quests, faction routes to explore, base-building, and so on diverting the players attention, and Starfield will be the same as previous titles in that respect. In fact, it should offer considerably more content in the form of 1000 fully explorable planets, which will offer procedurally generated content that no one player will feasibly ever see all of.

Howard believes the modding community will keep Starfield fresh for a long time, even on top of DLC expansions Bethesda will inevitably create.

"We've learned that people do play our games for a really, really long time," he said. "They're still playing Skyrim - not