Starfield was "made to played for a long time".

That's according to Bethesda boss Todd Howard himself, who said in a Game Maker’s Notebook interview with Insomniac CEO Ted Price that after watching how players interact with other Bethesda RPGs like Skyrim and Fallout, he believes "people want to play [games] for a very long time".

"This is a game that's intentionally made to be played for a long time. One of the things we’ve learned from our previous games, like Skyrim, like Fallout, is that people want to play them for a very long time," said Howard, as transcribed by VGC.

In the same interview posted to the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' YouTube channel, Howard also reflected on how the Starfield team challenged itself whilst building the ambitious sci-fi adventure.

"I think it starts with the developers, It has to, right?" Howard said. "I think it starts with technology. You're seeing new hardware, you want to use it in new ways, you're looking at game demos going, 'We could do this, we could present it in this way'.

"The scale of games, I think, I’d have to go back and look. How big were things before?

"The one thing I have noticed is that because more games are played for a long time – they’re 'live games' – the ability to update them over time creates games that people are playing right now that have been around for a long time, gotten years of updates, and that creates an expectation."

Obsessed with – or need more practice at – Starfield's lockpicking mini-game? Then I have good news – you can now Digipick to your heart's content courtesy of a new Digipick simulator browser game.

"An open-source recreation of the digipick/lockpicking minigame from Bethesda's Starfield", Digipick Simulator lets you "pick virtual locks whenever you want" from the comfort of your internet browser.