How long The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has stuck around for has become a meme at this point, and it's sounding like Bethesda is ready for a similar situation with Starfield. In a recent interview on the 'AIAS Game Maker's Notebook' Podcast (thanks, GamesRadar), Bethesda's Todd Howard talked about how the team is preparing for longevity with Starfield - and how they're already looking at five years plus of support.
Here's what Todd said about the team's recent titles and how they've influenced the plan for Starfield:
"One of the things we've learned from our previous games, from Skyrim, from Fallout, is that people want to play them for a very long time. So Starfield, I would say, was the most intentional, going into it, that this is a game people are going to play for a long time."
Of course, one way to extend a game's life is proper mod support - something Bethesda is very familiar with for its brand of massive open world RPGs. Skyrim was big on mods, and it sounds like Bethesda is well aware of this heading into the post-launch landscape for Starfield.
"Even a game like Skyrim – which if you look at it at launch was still a really, really big game – if you look at it today with add-ons and mods it's a much bigger game. It's still a game that's played 12 years later in large numbers for us. I think if you look at your audience, they get used to a game and they usually want to plus-one it. They want to add XYZ, and the developers, we usually do as well."
Bethesda is looking at that same mixture of official and modded add-ons for Starfield too - when official mod support becomes available anyway. The team probably isn't in a massive rush to get the tools out there right now though, as the plan is to support the game for at least five years.
"But it's also one where, OK, what does Starfield look like in three months, what does it look like in six months, a year, two years, three years, four years, five years? We've learned that that's going to happen so let's be ready for it, make the most of it, and embrace it. That's both what we do here and with our modding community."