How Long To Beat Starfield

Starfield is massive. That much you could have guessed. But if you're wondering how long it takes to beat in terms of earthly hours, well that depends on how much you want to see. Estimates can range drastically based on your preferred play style, meaning you could be done in short order and ready to see what else there is to play in September 2023, or you could make it the only game you play for weeks or even months to come and probably not run out of things to do. Here's what you need to know about the playtime for Starfield, its mission list, and more.

How long to beat Starfield

Like a lot of RPGs, especially from Bethesda Game Studios, your total playtime in Starfield is largely dependent on how much you want to get out of it. If you were only to play the main missions, you could feasibly beat the game in about 12-15 hours, give or take a few hours in either direction. However, that doesn't account for so much more the game has to offer, which we'll detail below. It's also likely that few people excited to play Starfield would ever consider playing that way, so one of these subsequent estimates may be more your style.

A more typical playthrough of Starfield--one which includes the main questline as well as a number of side quests and faction-related questlines, would take a typical player somewhere around 45-70 hours, and of course even that is not everything.

Completing all quests in the game would bring that estimate upwards of 90 hours, as the game is exceptionally good at introducing what looks like a relatively inconsequential "Activity," only to see it stretch into a multi-part quest that may end in great loot, a new companion, or a new ship. There's a ton hiding away in Starfield.

Then there's the true 100% playthrough, one that entails doing everything already mentioned with the added timesink of cataloging all 1,000+ planets, plus their flora, fauna, and natural resources and traits. To do this is no small feat, but undoubtedly we'll soon hear about players who have done exactly this at what seems like impossible speed. That's just how the internet works, isn't it? A playthrough including all of this would likely take somewhere in the range of 200+ hours, though we've only been playing the game for a few weeks, so this is purely our best guess. Will you be seeking to map the entire known universe in Starfield?

Don't forget, there's even a New Game Plus mode, which we'll share more details on soon, but not quite yet, as it's a bit too spoiler-heavy for now.

Starfield mission list - all main story quests

Consider this a spoiler warning! There are 19 main story quests in Starfield, most of them involving several objectives each. The order in which you play the story can slightly differ due to how multiple missions are sometimes offered at the same time in your quest log, giving you the freedom to approach them as you see fit. The full mission list in name, and without any additional information so as to avoid spoilers, is as follows. Please note that if you don't want to draw any inferences from these quest names, it may be best to just look at this later or note how many there are.

1. One Small Step
2. The Old Neighborhood
3. The Empty Nest
4. Back To Vectera
5. Into The Unknown
6. All That Money Can Buy
7. Starborn
8. Further Into The Unknown
9. Short Sighted
10. No Sudden Moves
11. High Price To Pay
12. Missed Beyond Measure
13. Unity
14. In Their Footsteps
15. Unearthed
16. Final Glimpses
17. Entangled
18. Revelation
19. One Giant Leap