All the locations and cultures – from the military order of New Atlantis all the way to the cyberpunk underworld of the city of Neon – offer the broadest palette that BGS has ever painted. It took a long time to nail the variety of distinct flavours and storylines, inspired by all corners of the sci-fi genre, from Battlestar Galactica to Star Wars and even to Deadwood in space, but also keep it cohesive. “We have this ability to affect a player on both an emotional and intellectual level, and you're constantly deciding which one to do,” Pagliarulo says. “Go too far down the emotional path and it can get cringy. Go too far into the intellectual and it becomes too pointy-headed.”

The biggest mutation in the studio’s DNA is a new way of exploring. Because of the nature of spreading a universe across dozens of planets, exploration is both broader and more transient than the open-worlds of previous BGS games. Howard admits he’s not sure whether everyone will like the change in rhythm. “It’s not the same as dropping you in a world like Skyrim,” he says. “You wander totally differently.” But it’s in those moments of wandering where the game can be the most empty, and the most beautiful. All of the tech and art comes to fruition when I land on a distant world and step out of my ship. “I think that moment works almost every time,” Howard says, as a distant gas giant rises above the horizon. Every planet and moon in the game has its own time, orbiting their stars independently. “When you’re looking over the landscape and the star is setting. That’s all somewhat simulated. In this game it just happens.”

Howard has been at BGS almost three decades now – it’s the only place he’s ever worked. The studio is somewhat unusual in the world of video games. People just… don’t leave. The combined tenure of the seven people I speak to is well over a century. Browder, who has been here 18 years herself, recognises the cliché but compares it to family. This team has grown up together – kids’ parties and weddings.

“It’s weird for me,” Howard says, when I ask how he feels when he contemplates retiring, “but that’s a long, long way off.” He will likely be 60 years old by the time The Elder Scrolls VI comes out. Succession planning is kind of a constant thing. “I want to do it forever,” he continues. “I think the way I work will probably evolve, but… look at Miyamoto.” The Nintendo icon turned 71 this year. “He’s still doing it.”

For now, the team is still “checking under every rock” to get Starfield prepped for launch – fixing blinks. He has a mantra: great games are played, not made. So, they play it. Day in, day out. This year alone, Baldur’s Gate 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom have offered wildly acclaimed and contrasting takes on the role-playing genre. Can Starfield push it forward in the same way? “I don't think about it in those terms," he says. “I think about it in our terms. How does it push our games forward? This takes it all to a level that we weren't sure even that we could do. This type of game is still unique. When it clicked, and we could play it, we realised we had missed it. No one still does this.”

I think it might be an age thing, but Howard is starting to see “this” differently. Essentially, he’s learning to love the making. “We don’t get many of these in our careers – we don’t get many shots,” he says. He used to work to get a game done – seeing it complete. That can be unhealthy. “How people are going to feel about the game can kinda tie you up. But then you realise how much we love it. We’ve got to find a way to enjoy and embrace it, so that we can look back and think, ‘That was good for us.’”

Toward the end of our time together, he tells me this process – of sitting down to talk about the game, how it’s affected his life, and the “can Starfield really deliver?” of it all – has forced him to be unusually reflective. But, in a comforting sort of way, it’s the same as it ever was. He casts back to 2008, when the team were in the midst of finishing Fallout 3. His family – Kim and his two young sons – were going on holiday without him. “My wife was saying goodbye to me,” he says. “It still sticks with me.”

What did she say?

“This game better be really good.”