The never-ending Skyrim

If you were planning to spend hundreds upon hundreds of hours playing Skyrim you can think again – the number of in-game quests is infinite, according to developer Bethesda.

Todd Howard, game director and executive producer at Bethesda, says the game’s ‘radiant story system’ means there is no limit to the number of randomly generated quests within the game.

"The vibe of the game is that it’s something you can play forever,” he told Wired.

As players encounter the different factions within the game, for instance the Dark Brotherhood, a series of scripted quests will become available. Once these are completed, smaller quests will continue to pop up.

These smaller quests will never run out and can be generated infinitely.

In Skyrim, Howard says Bethesda has taken lessons learned from games like Fallout 3, and uses the environment to tell the story.

"With Fallout, it’s not as beautiful a world to everybody. We had to find ways to make exploration interesting.”

He says the most important part of the radiant system won’t be the quests themselves but the things a player can discover while exploring the massive world.

In other Skyrim news, there’s a new interview with the animators plus an awesome video showing off the in-game combat – take a look for some swords, shields and good old-fashioned decapitation: