Since 1994, Todd Howard has worked for Bethesda Game Studios. The industry icon has helped build and even spearheaded some of the gaming industry’s biggest RPGs, but what’s it like reporting to him?
Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Starfield, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle—the list goes on. Todd Howard’s resume of work for Bethesda is amazing, and long-time former dev Bruce Nesmith had big praise for the now-producer and director.
Todd Howard Catered More Toward the Player
The Examined Game‘s Steven Lake interviewed 17-year Bethesda veteran Bruce Nesmith. The former dev was the lead designer for Skyrim and played a huge role in Oblivion and Fallout 3’s development.
- More Insider Gaming: Skyrim Lead Designer Reveals Two Biggest Changes Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel Needs
Nesmith opened up on working with Howard, and how he operated:
“Well, part of what Todd has historically been very good at is putting himself in the seat of your typical player as a developer.
I sit in an ivory tower. It’s inescapable. I have more experience with a wider set of games than your typical player does. I have way more gaming experience in your typical player. I think more deeply about games definitely than your typical player, and he’s able to cut through that and see: ‘Oh yeah, they’re looking for a little bit of joy here. Don’t get in the way with your math and your complex decision here. They want to just shoot that thing over there. Let them shoot it.’
You know, or they just want to be able to romance that other characters. Just let them do it. Let’s let that happen. He’s always very good at that for me, because I would tend to try and make things a little more complex. And he was more than willing to to say, no, that’s not what the players are going to want. They’re going to want something simple.
The discussion also moved onto an example of where Nesmith was ‘wrong,’ about a certain Skyrim mechanic:
“Todd had this vision for how the constellations would reflect your skills, and he was looking at the art and wanting it to be a reflection of wanting the art to drive some of how the skills related to one another in order to form these. I was like, no, you know, you’re going up and you’re looking at these, why can’t we just put a list on it?
More functional people are just going to get confused by these constellations. It’s just not going to work. I’m not seeing it, and I held that all the way through production. The game gets out there, and people loved the constellations. They thought they were fantastic. So I was clearly wrong. I was dead dog wrong on that.
But fortunately, Todd, being the studio director, he got to make that call. He said, no, this is what we’re doing. So we we did the better thing in that particular case.
Do check out the full, fascinating deep dive into Nesmith’s time at Bethesda, and thoughts on The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel.
Would Bethesda be what it is today without Todd Howard’s vision? Let us know your thoughts via the free Insider Gaming Discord server.
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Andy is Insider Gaming's Senior Evergreen Editor and has been in the games journalism sphere in one way or another for over 7 years. His video game taste is as…
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