Todd Howard has been working at Bethesda for over 30 years. Over the years, he has contributed to the creation of various projects across the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls franchises.
Recently, former lead designer of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim with 17 years of experience Bruce Nesmith gave an interview to The Examined Game. During the conversation, he shared memories of working with Todd Howard and spoke about his approach to development.
According to him, Todd has the ability to put himself in the shoes of an average player. Nesmith admitted that he cannot do that himself—because of his accumulated experience, he views video games differently:
I'm sitting in an ivory tower. There's no getting around that. I'm familiar with a much wider variety of games than the average player. I have vastly more experience playing games, and I definitely think about games more deeply.
And Todd Howard knows how to cast all that aside and see what matters most: “Yeah — this is where people just want to have some fun. Don't get in their way with your math and complex solutions. They just want to shoot that thing over there — so let them take the shot.”
Bruce Nesmith shared a story about the development of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which highlights the difference in how he and Todd Howard perceive games. Up until the game's very release, he did not understand the concept of the skill constellation system.
Todd Howard wanted the visual design of the constellations to reflect the interconnectedness of skills, while Nesmith suggested replacing all of it with a regular list — he was worried players would get confused:
I thought: ‘People who care more about convenience and functionality will just get confused by these constellations. This simply won't work — I don't see how this could work.’ And I held that opinion throughout the entire development. And then the game came out, and people loved the constellations, they thought they were amazing. So I was clearly wrong. But fortunately, Todd, as the studio head, had the authority to make the final call. He said: ‘No, we're doing it this way.’ So in that particular case, we went with the better option.
The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel is currently in development — the game does not have a release date yet.