Bethesda Softworks
Starfield: how long does it take to beat?
Bethesda’s Starfield is a galaxy-spanning sci-fi RPG that critics are already calling on e of the biggest games of 2023, quite literally. How much time will you invest into it?
With an early access period about to begin, and the official release just around the corner, players all over the world are already gearing up to jump into Starfield and explore the galaxy. Whether you want to be a space cowboy or part of a coalition of planets, smuggler or space realtor, or whatever you want to be, it seems like there’s plenty to do in Bethesda’s new sci-fi RPG. But how long will it take players to reach the end credits?
How long does it take to finish Starfield?
Taking into account that this is a Bethesda game, meaning it’s most likely an open world full of activities to do and places to explore, the question about how much time it’ll take players to complete really depends on how they want to play the game, and what they’re looking to do.
HowLongToBeat.com has already uploaded a couple of estimates, and while the main story of the game might seem short, Bethesda fans know that the meat and bones of the game lies in all of the “side” content that is peppered around the world. Take a look at a couple of playstyles and their estimated time-to-beat:
- Main Story - 15 hours
- Main Story and side content - 77.5 hours
- Completionist (doing 100% of the content in the game) - 200 hours
Are these numbers accurate? Honestly, it’s quite difficult to say. While it’s true that just going for the story could take only 15 hours, it’s highly unlikely that it is the only thing most players will be focused on doing.There’s side quests, faction-related storylines, character-centric adventures, over 1000 planets to explore (whether they’re inhabited or not), weapons to find, powers to obtain, ship building, space battles, random emergent content, and more.
To be honest, the “Completionist” estimate that has been given sounds like what most people will reach before they get tired of trying, and not how long it’ll actually take to find everything there is to do in the game. Either way, we’ll all find out just how much time we sink into Starfield when we finally get our hands on it. Although, considering what speedrunners have managed to do with the studio’s other titles, we’re excited to see just how fast they manage to reach the credits.