Bethesda: Starfield Has Been Planned For Over a Decade

Even though it just got introduced at E3 last month, it appears that Bethesda‘s Starfield has been lingering for much, much longer than that. In fact, the company recently noted that it’s been in development for quite a few years.

Per this report from VentureBeat, Bethesda mastermind Todd Howard that Starfield has been fresh on his mind for around ten years, well before the days of superstar Fallout sequels that have done well for the company. But it didn’t really begin development into gaming until about five years ago, when a trademark was filed (which we saw hints of) and work officially began.

“After Fallout 4 ended,” Howard explained when it came to Starfield starting development. “End of 2015? But back when we — 2004, we had made a list of what we might want to do in the future. Epic science fiction game, that’s always been on my mind. Post-apocalyptic, Fallout, was our first choice. Sci-fi was our second at the time, when we got the Fallout license. We were going to do our own post-apocalyptic universe if we didn’t get Fallout.”

He continued, “We just talked about it, and then I guess it really picked up steam — we’re going to do this, register the trademark — about five years ago. Then we would talk about it from time to time during that period. What are we going to do? And we started work right after Fallout 4 was finished, November 2015.”

That said, it sounds like Fallout 76 may have been in development for about that same five-year timetable, which means Bethesda began building up on these projects some time ago. That should bode well for that game’s release on November 14 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.

As for Starfield, it’s going to be awhile before we see how that’s coming together. We might get a glimpse next year during the company’s E3 2019 presentation, but that’s just an estimated guess. But it’ll be great to see how all those years of development are shaping up into a solid project.

Fingers crossed that Starfield is…out of this world. You can relive the epic teaser from E3 below.