I Interviewed Todd Howard For The First Time In 15 Years

Hello, One Take Shrier here. Yesterday I got an unusual call, a call that I did not expect from the people at Xbox and Bethesda. They said, "Hey, would you like to speak with Todd Howard?" And I said, "Of course I would like to speak with Todd Howard." Todd Howard, if you're not familiar, is the long-time director at Bethesda Game Studios. He directed Morrowind and Oblivion and Skyrim, all those Elder Scrolls, most recent Elder Scrolls games. He directed all of the most recent Fallout games, Fallout 3, Fallout 4. Um, and he is someone who uh also directed Starfield. He is someone who I've had a lot of respect for, who I've gotten a chance to talk to in the past, 15 years ago, but haven't talked to on the record since then. I've seen him at events and we've we've kind of chatted casually, but haven't had any uh proper interviews since then. And there's a a pretty wild reason behind that and some interesting backstory. And I'll get into that a little bit later,

but first I want to actually get to the news that they are announcing today and some of the stuff that he told me in this interview. And then later on I'll explain why it's been 15 years since I've talked to him and how that actually changed. So, what's the news? Well, last week Xbox and their new CEO Asha Sharma announced the big changes that they are making to the Xbox organization. They announced a whole lot of layoffs, um 3,200 uh job cuts, 1,600 last week, another 1,600 to come. And as I explored in my previous video, it's actually a lot more than that because of vendors and co-dev studios and all the other kind of ripple effects of that. They also said that they were going to double down on some of their biggest franchises, including Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, which are the two studios that Bethesda Game Studios and Todd Howard are the two franchises that Bethesda Game Studios and Todd Howard are responsible for. And so this morning, uh July 17th, they made some

announcements to kind of reflect that plan. They laid out a road map in a way that I thought was really interesting. So, here's the top line. Big news is they are officially announcing Fallout 5. I don't think they've said anything I I think they've said they're going to work on a new Fallout game like after Elder Scrolls 6, which is their next game, but they haven't officially set called it Fallout 5 as far as I can tell. Um this is their kind of first time mentioning that. They say in their blog post that Fallout 5 is their their kind of long-range destination. Um they also announced remasters for Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, um which had been heavily rumored in the past. I think everybody knew that they were coming, but had not been confirmed until now. No no news on release dates for those two. Um and this is the most interesting, they confirmed my report from last week that they will be collaborating with Obsidian on a Fallout project. Not saying anything about it, just saying, "Hey, we're we're confirming that we're

working with Obsidian on a new Fallout game. We'll share more down the road in the future." Um couple more news nuggets from today's announcement. Um more of Fallout Shelter stuff coming. Um they're doing a new Fallout 76 expansion that is a prequel story to Fallout 3 called Raven Rock. That's coming out next year. Um seems pretty clear that the Fallout 3 remaster is is going to come next year at some point. I think that's safe to say. Um they talk about how they're making right now they're currently making Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 on Creation Engine 3, which is their proprietary technology. Fallout 5 is in pre-production, they're saying. I think they want to hint that uh maybe maybe Fallout that Fallout 5 is in kind of simultaneous development to Elder Scrolls 6, so you won't be waiting until 2040 to play Fallout 5. Um they talk about how ZeniMax Online Studios, which is the studio behind The Elder Scrolls Online, which laid off a lot of staff last week

as part of the massive reorganization that Xbox did. They talk about how they are going to, in addition to supporting Elder Scrolls Online, they are going to partner with Bethesda Game Studios on The Elder Scrolls franchise. In other words, they're going to support the main studio BGS. They're going to be a support studio for Elder Scrolls stuff. Talk about season 3 of Fallout being on the way. Talk a little bit about Starfield updates coming. That's That's kind of the main news. And so I asked Todd Howard, I got a chance to sit down with Todd Howard for about 20 minutes to talk about some of this stuff. He didn't get super specific on a lot. He dodged some questions, not going to lie. But actually it was really interesting cuz he's a fascinating guy and I always enjoy talking to him. So I asked him I got a little the stuff he dodged specifically is about the Obsidian project. He didn't really want to get into how that came about. Um, um, like why why now? Why it just happened? Like I think there's maybe a

story to be told there another time, but Howard didn't want to get into it. He told me that I'm going to read a little bit from from the transcript that I have here. He told me that he is good friends with Obsidian, talks to Feargus Urquhart, their CEO, all the time. When I asked him, I said, "Hey, like have they gone to you in the past to pitch Fallout games?" And he said, "Well, we all talk and hey, this would make sense when the timing is right." And so I said, "Well, what would make What made the timing right right now?" And he said, quote, "That would be spoilerish." Which I thought was pretty funny. He talked a little bit about I asked him like, "Hey, is like Obsidian going to be the lead on this? Kind of like they were with Fallout: New Vegas with like support and supervision from the that this Game Studios? Or is it going to be more of like a collaborative thing? What is that going to look like? He said, "Quote, it's going to be a collaboration, and we're starting that now." And then he said, "I would say the Fallout franchise, all that is managed out of here, and our staff and our

franchise team. So, essentially, Fallout is is still going to be managed at BGS. It's still going to be supervised by BGS. Um TBD how much of kind of the creative vision will be executed by um will be will be laid out by BGS versus Obsidian. I asked him about the engine, which I know a lot of people have been wondering if this new Obsidian Fallout game is going to be on the Bethesda proprietary Creation Engine tool set, or if it's going to be the Unreal Engine, which Obsidian is more accustomed to. An engine, in case you're not familiar, a lot of times people use this kind of video game logo lingo assuming that people know what they're talking about. And a lot of times, people have no idea what an engine means, but they talk about it anyway. Essentially, an engine is kind of the framework of technology and tools that you use to create a game. Um it's it's very important uh on if you're actually working with the the game and the technology and the tools. Um I think from a consumer perspective, little bit less important than people uh than maybe people out there like to make

it seem, enthusiast gamers and YouTubers and the like. Um but still, you can you can there there are aspects of an engine that are visible to the customer. And um when something is on the Creation Engine, I think there are indications of that in the way that they the um certain aspects of the technology work. Um but anyway, he he wouldn't answer that. He said, "We'll talk about that when we talk about the game." Um and yeah, I mean, when I asked him uh about uh like how this all came together, if Obsidian had pitched games in the Fallout franchise before, and if BGS had said no to that. Um and uh no real answer. He said, "We We When I talked to Fergus and other people, what we would make, when having those conversations, now is the right time. Um, I asked him a little bit about why it's been so long since we've gotten a new Fallout game, especially with this hit show. A lot of people have been wondering, why was there a new Fallout, no fall no new Fallout game to coincide with the release of the Amazon show. Um, he talked a little bit about Fallout 76

being enormous and putting a lot of resources into that and um, he talked about uh, he said, "I look at it from what does the franchise look like to the audience? I view TV as one chapter and I view when is a franchise really, really healthy and when can we execute whatever we're doing, whether it's a mobile game or a TV show or remasters, making sure that we execute those at the highest level." He said our focus was 76 and the remasters and Fallout 5 and it's not that we wouldn't want it, it's finding the right pocket timing and everything that goes along with that. Um, couple other uh, tidbits from our interview. I asked him a little bit about the layoffs because BGS actually laid off a few dozen people last week including some long timers, so people who had been with the studio for a very long time. Um, he said, uh, "It's difficult for him, difficult for people who work together. Um, he talked about how it's Bethesda's 40th anniversary and how there have been periods where we've gone through changes. Um, he talks about how like, uh, in in back in the '90s the company

almost went out of business and then it became kind of Zenimax 2.0 and now we're we're we're going through a change so that we focus best on the franchises and what we need to do to deliver for everybody." Um, I talked to him a little bit about what it's been like managing a studio that has expanded from less than 100 people on Skyrim to now hundreds of people across um, multiple locations, offices all around North America, um, for Starfield and now future games. Um, and uh, that was it was interesting hearing his perspective on that. Um, he talked a little bit about how like, um, everybody has their own opinion on like what the right team size is and then how know when he started um, at Bethesda back back in the day there was a team of maybe 10 people on Terminator on a Terminator game. And then when that team doubles going from 10 to 20 that's like holy crap like we just went from 10 to 20 that's unbelievable then it goes to 40, 60, 80, 100 and he talks about how quote there's always a period where everyone has their own opinion that was the right one. He talks about the progression and he talks

about how like when they did expand from just having that Maryland that Rockville Maryland studio to four different studios at Bethesda quote we went through a lot of growing pains I won't sugarcoat it it was tricky we made a lot of mistakes and he talked about how like they have a lot of learning to do a lot of kind of now they're working with a lot of co-development partners and still still much learning to do. I personally find that to be a very interesting conversation the topic of team sizes and that's something I'll definitely address further down the road in future videos and reporting I've written some stuff about that as well. And uh I asked him a little bit about the state of Elder Scrolls 6 he didn't want to talk about the timing he talked about how like as most people know Todd Howard prefers to wait to talk about these games until as close to release as possible but he said like he they felt like this was a good time to just kind of like lay out this road map and finally I asked him about retirement

and he told me quote the truth is there was a period of time a while back where I pondered what does it look like not is it imminent but what does it look like and I no longer do. I see the work work we're doing I just love it I love working with these people it's really not something I think about. And he says some folks in our industry that are a little older than me they're just making great stuff too so it's not something I've been thinking about. So yeah interesting conversation there make sure to check out my story at Bloomberg this morning if you want to see the written version of that interview and this big news. Um so here's a little backstory on why this is such a strange thing that happened. Um in 2013, I did a series of stories about Bethesda um including a story about the turbulent development of what at the time was called Doom 4. Um a story about Arkane uh the developer within Bethesda the studio um being kind of forced to work

on a game uh that would later be called Prey, but at the time was being called Prey 2. Uh a lot of weird backstory there I won't get into, but basically I did a story about this and um uh some people came out and denied it and then I published some emails showing that um that their denial was was a lie. Um and then finally at the end of the year I published a story about Fallout 4. And the context there is that there was this big there was this kind of like fake ARG that someone put up called the Sur- vivor something 2299 or something like that. And um a lot of people fell for it. A lot of people thought it was a real ARG for Fallout. And so my story I debunked that, um but at the same time I said, "Well, look, despite this, Fallout 4 is real. It's set in Boston, and here's a little bit of evidence for that." Now, despite what you might have seen on the internet cuz there's kind of a misconception about this, I did not post in Kotaku at I was at Kotaku at the time. We did not post anything about the story of the game and we did not post any spoilers of the story of the game. We did not leak the script. We did not

do anything other than just kind of share a few cast document or a few a few details um of script pages that were unrelated to story and that that were just kind of like, "Here is evidence that this game is real. It's set in Boston. That's all we're going to share." And what actually happened was I was sent some um script pages from the script of the game including the beginning of the game where you find out spoilers for the first 30 minutes of the but essentially you are put in this cryogenic uh freezing chamber. You are you are jumped forward in time, and your son is kidnapped, and your spouse is killed. And that was all on the script pages that I got in 2013. I deliberately chose not to share those in the Kotaku article because I didn't want to spoil the story for people. So, it's kind of ironic and annoying that there's somehow this I've seen on Reddit all the time people saying, "Ah, Jason Schreier spoiled the script for spoiled the story for Fallout 4." And that actually is not what happened. Um anyway, so between the Fallout story, the Doom story, and the Arkane story, some people at Bethesda,

including their PR boss at the time, made the decision to blacklist me and blacklist Kotaku. And that was 2013. We tried for a very long time to talk to them, to have conversations with them off the record, to try to clear the air, to try to explain why we do what we do, talk through reporting and why it's important to us, yada yada yada. Not so much cuz of like review copies. I didn't really care about that. Maybe other people did. I cared more about getting a chance to talk to people like Todd Howard, which I had gotten to do when Skyrim came out in 2011, and it was really cool. I found him fascinating. I think he's really interesting designer. I know he enjoyed talking to me, etc. etc. Um so, that just kind of lasted for a very long time. When I came to Bloomberg in 2020, the blacklist continued. I some of my colleagues here had some conversations with as Xbox took over Bethesda, which was at the end of 2020 into 2021. Some of my colleagues here were kind enough to have

conversations with them trying to get them to ease off. It was kind of like a very long work in progress about like trying to figure out what that might look like. And then a few years later, the person who actually made the call to blacklist me left. But still, it was a little while before any of that could be solved. And then yesterday, talking to Todd, that was actually the first time that I have talked to anyone at Bethesda in an official on-the-record capacity since before 2013. And so, uh, I really appreciate that. I really appreciate that the people at Bethesda and Xbox and Todd Howard, of course, I really appreciate that they were willing to do that and willing to start, um, the process of just kind of getting getting past that blacklist and moving on cuz I don't really think blacklists are good for anybody and I very much stand by all of that reporting that I did. I don't have any regrets about that. I do have some some regrets about stories I've done at Kotaku and stories I've done over the years just cuz I think anyone who's been doing this

for long enough has some regrets about things they've published or or would have done things a little bit differently. But in this case, I have absolutely no regrets because, uh, as I mentioned, we were very careful about that Fallout stuff, very deliberate to not, um, post spoilers and just I do not think that it was something that, uh, we should have been blacklisted over by any means. Um, so yeah, I I really appreciate the people at Bethesda, the people at Xbox, and Todd, I appreciate that they were willing to do this and I told Todd, and hopefully he agreed, that I would love to sit down with them for a way more in-depth conversation rather than just about the news of the day about game development and about, um, maybe when Elder Scrolls 6 comes out, maybe we can get in-depth on that cuz I I find that stuff really fascinating and I think he's a really interesting and, uh, smart dude. Um, I'm sure many of you have seen him talk over the years. He's always fascinating to to hear talk about game design and game development. So yeah, that's the story. It's, uh, it's a wild one and yeah, I mean, if you see people out there on Reddit being like, "Yeah,

Jason and Kotaku deserved to be blacklisted by Bethesda because they spoiled the story of Fallout 4." Know that it is not true and it is demonstrably not true because you can just pull up that article. I think Kotaku has removed all the images from their articles cuz, uh, our parent company, um, in recent years was a bit of a disaster and uh Jim Spanfeller and crew for some reason decided to pull all of the image images from old articles, so you can't actually see the script pages anymore, but um, but you can see that there's nothing in it about story spoilers. There's nothing in it that's like really spoils any part of the plot at all. We were very judicious about that not to do that. Um, all right. So, uh, Fallout news hit. You'll see it. Make sure you check out my story at Bloomberg and uh, I might actually be back later today for a second video. They call me two video a day Schreier. Hm, little not quite as catchy as one take Schreier. I think I'll stick with that one. All right, see y'all next time.