Is it time for Todd Howard to move on?

[TheGuyWhoKnowsStuff]

With Bethesda Game studios, is it time for the creative leads and Todd Howard to move on and allow fresh new perspectives to step in for TES 6?

Yes

No

[NamerOfStars]

I once read about the birth of a child whose parents had named him "Dovakiin". In response, Zenimax said they'd give him free copies of every game they made for the rest of his life. This means that up until last year, all he'd've been given were rereleases of Skyrim. Skyrim was visually impressive (well, until I first ran into a dragon in the wild and it promptly began flying backwards before spinning down into a mountain like a cartoon character and disappearing; that kinda killed the mystique, though I WILL admit I'd never seen that combat technique before), and the music was good (though that's been the case in every Elder Scrolls game, I don't think that means we shouldn't consider it), but the gameplay was hollow, the systems weaker than any previous entry (and I include Redguard in that!), and the whole appeal of "Wow! Dragons! We've never had those before!" doesn't work if you remember that Daggerfall exists. The fact that Todd worked on Daggerfall doesn't give him much room to pretend that.

Morrowind was great; Oblivion sucked. Fallout 3, if you've played prior games, will make you despair for the state of gaming. New Vegas showed the franchise still has potential, but only with outside writers- and a lot of what went into it (good AND bad, to be fair) came from Van Buren. If you count the stuff Todd was less directly involved in, Dishonored was okay, 2 was better, Death of the Outsider was WAY too obsessed with the fact that its protagonist was a black lesbian to not DO anything plot-relevant with that, but they went ahead and did nothing with it anyway. A game that's a Deus Ex title disguised as a Thief title lives and dies by its writing; you don't have the luxury of fucking that up. Prey was better off; an Arx Fatalis (which is really Ultima Underworld without the "Ultima") title disguised as a System Shock title lives and dies by its gameplay, and the writing wasn't bad anyway. Unfortunately, the low enemy variety and its collapse in the last act kept that game from true greatness, but it came close- or would have, if it weren't for the scourge of Denuvo. Fallouts 4 and 76, Deathloop, Redfall and Starfield I haven't played, but the consensus on all of them is pretty damned negative.

I have no knowledge of Todd as a person or a manager; I know only the output that's happened on his watch, but going by that... yeah. The guy needs to move on to something else, at least for a while.

[TheGuyWhoKnowsStuff]

I can't say I agree with you on Oblivion, which I thoroughly enjoyed despite its flaws. I mean looking at NPCs in the face was a bit painful WHEN IT CAME OUT let alone now. . . but the Dark Brotherhood quests and general experience were pretty good despite "horse armor."

Starfield is very much "Hey, space!" and the graphics improved. . . although I looked at trees in the main city and my screen turned fully green thereafter. There was some cool quirky characterisation in the tutorial, which made me excited before getting jailed for accidentally picking up someone's drink. But hey, the whole "Here is a sandbox map with rocks and nothing to do or see or interact with besides the odd recycled mini-level of space warehouse" gets old very quick.

I think Bethesda is drunk on Skyrim's profits but falling so far behind their studio peers that it is becoming an embarrassment. Story is not their strong point whereas object interaction within the game setting was. They started to get environmental interact with things being washed away by water physics I think, but failed to copy anything worth copying from No Man's Sky. That is, they robbed a bunch of existing games' concepts and watered them down into mush then served it with the expectation of it'd do okay at the AAA fine dining table.

Granted there is a good history with Morrowind and so on being innovative, they're still only as good as their last game. Somewhere they've learned to spit out quantity (e. g. Skyrim re-releases) rather than quality. That quality flag post is shifting in the industry but they seem to be using their own flagposts and that is not how competition and innovation in game development works.

[NamerOfStars]

Ah, but that's the issue: it IS how competition works, if you're rich enough to wait out any competitors. And you can do that, even without having a massive corporation bankrolling you, if you 1. generate enough hype with crowdfunding, 2. rely on modders to fix everything (Todd himself always supported modding; that's done his games unquestionable good, but his company pretty unquestionable harm), or 3. both.

Get enough hype, and you don't have to release anything new; No Man's Sky itself, even if it HAD been complete, was just a ripoff of Noctis. No one cared. Get enough money coming in, and you don't have to release anything at all; look at Star Citizen.

[TheGuyWhoKnowsStuff]

You make valid points. Modding is a strength of TES series. Unfortunately, it is enabling laziness from Bethesda.

[NamerOfStars]

Exactly.

[zagor]

Let's see, looks like Morrowind was originally released in 2002, Oblivion in 2006, Skyrim in 2011. It has now been more than a dozen years since the latter so I have no idea what the holdup is, given the popularity of the series. SOMEONE needs to move forward on it. I wish they hadn't wasted time on their scifi releases instead of moving ahead with the Elder Scrolls series.

Similarly, The Witcher was released in 2007, The Witcher 2 in 2011, and The Witcher 3 ( the only one worth playing as the gameplay in 1 and 2 sucked) in 2015, so they have more than doubled their release intervals. And the next version likely won't be out until at least 2026.

[TheGuyWhoKnowsStuff]

This is looking at the bigger picture, which I think is prudent. Keeping in mind Starfield was in development for 25 years. . . I am curious if people think that Todd Howard and leadership at Bethesda needs a fresh injection to get with the times and restore the Bethesda standard.

[zagor]

I think people (justifiably) expect a lot more in terms of technical quality than they did in (say) 2011 so there are a lot of expectations, especially from such an iconic series.

I haven't tried Elden Ring or Baldur's Gate 3 yet but will probably try those when I get a new PC instead of growing old waiting for Bethesda.

[Forceinhand]

Let's not be so cynical and mean. TESVI hasn't even been released yet.

[TheGuyWhoKnowsStuff]

Rather than avoid the question: Bethesda, after the Starfield fiasco, has been accused by the media of being behind the times and outdated in relation to relative standards of video game production at the AAA level. So, do you think this is true or not?