Bethesda is the king of the castle when it comes to expansive, enormous games. Over the years, the company has produced the likes of Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and most recently, Starfield, all massive open-world titles with hundreds of hours of content. However, one developer who contributed to many of these creations has suggested that players are ‘fatigued’ by these types of games.
In a recent interview with Kiwi Talkz on YouTube, Will Shen, former lead quest designer on Starfield, said just that. He believes that players are growing tired of 100-hour campaigns and gargantuan worlds that can’t possibly be explored in their entirety.
‘A Tall Order’
Speaking exclusively to Kiwi Talkz, Will Shen explained:
We’re reaching a point where people are fatigued — or a large section, a growing section of the audience, is becoming fatigued at investing 30-plus, 100-plus hours into a game.
They already have the games that they will continually come back to, and adding another one to that list is a tall order. It’s always a tall order.
Shen was instrumental in the delivery of Starfield, the biggest game that Bethesda Game Studios has ever produced. It features more than 1000 planets, all of which can be explored by the player at will. Before that, he worked on Skyrim and Fallout 4, which are gigantic games in their own right, if not by map size then at least by the amount you can do in them.
He mentioned that you can ‘pretty much play (these games) forever’, which is true for many Bethesda titles.
Here’s the full interview for your perusal:
Will Shen left Bethesda Game Studios after a 15-year stint in October 2023, just a month after the release of Starfield. He moved into Something Wicked Games to work on Wyrdsong, and since August 2024, he has assumed a lead designer role at Unknown Worlds Entertainment.
What do you think about Shen’s stance on big games? Do you think smaller, more sensible titles are the way forward? Let us know on the Insider Gaming forum.
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Absolutely love and adore big games, but only if there’s actually content to play.
I love a big game with deep lore and a massive world you can get lost in. Especially if there’s tons of content, and the world seems alive.
Players are tired of buggy, overpriced, bad looking games that take over 5 years to make and are filled with micro transactions and DLC that will “improve” the already bad game. Not to mention agenda being shoved in their faces another thing they hate only the shills/influencers like that crap. Another thing we’re tire of is them and journos telling us what to think. If you make a small game that’s still trash that doesn’t fix the problem but people don’t want that they want to industry to drag on like this in mediocrity to benefit them.
Simply not true if massive games are done right. What ppl are fed up with is Bethesda’s brand of big games. Janky horrid looking and outdated overplayed stories… And wed forgive the 30 year old engin they build em with if they could release one title that isn’t pure jank
No, still love being in a massive open world. But as others have said there needs to content and good game engines that work well. I’ve played Witcher 3 four times all the way through because of its immersion and content, and thats the whole thing for me.
This is so spot on. I tried to play Ghost of Tsushima after having played both Horizon & AC Valhalla in close proximity and despite it being obviously fantastic I just was so done with it being massive and trekking back and forth all over. When the second half of the map got revealed I just stopped and wasn’t able to pick it back up. Give me more 20-30 hour streamlined story games to balance out these massive epics so that the audience doesn’t get fatigued!
I still play Skyrim Fallout 4 + Mods today.
Starfield is a piece of shit. Big but nothing. Except for the space theme. Its gameplay and systems are way worse than Fallout 4.
Nope. I’m fine with it. It’s the move towards $70 price tags on new releases
i disagree and you have the right to be wrong
nah, we just want a good game. Starfield did not hit the mark.
Nope I love big games the problem I had with starfield was the repetitiveness and the endless loading screens