Viime vuosina on alkanut nousta esille sellainen näkökanta, että pelien pitäisi (taas) olla hieman lyhyempiä. Varsinkin kuluvana vuonna on saatu useitakin eepoksia, joihin pystyy upottamaan satoja tunteja aikaa. Tämän vuoksi kaikki eivät halua edes aloittaa, koska eivät halua pelata sitä sataa tuntia. Bethesdan mies Todd Howard pitää kuitenkin tärkeänä, että mittavasti pelaaminen on mahdollista, jos niin haluaa.
Todd Howard puhui asiasta BBC:lle.
"In my career I've found two things about people who play games. Often they do play one title for a really long time rather than moving on to something new. But even if they only play for 10 or 20 hours, finish the main story, save the world then move on, they'll have at least seen all the other choices that could have been taken. It means those 20 hours will be different for every player because they were exposed to so much choice - which impacted their appreciation of the story and experience."
Starfield on ulkona, ja joidenkin mielestä kannattaa kiskaista peli läpi nopeasti, ja vasta New Game+ -tilassa nautiskella hitaasti. Howard on eri mieltä.
"Options are what I think keeps a game going in your head. When you put it down, you start thinking about when you can pick it back up? What am I going to do next? Or when you get distracted by choices in a game, and the hours go by, that's when I start feeling good about a game I'm making. Things are always a bit of a mess during development, but you know things are starting to gel together when you go in to test something, and it's late in the day and you've got to finish up soon, and you start playing. Next thing you know, three hours have gone by and you're like 'oh my, I didn't even know!'"