"- Blink once, if when Elder Scrolls VI 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 t..."

"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 esc..."

"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 ..."

"That's a generic line that all of the housecarls have and it just kind of lands when she says it. - Why does it land? What do you... And did you anticipate it would land? - It's a slight snarkiness in..."

"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..."

"It's one way to think about it. - I mean, that's really fascinating. That's something that people had, they were wondering about to what degree it's possible to run the world without you. So there is ..."

"of the virtual world you're in, so if we wanna do something crazy, when a dragon lands, or a death claw comes out of the wasteland or those kind of things that you, it has the impact to you as the vie..."

"- Is that one of the essential components of randomly generated worlds? So when I think back to Daggerfall, has a gigantic world, when I first played it, I thought like, I mean, you're just struck by ..."

"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, Morro..."

"- Were you able to like look up the sky in Daggerfall? - Yep. - My memories... - It's full 3D, yeah. - Yeah, it's, so that's what full 3D means. And then you can go outside the city? - You can walk ou..."

"goal was to write my own video games. And by sixth, seventh grade I had written my own much better Star Trek clone. - Yeah, of course. - Apple II. And I really enjoyed programming in the Apple II then..."

"- 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 h..."

"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 what... And I, well I'm in college, I'm talking about when I'm outta school. ..."

"So then we're in '94, Arena had just come out and I loved it. So I was the sports games, I like the hockey stuff. They were doing a basketball, they did a basketball game. - Yeah, I'm just looking at,..."

"to make Madden 'cause they were struggling. And when I started at Bethesda, I remember the owner had John Madden's Oakland Raiders playbook in his office. Like, ooh, can I see that? And I love sports,..."

"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..."

"So that was kind of an external project which 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 w..."

"We had the disc replicators. - Right. So Arena was not released on floppy? - It was, yeah. It's, I believe it's six floppy discs. - Six floppy discs. - Maybe it was eight. - [Lex] Yeah. - But in those..."

"for the whole industry where, oh, it's unlimited data. - By the way, I played Arena... So that was of course attained (laughs) legally, as one does. - [Todd] Alternate means? - By alternate means on f..."

"It's probably, I mean, of course as people say is the first game you play is the most, is the one that really sentimentally means the most to you. That I think the first role playing game I played and..."

"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... So you joined, you made it, what did you wo..."

"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. S..."

"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 like looki..."

"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 landscape height map with instance objects all over it. And that is..."

"- Allows you to build a bigger world much faster and not every single version of that building is in its own unique architecture that is gonna take up memory and processing speed, et cetera, et cetera..."

"And then 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 ..."

"if that makes sense. - How much trade off 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 tr..."

"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... Our, traditionally our games we ar..."

"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 art outsourcing..."

"of the other games, but for me Skyrim is the outdoor, when you step outside, it's the outdoor scenery. So what does it take to create the feeling especially of that being outdoors, of nature and just ..."

"and we always push them, because when you're doing the kind of things we do where you step into a virtual world, it doesn't have to have that moment of, wow, this is, this feels real, I've never exper..."

"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 mome..."

"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..."

"- Well that's what Daggerfall, isn't there mentions of dragons or something? 'Cause I remember being sure that there's dragons in Daggerfall as I'm playing it and I'm searching. - I'm pretty sure, wel..."

"And that was unique to that at the time. - Yeah, just a brief tangent on that. I thought Redguard was a really, really good game. I played it as... I, again, you don't just, you forget stuff. But I re..."

"you sort of realize, someone says to you, okay, you're gonna get another shot. And that's where like, okay, we're gonna make Morrowind and make the biggest, best RPG we can make. We know what the audi..."

"than be very, very conservative in what we're putting out there. - You you've mentioned, just referencing this game, on a Reddit AMA that long time ago, during Redguard, the lead programmer made me, m..."

"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, th..."

"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, 'cause what you don't want, we actually had this problem started in Oblivion, I believe, whic..."

"- I love the idea though. You'd be using AI to design different NPCs and then testing if they're good enough, if they're like a little too crazy, you don't want like the super... - Right. But if we go..."

"really impactful and special to them 'cause they did put in the time. That's another thing that I always come at it with, which is, I think people who don't play video games, they sometimes think like..."

"and games, like that's like, 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 ..."

"What is Starfield and what's the origin story of this game? - We had always wanted to do something where you explore space, the explore space role playing game. So take the kinda games that we make an..."

"- And that's a brave move. So Fallout's post-apocalyptic on a single planet. Elder Scrolls series is on a single planet. So this is going out into the open world of many star systems, many planets. I ..."

"If you go back to tone like, well, that's probably the wrong tone and how can we say yes? Like I wanna land on that ice ball. So it started, we started the game right after Fallout 4, so 2016. And the..."

"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. Long answer, I du..."

"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? It's Buzz Aldrin, is it? - Beautif..."

"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 wrap it in so we can name them all and have a finite set e..."

"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 y..."

"- So it's the deeply human world. - Very much. Yes. - In terms of tone. So have you talked to Elon about this, about this game, is there- - A little bit? - How much of reality, like the work of SpaceX..."

"I was on the Delaware coast last month, and I went, 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..."

"or you jump into a system and you see these freighters and sometimes they contact you. Like it's not all just like jumping and combat. - Do you ever think about the fact that science fiction seems to ..."

"I mean if humans are ever to become a multiplanetary 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 ..."

"- Yeah. Because in the next couple of decades, likely a human being will step foot on Mars, which are the first steps towards us becoming multiplanetary. - And then if you read some of the stuff they'..."

"- The challenging question is what it looks like and how much of it is intelligent. So a lot of biologists tell me the big difficult leap is from the prokaryotes to the eukaryotes. So like the complex..."

"- We have Space Force. - Space Force. - [Todd] Right. - It will both protect us and destroy all our enemies. (laughs) This is 100% a video game we're living in. Okay, back to dragons. So blink once if..."

"about how you architect it from the get go. - What are some elements that change the way... Like how do you make a game that's playable for 20 years? - I know we're trying to figure that out... (laugh..."

"- Yep, absolutely. So it starts with us, like everything we're doing okay, a modder, a content creator's gonna have to do it, use our tools... Now we do clean them up for release, because if you're li..."

"with the games... - So a lot of it is the visuals. - A lot of people do visual things 'cause it's the easiest thing to do first or they're building new space. There's some great things with like, I lo..."

"it does take us, which is why you see, when we have a new game come along, the palette that they have is, there's so many more things they can do. - Well, I've built bots that play the driving games. ..."

"I mean, I don't feel like there's a balance to be struck 'cause you always wanna be in fear of death, against... - Yeah we always, we have this chart at work we use, which is like, if you think about ..."

"experience for everybody. - Do you play the survival mode? There's a survival mode in Skyrim. Was that Creation Club thing. It does, like, some hunger. It does hot and cold. It does some other systems..."

"And then we are always overlapping. So while we're making one game, as we are getting in the throes of it or wrapping it up, probably by the midpoint of one game we've had enough conversations to unde..."

"into another dimension. Anyway. - Then I like to do music. So we've already done a take on the music for Elder Scrolls VI. - So you can sit there with the, with like the concept art and the music. You..."

"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 ..."

"how does the reticule change? What are the little sound effects? - What about like the gamify, like that is fun? - That goes back to the winning, you know. - So winning is fun? - Yes. - Death is not? ..."

"How do you get that right? What's interesting there? It's such an interesting, like, a lot of games don't have that kind of thing. So what role does that play in- - I think we really cracked it in a w..."

"- 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. Can you make a case with Fallout 4 and I should, or should I just wait till Fall..."

"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 sort of weaving the drama and darkness of a post-apocalypti..."

"- So the funny thing is, I do think Fallout 3 is one of the greatest games ever. You've said that quote, when we started Fallout 3 in 2004, we obviously had big ideas of what we could do with it and I..."

"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 di..."

"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 deve..."

"- Are there some favorite things to you about that world that just kind of connect you? - Fallout 3, I love, again, I usually start with the beginning. I love the beginning, I love the character gener..."

"which has a lot of positives and Fallout for us has been more of a, this was your life before, here's who you were, go be who you wanna be, but this is the background, it's a little more strict. - Now..."

"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 st..."

"So... - Also like life itself. But yes, go ahead. - (laughs) But like life is, okay, so you can then... - [Lex] Fix it in game. - Right? I wish I had learned archery. Well, I'm gonna start tomorrow. S..."

"- So tonally, what's the difference to you between Oblivion, Skyrim, Morrowind, and Oblivion, Skyrim and Elder Scrolls VI? Like to me, I mean stuff blends together. But Oblivion, that's when you could..."

"It's like, 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 a tangent upon a tangent upon a tang..."

"But the best ones for me are actually were 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 gonna find some ingenious solution, a silly, t..."

"- How do you place objects in a world in an interesting way? 'Cause it's a big part... - We have a level design... You cannot... People, oh, if they only knew how much we spend on, we have a clutter g..."

"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 ..."

"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 'em did you know momen..."

"that started as more classic MMO. Know the folks, they're part of our company who made that game and it's insanely, insanely popular. - It is? Okay. So I should try it all. - They do some great storyt..."

"Had a lot of fun. - On the mobile? - Yep. - 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..."

"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. - (laughs) It..."

"with marketing and publishing, and we've reached a point where, on Starfield, where it was pretty clear to us, even though you wanna say you can get it done, that the risk involved with that, to the f..."

"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 ..."

"And so there is a lot of pressure there. 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 exclusive. - It's..."

"- What's the difference in creating the console versus the PC? I also have to admit, I've never, is this shameful? Actually, you should recommend to me, I've never played Skyrim or any of the games yo..."

"- [Lex] You can? - Yeah. It depends on if... - For which games. So for Skyrim? - If you have the Game Pass PC version of it versus Steam, not via Steam right now, not via Steam. - Got it. And so there..."

"Well, for you, if you're not allowed to pick any of the games you were involved with, what are some interesting candidates for you that are just games that inspired the world, impacted the world, shoo..."

"They know who they are. They know what they wanna do. Always in awe of what they create. - I gotta ask about a game I haven't played, but people put up there as one of the greats, Zelda: Breath of the..."

"It's a magical game. - It really feels open. - It's, 'cause it truly is. Yes. - What about, I mean, is it, I just like asking you about some open world, a very different one is the world of either Gra..."

"I think they've just done a phenomenal job. - Is there any others that pop to mind? - Portal. - Portal, yeah. That's another weird creation. - [Todd] I could just sit here and list games forever. - We..."

"- 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 like, or racing games, Forza, put up there, I l..."

"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 ..."

"- And like I mentioned to you offline, I think of video games is, I mean, to me has brought thousands of hours of happiness. And so when you're designing the game, whatever you're doing, you have a pa..."

"- And in general, for young people, that sense of accomplishment is hard to find. - I mean- - Yeah, they don't, not everybody has it in the outlets that real life provides. - Well, that's the thing, I..."

"- Did you have low points in your life? Dark points, where your mind went to a dark place? Whether it's struggling to get a job at Bethesda Softworks or maybe with Redguard flop or... Where you kind o..."

"of what it's become 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 "Interst..."

"Those are all the best. No one ever does it wanting it to not be great. But they've just done, their attention to detail and they're just obsessive with what's on the screen and the storytelling and h..."

"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..."

"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's k..."

"- What was the opening? Is this when the... - What? It's the temple and then the ball rolls and tries to crush him. - Oh, that's the opening. - That's the opening of "Raiders." Yeah. He steals the... ..."

"- Can you say if it's a, 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,..."

"somehow into Elder Scrolls VI? It's a mod, if anyone wants to create mods of me... And is that possible? - Yeah. - It's possible? - [Todd] Of course. - While maintaining realism somehow. 'Cause you do..."

"So... - So the actual process of creating, the struggles along the way of stuff not working, like you said, at this point with Starfield probably creating some of the glue of how stuff feels and going..."