Whenever there's a new open-world RPG on the horizon, the most important question on everyone's mind is, "how big is the map going to be?" Big maps are important to us because more map means more places to go and things to do. As a result, these games continue to get bigger and bigger to the point that they're practically the size of a small country.

And it looks like Starfield will be no different. Todd Howard, the infamous director and producer of such classics as Fallout 3 and Skyrim - he's also responsible for Fallout 76 so hold your applause - recently sat down for an interview for the Develop: Brighton Conference. During this interview, he talked a little about Bethesda's upcoming sci-fi RPG and confirmed what everyone had suspected: that it will be very big.

The interview revealed some new details about Starfield's production. One of the most notable revelations was that procedural generation will be used to help form the game's world. Howard was quick to stress that this doesn't mean that everyone is going to have their own unique maps. Instead, this technique is being utilized to create a map larger than their previous biggest game, Fallout 76.

So yeah, this game is going to be huge. Fallout 76 is already four times the size of Skyrim, and Skyrim was massive to begin with. If Bethesda is implementing new technology to make even bigger worlds, then it could take hours just to cover half of the immense landmasses of Starfield.

This interview also touched on other aspects of Starfield's development. Bethesda's Creation Engine is finally getting some much-needed updates. While the engine has been used to make the modern-day Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, it's also notoriously buggy and outdated. These new updates will supposedly improve aspects of the engine such as artificial intelligence, rendering, animation, and other areas where it has faltered in the past. If this means we get to play a Bethesda RPG that doesn't feel like it's held together with duct tape, then it could be their best game in years.

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This all sounds lovely, but it's probably not a great idea to get hyped up about Starfield just yet. The game is still well into development and Bethesda isn't even thinking about a release date right now. The only footage we've ever seen of it was the official announcement trailer from E3 2018 that didn't even show off any gameplay. It may be years until it's out, so you'd probably be best to not even think about Starfield since it'll make the wait for Cyberpunk 2077 look like nothing in comparison.

Still, it's good to hear that work on the game is progressing and that it will continue the Bethesda tradition of being a humongous adventure to spend hours upon hours getting lost in. It'll be some time until any of us get our hands on Starfield - or The Elder Scrolls VI which is also in development - so it's probably for the best that we put it out of our minds until Todd is able to tell us more about it. At least in the meantime, we'll soon have Cyberpunk 2077 to satisfy all of our futuristic RPG needs.

As long as it doesn't get delayed again.

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