Todd Howard, director of Fallout 4: Give fans what they want without too much dispersion

Todd Howard, director of Bethesda Game Studios, noted in a recent conference at the Gamelab event in Barcelona that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim continues to migrate to new platforms because fans continue to show up. buy on each new platform. But even a big company like Bethesda, which belongs to Bethesda Softworks (in turn, owned by ZeniMax Media), has to compromise on where to dedicate resources.

Howard has been working in Bethesda for 25 years, and in recent years he has established himself as director of games such as The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Fallout Shelter. Howard is happy to give fans more of what they want, as evidenced by recent announcements at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) of Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls VI.

But Howard has also looked further into the future, showing Fans have a glimpse of Starfield, an original science-fiction game that Bethesda has been creating for the past decade. This shows that Bethesda and Howard have engaged in a challenging exercise of balancing fans with titles based on past franchises with the need for developers to create something new.

We ran the story of the cat by the fire with Geoff Keighley Game Awards. But we also had the opportunity to sit down with Howard. I interviewed Howard alongside the writer Eurogamer Robert Purchese (who was asking half of the questions)

Here is a revised transcript of our interview.

Above: Todd Howard (right) of Bethesda speaks at Gamelab 2018 with Geoff Keighley of the Game Awards

Photo credit: Gamelab

Question: When you announced Skyrim, it was once, I remember to be a year away from the launch. When did you announce Fallout 4, it was about six months?

Todd Howard: Five. Who counts?

Question: This year at E3, why announce some of your new games so soon?

Howard: This was a debate. Should we do that? There were two things in our minds about it. First, we go to E3 and show a new Fallout game very different from what we would usually do. Then we show an Elder Scrolls game that is very different from what we usually do. If we just leave that to that, our fans are like, "Are you still going to do the things I like?"

We had already said publicly before we finally made Elder Scrolls VI, but we have these other projects. We had the impression that we would say the same thing right after E3 to something like that. So let's make sure our fans know that's what happens in what order. They do not know what years. We have some ideas, but we are not positive either. But here's what we do.

When we hear our fans chatting, they are already chatting about Starfield. They understood some things. And everyone asked about Elder Scrolls VI. So that was it. Let's just say it.

Above: Starfield

Source: GamesBeat

Question: If you did not say anything, they would be disappointed.

Howard: They would be disappointed, and they would always want to know. What about Starfield and Elder Scrolls VI? The negative is, are we distracted from what we are putting out now? We found that people understood it. Let's just go ahead. That's what we do and in what order

Question: Another negative point could be that you build a hype before you're ready.

Howard: Potentially. That one – we do not say much. I do not worry about that. I'm worried about what will happen in the future when people say, "When will I talk about it again?" And you say, "Well, I can not tell you." [19659002] Re living in a world of so many leaks now. You know that somewhere on the road, someone will run away from this thing and you do not have the chance to make the big announcement.

Howard: This is another part. Especially with Starfield, where – okay, here's the logo, here's what we do. It is better to say that we do it. It makes life a little easier for us. It's also exciting. Were excited. We want to share it with everyone. There will certainly be new negatives that we did not foresee, but there are a lot of positives. We'll see how it goes. Ask me for the next cycle. "Are you sure it was a good idea?"

Question: I thought you could try to capitalize every time on Fallout Shelter, when you have 12 million downloads a day. Does this sound again?

Howard: This is the case. It's my perfect scenario. He does not always align. If Blades was ready for the E3, we would have come out, but we knew that it needed more to be what it was going to be. It's my perfect scenario. In fact, my perfect scenario is to announce one day, here is a trailer, and the game comes out the next day. At least give people 24 hours to share and be excited. That would be perfect

Question: The mobile must often have these soft launches, too. You give the secret. This improves the game, but you lose the advantage of surprise

Howard: That's also why we are announcing it at E3, get registrations for early access, then early access to the game is what becomes our soft beta launch, more or less. But not in a territory. It's with specific users who have registered who say they want to play. We have a better connection with them. They better understand what's going on in the game.

Above: The Elder Scrolls VI

Photo credit: Bethesda

Question: To return to the announcement of Elder Scrolls VI, do you have

Howard: Yes, some time ago.

Question: Is it possible to determine from the trailer what that is?

Howard: Obviously, I would say yes, but that's intentionally – you can exclude some things. You can direct certain things. The first thing we do is the world. We know since a time when it is settled

Question: Is this Hammerfell?

Howard: I will not answer that. [laughs]

Question: I anticipate a short answer on this one too. Do you play the mobile game of Westworld [Bethesda is suing Warner Bros. for allegedly ripping off Fallout Shelter with Westworld]?

Howard: Legally, I was forced to play it. [laughs] And pass some judgment

Question: You said you were talking about Starfield internally for 10 years while you were talking to Geoff earlier. When did you start to dedicate people to it? When did he begin to firm up?

Howard: After the end of Fallout 4. Late 2015? But when we – 2004, we made a list of what we might want to do in the future. An epic sci-fi game, it's always been in my mind. Post-apocalyptic, Fallout, was our first choice. Sci-fi was our second at the time, when we got the Fallout license. We were going to do our own post-apocalyptic universe if we did not have Fallout.

We just talked about it, and then I guess it really got up – we're going to do it, register the mark – about five years ago. Then we would talk about it from time to time during this time. What are we going to do? And we started working right after the end of Fallout 4, November 2015.

Above: Todd Howard received the Industry Legend Award at Gamelab 2018

Gamelab

Question: Is this a Bethesda game in the sense that the main games Fallout and Elder Scrolls are?

Howard: I do not want to say yes or no to that because I do not know what it means for you or anyone else to read it. It's different, but if you sat down and played it, you'll recognize it as something we did, if it makes sense. He has our DNA in it. He has things we like. But there are a lot of new systems we've been thinking about for a while, things that fit that kind of game well. We'll talk about that in the future. You see, now I would not have announced it.

Question: You have announced it as a next generation thing. Does this mean it's a next generation console?

Howard: This means for us two things. It means hardware, and that means software on our side. It also means gameplay. What does the next generation of epic solo RPGs make us feel? That's all these things. What systems do we put on, what are the material requirements, this remains to be determined. We think very far into the future. We are building something that will handle the new generation hardware. That's what we're working on right now. That's where our mind is. But that does not mean that it would not exist on current systems either.