Outside of the MMOs that I have sunk half of my life into, Bethesda titles are arguably the games I have the longest played hours with, exploring every nook and cranny of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout universes along the way.

Fallout 4 has been out for over a decade at this point and it's safe to say that I have thousands of hours in the Commonwealth, building towns, helping the Minutemen and blowing up the Institute, over and over again.

Equally, I have just as long in games like The Elder Scrolls III, IV and V, as well as Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, all of which made up really important parts of my video game life growing up.

With that in mind, I'm very much hoping that the next release in the Fallout series has everything it needs to keep me hooked for just as long, and it seems that's equally close to the front of the developer's thoughts as well.

Bethesda Design Director Outlines Ambitious Fallout 5 Plans

Bethesda Entertainment

As revealed in an interview with Game Informer, Bethesda studio design director Emil Pagliarulo shared his lofty ambitions for the release of the next main game in the Fallout series.

"I would be happy with a game that is as successful as the previous Fallout games that continues to give fans what they love," Pagliarulo states.

"To give them a story that they can get into and systems that they love and really just an experience that they play not for 20 hours and not for 100 hours, but an experience they can play for 200, 300, 600 hours, because that's the kind of games we make."

To be totally fair to Pagliarulo, he really is pretty bang on about what Bethesda games have been up to this point, and what fans will likely be expecting of them moving forward.

In a post sharing the news on Reddit, fans were quick to have their say, and most had more pressing priorities, above potential play time.

"Anyone can make a game that could be played for 600 hours. It's about making a game that people would WANT to play for 600 hours (like Skyrim). Bethesda need to create worlds and systems where you want to stay in, not get bored by," one fan said.

"Skyrim was revolutionary for its time but Bethesda hasn't really evolved past that. That's the real problem, I don't think their games are that much worse than Skyrim in terms of level of quality it's just that the standards they're operating on are almost two decades out of date by now," another added.

Whatever we do get, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we'll get to play it before 2030, though with each passing year, that feels less and less likely.