Starfield’s Todd Howard tips hat to ‘long journey’ of legendary titles that paved the way for spacefaring saga

Bethesda director and executive producer Todd Howard has hailed the previous generation of the studio’s games for paving the way for Starfield.

Bethesda’s gaming behemoth and first IP in 25 years is now right around the corner, with the countdown to Starfield ticking away. Plenty of focus has been placed on Starfield’s long development journey and its vast scale, with over 1,000 planets to explore and more dialogue than ever seen before in a Bethesda title.

Starfield is expected to take Bethesda to new heights, though Howard made it clear that the journey would not have been possible without the publisher’s back catalog. While speaking at Gamescom in Cologne earlier today, Howard said Starfield was a “long journey … that in many ways we couldn’t have built without doing these other games,” according to GamesRadar.

Howard previously discussed with IGN in 2021 that making Starfield “was pretty much now or never.” “We felt doing something like Starfield… we’d been wanting to do something else for a long time and play in a new universe, so if not now — I’m going back in time, we started right after Fallout 4, so 2015 — if not now, when?” Howard said. “It felt like, if we didn’t do it then, the ‘when’ could be ‘never.'”

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Any delay to Starfield has certainly been beneficial to both Bethesda and gamers alike, with a rapport being built from the likes of Skyrim and Fallout 4 that has seen the audience for the games grow—many of whom are now eagerly awaiting Starfield.

Skyrim and Fallout 4 are among the gaming classics that Bethesda has introduced and expectations are high for Starfield to follow suit. Starfield is set to be released worldwide on Sept. 6.