'Starfield' was almost set in the same universe as 'Fallout' before the pandemic.

Bethesda director Todd Howard has opened up on some of the studio's plans for the space exploration RPG - its first new IP in 25 years - and there was scope for it to potentially even be a sequel of sorts.

Speaking to The Washington Post, Todd admitted the team "talked about" the possibility of implying Starfield and Fallout's Earth were both the same.

He said: "Oh, we planned, and those plans went out the window.

“We knew we were going to rewrite parts of the engine, so we started building technology for the planets and the outer space stuff on our previous engine and renderer.”

The pandemic hitting meant production was "very, very slow" with the studio overhauling its technology.

This meant the team - who had realised they would have to port years of work into the new Creation Engine 2 - delayed the game beyond its initial November 2022 launch.

Todd explained: "We had lots of buffer and we felt really good about [the original launch date].

“As things moved on, we were off by a percentage, and a percentage when it comes to the scale of this game turns out to be a lot of time.

"We felt it was the right thing to do to give us the time we required.”