Jobe: Starhawk campaign 5-8 hours long

PlayStation 3 exclusive Starhawk has a single-player campaign that lasts between five and eight hours long, developer LightBox Interactive has revealed.

In fast-paced action shooter Starhawk, the follow-up to PS3 exclusive Warhawk, players assume the role of Emmett Graves, a Rift miner turned gun for hire altered by Rift Energy, found on the outer reaches of space.

The enemy faction is the Outcast, humans turned into monsters following exposure to Rift Energy. Graves goes in search of his outlaw brother, the leader of the Outcasts. Levels are large and open, designed to offer dynamic gameplay with AI that adapts to the player's actions.

The gameplay hook this time is an RTS-lite element called "Build and Battle". As players kill enemies and other players they gather resources, spent on calling down structures from orbit and placed down on the battlefield as they see fit. Structures include walls, gates, turrets and landing pads for vehicles.

"Shooters these days range between five and eight hours, depending on a play through," LightBox boss Dylan Jobe told Eurogamer. "We're going to be in that range.

"There is some concern sometimes, when a guy in the media will be like, 'Oh my God, it's too short for single-player.' I just don't see it that way.

"For example, if you play most shooters from start to finish, if you play it again you're going to get pretty much the same experience. You could go play Halo on mercenary mode or whatever. It's going to be tougher, but it's still pretty much going to be the same experience.

"For ours, all the missions you play through, you can play through again and get a very different experience. You can build different structures next time through. You can unlock different medals and challenge yourself in those combat sandboxes in a different way. You can get a lot of gameplay out of it."

Despite LightBox's effort with single-player this time around, multiplayer is still of most importance.

And it's here that Jobe believes players will end up spending most of their time.

"Multiplayer is really where the massive hours get logged. In Warhawk we saw players on the average clock 210 hours – some ridiculous number. That will still be the case in Starhawk.

"Players will spend way more time in multiplayer than they do in single-player."

Eurogamer's Starhawk preview went live last week.