blink once if you know when Elder Scrolls 6 is coming out, but are not going to tell me.
The following is a conversation with Todd Howard, one of the greatest video game designers of all
time. He has led the development of the Fallout series and the Elder Scrolls series, including
Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and the future Elder Scrolls 6, and a totally new
world in an upcoming game called Starfield. Many of these have won Game of the Year awards
and have been some of the most celebrated and impactful games ever made. To me, Skyrim is
quite possibly the greatest game ever. This is the Lex Friedman podcast. To support it,
please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Todd Howard.
Todd Howard, is it possible that we are currently living inside a video game that the future you
designed, can you give hints as to how one would escape if this was a video game? How can a video
game character escape to outside the video game? Are these things you don't consider when you design
the game? Actually, we do. Because in the kind of games that we make, we want it to be as open as
possible. So when you start a game, you're always testing it. What can I do? What would the game
allow me to do? And you check everything. You try to pick up the mugs. You try every door.
You collide with everything like, hey, what are the rules of this world? We try to do games where
we say yes as much as possible. That leads to some level of chaos. But if you were stuck in a
video game, you would try everything. And usually, you're going to find a door or a space where the
designers didn't anticipate you piling all those crates up and getting over a wall that they didn't
expect. Right. So it's not a designed doorway out. It's an accidental, unintended doorway out. And
it's a happy bug. You could like trim and show. Just get in the ocean and go till it's done.
Just keep going and keep going. But the more realistic the game becomes, the harder it is
to find that door, the bigger the world, the bigger the open world. And then as we do it, we learn
they're going to find a way. So just don't try to pin them in. Usually, we leave like this developer
test cell area in the game that we don't anticipate anyone will find and they ultimately find it.
It usually has crates of all the weapons in the game and things like that.
The little hints you drop now will just drive people mad, which is something I enjoy deeply.
So Skyrim NPCs have, at times, hilarious dialogue. What does it take to build a good NPC dialogue?
The main thing is to make them reactive. A lot of times when you write characters for movies or
things like that, you want to make that character interesting for themselves, right? What's their
story? And there's some characters like that that the player definitely cares about. But the best
characters are the ones that react to you. So you'll find a lot of people love our guards
and the guards are written almost purely to be reactive. Hey, nice tie. I like your jacket.
Do this cool watch. You know, hey, what'd you do? And so that, hey, you're the man
as you walk by, that makes them interesting or the way they react to something that you do.
Lydia in Skyrim, who everybody loves, I'm sworn to carry your burdens, that's a generic line
that all of the, you know, House Carl's have. And it just kind of lands when she says it.
Why does it land? And did you anticipate it would land? There's a slight snarkiness
in that particular read of it. And you're asking her to do something and she's reacting to you.
What about the trade off between maybe the randomness and the scripted nature of the dialogue?
Like, is there any room for randomness of the dialogue tree? Oh, absolutely. We tend to write
them in stacks with, you know, it's a very small, think of it as a small state machine that just
says, okay, this is what's happening. Here's a random list of things I could say to that.
And then some of that plays out in ways you don't anticipate. But we look at the things,
what are the players doing that we could have the characters respond to that they don't expect,
you know, jumping on tables or stealing stuff, or, you know, sneaking in in the middle of the
night or those kind of things. The more that we can do, the more reactive and interesting the
characters appear. And these state machines, how big are these things? Are these individual to the
individual characters? That's just fascinating how you design state machines. Is it just a
I would think of the AI as one big one. Yeah. Oh, so for sort of everybody.
So there's an AI, there's a manager for all the people. And one of the things that
people manager, right, right. Nice. One of the things that makes what we do particularly unique
is, and this is a trade off for what people are seeing, because a lot of it's not on the screen,
but we're using cycles to run this, which is we're thinking about everybody in the whole world
all the time. The ones that are further away at a much less tick rate, they go into low,
but we know if they want to walk across the world, and we're running every quest
at the same time. Whereas in other open world games, you start an activity, the rest of the
world's going to shut down so that they can really make that as impactful. I really prefer
that the rest of it's going on. It's more of a simulation that we're building. So when those
things collide, that's where it gets the most interesting. And so we're running all of those
people and understanding where they want to go and their cycles and what they want to do. And
the ones that are closer to you, we just update a lot more. It's one way to think about it. I mean,
that's really fascinating. It's something that people had, they were wondering about to what
degree is possible to run the world without you. So there is a feeling to role-playing games that
you're the central, you're the center of the world, and the whole world rotates around you.
As it does in normal life, like when we walk around, when you forget yourself,
you start to take yourself very seriously, like you are the center of the world. You forget that
there's eight billion people on earth and you forget that they have lives. That's actually a
sobering realization that they all have really interesting life stories and they have their
worries, they suffer in different complicated ways. And yet, when you play a role-playing game,
there's a, I mean, both computationally and from a storytelling perspective, you wonder if the world
goes on without you. Like if you come back, if you take a break and you come back, is there still
a bustling town that now has a history since you have last visited? So to what degree can you
create a world that goes on without you or goes on at the same time as you do your thing, whatever
the heck you're doing? We don't prioritize the stuff you can't see. So it's more like an amusement
park. If you study like the design or our level designers did this, how do they build
Disney World in these places? So it still exists for you, the player. So it is fairly, you know,
when you're going to come in, this is what you're going to see, the shops are in the front,
you're going to do this. It's just for us to make it far more believable and get some more
emergent behavior that not just make that sort of the verisimilitude of what you're in for that
moment, but you buy it all. I always say like, you know, we got to do the little things so that
you buy the reality of the virtual world you're in. So we want to do something crazy. You know,
when a dragon lands or a death law comes out of the wasteland or those kind of things that you,
it has the impact to you as the viewer that it would to the people in the world.
Okay. But still, you're simulating stuff that's close to you. It is a bit of a simulation going
on. Oh, absolutely. Yes. And so that creates some interesting dynamics then. And the stuff
that we're looking at in the future, you know, our plan is to push that even more to think about
how these things exist in the world first. And we do some of this, but even more so in the future
to say, how do these things exist? Take like a faction in the world? What is their role in the
world? As opposed to just their role is for the player to join it, go through a bunch of quests
and become the head of the faction. You know, think a little bit deeper about the simulation and
what would the mages guild be doing in a fantasy world? Or the fighters guild be doing in a fantasy
world versus just sign up, do quests, get gold. And so that when you show up to that mages guild,
it's a bustling guild full of stuff going on. It's not just that it's bustling is that they
feel rooted in it. They don't feel like a storefront for come here, do quests, get experience.
Is that one of the essential components of randomly generated worlds?
So when I think back to Daggerfall as gigantic world, when I first played it, I thought like,
I mean, you're just struck by the, the, the, the immensity of it, the, the immensity of the
possibility. When you're young and you look into your future, it's, it's wide open and you can do
anything. And that's what the, what Daggerfall felt like the openness was gigantic. And Daggerfall
is interesting coming off arena where arena does the same thing, but Daggerfall in many ways is
bigger despite focusing on an area because of how the density of, okay, this is how, this is how
much physical game space we'll do for these villages and towns. And it does feel endless,
even though you're looking at a map that has constraints. And Daggerfall actually was a
touchstone for us going into Starfield for how we do the planets, because there is,
there's a different kind of gameplay experience when you just wander outside a city in Daggerfall.
Then, you know, follow a quest line and go through, go to this place and it's completely
handcrafted and everything around every corner we've kind of placed like Skyrim,
you know, Starfield's a bit more like Daggerfall. And if you wander outside the city,
we're going to be generating things and you kind of get used to that game flow different than we've
done before and fun in a different kind of way. We'll talk about Starfield. So just for people
who don't know, and how dare you for not knowing, but where with Daggerfall, we're talking about
the Elder Scrolls series that started sort of talking about the big titles within the series,
started with Arena in 94, Daggerfall in 96. I didn't look up the years before this. This is
depressing or awesome. So all of these games brought hundreds, probably for some of them,
thousands of hours of joy for me. So Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim.
So I don't remember Arena being that open world. Well, it's all the provinces.
It follows kind of the same pattern. It just doesn't have all the
number of villages and places that Daggerfall has. While Daggerfall focuses on the Iliak Bay
area, Arena does it all. It just changes the scale in terms of, you know, one block on the map
equals this much space. There is something that, I mean, I'm speaking to anecdotal experience,
but I just remember it feeling wide open, Daggerfall. It definitely was, yes. In the way Arena didn't.
And I don't remember. Maybe because Arena, it was so cool to have the just the role-playing
game aspect. You're focused on the items and the character development. Daggerfall has a lot more
depth, particularly in the character system. That's what it introduces, all of the skills and
those kind of things. Arena, it's actually, it's a game I love. And it's very, very elegant.
And if you look at the first one where it's just an XP-based system, do this, get XP,
level up. Very classic role-playing game. Daggerfall digs deep into who's your character,
how you're going to develop it, what are your skills, there's advantages, there's disadvantages.
And the environment going full 3D from Arena, which is actually like a 2.5D Doom style engine,
that I agree with you, that Daggerfall feels like there's more possibilities when you're playing it.
Were you able to look up the sky in Daggerfall?
Yep. It's full 3D.
So that's what full 3D means. And then you can go outside the city.
You can walk outside the city. You can do that in Arena too, but it looks more fakey, right?
It's all going to be a flat plane. Here comes things, and then a dungeon entrance is a,
you know, 8-bit. Here comes a little flat coming at the camera.
So before we go to the end, in the middle, so from Starfield to Fallout and the Elder Scrolls series,
let's go to the very beginning. What's the origin story? You know what, let's even go before then.
What's the first time you remember the thing that made you fall in love with video games?
Well, I think it's partly, you know, my age coming up with the arcades
and playing, you know, Space Invaders at the Pizza Place, and then Pac-Man really...
It's interesting about video games and what Pac-Man did for video games,
where it popularized them in a way that was just insane at the time, had a song, had a cartoon,
had all of the things. Nintendo comes along. So it was always part of, you know,
I think if you were a kid growing up then, it was such a newness to playing things like that.
And I remember being in fifth grade when the TRS-80 was brought into the classroom
and there was a Star Trek game. And I was enamored with it and they were going to start teaching
some rudimentary programming. Like, okay, would you like to know how this is made?
And I was hooked. I was like, I need to figure out how to make this stuff.
And so I was a, you know, a self-taught programmer and my whole goal was to make
a programmer. And my whole goal was to write my own video games. And, you know, by sixth,
seventh grade, I had written my own much better Star Trek clone for the Apple II.
And I really enjoyed programming on the Apple II then. And that I think was the right level of,
like, complexity, you know, at that age where you could kind of, you were always learning,
but you could still understand a lot of the problem set for like,
this is when I get on the screen. And I was also into art. So I did a lot of art and I did a lot
of programming and I was always making games. That was my hobby from the time I was, you know,
10 or 12. What was to you involved in making games? Like, how did you think of it? Was it
from a graphics perspective, like what shows up on the screen? Was it how it makes you feel?
Was it about the story? Was it the text-based stuff and the dialogue and the prompting?
Like, what, like, what does it mean to create a video game at that young age to you?
Well, it was a way of experiencing things that I couldn't myself. So, you know, if you're playing
Dungeons and Dragons at the time too, where you, you really feel, even pen and paper, these are,
like, they feel somewhat in quotes real to you as you're playing them. You're very invested in
your character and what you're doing. And then I love the games, The Wizardry and Ultima, that
were able to bring that to a computer so I could, you know, do it on my own time. It was very, very
real to me. I'd sit in my bedroom and then go to bed and think about it. And then,
oh, no, I have to go to school. I want to come home and figure out how to, how to do this problem
in the game. And so whatever I was creating was something that I was excited about at the time.
I made Raiders of the Lost Ark games.
Like with graphics and everything?
Yeah. So it was usually, you know, made a Miami Vice game, made a Grew the Wanderer game, made a
Traveler game. I made, but every time I was doing it, I wanted to figure out a new method
on the Apple II of pulling it off graphically, whether that was editing character sets to get
graphics in different formats, or how can I enable the secret double high res mode it had, or
just things like that where it became kind of this limitless, what can I make this do? And I had
some friends who were doing the same thing, and then you get into who can impress each other.
And I was kind of middle of the pack, I would say. But again, this was the time where they're
bringing computers into the school and the apples come into the school and the teachers are learning
it because they have to teach the students. But then I would say I was part of a group of students
that were like, way past that. And it was very much of a self-taught. You know, how do you make
this thing dance? I'd like to ask a strange question. So at that time, a lot of people consider
you one of, if not the greatest game designer creator of all time. You were middle of the pack,
then. Did you have a sense that this would be your life? And you would also be creating
the greatest games ever? Not in the slightest. No, I don't think anybody, but I was very much
like that was my dream at that age. But you don't think that that's a job. And as I got older,
I was really going through college, and even the computer classes then weren't where I wanted
them to be, so I was still kind of doing my own stuff. And I ended up getting a business degree
and then interviewing for some jobs, like finance jobs. So well, I guess I should do this to make
money. And I can keep doing this on the side. And I remember I actually got to like the final
level of like this corporate finance job at Circuit City. Nice. And they turned me down.
And I was like, fuck them. I'm just going to go make video games. So thank you, Circuit City.
Yeah, I remember Circuit City. I think they went bankrupt, actually.
Well, they were based in Richmond. I was going to school close to there.
So what's the origin story of you joining Bethesda Softworks at the time?
So I had gotten Wayne Gretzky Hockey 3 for Christmas from my girlfriend at the time,
who's now my wife. I was in college. And I noticed that it was in Rockville, Maryland.
And, oh, that's on my way home over Christmas break back to William & Mary, where I went to
college. And I was at this point committed, like, this is what I want to do. So I'm just going to
drive by and knock on the door, which is what I did. So I drove by and knocked on the doors,
Martin Luther King Day 93. And someone came out and met me and said, well, maybe, and I said,
well, I'm in college. I'm talking about when I'm out of school, like, okay, we'll contact us then.
And I will say I was, I was, I would contact them every once in a while. I did work for a small
software company right out of school down in that area of Williamsburg. And still would contact
Bethesda Arena had just come out. So then we're in 94 Arena had just come out. And I loved it. So
I was in the sports games, like the hockey stuff, they were doing a basketball, they did a basketball
game. Yeah, I'm just looking at they did a lot of they did like six sports games, six. Bethesda
had 10 games, six of them sports games, and CWA basketball, hockey league simulator simulator.
So it was really like sports gridiron, which is like the first kind of physics based football
game at the time. And there's a famous story with electronic arts trying to do Madden and then
hiring Bethesda before my time to make Madden because they were struggling. When I started
at Bethesda, I remember the owner had John Madden's Oakland Raiders playbook in his office. Like,
oh, can I see that? And I love sports, right? So I still play Madden to this day. I love it.
So there's an alternate reality where I made sports games. Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to make
like the ultimate college football game. Well, it's always like, you know, it's like music. You
probably listen to lots of type of music, like you don't play every time. But I think of open
worlds as fundamentally different. We sure. No, like source of happiness, entertainment,
storytelling, world gaming, then Madden. I mean, just because I love both. I love both worlds,
but they're two totally different experiences. Just like when you might watch a movie, you
might be in the mood for Lord of the Rings one day, and then you want some other, I don't know,
competitive show or game show or something like that or watch football on TV, right? You watch
football on TV. But then I want to watch, get really into Game of Thrones. So I think all those
things have validity. And actually, one of the first things I worked on when I started Bethesda
was NCA basketball, Road to the Final Four II. So that was kind of an external project,
was came in like, hey, you know, sports, get this game done. And then went on to,
but they were doing everything I loved. It was like, this is where I have to work.
They're doing like the Terminator science fiction stuff. I love that. They're doing these open
world role playing games. Like, I love that. And they're doing sports like this. I have to work
here. So started there. And you loved. I loved it. Yeah. So when I came in, it had just come out,
and they were doing the CD-ROM version. So CD-ROMs aren't even out yet. Oh, it used to be floppy
disks. We would burn them in the basement. We had the disk replicators. Right. So
Arena was not released on floppy. It was. Yes. I believe it's six floppy disks.
Six floppy disks. Maybe it was eight. Yeah. But in those days, the number of floppy disks was
very, very important to what the money you were making. So you know, if you want to do a big,
huge game, like, well, that's just too many disks. So the CD-ROM became this,
this jumping off point for the whole industry where, oh, it's unlimited data.
By the way, I played Arena so that that was, of course, attained
legally, as one does. Alternate means? By alternate means on floppy disks. And that was
such an incredible, as you probably have seen, interacted with a large number of people. It's
a whole world. It's a world that you escaped to in the way, like your favorite book, like Lord of
the Rings. It was just something, it was unlike anything else. It was incredible. It's probably,
I mean, of course, as people say, it's the first game you play is the most,
is the one that really sentimentally means the most to you. I think the first role playing game I
played, and it was just changed everything. Was Arena? Was Arena, yeah. I think Daggerfall is
what I really kind of really played, especially because, like you said, the character development
was really rich, but just like that you can feel like you traveled to this whole other world
that's less about entertainment, like a shooting game, and more about a world. It felt like it's
a world, like you're literally there. You can travel there. You can live there. You actually
feel like that person versus like a Pac-Man, like an arcade fun, entertaining adventure game.
So you joined, you made it. What did you work on first there?
I worked, well, everyone did a bunch of stuff. So I worked on the basketball game really just to
get it out the door, and Terminator Future Shock. So we were doing Future Shock and Daggerfall at
the same time. They were developing a new engine. So it was one of the first 3D engines, the X-Engine.
There were a bunch of guys from Denmark, actually. There's like a big Danish demo scene in those
days in the PC, and so a bunch of the top programmers there. Well, look, this is not big.
This is not a big company. Maybe there's 20 people in development. And we were doing both
Daggerfall and the new Terminator. And so Daggerfall was a bit more, again, behind the Terminator
game. So I was one of the main people on the Terminator team. And I don't know, things kind
of worked out. I very quickly, I don't know why, like I quickly became the producer and I was
making levels and doing all these things. And it was awesome. And I, like, looking back now,
I can understand it better. But at the time, I didn't appreciate it, which is no one quite
owned the Terminator license. It was in like this limbo, legally. So there was no one to tell us
what to, like, no, you can't do that. So we would, you know, pick apart the movies and, oh,
how does he mention the gunny ones and the wattage of the laser and all these things. And so
Future Shock is a game that I still love today. It does a lot of things that if you go back and
look at it, we're, frankly, still doing. Like, it's a large, open world, post-apocalyptic,
you know, landscape height map with instanced objects all over it. And that is still a lot
of how we build our worlds. What's an instanced object? It's, you know, some games every,
you know, wall or building is kind of unique in its data. Whereas we would just build, you know,
these little husks of buildings and then place them all over the place. So the memory and the
way you render it is much more optimal. So that allows you to build a bigger world?
It allows you to build a bigger world much faster and not, you know, not every single
version of that building is in its own unique architecture that is going to take up memory
and processing speed, et cetera, et cetera. So you're there very much feeling the computational
constraints of the system when you're creating these open worlds? And you know what? That's the
thing then. You see some of it now. But in those times, I do feel like every year the technology
moved. And maybe it's because the same thing where like that my age at that time, where every year,
somebody was coming up with some new method or some new game system. And it was every year that
innovation, innovation, innovation, and then, you know, 3D acceleration comes along. And then
these things come along and then HD comes along. And it is true that as time goes on,
there is visually a diminishing return in terms of what you're able to do on the screen. And it,
there's a ton of work that goes into it now because just rendering this cup to the perfect
shine and material and roughness and how does the global illumination off this wall,
like, it's a ton of work. But you can pretty much do what you want now if you want to put the time
in. Whereas then, okay, you can't do everything you want. So pick your battles really carefully.
And technically, you couldn't do what you want, if that makes sense.
How much tradeoff is there now in how much effort you put into
the realism of the graphics versus the story? And actually, not even how much effort you put in,
but is there a tradeoff in the experience, the feel of the game in terms of realism and story?
Usually, we will start with let the player have as much agency and do as many things as they can
as possible. And we will sacrifice some graphic fidelity for that, some speed for that. We could
make a game that, you know, our traditionally, our games are, you know, we okay with 30 frames
a second as long as it looks really good and the simulation is running and all of those things. So
we'll sacrifice some of that fidelity for the player experience and the kind of things that I do.
But from like a manpower standpoint, the graphics programmers work on graphics, the artists work
on art, and we have, you know, awesome team of artists and designers and writers and programmers.
It's usually where we find as time goes on, the amount of art time that it takes to create
a cup compared to what it used to be, that has increased. So we do use like most people use,
you know, art outsourcing as well so that we're not, we still relatively compared to our industry
and what we're doing have smaller teams. What about the experience of the beauty of the graphics?
So like, one of the most amazing things about Skyrim, and maybe you could say that about some of
the other games, but for me, Skyrim is the outdoor when you step outside. Yes, the outdoor scenery.
So what does it take to create the feeling, especially of that being outdoors of nature
and just like lost in the beauty, whatever it is when you go hiking, and you feel the awe of it.
How do you create that awe? Is that graphics? What is that?
It's a lot of graphics. It's a lot of mood. We just talk about it in terms of tone.
And those are, again, going back to my previous comment, the graphics are very, very important to
us because, and we always push them, because when you're doing the kind of things we do where you
step into a virtual world, it does have to have that moment of, wow, this feels real. I've never
experienced this. And it's okay. I think it's okay to let just like the time settle, meaning you step
out. How does the wind sound? How are the trees moving? How are the clouds moving?
I enjoy strolling and watching the sunset. You know, how does it land over the water?
Like, it doesn't have to be like, hey, let's go. Let's finish a quest. Let's go kill things.
Let's figure out the next step. Let's level up. Like, I like the quiet moments a lot. And I think
when you play our games, you can tell we spend a lot of time on them. Then you watch like the
weather roll in. I think that's just part of being, being that character, being that person in that
space. Yeah. I saw that there's a mod that removes all enemies. I've been meaning to do that, to
just do like a live stream where for hours walk around Skyrim, just and then answer questions
and so on. That just feels, that's a completely stress free environment. It's just you are,
just like you said, in this moment in time. And it's so incredible. It feels as incredible as
going hiking or something like that. But in another totally different place, like in Iceland or
something like that, this whole other surreal, ethereal place. It's incredible how you kind
of create that. So graphics is a part of that, but also letting it, the temporal aspect of that,
like the wind, the rustling sound and look and all of that. The soundscape is really,
really important in the sky. We spend a lot of time on the sky because it's taking up much more
of the screen than a lot of people give credit for. What about the rendering, the openness of it?
There's a lot of level of detail streaming work. And nowadays it's getting more common. Like,
frankly, the systems are built better for it. Hard drive speed is really prioritized. Like,
they're so blazing fast. You take Skyrim and Oblivion and the fallouts of that 360 era.
It was a lot of time spent on how do we get all this data streaming in as you move and then
levels of detail so you can see all the way, but not crush the processor.
You know what? Let's even step back because you mentioned tone. You mentioned tone a lot.
What do you mean by tone? It's all of it together. If you look at,
I think you can flip through, let's just take fantasy. You can sort of look at a couple images
or things and know how does Lord of the Rings different from Game of Thrones that is different
than a Thurian Excalibur or your sci-fi channel series of the month kind of thing.
And so finding that, what's going to make it kind of unique and usually I lean on something that
is grounded in reality for what it is and then have lesser kind of fantastical things at least
at the start and then they kind of build. So even when we do Starfield, I mean it's a science fiction
game. There are laser guns and spaceships that fly around shoot each other and blah, blah, blah,
but it's grounded in. You can look at it and say, okay, this is kind of an extension of
things as we view them today in space. And we sort of take the same approach with fallout where
admittedly things can get a little bit crazier the longer you're developing fallout content.
So just to link around this, the tone starts at or the defining the tone starts at creating a
realistic experience like you feel like I could walk into this and this feels like life.
What's their technology level like even for a fantasy world like is magic? How prevalent is
it? Or are they making weapons and things and armor? Is it for utility? Is it for decoration?
How do they live their lives? Does this feel like a place that you believe that it has some
grounding in our reality, whether that's historical or near future, or that it's grounded in some
semblance of the reality that you and I understand so that it can feel, it's also making it feel a
little bit welcoming. Like, okay, I understand this. Is that art or science? So like, how do you know
when he feels welcoming and everything fits in his ground? I don't know. I mean, I guess it's
personal taste. Some people like things that are weirder, that have more fantastical from the get
go. Even a game like Morrowind where we get into some more fantastical things, it intentionally
starts a little more grounded. There's a very classic medieval looking town that you come into
if you look just beyond at her mushroom trees and giant insects and things like that.
So, in Skyrim, when you put a dragon in it, what are your thoughts about dragons and tone?
How does that fit into a tone? That's a great question. The...
It's a ridiculous question, but yeah, I just love dragons. I want to bring it up.
No, no, no. These are the things that we debate with... Do we include a dragon?
Why didn't you include a dragon in Daggerfall? That's what I want to know.
I think there's dragonlings. They're hard to do. Dragons are hard to do. So, when you start Skyrim,
say, hey, look, dragons are going to be a theme. Start visually. You can make the argument that
dragons existed. Okay, what would they look like? How close to dinosaurs would they be?
And ours are less, I believe, they're less fantastical looking in general. They look like
beasts that could exist in that world. And then how we introduce them, it's kind of a little bit
of a slow, you know, roll in Skyrim and that the people in the world are reacting to the dragons
appearing. And that's somewhat, you know, mirrors. You want something that mirrors the player
experience as well that says back to you, like, hey, no, these are... Have you heard this? Someone's
all dragon. Well, that's what Daggerfall... Isn't there mentions of dragons or something?
Because I remember being sure that there's dragons in Daggerfall as I'm playing it and I'm searching.
You're pretty sure, well... Is there a dragon in Daggerfall? There's dragonlings in Daggerfall,
to my memory. Look, I guess someone would probably correct me. Like, actually, there is a dragon here.
But I'm pretty sure they're sort of, they're not. And then game I did, Red Guard, which
we bring back a dragon. It takes place beforehand. So, we have a dragon there in that game. And
that was unique to that at the time. Yeah. Just a brief tangent on that. I thought Red Guard was
a really, really good game. I played it as a... I mean, again, you don't, you know, you forget
stuff. But I remember getting... I guess it was the first in the Elder Scrolls series to put it
into that world, but it was like an adventure game. It reminded me of another game I really love,
like Prince of Persia. That was one of the inspirations. Prince of Persia is one of my favorite
games. I apologize if I'm forgetting, but you can jump in buildings and stuff. Like,
there's a jumping, there's a dynamic, like, airy nature. Like, it's a part of that situation.
Yeah, it was an incredible game. Why do you think... Let me ask sort of a dark question. Why do you
think that game was a flop? One of the future... Not a dark question. It was. Well, a lot of reasons.
Game that I love and really got us going on a handcrafted world. So, we're coming off a
dagger fall. Morrowind is sort of in design. And then, you know, part of our development teams
broke up to do different things. The game that did Battle Spire and Red Guard was my game.
And I wanted to do something a little more ultimate feeling, handcrafted world. I really like things
that blend up genres. So, I know it's in the adventure game category, but it really does a lot
of things. You know, it's a love letter to Prince of Persia. There's a little Raiders of the Lost
Ark in it. There's a lot of Ultima in it. And really see what we could do with the engine. But it's
a game that I think plays... It would have had a much better home on, say, PlayStation or Xbox.
This is pre-dates Xbox, where it's a much more like constantly Tomb Raider had come out. So,
do you see those influences of Tomb Raider on that game? And 3D effects cards had just come out.
And it was the last... I think it's one of the last like DOS games in a Windows world. So,
it... I think it missed kind of a technology window, as well as, ultimately, not what people wanted
from us, you know? And I felt... I was really kind of... The company let me make that game,
and it was a big flop. Battlespire hadn't done well. The company was in a really bad shape,
and I felt really like personally responsible. Like, they let me do this creative thing.
It didn't do what we needed it to do, and now we're in a very, very bad situation.
A company almost went out of business. And that's when it got reformed with Xenomax Media,
and Robert Altman came in, and we were starting more when we had just sort of started. And it was
sort of that whole experience that made you sort of realize, someone says, okay, you're going to
get another shot. And that's where you're like, okay, we're going to make Morrowind and make
the biggest, best RPG we can make. We know what the audience wants from us. We know what we could do,
building a world. So, there's like callbacks to how we built the world in Redguard.
Morrowind is a large-scale handcrafted, but if you were to put it, you know, pixel per pixel
with Daggerfall, you wouldn't even see Morrowind. Like, because Daggerfall is so big. But the impact
of playing it, I think, is in many ways equal, but different. Just you personally, psychologically,
did you have doubt about yourself from the performance of Redguard? Do I even know what
it is? Of course. Where do you get the, how'd you overcome that? I don't know. I would say this,
honestly, I enjoy it so much. You know, like, I'm so heads down, like that becomes,
for better or worse, like my life. And it's just something that I want to play so much. It becomes,
like, there's a little bit, you get a little obsessed with it. No, but I mean, you love Redguard,
right? So, like, doesn't that mean, isn't there a kind of self-doubt about, do I know what it
takes to create a great game? Well, no, I think Redguard's a great game. All right, so you were
sure, even if it wasn't... Okay, so if you're going to debate, like, do I like that game, it's about
finding an... Okay, so I love Redguard. And the people who play it, it won a bunch of awards,
and, you know, it, like, critically was a pretty good game, did not sell. And the reason for that,
again, like, we probably made this the wrong type of game, and we missed the technology window.
We also thought it was very conservative. We're going to do this. So my main takeaway was,
I'm not going to be conservative again. I'm going to swing for the fences. And we've had, you know,
there'll be some rough edges in swinging for the fences and shooting for the moon,
but we'd rather do that and land where we land than be very, very conservative
in what we're putting out there. You mentioned just referencing this game on a Reddit AMA
that long time ago during Redguard, the lead programmer made me, made all the buildings up
and down after you played for 10 minutes just to mess with me. Just a curious tangent. What's
involved with programming an open world game? So we talked about, we will talk about design and so
on, but specifically the programming, because I think this question came from, what are some
interesting sticky bugs that you've encountered throughout your life in creating these games?
And this is one of them that you mentioned. So what are some of the challenges of programming
these open world games? I mean, there are different flavors of them, right? Your GTAs will
have different issues than, you know, the Ubisoft games versus R games. I can sort of, you know,
speak to ours, which is you want to build systems, right? Because they're going to play the game for
a very long time as well, which we've learned. And you can't go through and touch everything by
hand per se. So you have to rely on some systemic level of creation and a lot of systems that are
robust enough so that when they touch another one, things aren't breaking apart.
So there's like, what are the major systems? Is there like the physics of the game, the engine
of how like stuff, yeah, like, yeah, the physics, the motion, maybe how light is rendered and all
that kind of stuff. Right. So you have the rendering, right, of like, okay, this is how I'm
going to render the data that I have. So a lot of people confuse engines with rendering. I mean,
they're combined, obviously, but there's the data you're going to give to a renderer, which is the
thing, you know, that draws the pixels on the screen. So there's a, most of the engine is how
are you going to bring in that data and give it to the renderer to draw it. So you have that whole
system of walking through the world, feeding in the data and drawing it. You then obviously have
the physics and the interactivity. What are the things that are there just to be drawn?
And what are the things there that are meant to be interacted with and touched?
We put a big premium on the ones that can be interacted with and touched, whether it's flowers,
whether the trees move, whether you can sleep on the sofa, sit in this chair, pick up all this stuff,
bake bread, blah, blah, blah. You then have the AI, which loops in the stuff we talked about earlier
in terms of processing everybody and combat systems, which is a lot of what end of people end
up doing combat systems on top of that AI. How do they react to those types of things? And then
how do they look at the things that can be interacted with? One of my favorite things is
when NPCs will go pick up weapons in the world, but you don't see it in other games. And the first
time you see it in one of ours, like very unexpected, you can drop like a crazy weapon,
be in a fight and an NPC runs over, picks it up and uses it on you. It's not something you would
expect, but I love that stuff. And that's integrated into a larger system, the ability
to pick up the NPC mechanical. So it's not like a little quirk that's hard-coded in,
it's part of a bigger system. They have their own AI for scanning the environment,
and that's one of the rules. Hey, is there a weapon that is better than the one I have?
I'm going to go get it. Now, we do lock off if it's in a chest, and that's treasure we left
for the player, but it's in particular, because what you don't want, we actually had this problem
that started in Oblivion, I believe, which we set up a level. Hey, let the enemies go pick up
the weapons if they're better. So we make a level and go in, and all of the enemies are armed to
the teeth, and there's no treasure for the player because the enemies went and took all the good
weapons. They don't take those, they take the ones that are dropped by other NPCs or the player.
That's such a fascinating world of designing the experience for the NPC,
because in part, that experience defines the experience of the player. So how they interact
with their environment defines how the player experiences their environment. Is there a room
for further and further development of the AI that controls the NPC?
Sure. We're always iterating on it. And again, as we look in the future,
it's more about us finding those more reactivity to the player and also understanding their roles
in the world. So they're not just there. They're not just there for the player as a signpost
for the player. But they're reacting to the player. But what about some of the richest experiences we
have with people is like the chaos of it, the push and pull, the unpredictability. Is there
something, I don't know if you've been following, but the quick amazing development of language models,
the neural network, natural language processing systems, dialogue systems. Do you think there's
some possibility of using these incredible neural nets that can have open-ended dialogue, basically
chatbots? Yep. I've seen some incredible demos. I do think it's coming. I don't know when.
And there's a little bit of a question like what's ready for real deployment and release
versus, hey, let's use that to generate some things that is then static that we're giving to the
players versus it's generated on the fly. But it's definitely coming. It's definitely coming. And I
think you'll see it in the types of games that we do. It has great application. I love the idea
that you'll be using it to design different NPCs and then testing if they're good enough.
If they're like, oh, too crazy. You don't want like the super. Right. But if we go back to it
being reactive, some of that bot stuff, it's pretty, it's incredible. It's then translating
that into voice. And then is that being done by the client? Is that being done on a server?
Is it baked into the game? There's like different flavors of it.
So there's still computational challenges like how do you actually make that happen?
Right. Well, what about in terms of creating the feeling of an NPC?
What's the role of voice actors? Awesome. Yeah. We work with a ton of voice actors.
And they bring so much to it. And that's the thing. We can write some stuff and the best ones
get in there and make it so much better or even ad lib things. And so we do a lot of voice recording.
And we used to do it kind of like at the end of the project. And now we do it throughout. We start
really early and we just start recording. So we're recording for years and years, literally,
probably three years, four years. So part of the actual experience of the recording will help define
the characters and the tone of the game. Right. And we'll go back sometimes and, hey, we really
like this. We want more of this. Let's write, we'll do another session. Or, hey, we don't think
this character is actually working. We want you to do, you're going to be someone else now. Sorry,
that got cut. Do you ever try to sort of imagine that people fall in love with the characters,
with the NPCs? I do. Like, do they get really attached to the... Oh, yeah. I mean, I've done it in
games. These are like close friends, right? Like, you can... Like, you miss them.
100%. Isn't that part of the thing you miss? I actually, like, whenever I'm playing a game,
and there is, you know, if there's like a friendship option or make friends or a romance
thing, I find those moments really... I enjoy them. I find them pretty impactful emotionally
to what we're doing. And so we've done a little bit of it. It's one of the things that we actually
have pushed in Starfield. So we have a number of companions, but for them, we go, you know,
I won't say super complex romantic, but more complex relationships than we've had in terms of
not just some state of they like you or they don't like you, but they can be in love with you
and dislike something you did and be pissed at you temporarily and then come back to loving you.
Also, that relationship status of it's complicated, that they're existing in that gray area,
it's complicated. We're not dating or just... Well, it's in a lot of games, you know,
previous stuff, you just work your way up, they like you more and more and more and more,
and now you're in a relationship. Now you're in. And when you make them upset,
you drift out of like it never happened, you know, you drift out of it. Whereas,
we wanted one where, okay, we can be in a relationship and we've committed to each
other in some way, but I just did something that really made you angry. And as opposed to just
drifting out of that status, you're in a temporary, I don't like what you did state.
Well, so some greater degree of complexity in the relationship with the companions.
A little bit.
A little bit. A little bit. We're talking about...
I don't want to oversell that part, but my point is, I think those things where you meet a character
in a game and you do spend time with them, a companion in a game, and it leads to romance.
You know, myself and others, and I find a lot of players, those moments are really,
really impactful and special to them because they did put in the time. That's another thing that I
always come at it with, which is, I think people don't play video games. They sometimes think,
like, oh, that's, I don't know, that's a waste of time when that's not real. That's not like,
you're not getting a lot out of that. Like, well, you haven't really experienced it in the way that
you can because these moments that I spent in games, not the ones I made, other ones when I was
growing up or even now, those are... That is important time to me. Like, I love those moments.
I felt really, like, proud of what I accomplished. And we want people to have that in our games.
And the fact that they have had those experiences and we hear from them and how important it is
to them, it's like, no, this is really, really special.
Yeah, it's fun. I mean, from a game design perspective, I wonder if you can honor the time
you spent together with the game because sometimes there's a heartbreak at the end of the game.
Like, when you're... When you leave a game, there's a... Yeah, it's a really complicated relationship,
actually. Because when you leave a game, it's almost like leaving a romantic partner because
I think you spent so much meaningful time together. And there's a sense in which it was
ephemeral. Like, this is not... It didn't happen. Yeah, it didn't really happen. It was good. It was
like you went to Vegas and you got drunk and stuff. But like, and now life goes on. I wonder if
there's a way to sort of always carry that with you. I mean, I guess with words you can kind of
share with others. It's weird. I don't... Like, now that we're in the age where you have achievements
and you can look at your library and see your hours in games, it's almost like a scrapbook now.
Like, I wish... One of my wishes was like, I wish I had that achievement list for everything.
Like, back to the late 70s. Like, every game you played. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
that's one of the cool things with Xbox. Like, we're moving towards that direction. It'd be cool
to be from like childhood. The first time you play a video game, it will actually tell you
what is the first game you play. But you know what? Yeah. Kids today, they will have that.
They will have that. And see. But you could look back and see, oh my god, I put a thousand hours
in there. What is the first game? And my last save was 1997. Last save. Man, I don't know,
Golden Axe maybe? I'm trying to think what was the first game I've ever played.
No, it's probably a common or 64 games. Yeah. Yeah, arcade games. Okay.
You mentioned Starfield. What is Starfield? And what's the origin story of this game?
We had always wanted to do something where you explore space. You know, the explore space
role-playing game. So take the kind of games that we make and give it a little bit of a different
spin. And you know, the other games that I loved, there was a pen and paper RPG I Love Traveler.
It was one of the first games I made for the Apple II. I never finished it. I'm just doing it on my
own. And I love this game. Starflight was one. Star Control II was a game that I loved.
Sundog was a big one in the Apple II days that a lot of people don't know that I loved.
And so a lot of us in the studio felt it was time to do something new. You know,
we're going between Elder Scrolls and Fallout and going back and forth. And I mean, we love that.
But hey, we've always wanted to do this explore the galaxy science fiction game.
You know, now is the time to do that. And that's a brave move. So Fallout was post-apocalyptic
on a single planet. You know, Elder Scrolls series is on a single planet. So this is going out into
the open world of many star systems, many planets. I saw that it's thinking about 100 star systems
and 1000 planets available to explore. What is that world of stars and planets like?
Well, you mentioned Daggerfall. We go back to some of that. Well, the first one we did it was,
how are we going to render a planet, like pull it off for the player? Can we? Or do we have to
sort of do it where you can't land on all of them, where you're landing in a very controlled small
world space that we kind of craft and you would have a very limited set of those?
If you go back to tone, like, well, that's probably the wrong tone. And how can we say,
yes, like, I want to land on that ice ball. So we started the game right after Fallout 4,
so 2016. And the first thing we did was can, you know, how can we have a system to generate
these planets and make them look, you know, I'll say reasonable as opposed to, you know,
fractally goop. What's the technical definition of goop? Fractally goop?
Fractally goop. You've probably seen a lot of, like, simulations, whether they're space things
or landscape things, where they're using fractals and just the landscape does not look real,
it's just like highs and lows and it's muddy. And so we did find a way, we came up with a way,
had prototyped of building tiles, like large tiles of landscape the way we would usually build them.
We kind of generate them offline, hand do some things and end up with these very realistic
looking tiles of landscape and then built a system that wraps those around a planet and blends them
all together. And we had pretty successful results with that. And so we thought, yeah,
we could do this. And so there was a big design kind of problem to solve in terms of, well,
what's fun about landing on a planet where there's potentially nothing? Because there's a lot of
planets and moons, if you kind of write in reality that, well, there's nothing on them,
except resources. And so we spent a lot of time figuring out, okay, let's just lean in on that can
A be a lonely experience, as long as we tell the player, here's what's there, here are the resources
that are there, go find them. But I equate it to that moment of we said about listening to the
wind go and watching the sunset. And I do think there's a certain beauty to landing on a strange
planet being somewhat the only person there building an outpost. And we are modeling all of
the systems, because that's how we like to do things. So you can watch whatever that gas giant
or moon, it will rotate and go and sunrise sunset and all of those things that you would expect.
And it's, it's all really happening. And most people probably won't notice or appreciate all of
that. But I think it gives them the ability to say, I want to go do that and see that on that
place, as long as we tell them, hey, the quest leads over here, here's where the handcrafted
content is that you would expect. And then here's more of the open procedural planet experience.
So your long answer, I don't know if I answered your question. There's no questions are stupid
and the answers are brilliant. So that's how this works. So this is the world's most immense
simulator of the human condition of loneliness. Because I can't imagine a more lonely experience.
I mean, you put it that way. I don't know that was the goal, but just on a planet alone, I just,
I think that must be, I mean, a deep embodiment of what loneliness is like.
I mean, it's both on like when you hike alone, there's a, there's a deep loneliness to that.
It's like, it's humbling that this thing will last much longer than you. It's been here way before
you. Is it the line from the moon landing, beautiful desolation, the Buzz Aldrin, is it?
Beautiful desolation. Is that what you said? I think so.
Beautiful desolation. Well, something like that. But that's just words. There's a feeling to it.
And you want that feeling to be real. You're just here. There's some resources here. I just feel
like it will hit people at a certain moment. Like it does for me with Skyrim. Like, holy
shit, I'm here alone. And then, and whatever cruel nature that's out there doesn't really care about
me. Exactly. That's, that's the experience. So you, you want to create the whole planet
and you want to have many of them. We have, we do have many, but once you build that system,
I think the numbers become, I mean, honestly, a little bit, we, we wrap it in so we can name them
all and, and have a finite set, even though it's a very, very large number, but a set that we can,
you know, validate and, and know about even though it's a huge number. But once you,
once you're building a system that can build a planet, I mean, a planet is sort of infinite space.
We go back to the Daggerfall analogy, right? If you have systems to build that much space,
doing a hundred planets or a thousand or 10,000 or a million planets is not, it's just,
you just press, you just change the number and press the button. But you can't, you can't name
them all. You can't control like when you're getting in really big numbers. Hey, what is,
what does this system way out here feel like? If you take your ship and jump that far,
we do level the systems. When you go to system, you'll see, oh, this is like a level 40 system.
And us being able to at least control that scale is how we kind of ended up with the
hundredish systems we have. What, what are the, what are the levelings? What do you mean by level,
level? It'll be like when you look at a map in a game and says, this is the area for low level
players. This is level one. Oh, got it. Yeah. Yeah. So we do that on a system basis,
star system. I read that space travel is considered dangerous in this game. Can you explain?
That's more of, that goes back to a tone thing, right? When you actually play the game, because
it's a game where we don't really kill you when you fly out in space. But it has a tone of,
there's some effort involved. And we've dialed it back as we've been making the game. Whereas we
used to run out of fuel, you jump and get stranded, which on paper was a great, like it's a great
moment when you get stranded and you have to press this beacon and you don't know who's going to come.
Turns out that's not like, it just stops your game. We found you'll be playing the game and I
ran out of fuel. Okay. I guess I'll just wander these planets trying to mine for fuel so I can get
back to what I was doing. It's a fun killer. That's too realistic of a simulation of the human
condition. Yeah. I know the idea was, well, games do that. If you had a hardcore survival mode,
that's the kind of thing you would do. Maybe we'll do it in the future. But it's more of a tone,
how they build their ships. Do they have all the right things for safety? We do get into
environmental things on the planets, in your spacesuit. Obviously a lot of different spacesuits
and buffs for the gases, the toxicity or the temperature on various planets.
Are they robots? Yeah. Those companions, are they robots by chance? Can you say?
One of the companions is the robot, Vosco. Yeah. Okay. So they have a name and a personality and so
on. Vosco does. And then there's a whole bunch of, I call them generic robots. We use them for
utility. We actually dialed them back because if you think about, well, you know a lot about this
more than me in terms of- I'm offended right now. You're calling robots generic and- No, no, no. The
ones we use, the ones we use, we made them more generic. I'm very sensitive about this stuff.
I understand. If you were to chart the future, you would say robots would have a much bigger
role in our future than we are presenting. But that was the tone thing. So we, most of our
robots are there as utility robots and there are some combat ones as well as enemies.
So it's the deeply human world. Very much. Yes. In terms of tone. So
have you talked to Elon about this game of there? A little bit. How much of reality like the work of
SpaceX is an inspiration for the decisions made in this game? I wouldn't say it's for the decisions
we made, but you know, visiting SpaceX and walking in there, it was, it's like the Avengers
meets NASA. It's like the most amazing and here we're building the next gen, like see the dragon
stuff before it was, you know, other people saw it. Like just, I was really in awe, you know,
this giant machine that looks for imperfections on the surface of these giant, you know,
fuselage, just, you know, whenever, and because, you know, we're in DC, go to the Air and Space
Museum a lot. And so whenever I look at those kind of things or, you know, you'll visit the
space shuttle, sort of overcome with how big it is. And I go stand back by the engines and think
about that thing, leaving orbit, you know, and one of the things that Elon really impresses,
like, we're reaching the edge of physics on a lot of the stuff where how hard it is to leave orbit,
the gravitational pull. And like, so the engineering that has gone into that, our space
program, what he's doing now, I just marvel at, I don't understand, right? I'm not at that level,
but I marvel at the kind of human ingenuity and scale. I was on the Delaware coast last month,
and I was outside for some reason, it was dark, and I saw this crazy light in the sky.
And I thought it was like a helicopter, and then it didn't go away. And I'm like,
oh, someone, what is that? I call my, we had some friends, hey, does everybody see this? What is that?
And we just stood dumbfounded looking at this thing in the sky. And like, that is a UFO, nobody
takes their phone out. Everyone, I'm with like four people, everyone is too dumbstruck, you would
think, why don't you take a picture of this thing? And the next day we found out it was in the news,
it was the SpaceX launch in Florida. And I'm seeing it from Delaware, Maryland area,
it was one of the most, it was incredible. It's just even just that, I am in complete awe of.
Is there some aspect to that that you can replicate the majestic nature of that in the video game?
I wish I had the answer to that, you know, I think some of it we were doing when you're
standing on a planet and you see, you see the other moons go by. And then you realize,
I could get my ship blast off and land there and build myself a home. I think that's pretty cool.
There's a minor thing we do, which is we, we have other ships come and go from the starports when
you're there. So you'll be in a city and then you hear this, you hear the engine, you look up and a
ship is taken off or come out. There's nothing for you to do, but it's, I think it's awesome.
Yeah, yeah. And then that's all about creating the soundscape to feel.
Seeing it and like, oh, that's real. That's a ship that, or you jump into a system and you
see these freighters and sometimes they contact you like, it's not all just like jump in and combat.
Do you ever think about the fact that science fiction seems to make,
it has a way of creating reality, not just kind of predicting it or imagining it.
It's almost like the thing you put out there with a video game like this,
like Starfield that you kind of anticipate. It kind of fuels people's imagination of what is possible.
Maybe, I don't know. I don't know. I can't, I can't say. You're making me think now about
other science fiction that, movie I love, Minority Report, it's more of like a, not a space movie,
but more like looking at the future. If you look at a lot of the things in that movie,
it's almost like, I think those are coming true. Yeah. I mean, is that the one that you do interface
just like? It's the interfaces and then the way he looks at his child is more like a holographic,
almost AR, VR kind of thing, or digital billboards, or trying to predict human behavior.
There's just a lot of future stuff in that movie. As it comes to sci-fi to your other question,
I don't know. I don't know. Well, I think it does. It's interesting. I mean, I suppose
you're trying to create the most realistic, sticking to the tone, the most immersive realistic world,
and almost by accident, you create the thing that is possible, because you want it to be
realistic in some deep sense, so accidentally it can become the possible. And then that places
that idea in people's heads. I mean, if humans are ever to become a multi-planetary species,
we need to play games. We need to read sci-fi to help imagine that that's possible,
to look outside of Earth, to look outside, look up on the stars that we can actually travel out
there. I don't know. There's power to sci-fi to do that. I guess you shouldn't feel the pressure
of that. I don't know if I'd make the leap now. That's all that what we're doing might... Hopefully,
it might inspire some young people who are headed in that direction of like, oh, I thought about
getting into space and space exploration and being an engineer or doing these things. And I
played this game and it really sparked that interest in me. So I'm going to go take that
as a field and maybe that's the person who goes and does some of these things. Yeah, because in the
next couple of decades, a likely human being will step foot on Mars, which are the first steps
towards us becoming multi-planetary. And then if you read some of the stuff they're doing
with the James Webb telescope and them being able to look for signs of life on other planets,
it's quite fascinating. And you know, recent stuff I read say they think in 20 years they will.
So it's actually quite encouraging to think. I almost dream of mine like in our lifetimes
that we discover life on another planet. Yeah, especially if it's intelligent life. I've been
talking to a lot of biologists and a lot of folks. I imagine there's life everywhere out there.
The numbers would say so, yes. The challenging question is what it looks like and how much of
it is intelligent. So a lot of biologists tell me the big, the big difficult leap is from the
prokaryotes to the eukaryotes. So like the complex life, it could be that a lot of our
universe is just filled with bacteria. I believe if I'm understanding it right,
that there's two ways they're going to look at planets when they can look at, you know,
they can read, hey, this planet has this kind of gas. They can now look at the ones that are created
by potential life forms and then the ones that are created the byproducts of industry. There's
only certain ones that are created if you have a society there and that they can start looking
on these types of star systems and these planets. But it takes a lot of time because you have to
book time on that telescope. You have to like look at that planet over a long period of time.
But in theory, given enough time, given the amount of space out there,
we would find one. That would be a cool thing in this short life of ours to find out
definitively that there is an industrial intelligent civilization out there before you
contact them. So like die and your life, not knowing the rest of the story, but just know
that it's out there. That's a cool. And then if you have kids be like, well, this one's on you.
F this, I'm out. And I'm fascinated by what it would do to the way, I think in a positive way,
the way humanity thinks about itself here. Like, no, there is a definitively other life out there.
I mean, both things, if there isn't life out there, that's also a huge responsibility.
Both are super exciting. If we're alone, it's super exciting because there's a responsibility
to preserve whatever special thing we have going on here. This, whether you call it the
flame of consciousness or whether it's consciousness or intelligence, that's the
special thing, preserve it, have it expand. But if there's others out there, I mean,
that like that sparks that drive for exploration of reaching out to the stars and meeting them.
Most of them probably want to kill us. So, but luckily we have the military industrial complex
on earth that builds bigger and better weapons all the time. Space Force. Space Force. It will
both protect us and destroy all our enemies. This, this is 100% a video game we're living in.
Okay, back, back to dragons. So blink once if you know when Elder Scrolls 6 is coming out,
but are not going to tell me. I have a vague idea. Okay, vague idea.
So like if you have the quantum mechanical interpretation that allows for multiple universes,
in the universe where you didn't blink, what would that Todd tell me about the year it's coming
out? Would it be 2025? That's a trick question. Or 26. I've been asked that question many ways,
but never like that. Yeah, I thought I would try to sneak it. I mean, there is, there is,
of course, no answer because I wish it was soon, you know, like we don't, we want them out too,
you know. And I wish they didn't take as long as they did, but they do. And look, I mean, if I could
go back in time would never have been my plan to wait as long as it's, it's taken for it.
So you love that world, the Elder Scrolls world? Look, it's, it's part of why I'm spent more time
there than anything else in my life, probably, right? So it's deeply love it. We all do. It's
a part of us. And, you know, when you aren't doing it for a while, you, you really do miss it.
And when I look at what we're doing, have planned for that game,
and that was a meeting yesterday. It's like, I just want to play all this right now. But it,
you know, we're going to make sure we do it right for everybody. And we do have to approach it.
People are playing games for a long time, you know, Skyrim's 11 years old,
still probably our most played game. And so we don't see it slowing down. And people will probably
playing it 10 years from now also. So you have to think about, okay, people are going to play
the next Elder Scrolls game for decade, two decades. And that does change the way you think about
how you architect it from, from the get go. What, what are some elements that changed the way?
Like, how do you make a game that's playable for 20 years?
Sorry, we're trying to figure that out. But there are some elements I should pause on that,
you know, part of me, of course, asking jokingly, I'm excited for it. But
I think Skyrim is an amazing game still, you know, I really enjoy it still.
Yeah. And you know what, the content, the, even if I think if you step away from it for a while,
then play what I'll put, say the vanilla version without mods, if you go and haven't played in a
while, there's always a new way to play it. But then if you look at the mods and what creators
are doing to it, we think that is just awesome. It's something that we've always supported.
We're going to keep supporting. We've hired a large number of modders that are now professionals.
We want to support the people who are doing on their own so they can be professionals on their
own. And how do you create a world that's moddable? So you think of designing the game
from the start as that enables mods? Yeah, absolutely. So it starts with us,
like everything we're doing, okay, a modder, a content creator is going to have to do it,
use our tools. Now, we do clean them up for release, you know, because if you're like a
developer in-house, you can deal with some clujiness when you're putting stuff together.
When you put it out for people, we do clean a lot of it up. And there's still a lot,
obviously, of learning curve there. But look, we have people who have been doing it for 20 years
with us. What's involved with modding? I'm actually quite newbish at this. And I'm almost
afraid to ask because not that you explained to me. I fear I will spend a very large amount
of time creating mods. Well, we have an editor. You can download on Steam, the creation kit for
our games. And then it loads up the world and you could do something really, really small. It
changed the color of the weather. And it creates a little plugin file, we call it, you know,
a modification to the game. And then you can run your game with that. It's on console now,
that the mods, not the editing. And it's just been incredible. Our community there has been
amazing what they do with the games. So a lot of it is the visuals. A lot of people do visual
things because it's the easiest thing to do first or they're building new space. There's some great
things with like, I love the Khajiit follower mod for Skyrim. It's awesome. There have been quest
lines. Those things just take a really, really long time. And so someone is going to do that.
That's almost like, it takes them a long time. It's more than a hobby. And we're always looking
at ways that we can make it like, hey, they can turn a career into it because it's just awesome.
What about, is there any possibility in doing a mod for the some of the AI stuff?
There is. And I've seen some, but to really move it along, if they're using the tools that we already
put out there, so to really move the AI along, you'd have to get in the code, which some people
have figured out ways to hack in and do things with script extenders. But for the most part,
like really pushing it, it does take us, which is why you see when we have a new game come along,
the palette that they have, there's so many more things they can do.
Well, I've built bots that play the driving games, but they do that by just taking,
reading the screen and doing basic, not basic, it's actually pretty complicated, but computer
vision and doing the control, be basically similar in the human player to do that for Skyrim or for
some of the open world games. That's literally, you have to create AGI to be able to play those
open, well, maybe not. Maybe you can create a super dumb, like just a two-handed sword and just
keep swinging until everybody's dead. Look, there's some bot stuff out there that does it. We have
some very, very dumb bots that we use to run through the world, to test it, that we'll deploy
on a whole bunch of servers just to, you know, we do it every day. We run through every space,
we're doing it in Starfield. And then just running, they're all hot.
Well, it does it very quickly. It loads up every place in the game and runs around a little bit,
and then loads the next place and runs around a little bit. We're just testing, like, did a crash,
where's the memory growth, what's the, get a report, hear all the places where the frame rate
wasn't up to snuff. And then we do have one that will play on its own. It's heavily scripted,
but it lets us test, you know, every time we make a build, there's a bot that runs through, like,
the first one or two main quests. Like, it'll just play it. That way we know. Do we break anything?
Because you don't want to waste, like, QA's time. Like, you guys broke it again within five minutes.
So, yeah. Yeah. So that's for bot, that's for, like, broken stuff. Right. I wonder if you can build
a bot that estimates the quality of the experience. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Can you do that?
But just like the number, like, how boring or not boring, the boring meter.
How many times you die? How many times you die? Death is death boring or exciting? That's the
question. I mean, I don't, I don't, I feel like there's a balance to be struck there because
you always want to be in fear of death. Yeah, we always, we have this chart at work we use,
which is like, if you think about any game that you've played that you've put down,
it's either about a frustration slash confusion or boredom. You got to put the player right
in the middle of that. But I've sometimes put down games from frustration only to return
again, stronger. Dark souls. Yeah. So, I mean, that, that's, I mean, the challenge,
that's part of it. It's, well, I don't know. Actually, Skyrim, I don't, I'm one of those,
I mean, I'm sure there's all kinds of humans that you've interacted with about what they enjoy.
But to me, I could enjoy Skyrim on any difficulty level. It doesn't, all of it,
so it depends. The open world nature of it is what's really compelling, not necessarily the
challenge of the particular quest and so on. But I'm not sure if that's the same experience for
everybody. Do you play the survival mode? There's survival mode in Skyrim. It was a creation club
thing. It does like some hunger. It does hot and cold. It does some other systems that make it,
you know, in our minds, more believable. It was actually a creation club thing made by an
external creator who is now full-time with us. So, can we actually, thinking about
Starfield, thinking about Elder Scrolls 6, go through the full life of a video game
you've created. So, what's it take to take a game from the idea to find the final product?
What are the different steps along the way? Great question. Well, usually it starts with,
I mean, honestly, lunchtime conversations with a number of us. Hey, we think we want to do this.
This is what it's going to be like. I mean, look, with an Elder Scrolls, you know you're going to
do it. It's a matter of when. So, okay, what's the tone we're going for, right? Where's it set?
So, we usually start with the world. And then, we're always overlapping. So, while we're making
one game, as we're, you know, getting in the throes of it or wrapping it, you know, probably
by the midpoint of one game, we've had enough conversations to understand what the next one's
going to be. What are the big ticket? Like, where's it set? What's the tone? Is there a big ticket
feature or two that make it really unique? And then, when we're finishing one game, we start
prototyping. Sorry, before that, we start concepting. So, we'll do concept art. And for one reason or
another, I usually have the beginning of the game worked out. Like, I like to think about,
okay, how's the game start? What's the player do first? We do music early, you know. So,
take Elder Scrolls 6. We forgot where it's set. What's the tone? What are the big features?
We discussed the beginning of the game, which we've had for a very long time.
Where's it set again? Yep, in Tamriel. And. Damn it. Well, at least we know we never did
down that. That would be epic if it was like a portal into another dimension. Anyway.
Then, I like to do music. So, we've already done a take on the music for Elder Scrolls 6.
So, you can sit there with the concept art and the music you can feel it.
No, the music, we put in the teaser for it. This was 2018. We've taken that
further, obviously. And, again, we're working on the world. You're then doing concepting and
design for the world. And then, once we're wrapping up one game, we can really start prototyping
the new one. And you're usually building kind of your initial spaces. And so, we do like to do
like a first playable, a smaller section of the game that we can sort of prove out and show to
people, hey, this is how it feels different. This is what it looks like. This is what's unique
about it. Then, we turn that into a larger chunk when more of the team comes on, when the other
game is done. And that's still what we call a VS vertical slice. So, you still don't have the full
team on it. And it's a larger chunk of the game that you can play. And then, once you feel good
about that, you're going to bring on the rest of the team. And we're fortunate that the other
games we've done are popular enough that we can be doing DLC and content and those kind of things
while we're getting the one going. And then, we're at full production, where we're sort of at maximum
size. We just call that production. That's like the full production period. And that, depending on
the game, can run a year or two years, maybe more. And then, you kind of have a finalizing,
final six months to a year on a game, which is, okay, we've built everything now.
And usually, it needs a lot of glue, where we have a lot of very different elements that
maybe aren't clicking together the way you want outside of the regular polish for levels and
features. And we're shaving and gluing and sticking things together so that it's not the
schizophrenic game experience that things flow from one into another.
In terms of story, like on that level?
It's really, no, usually the story, the designers have done a really good job. It's more about
game features, you know, and then how they interact with the story or, hey, I went from this experience
to this experience, or picking flowers and alchemy feels like a different game than,
and then how is another character referencing that? And how is that intersecting with
the skill system and the interface? Like, the skill system and the interface is the party host.
If you think about a game, most games, particularly what I like to do,
is that's your person who says, welcome, do this, go here, check this out.
And the skill system and the way it reacts on the HUD, the interface of the game,
is sort of leading you to the next thing. And once you get that flow down,
and the rate at which the game is giving you activities, then you're in like what we describe
as a game flow. And it's not until really that last year, before that, the game flow was just,
it doesn't even exist in the way that you see it in the final game. And that's what we're working
on a lot that last year. So at which point is like the set of skills, the skill tree,
the characteristics of the role playing aspect of it? When is that set? The ideas?
We usually have it in the beginning, but it's just, we know it won't be done until that last
year. We'll have one, but we know it's going to get honed. Because it's not until you really see,
okay, how impactful is that one? How much are you doing it? How much are you really,
and the main combat ones, they always win. You always know the players will drift toward
the combat type skills, because every character needs some amount of that.
But okay, well, how important is cooking? How important is alchemy? How important is these
other type of activities? And then how do you balance them? Where when you load up the skill
menu, it isn't automatically give me plus 10 damage. How do you get the, what about the combat
system? That does seem to be an important part of a lot of games. You start in the beginning. Yeah,
every time. Yep. So usually when we're making that first playable, it's an area you can go through,
some amount of dialogue, some amount of combat. How do you get the combat right? What's the secret
to a great combat system? Well, first on a control side, helping the player when they don't realize
it. There's a lot of tricks you can do with magnetism in terms of the controller and where
the attacks go. So it has to feel the minute to minute has to feel really good in your hand. So
there's a lot of animation time, right? And changing animation so they're impactful. And they happen
at a rate that the player feels like they're really doing it. And then ultimately, it's the
illusion that the enemies are smart. But they really are there for you to kill, right? So they do a
lot of things to just let themselves get killed. They're not as near as smart as we can make them
because it turns out that is not fun. Right. So there's a balance between, but there's a, that is,
I guess, a kind of AI. And it's a very intimate interaction with an AI because it's like,
there's a lot of stuff going on. It's not just very kind of shallow, like a dialogue or something
like that. It's like, there's a time critical nature of it. A lot of stuff is happening.
And if anything feels off, it's going to feel wrong. Yep. All the games do it. It's not unique
to what we do in terms of how they handle combat scenarios. And there's some games that just do
it extremely well in terms of even a multiplayer where you're playing bots and most people don't
know it or how a multiple enemy scenario is really, they don't all shoot you. They trade
off. They're going to wait. And I was like, I'll just wait my turn because we don't want to overwhelm
them. But he feels like you feel like you're overwhelmed when there's six enemies, but
a good game will. No, they're going to take their time. Is there a science to it? Is it art? Is
it like? Yes. Yes. I mean, it's all of that. So it's like an iterative process where you
try different things. You have different ideas. There's a lot of animation. There's a lot of
timing, animation work, HUD work also. How does the reticule change? What are the little sound
effects? What about like the game file that is fun? Again, that goes back to the winning.
So winning is fun. Yes. Death is not. Yes. Let the Wookiee win.
I like how you have to dumb down the AI to make it fun for humans. Because if you didn't, it would
just be just slaughter nonstop for all humans. That's good to know. What about things like
you said, cooking, like crafting, making potions and poisons and smithing, weapons and armor,
cooking. How do you get that right? What's interesting there? It's such an interesting
like, you know, a lot of games don't have that kind of thing. So what role does that play in
the game? You know, I think we really cracked it in a way I like with Fallout 4, actually,
where when you're doing Elder Scrolls, we have like the flowers and things and you have alchemy
and we took this to, okay, if it's post-apocalyptic, what if everything in the world
wasn't a chemical ingredient sometimes, so breaking it down to their components. So when you
walk around a world like that, again, we like the simulation. We like the forks and the spoons
and the cups and all that. Okay. How can I use those to create? So I love how it works,
starts working in Fallout 4, where, okay, all these things I find, they have some value
in creating or crafting outside of a cup is worth one gold piece or one cap.
By the way, I have to be honest, I haven't played Fallout 4. I played Fallout 3. I thought that
was a legendary game. I've been, can you make a case for Fallout 4 that I should or should I just
wait for Fallout 5 and when does that come back? I think you should play Fallout 4. Love to hear
your thoughts. All right. It's a different game. Skyrim is too. I mean, it's... We try to make them
all different. They all... They are fundamentally different. They all have their own tone. Yeah,
so Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 are intentionally a very different tone. Oh, really? Interesting.
So what's that world like? What's the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout? If you can just
briefly take a stroll into that world tone-wise. Well, there's, look, in entertainment, there's a
lot of post-apocalyptic stuff. And what makes Fallout tick is the world that was left behind,
the world that blew itself up, this utopian world of nuclear energy and it all goes wrong.
So I love the American dream of that, like how they vision the future in the 50s and that
blowing itself up. I think that's like a super interesting place to explore, which is why we
always wanted to play in that world. And it does an amazing job of weaving the drama and
darkness of a post-apocalyptic world with B-movie humor. It winks at the camera sometimes,
often actually, and that when you're in that world, it just has this, its own unique flow
and vibe outside of anything else kind of in that genre. So the Elder Scrolls has,
or at least Skyrim has, some humor. Has a little bit. But Fallout leans into it a little more.
A little bit more, a little bit more. Yeah, yeah, it does. It's like ironic humor. It's
the ducking cover. So get onto your desk if the bomb comes and everything will be fine.
It's that type of humor. So the funny thing is, I do think Fallout 3 is one of the greatest games
ever. You said that, quote, when we started Fallout 3 in 2004, we obviously had big ideas
of what we could do with it. And I talked to a lot of people from ex-developers to press,
folks to fans. What made it special? What are the key things you'd want out in a new one?
The opinions, and I'll put this mildly, varied a lot. But they would all end the same
like a stern father pausing for effect, but do not screw it up. How do you not screw up
a game? You have not screwed up many games yet. I mean, back to the Fallout one. Yeah.
Yeah, that was, look, that, I remember that we were met with a lot of skepticism
in terms of, oh, what are they going to do with this? It was a beloved kind of isometric turn-based
role-playing game, awesome for when it came out. And actually, it was announced, we had finished
more win, but not announced oblivion. But because we'd acquired the rights, we had to announce it,
because I think Interplay was a public company. I don't remember. I just remember we had to
announce it and we're thinking there, well, we're going to piss off all the Elder Scrolls fans
because we're announcing a Fallout game. We're probably going to piss off the hardcore Fallout
fans because we didn't make the original and clearly we'll probably make a different kind of
game. So I do remember there was a lot of concern with all of our fans and fans of Fallout at the
time. And so I think it was pretty rewarding for us that that game found the audience and success
that it did is one of my favorite projects that I've ever worked on. And because it was so fresh
for us, and we had a very clear like, even before we had the rights, like, this is the game we're
going to make. Like, this is the kind of thing we're going to do. And we had done more when then
we were working on oblivion. And it was kind of a breath of fresh air to do it. And what's kind
of remarkable is Fallout 3 comes out just two and a half years after oblivion. And we did all this
DLC for oblivion. So we were really, really kind of prolific in how our development, how it was
going. So I just remember enjoying making that game so much because it was everything we were
doing was new. Which as to the world creation, was there some innovation like technically that
was happening? The world creation, like it was, you know, obviously a different look, even though
some of us, very few of us had worked on the Terminator things, the VAT system, the skill system.
And we love the original game so much. So you felt this responsibility to bring it back in a big
way and reintroduce it in a way that, you know, as much as we could scratch the same itch when
you, when you played the original game that had the same tone. Are there some favorite things to
you about that world that just kind of connect you to the human? Fallout 3, I love, again, I
usually start with the beginning. I love the beginning. I love the character generation. If
you go, if you played it a lot or you're developing it, it starts to feel really long.
But the first time you play it or second, I just think it's awesome. And this idea,
it's a hard thing to say, okay, we want you to feel like your character on the screen. Even when
you play like a Skyrim, you don't know what you were doing before that. But Fallout 3, you were
born in the vault and you raised in the vault and you lived in the vault, but you experienced a part
of that. So it's a very different, when you step out, I think it really, I mean, the visuals are
the visuals, but the emotional moment of stepping out of the vault, you feel like you lived your
whole life in the vault. And you feel like you have a sense of your past. Right. And I need to
find my father. Isn't it possible to have that sense with like elder scrolls, like a life story,
like childhood trauma and stuff? Back to the human. I mean, you'd have to like,
look, you do some of that stuff, but they go through menus, you know, pick your background.
We're doing that in Starfield. Hey, pick your background. What are you doing before this moment?
Can you pick your traumas and stuff?
Say, hey, you want to make a mod? You want to make a mod? You want to make a mod? You go for that.
And then also make a mod for like a therapy. But a lot of it, you know, is in your head. So you're
going to do that. You're going to pick this background and you do these things and you're
sort of like, this is who I was. And we intentionally with elder scrolls kind of make it a,
as much of a blank slate, you know, elder scrolls a little bit more of a blank slate game to who
you are, which has a lot of positives and fallout for us has been more of a, this is, this, this
was your life before. Here's who you were. Go be who you want to be, but this is the background.
It's a little more strict. Now, this might reveal something about me. And speaking of childhood
trauma, but I, but I, but I feel like there's a lot of, a lot of the meaningful experience of a role
playing game is not just the development of the character throughout the game, but the initial
character creation. Like you said, is there something to that process that you found to be
powerful, like the design of that process? Because you think so much about that beginning.
What, how much should be controlled? How much should be defined? The interface itself?
The visual appearance of the character too? Because I feel like that you're loading in,
you start to load in the world that you're about to enter by creating that character, right?
Yeah, we think about it a lot. It's a really, really good comment and question. And it's more than,
it has to set the whole stage, has to like peak your interest for the world you're going to enter.
And we've done it so many different ways in terms of when you actually go to make your character,
when you're making the choice. And one of the things over time that we've wanted to avoid
is people starting over. So there's a lot of intentionality around the types of choices you
have that can be undone or not undone. Because what you, what game players want to is I'll play it,
and then I'll make a new character. But sometimes they do that because they realize they made the
wrong type of character. And as a designer, you don't want that to happen. So some people,
when you get this comment in Elder Scrolls, like, oh, you simplified it. No, no, no, no. We moved
those choices into the gameplay so that you don't make this character in the beginning,
and then eight hours later realize you make a horrible mistake. And so, okay, I'm going to
start out like that, to me, is a really, really bad experience. So. Also like life itself. But
like life is okay. So you can then fix it in game. Right. I wish I had learned archery. Well,
I'm going to start tomorrow. So you can do that. Like the Skyrim character system
was really designed around that. All you pick is like, what's your race? And that gives you
some things. But there's nothing you can't get then on your own. It mostly, it sounds weird,
but you mostly want that beginning character generation to be visual, which you then can
also change in the game. And some starting skills that get you off to the type of play that you
want. But if you discover you don't like that type of play, as you play, you can move your character
along. So we have moved away post, you know, oblivion to a classless, meaning you don't have
a strict character class where you're made to thief, whatever, in our games.
And that's, that's continuing for the, are you like thinking of Elder Scrolls 6? You're already
thinking about that kind of stuff. So you think of early on the, like you said, the first few
experiences in the game, you're already thinking through them. Yep. Yeah. We know what the first
few hours are like. We, we know what the character system is basically like. And
So tonally, what's the difference to you between oblivion, Skyrim, more when oblivion, Skyrim,
and Elder Scrolls 6? Like I could, to me, I mean, stuff blends together. Yeah. But oblivion,
that's when you could make spells and stuff. You could, you could do it in Morrowind as well.
Oblivion has some more guardrails on it. Morrowind is where you can really go. And Daggerfall.
I don't remember if you make spells in Arena. I think you can. Someone will correct me. You
definitely can. And Daggerfall gets crazy. Morrowind, you can. And then we start, we start putting
guardrails on it because people started breaking the game in certain ways. Yeah. Why is it bad
to break the game? Like you always want it to be. Well, there's like one people love in Morrowind
where you can make these recall stones and you could teleport to different areas, which you
really need in that game. It breaks so many quests. Yeah. And so as we, any, any quest we were then,
we would do this, this exercise of designing a quest. And then someone would say, and then I
recall away, okay, the quest is broken. And then one day someone says, can we just get rid of that
spell effect? Everyone's like, yes, please. And so it allowed us to make better content.
So the tangent upon a tangent upon a tangent. How do you create a compelling quest? Because there's
all kinds of personalities of humans that play these games, right? Because I like the grind.
Well, there's, look, there's, there's multiple flavors of a compelling quest.
You know, some of them have very good upfront storytelling. You just like the story and the
NPC that's giving you this task. And you'll go through a more handcrafted experience that
the designers have done a really, really good job on the space. It has some, some twist or
surprise in the middle. And then the ending has some, you know, multiple options that the player
feels like they had, they got to do something. They made an interesting choice. But the best
ones for me are actually where all of that was far more open ended. The how I am going to accomplish
this task is completely up to me. And I'm going to find some ingenious solution. A silly, this
will like, this sounds very basic. It's going to sound quite cliche and silly. Go find me five
data cards or whatever, like find me X of something that's hard to get.
It's a very simple set. You can give a simple story set up for that. And we're not telling
the player where to get those. Now, where could I get those? And I've actually find those to be
just as rewarding as the really handcrafted, well done, a little bit more linear with an
interesting choice at the end. If those objects are in the world in some, you know, believable way
that there's usually some challenge at getting, getting them.
How do you place objects in a world in an interesting way? Because it's a big part.
We have a level design. You cannot, people, if they only knew how much we spend, we have a
clutter group, a group of people who clutter. Clutter is all the stuff around. It's like
interior decorators for treasure and stuff and trash. And they go through every space and they
clutter it. Our level designers think about it a lot. These also become landmarks for the player
when you're walking through a space and, oh, this is the place with this. And there is a logic to
making a good level. As they say with, even if you walk by like a little T intersection,
that becomes like a decision point in the player's head. Like, oh, I didn't go down that way.
But the more you do that, it looks easy on paper. But when you're playing a game,
you actually kind of want to limit those because he's trying to keep track of all these decision
points, then they get lost. And yes, we have maps, but anytime the player's going to check a map
in a place like that, I feel that it's more of like a backstop for certain players. If they
need to check the map, I feel like we've kind of failed. Got it. So there's a momentum to it,
just pulls them in. And you know, you played a lot of games, you played a lot of levels where
you're just like, I'm a little confused or I don't know. And you play other levels where like,
man, I just, yeah, it was great. I went through it. It was well balanced. I knew where I was going.
And it's not, you don't want to ever be mazy. As long as you know where you're going,
as long as you know you made those choices, then it feels fine. But as far as the treasure and
all of the loot, it is really an art. We will not do enough clutter. And then we will over clutter.
And then there's too much stuff everywhere. And then we declutter every single game. I wish we
got better at it. It would save us a lot of time. But you're constantly going by feel like this is
not as too much. It's not. Right. Because the other thing is, look, it creates,
people want to pick everything up. They want to click everything. So if you have too many things
of importance in a room, it's like, it actually makes you feel a little tight as a player. You're
like, well, I need, I'm basically an idiot if I don't pick all this stuff up. You probably felt
this way. Yeah, for sure. And like, the moment where you decide that you're just like, I've clicked
so many things in this room, I actually am going to leave that ammo canister there. But you feel
like a dope. You've probably experienced this. Yes. But also you have a, you have a joy from,
if there's not many items and you found the one and you got it, and you feel good, I got it.
And then it's finding like, oh, I stuck my head in this corner and, you know, I picked this lock
and I opened this locker and there was this thing I've been waiting for. Yeah. What about like
rare and rare items? That's an art, even more so of an art. I will say we have a ways to go there
in terms of finding the right drop rate for special items, we call them your epic rare
legendary. You look at games, like so many games do it. And there are ones that you just play and
love because they have it down. Destiny 2 is great at it. Diablo, a series I love, you know,
sort of famously Diablo 3, which I think is great. And they did an update and mostly just
changed the loot drops. And it's like this whole new experience. And there's a really,
real art to it. I think that we're still learning. We're still learning a lot and have to, we're
trying to, you know, get better at it because it's one of those things where it drives you
through the game. It's fun to get the treasure in. Diablo and Skyrim have this interesting
quality of being extremely popular. And there's a lore around like rare items. So it's a, it changes
the dynamic of like you could afford to have really rare items. Yes. And then somebody finds it and
that becomes like a thing. I mean, as you release a game, there's a, I mean, a lot of people play
and they start sharing stories and so on. It's so interesting because that's part of the game
experience is the stories of others, right? For us, 100%. Because we've been classically,
with most of our stuff, single player, that that water cooler shared experience, we would have
a thing like where we call them, did you know moments? Like, we got to have a bunch. So you
meet someone, they do, what are you doing? And then they say, did you know? If you go here and do
this, what did you know? And that to us is where of a lot of our community has, has been sharing
their stories and here's what you can do. Has there ever been a temptation to create
not a single player game that's gigantic? That's what we did fall out 76. We have elder scrolls
online, not not a game I created, but look, that started as more classic MMO. No, the folks,
they're part of a company who made that game. And it's insanely, insanely popular.
It is. Okay, so I should try it out. They do some great storytelling quests,
like the actual mechanics aren't the same as Skyrim, but the world is awesome. They've just
done an incredible job. You know, it's about to be 10 years for that game as well. And they,
there's just, you know, great community around that. Yeah, it's a, I haven't played because
there's a, there's a mobile fallout game, right? I need to play that. I was thinking of playing
Diablo mobile too. I mean, you can debate the monetization, but I would not, it's,
I think they did a fun, it's really fun. On fallout? Diablo? Diablo? Yeah. Well,
fallout, I definitely recommend that one. Fallout Shelter, completely different game.
Yeah. Diablo Immortal is, I was very, very impressed that I had a lot of fun. On the mobile?
Yeah. What's the challenge of designing a game for mobile versus the PC and console?
Well, obviously the screen size, right? Is that what you feel first? What's the,
what's the fundamental change in the, in the philosophy of design? Does it, does it constrain,
does it change the tone of the game? Well, we've done a few things and we have a new mobile game
that we're working on that we haven't announced yet that I'm in love with. There are a couple
things that you approach on mobile. Now, I can give you sort of the classic mobile gaming thing
and then what we do. You know, a classic mobile gaming is really for short play sessions.
Because for the amount of people you're going to get, the, the number that I have,
the amount of time to sit there for a long time and play it, like a console game or a PC game,
is, is lower because people are playing mobile games on the move or whatever. And how it on
boards you, because obviously most of them are free. So the tutorial, how the tutorial works,
how it gets you into the game, because you haven't bought it, you haven't done this investment of
buying it and then saying, no, I'm going to learn it. People don't care. So really understanding
how they get into the game. Those two things are really the magic to mobile gaming. We have found
though with our games, you know, particularly Fallout shelter, people will sit there for an hour or
two. Like they will just sit there and play it. Like large numbers of people will play it for hours
a day. So it's a, there is a more, I don't know, addicting element to the mobile because I guess
you can spend more time with it. And if you look at, you know, if you look at kids these days,
they can stare at their phone for hours. That's all they do. That's where they watch everything.
So it's also like a demographic thing. The younger audience, they would rather sit and stare at their
phone than play it on a big screen. I would just love to sort of list out throughout human history,
the evolution of sentences that began with, if you look at kids these days.
It's true. It's true. The kids, the kids of the kids these days will probably be talking about
being doing like virtual reality. Like I love mobile games though. I play a ton of them. I am
like the game, my favorite game this year is Marvel Snap. This card game from the folks who
did Hearthstone. You should really play it. If you like, do you like card games? Do you like
superheroes? No. It's genius. You don't like superheroes? No, I don't like superheroes.
I never understood, listen, this never, this is growing up in the Soviet Union.
You're wearing a costume. It's silly to me. So you have to suspend,
like you have to be able to immerse yourself in for some reason. There's something about
costumes. It doesn't get me. But then again, I'm like into elves and dragons. So I don't
understand and I'm fine. I think I get it. Yeah. But the rest, at least the America,
the Western world disagrees with me. So even Batman, you have like little ears, but that's fine.
Well, back to Elder Scrolls and Starfield. So one thing I didn't ask you about
when you look at the timeline of five, six, seven, eight years, whatever it is to create a game,
what's the role of the deadline internally, not publicly announced? Keeps you honest.
Do you try to keep in your own brain a deadline for the team a deadline? Yeah, all the time.
And when you set that deadline early in the development,
do you try to set deadline like that's really tough to reach? No, we try to make it like,
hey, this is our best guess. If you make it tough to reach, it's sort of, you know,
you're going to miss it. It's arbitrary. We really try to keep ourselves honest,
because it will let you know where you're at, right? When I have first playable,
we want to be done with prototyping or design by this date. We want to have first playable
this date. We want to have this, but look, you know, things happen, pandemic happens,
people go home, it's throws everything off. Or, you know, what you needed to do,
because we're not just like making a game and then moving everybody on, you know,
what you needed to do like Skyrim was so popular, we kept people on that game for longer.
So it delayed a little bit. We were doing a fallout four at the time because we can't,
you know, hey, we really shouldn't move the people on the fallout yet because we're doing
these things in Skyrim and we should. So it just sort of keeps you honest for where you're at.
Does it get super stressful as you get closer? Are you trying to avoid announcing anything?
Is there a temptation to announce that? Well, I've done it always, right? I've
announced, you know, Starfield, we're pretty, you know, loud with a release date that we then
had to delay. So... Was that tough? It was. It was. But it was the right thing to do.
And... How do you know it's the right thing to do? Like when you sat down and looked at it,
like this is not ready? It's not an exact science, but you can look at what needs to be done and the
amount of time you have. And, you know, we've done it in the past where we can get it done. We believe
we can. And so you're fighting that personal belief that you can get something done. But there's a
lot of things that go into release date with marketing and publishing. And, you know, we've
reached a point where on Starfield where it was pretty clear to us, even though you want to say
you can get it done, that the risk involved with that to the fans, to the game, to the team,
to the company, we're part of Xbox now, to everybody was we should really move it
it and give it the time it needs. So you mentioned part of Xbox,
Microsoft bought Bethesda and ZMX for $7.5 billion. Well, what's it like joining the Xbox
team? You've, I think, written about it. What are the exciting aspects of that?
You know, when your company goes through a change like that, no matter what it is,
even if it's somebody that you've worked with for a long time, you never know what you're in for,
you hope. And I had worked with them for, since we started doing console stuff with
Morrowind, was, you know, they came to us, came to me and said, hey, you should make this game
for the Xbox. And so when they were making that console, had a great experience with them.
And then on the 360 with oblivion. And so I guess the point is, we felt that we had a very good
relationship with everybody there. And we understood what their culture was, but you never
really know. And, and I mean, this honestly, it's been awesome that the culture inside of
Microsoft and Xbox that the people see from the outside is the culture inside the way they talk
about players, the way they'll invest in the players, the risks they'll take, the thoughtfulness
from Phil Spencer on down has been, you know, feel really, really lucky. And then a game like
Starfield where look, we've had a lot of success with the games that you talked about, but we've
never been kind of the platform seller, you know, the game for a platform for a period of time.
And so, you know, there is a lot of pressure. There's a lot of responsibility there to make
sure we deliver for everybody. Is there a chance that Starfield is exclusive to Xbox?
It is. It is exclusive. It's officially right here. Yep. Yes.
So you're, I get it. So extra pressure also creating a new world.
Yeah, it's new. But keep in mind, for us, that exclusivity is not unique, even though we've
done PlayStation stuff. And I think the PlayStation 5 is an insane machine. They've done a great job
and we've had great success on PlayStation. We were traditionally a PC developers in the beginning.
We transitioned to Xbox, became our lead platform, like more wins, basically exclusive to Xbox.
Oblivion was exclusive to Xbox for a long period of time. Skyrim DLC was exclusive. So we've done
a lot of like our initial stuff is all Xbox. So we get into development and saying we're focused
on Xbox and it's not abnormal for us in any way. It's been kind of the norm. And from a development
side, I, you know, I like the ability to focus. So our ability to focus and say, and have help
from them, you know, the top engineers at Xbox to say, we are going to make this look incredible
on the new systems is like, from my standpoint, it's just awesome.
What's the difference in creating the console versus the PC? I also have to admit, I've never,
um, is this shameful? Actually, you should recommend to me. I've never played Skyrim or any,
um, any of the games you've created on Xbox. Really? Yeah. And on console, I played, I
may have played very little. Yeah, sure. I mean, look, there's, there's the obvious interface part
between mouse and keyboard and then a controller. But when you're looking at hardware PCs, it's tough.
Right. Cause you're looking at, well, you know, what are their driver versions? What kind of
monitor do they have? What is the actual refresh rate of X, Y and Z? We're used to it. But if,
you know, anyone will tell you, give me the hardware that I know I'm writing it for, you know this.
And the, the series X is just a incredible machine. And now that you know what it is,
you know, you know what it is. And, and now that we're part of Xbox, getting, you know,
the people who built it to show you how to make it really, really dance is just awesome.
Is there a case to be made? Did you get people that enjoy people that do both PC and Xbox that,
that enjoy Xbox more? Like that? If they have a choice that they, they enjoy it? I think that
depends on, and look, now that you, you can kind of cross, you can take your save and go between
and all those things. You can? Yeah. If you, depends on, if, for which games? So for Skyrim?
If you have the Game Pass PC version of it versus Steam, not, not via Steam right now,
not via Steam. Got it. And so there's the Game Pass. So I'm, I'm like learning about this. So
there's a Microsoft game. So this is going to be on Game Pass. And then you can, if, yeah,
if you can take it from PC through Game Pass. I think it depends on like,
like, like for me, like, what's my physical mood? Do I want to lean back on a sofa?
Exactly. Right? Like the actual physicality of it is what determines where I want to play.
Do I want to be two feet from a thing right now? And sometimes I like that. I am more of a console
player just because I sit on my PC at work all day. Like I play a lot of video games. So when I
get home, you know, I was like, I am a sofa screen controller person. Let me ask you a
ridiculous question. So you've created some of the greatest games ever. I think there's,
there's a, the question will be, what's the best game of all time? All right. All right. Just give
me a second. Tetris. All right. That's interesting. Have you read the book on Tetris? No. You should
read it. Basically, someone to grow up in Russia. Yeah. I said, I'm sure there's an interesting
story. The fact that there's a book about Tetris is fascinating. Is there a book about Mario?
I would love, I would love to find out more, but I think I would put personal, I would put Skyrim.
I'll take that. Good answer. At number one for me, which is tough. However you put it,
because you could also make the case out of the Elder Scrolls series, like would you actually
value more? If you put Tetris and Super Mario up there, then like the credit goes to Morrowind,
maybe over Skyrim. I don't, I don't know where the biggest leaps are. But overall, I think it's
Skyrim. But for you, if you're not allowed to pick any of the games you were involved with,
what are some interesting candidates for you? They're just games that
inspired the world, impacted the world, shook the world in terms of what video games they're
able to do. Well, first, I'm just sort of like hearing you say that you think Skyrim's the best
game of all time is quite, like, thank you. And it's, you know, incredible thing to hear.
And, you know, when I think about, well, a couple of answers, there's ones that are like
personal to me, Ultima 7. Yeah, can you talk about Ultima? Like you said that as an inspiration.
I've never crossed that world. Well, it was... What kind of game is it?
It's a role-playing game, you know, circa 1992, 93, 94. And Ultima Online first, you know,
really visual online world in that way. But for me, that was a virtual fantasy world
where I had, you know, you could break bread, you could pick all the stuff up. I mean,
anyone who's played Ultima's and plays our stuff can see the kind of touchstones and callbacks to
that or inspirations. And the other thing that I loved about Ultima was, they were all different,
right, that they iterated and there weren't necessarily what I'll call a plus one sequel
outside of Ultima 7, part two, clearly a plus one sequel. But they each had their own tone.
I love like the boxes, you know, it's something that we get into as well. I love this idea that
a game also is this tangible thing. Oh, when you buy it... You buy, you know, the cardboard boxes
and the way they were designed and Ultima 7 is black and Ultima 8 is the fiery gate and
the paintings on them. And I just, you know... Does that break your heart a little bit that
culture is a bit gone? A little bit, a little bit. And that's also why I like,
you know, this goes to video gaming or any other digital things where digital ownership has great
value to people. So I like looking at my collections of games even digitally. I want to see nice,
you know, in the same way you want to see nice album art. I want to see nice cover art for our
games. And we spend a lot of time in them so that you take a look at Elder Scrolls and Mormon
Oblivion and Skyrim. We want those boxes to look good next to each other. Going back to the video
games, you know, I always mention Tetris because I think it's, you know, obviously I love virtual
worlds and those kind of things, but for the time and what an interactive like video games
sort of the simplest form is sort of think you can put Tetris in front of just about anybody
and they'll enjoy it. It's got some moment of challenge and it's just so elegant. It's like
to me the like this very pure game that only works because it's a video game.
And I think mobile games figured out some of the magic of Tetris, the simple
some of them have. Yeah. Yeah. And but Tetris did it a long, long time ago. Right. You can really
create that immersive experience without. But for me, you know, the ultimate civilization.
Yeah. As far as, you know, a grand strategy game. Pac-Man, I mentioned in terms of bringing games
into the mainstream in a way that captured people that nothing before it had. Super Mario,
Donkey Kong, everything Nintendo. I probably the best game makers in the world still.
They know who they are. They know what they want to do. Always an awe of what they create.
I got to ask you about a game I haven't played, but people put up there as one of the greats,
Zelda Breath of the Wild. Have you got any chance to play? A lot of it. Yes. Yes. It's
fantastic. It's fantastic. What do you think about, I mean, it's a very different experience.
I played other Zelda's than the open worlds you've created, but it is also an open world.
It is. It's my favorite Zelda, because obviously like open world stuff. And
the one thing that they do really, really well is they don't constrain you. Some people, you know,
even some of the things we do constrain you a little bit more. Zelda says, here's the whole thing.
And you are constrained by the actual player abilities you haven't earned yet,
not some arbitrary barriers. And so I think this did a phenomenal job. It's a magical game.
It really feels open. It's because it truly is. Yes.
What about, I mean, I'm just like asking about some open world. A very different one is the world of
either Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption. Both love. I would put GTA 3, Grand Theft Auto 3,
up there with the landmark kind of usher in the open world. When that comes out on the PlayStation 2,
even though there was GTA 1 and 2, this was an all new thing with the mobster storytelling.
Is that the first 3D version, I guess? It was. Then Vice Cities, kind of a fast follow, which
could be my favorite one. I loved all the Grand Theft Auto. I think they're really
phenomenally well made games. Same with Red Dead. I think Red Dead is Redemption 1.
Could be my favorite story. Highly recommend finishing that game.
So you like both the story? You like the grittiness of that? Because they have a bit of the,
I guess, if you like the fall out, there's the humor. I don't know. I don't know what it is.
It's the lighthearted humor of it, but also the brutality of human natures in there too.
Also, some of the fun they create with the music when you drive and stuff like that.
They create a world. There's a tone. There's a very strong tone. There is a very strong tone.
You know, the satire on the world is just so well done. The gameplay is great.
I think they've just done a phenomenal job. Is there any others that popped to mind?
Portal. Portal, yeah. That's another weird creation.
I could just sit here and list games forever. Well, I'm enjoying this.
Hearthstone's a game I love. I love all type of sports. College football,
NCAA football was my favorite. I would say this is a great role-playing game.
Oh, you would actually keep getting a role-playing game.
It's a role-playing game because I have all these characters. I have like 60 characters
and they're all leveling up and then I have to play them. And then the college ones are like
college football. They'd graduate so you lose your players and then they stop making this series.
I know the folks at EA and they will say, I have bugged them. When has this gone?
They're doing it. So it's finally coming back.
Nice. What would you say is the greatest sports game of all time?
Well, it's NCAA football. I have to pick the year.
NCAA versus Madden? Oh, yeah. You have more teams. You have the college
fight songs. There's more pageantry and the players turn over. They're only there for four
seasons. So it's more dynamic. So you like variety versus...
So what was the last one? 2014, maybe it was?
And you don't like FIFA and... Look, FIFA is incredible. I'm a college football fan.
They give you that fantasy. If you like European football slash soccer,
FIFA is incredible. I love that game too.
Have you been paying attention to the game design of that world, of those worlds?
Yeah. And the thing people, I think, with those kind of games,
it is really like... Or racing games. Forza put up there. I love Forza. Play them all.
When you have to recreate something that's real in the real world, say it's cars or
sports games, everybody knows how it should work. That's a really difficult task when people know
how it should work. Then you're going to balance it for single player, the multiplayer parts of it.
They get very, very competitive. And in many respects, you're forced to put out a new version
every year. And I say forced in quotes because they're... Count them as big updates.
But it's a very... It's a much more difficult development process than I think
people understand and how hard those teams work and know a lot of people who do it.
And I think they just do. I've enjoyed them all. I buy Madden every year.
Yeah, every single year. Yeah, they do refresh it. There's a feeling of freshness. I don't know what
that is. Yeah. Look, there have been years where it feels like less was done and more was done,
but I enjoy it every year. Yeah.
Yeah. What does a perfectly productive day in the life of Todd Howard look like?
So maybe not perfectly, but just like a perfectly average productive day.
Are you a morning person, evening person? Is it chaos? Is it pretty regular schedule?
I'm in a good flow right now. I'm still doing a lot of stuff. So there's things I'm executive
producing and then, you know, Starfield I'm directing. So I sort of view that as that's an
everyday thing. Fortunately, I get to do a lot of stuff from... Look at the TV show we're making and
this Indiana Jones game that's being developed, the machine game. So we have to look at that.
But, you know, the best really day or where I feel it's fulfilling is
get to play some of a game. The game will say Starfield. Get to play some of Starfield.
Look at the problem set of what it is doing and then get in a room with the other developers
that I work closely with and we solve that problem together. So that's the most rewarding
thing when you can say, okay, what do we want this to do? What's the real player experience we want?
What are all the pieces in front of us where you know the actual tangible pieces as opposed to
the beginning, the pie in the sky part is always fun. But it's like anything is possible. That's fun.
But it's not rewarding in the same way because you haven't solved something. Whereas these are
the elements you have to play with. How do we make this all work together and you come out of it
at the end of the day like now that feels great. So brainstorming about specific big picture,
both big picture and very specific detail of a game that's not working, something's not working,
you want to fix it, that kind of stuff. Because you feel like, okay, you've made tangible progress
on the actual build of the game or something you played in the beginning of the day didn't feel great.
You've figured out a solution with a group of people, like it's always with a group. And then
the next day you're like, yeah, that worked out. Who's on the team? Is it designers, engineers,
all the above artists, voice over. So internal to the studio, it's a lot of programming, a lot of
art, you have design, which breaks into some quest design, writing systems design, who are like
doing all the treasure and the lute and the skill systems. And then level design is making the spaces
like those that you'll play through. Production is a big part of it. The producers who organize
everything. I can't remember if I mentioned art, a lot of artists. QA staff as well. They're hugely
valuable in saying, hey, we broke your game in these magical ways. What are you going to do about it?
Is the lute design team still hiring? How do I apply? That seems like the most fun job.
Always. I mean, all of this seems like a super fun job.
You know what? It's the best. Then you have audio. And by far is the greatest job you could possibly
have. If you're into technology, it's great. If you're into storytelling and creativity and art,
it's great. And it's really the gaming, the combination of that.
And like I mentioned to you offline, I think of video games. To me, it's brought thousands of
hours of happiness. And so when you're designing the game, whatever you're doing, you have a part
to play in a thing that's going to bring like millions, hundreds of millions of hours of
happiness to people. It's crazy, right? It is. And I'm going to play you saying that back to our
team because people forget. Your head's down. You're trying to solve these problems. And then
you do forget how many people it touches. Like even tiny decisions. You make tiny little things you
create. Yeah, it's weird. I wish there was a way to like, I would notice things in a video game.
And it's like, huh, okay. It feels good, but you don't get that signal. The creator doesn't get
that signal. I wish they did. I guess you could get that signal by, you know, why is luck stuck in
this room like digging through the loop? We do now get a lot of good data on what the players are
doing. Enjoying a lot. Well, we know where they've been and where they've died and how long they play
in certain sections. And we can sort of tell outside of people just telling us on forums or
calling or other things. We can tell for some data where people are dropping off or having a,
you know, we can tell if there's a key frustration point.
Do you ever think about making people feel like human feelings when they play? Like designing,
like make them feel fear or excitement, anger, longing, loneliness.
All the above. Yeah, of course. The big one I like to say is the video games give you is pride
outside of other, you know, if you watch movies or things like that. Like, yeah, but you never
think like, look what I did. And that feeling of like accomplishment and pride in what you did
or you overcame, you talked about going back to a game that like those are real feelings
of like accomplishment that I've felt in games that I've played. And when we get to see a player
feel that it's really, really special. The other one is there is a, you know, there is an escape
or to be someone else that's more powerful in our games that you aren't in real life that
gives you a confidence or a perspective. We're doing one next week, but we've done a number of
make a wish visits kids who could wish for anything. And they want to come and I want to see the next
game and meet the creators and see how you do it. And they come with their family. And it is like
the greatest thing that we do. And it reminds you of like how important it is. And the other
really awesome thing is that you can see like the family change by the end of the day, like they
don't, they didn't even realize what it meant to their child or what went into it. And it's just
that to me is like been been involved with that foundation for a number of years and it's been
really good, you know, reminder of how lucky we are. And in general, for young people, that sense
of accomplishment is hard to find. I mean, yeah, where they they don't not everybody has it in the
outlets that real life provides. Well, that's the thing. I mean, the world is cruel to when you're
young. Nobody takes you seriously. You don't get like, that's why you everybody always wants to
grow up and get all the skills possible. It's hard. It's the hardest. It's hard. And then video games
allow you, I mean, to build that sense of confidence, sense of pride and something. That's why when
people talk down to video games, like it's a culture and so on, it's not it misses out on that really
deeply meaningful thing, especially with like single player. There's some darker aspects to
multiplayer that people create communities and you know, it can it can go off the rails a bit.
But the actual experience of the game, especially one we stick with for a while, that's really
beautiful. Do you have advice for those same young folks? Given that your life is an interesting one,
given what kind of degree you got and being a legendary game designer,
do you have advice for young folks in high school, maybe college,
how do I have a career or a life that can be proud of?
Well, you have to find something that you love so much that it's never going to feel like a job.
And don't do it for money. Don't do it for find something you love and
the rest of it will come. It won't be a straight path. And do not ever underestimate yourself.
It's going to take hard work. But the worst thing that young people do is think they can't
accomplish something or they underestimate themselves. And maybe those first few times through
where they do fail, if they love it enough, they're going to be resilient and push past that.
Anyone who's had success or gotten somewhere, it's been they've had those times, right? And
they've stayed resilient because they love it so much that this is what they want to do.
When you do it for other reasons, I just don't think it's going to work out the same.
Did you have low points in your life, dark points or your mind went to a dark place,
whether it's struggling to get a job, but that's the soft works or maybe with a
red guard flop or where you start to doubt yourself or any of that?
Well, I think what's weird looking back, I was always so in love with doing this
that I didn't view them as dark per se. Looking back, I just wanted to,
okay, let me find a way to make this work. Even when it's hard and it's
failing and all that kind of stuff, it's a problem before you to solve.
Yeah. When I started Bethesda, I don't know, my father had moved nearby to the office. I was
moving and I slept on a sofa. I didn't care. I don't need a bedroom. I'll sleep on the sofa
and work there. That's all I want to do. When the company almost went out of business,
it was, well, I hope it doesn't. I feel somewhat responsible, but hey, that's a learning lesson.
Let's go. I think I was pretty resilient to it all. Fallout 76, really bad launch.
What do we do wrong? What can we learn? Let's go at it. Now it's a success.
But those kind of ups and downs for the length of developments that we have,
you know, people don't see them, but we have them, you know, all the time.
And so it's that sort of belief that, you know, with the team, having done it time and time again
to know that, no, we're going to make it as good as we possibly can. And whatever we're
experiencing now, when we solve it and we get it out and, you know, we see the millions of people
who love it, it's all worth it. And you're getting into new spaces. First of all,
new worlds with Starfield, but also new, I saw the TV show you're working on on Fallout with Amazon.
What's that like worlds that you created in the digital realm becoming going on the screen?
Yeah, people asked, you know, I can remember 10 years ago after Fallout 3 was a hit,
you know, movie producers coming and, hey, we think this would make a great movie
and taking a lot of meetings. And I think, you know, most people would jump at that like sweet.
And I sort of paused and like, I don't know, what is this going to do? I feel like they're
going to like synthesize. I met great people, like well known creatives, like it's going to get
synthesized into this two hour, I don't know, I'm not, I'm not seeing the great thing here yet.
So, you know, I think the advent of television in terms of what it's become, you know,
nowadays with big budget TV series, it kind of came up again and met with people and Jonathan
Nolan and Lisa Joy who do Westworld and I always love the work he did writing Interstellar and
the dark movies. I just love Jonathan Nolan is involved with this. Yeah, he's the yeah,
he's the he's the EP and he's directed the first incredible. Yeah, this is awesome.
And he's the EP, he's directed the first few episodes. Nice. And when I connected with him,
Jonah was like, hey, you know, you're my, you're the person I want to do this.
So I met with people kept saying like, you know, just let me see if he wants to do it. And I was
to my joy, he was like, oh yeah, follow three is one of my yeah, sign me up. I was like, no,
how do we get this done? And at that time, he was sort of he was at HBO and it was, you know,
we were trying to figure out, it was put a little pause on it. And,
you know, got to visit the sets, reading scripts and things like that's all new to me.
But I, they're doing such an incredible job. Like, I think if you like this world,
you are going to be just blown away. Keep on, I've never made a TV show. You know,
those are all the best, you know, no one ever does it wanting it to not be great. But they've
just done their attention to detail and obsessive, they're obsessive with what's on the screen
and the storytelling and how it looks, the whole, the whole thing.
Yeah, I think obsession is really a prerequisite for greatness. What they did,
HBO did with Chernobyl, like the attention to detail is just and he's doing the last of us
now that showrunner. If you really care and you really put a lot of effort into the details,
you can basically, I was stunned that they, I mean, I don't want to spoil it, but when people
see it, I think it'll just be like, wow, it's the other thing we're approaching it. It's very
different where when it was, people would say, want to make a movie, they wanted to, you know,
tell the story of Fallout 3 or then tell the story of Fallout 4. And for this, it was,
hey, let's do something that exists in the world of Fallout. It's not retelling a game story.
It's basically, you know, an area of the map and like, let's tell a story here
that fits in the world that we have built, doesn't, you know, break any of the rules,
can reference things in the games, but isn't a retelling of the games that exists in the same
world, but is its own unique thing. So it adds to it while also people who don't haven't played
the games who can't experience like how crazy cool Fallout is can watch the series. And so
are there some similarities or interesting differences between the creation of a game
and a TV show that you noticed from the sort of story perspective?
Well, for them, you know, it's much more character driven. Like you can do all these
things with the world and stuff that we already have. It's the main characters, who they are,
what their motivations are, that really is the engine.
Right. There's no finding the right actors to do those. Yeah.
Because you're not, there's no interaction. There's no, you don't get to enter that world.
They have to do the work for you. The NPCs are on the show. Yeah, I can't wait to see how it turns
out. You also mentioned Indiana Jones. That's a weird, that's a different one. How do you work
with like, with a famous protagonist? Like when the character is known, how do you work with that?
Well, it's different. It's different. Like Indiana Jones is different where like
the name, it is the, like it's Indiana Jones. Not a world, it's him. Right? You can talk about
the world of Indiana Jones, but at the end of the day, it's about this character. And Raiders,
still my favorite movie of all time. No debate. It's the best movie ever.
Best movie ever. Ever. On a tangent, what do you love about it?
Well, you know, I saw it obviously when I was younger and I believed it. I believed this happened
and when they found the Ark, I literally, I could not believe that they found it. So,
and I have found over my life, it's still really watchable every time. I enjoy it every single
time. Love the character, love the story. The opening is the greatest movie opening ever.
And I just love everything. I love everything about it.
What was the opening? Is this one? What? It's the temple and then the ball rolls and tries to
crush it. Oh, that's the opening. That's the opening of Raiders. Yeah, steals the
idol. I think you're deeply offended. I was like, what's the opening of Raiders?
So, I've always wanted to, it's one of those things like what's on your bucket list like,
oh, I want to make an Indiana Jones game. And I had pitched Lucas, I met some people there and
pitched them back in 09, this Indiana Jones game concept. And they wanted to publish,
kind of the deal fell apart. They wanted to publish it and we were a publisher and so we
didn't do it. And I didn't really have the team to do it. I just was going to figure that out
after we agreed to a deal. And well, you know, we made Skyrim so it worked out. And then, you know,
fast forward 10 years plus and, you know, Lucas now part of Disney and they're doing a lot more
of licensing and working with people. And so I knew some folks there and said, oh, I have this idea
that I pitched a long time ago and they loved it. And again, the internal team that I had
not only didn't have the time, they probably weren't as good a fit as Machine Games, who's
done the Wolfenstein series, who is the perfect fit for this game with storytelling and how they
record it. And they are, it's awesome. They're just doing an incredible job with that game.
People are going to be, if you like Indiana Jones, it is a definite love letter to Indiana Jones
and everything with it. Can you say if it's a little, if it's more on the action adventure like
side, like the actual experience of the game? I could go back. I would just say it is a mashup.
It is a unique, it isn't one thing intentionally. So it does a lot of different things that,
you know, we've myself and Yerick and the folks at Machine Games have wanted to do in a game. So
it's a unique thing. Before I forget, who do I, how many humans do I have to kill? I mean,
dragons do I have to kill to get myself somehow into Elder Scrolls 6? It's a mod. If anyone wants
to create mods of me, and is that possible? Yeah, that's possible. While maintaining realism
somehow. You don't want a person in a suit and tie. It doesn't make sense. You put you in both,
put you in fallout. You can wear that. Yeah, exactly. Please put me, so fallout, there's also
a culture of... You do a mod where you replace the mysterious stranger. There you go. That's a
to-do task. I'll do top mod right there. And you will have my deep gratitude and more dear stranger
for doing so. What's the programming language for mods? Is it mostly... Their use are internal
scripting language that's built into the tool. Okay, I'm almost afraid to explore that world,
because you will never, never, never turn back. How long... You've created so many incredible
games. Is there... What does the future hold? Is there sort of going through this process? Do
you still have the energy, the passion, the drive to keep creating? I do. I cannot imagine
doing anything else. I'd like to do it as long as possible. I will say though, as I've done it,
soon it'll be 30 years at Bethesda. I've learned that to appreciate the developments a little bit
more, that the time it takes, I should prioritize all of us enjoying the development process,
more than I did in the past. It was like, just wanted to... The end, that's all that mattered.
And the more you do it, you realize, no, I'm spending the majority of my life
in Tamriel and the Wasteland and Fallout. So the moments that we're all doing this together,
we need to enjoy it. It's a lot of work finishing Starfield, but
hey, we gotta enjoy this. This is incredible. We don't get that many shots.
So the actual process of creating the struggles along the way of stuff not working,
like you said, at this point of Starfield, probably creating some of the glue of how
stuff feels and going back again and again and again to try to make the beginning better,
all that kind of stuff. And I would say it for anybody's vocation, whatever you're doing,
whatever people do, you're going to have harder times. And sometimes people, it's,
you know, you had to, you know, maybe recalibrate yourself to like, okay,
how can we make this more enjoyable for all of us, no matter what you're doing and rewarding.
So if life is a video game, which you most likely is, what do you think is the meaning of life?
From having created so many games, more the character has to try to figure out.
I mean, there's bigger questions than just solving the quest. You're asking the big questions of,
why am I here? I feel like that's good practice for answering the same question for this video
game we're in. What do you think is the meaning of life, Todd Howard?
That's very...
I can say what motivates me.
That's a good start.
Having a curiosity, you know, the ability to not assume a lot and be curious about the world around
you. It's more, it's, you know, not the same as just wanting to learn everything, but what makes other
humans tick? How do they feel? How do they love? It might be cliche to say the meaning of life is
to love, right? So that curiosity is just about noticing the world. Noticing the world around
you. You know, look, there's someone who's an anecdote, someone says, everybody has two lives
and the second one starts when you realize there's only one. And I think, I usually preach to my
children and everything else, like, have a curiosity to the world around you and you'll have the most
fulfilling days. Are you able to be inside the worlds that you've created and be able to notice
them? Like, really, like, really enjoy them? It takes time. So, like, Skyrim had its 10th anniversary.
That's when I went back into it. I think I got to see it for what it is. My younger son got really
into it a few years back on the Switch. That's when we noticed people age up into it, right? So
one of the reasons it's so popular is, you know, people come into, you know, they're now becoming,
you know, teenagers and, oh, okay, I'll finally play Skyrim. And, you know, he got obsessed with it.
And he wasn't usually like, hey, check out my games. Shut up, Dad. We're playing this other stuff.
And he got, like, obsessed with Skyrim. Like, we're having, like, deep elder scrolls,
lower conversations at dinner. And, you know, I saw it through his eyes. And that was pretty
special. And then the mods he was downloading and the YouTubers he was following talking about stuff.
So the people who, like, the elder scrolls people don't realize how much of that I have watched
with my son. And then I kind of, when the 10th anniversary came out, like, oh, I'm going to,
you know, check out a bill. I have to check out the build out, but I hadn't played it in so long.
And it was like, it does. It has this flow. We're like, oh, my God, I just played for four hours.
I need to, I need to turn it off.
Yeah. I mean, there's something about enjoying, enjoying videos against the people you love too,
or the, the, the water cooler discussion. And with kids. So I actually, I would love to have
kids and hopefully soon in the future. So I guess the thing I need your advice on is
how do I time it in such a way when they're old enough, right at the age they're old enough,
like, I want to know when to have them so that when they're old enough,
that's exactly when elder scroll six comes out. So I want to, can you give me a hint when I should
have kids? All right, never mind. You were a genius at how to ask that question. The number of times.
Yeah. You told the anecdote that your, that your son asked you the same question.
But, but of course, it's all for good fun and take as much time as needed. It's skyrim is still an
incredible game. It has an impact on millions of people as, as do all of your games. It's,
thank you for everything you've done for the world. Thank you. It's a huge honor that you
would talk with me. There, it's, this has been an honor. And, you know, it has to be said,
like it's, I have a huge team of people I've worked with for some of them for 20 years.
And it's really all of us together. Keep doing a great job. Guys and gals,
I can't wait to see what you create next. It really, really does have an impact
on silly kids like me and millions of silly kids like me. So I really appreciate everything.
Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Todd Howard.
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now let me leave you with some words from token. So come snow after fire and even dragons
have their end. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.