How the illusion and myth of Todd Howard as a good game designer came to be - Todd's Bethesda has never been a quality developer

[Delicieuxz]

Todd "an RPG is about going around on horseback and killing things with a sword" Howard literally schmoozed his way into working at Bethesda, solely because he was a fan of their hockey and sportsball games, and since then lucked his way to the top because of what happened to the studio during the 90's. Despite his public image, e.g. "I WAS IN THE CHESS CLUB!" (he was class president, actually), in actuality he's the kind of guy who can count the amount of tabletop RPGs he's ever played with one hand. While all the stoo-pid D&D nerds were working on Elder Scrolls games, the first game he opted to work on was an FPS (Terminator Future Shock), and his later directorial debut (Redguard) was an attempt at a cinematic action-adventure inspired by Tomb Raider, practically speaking the very opposite of a sandbox RPG. Pretty much everything good about the latter game (namely the writing and worldbuilding that helped pave the way to Morrowind) came from Kirkbride, who has since then said that he more or less had to work around Todd or outright bamboozle him to get stuff that he wanted in to make it into the game. Morrowind in particular was almost entirely his brainchild and not Todd's, while the rest of the credit ought to go to Ken Rolston and Douglas Goodall.

Though one could argue that Todd "Morrowind plays best on Xbox" Howard was the key figure behind their booming success that followed, in large part thanks to the deal that he made with Microsoft to port the game to their new shiny console at the time, those people were the ones largely responsible for how the game itself turned out. Despite switching roles from director to producer with Oblivion, it's evident that Todd was far more hands-on with the creative process and actual fundamentals of the game, Rolston for one was against liberal fast travel and yet it made its way into the game and was entirely designed around it despite him being labeled as lead designer, put two and two together.

I could go on, but really all you need to know about Todd "You might want to upgrade your PC" Howard is that he was allegedly good chums with Robert A. Altman, I think that says everything you need to know about the guy.

This is an excellent comment.

 

[gurugeorge]

He's made himself irreplaceable at Bethesda by directing all of their hit games and by being the face of the company for 20 years, and he could've leveraged that to make himself the American Kojima. "Here's my dream game, the game that's never been done before, and here's how I want it made."

We also have this upcoming dumpster fire to look forward to, which good ole Todd has been salivating over for many a year.

I'll reserve judgement because I don't know how you can possibly fuck this up. Even just copying nu-Tomb Raider should be enough to make it the best Bethesda product since Dishonored 2.

You answered your own question, Indiana Jones is so influential and has spawn so many copycats in the gaming industry that it is not clear to me how you can make an Indiana Jones game that isn't a shit version of Uncharted.

Eh, at best it'll be Tomb Raider without the tits.

 

[Jaesun]

I'll reserve judgement because I don't know how you can possibly fuck this up. Even just copying nu-Tomb Raider should be enough to make it the best Bethesda product since Dishonored 2.

Holy shit dude it's Bethesda. You know, the team who did the critically acclaimed and ground breaking Starfield.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Honestly, all they have to do to enjoy massive success is another Skyrim, but with at least a little better combat, competent writing, and better dungeons.

Lol they don't need any of these things. The mainstream audience can't tell what's good, and Bethesda fans don't care about these. They just needed to maintain a very low standard of quality and they couldn't even do that.

It's astounding that Starfield (and Fallout 76) was so bad that even the mainstream turned against them. There is a decent argument that The Outer Worlds is much better than Starfield.

Now Bethesda is in the doghouse with BioWare, two aging former RPG heavyweights that have been thoroughly ship of theseus-ed and is now just a zombie for their corporate overlords.

We are at the point that video games became so mainstream that a big demographic of people new to video games does not exist anymore. Substantially the taste of an average player, even casual has improved. You can't impress someone with a poor open world game if that person have already played a few open world games before.

 

[Hell Swarm]

We are at the point that video games became so mainstream that a big demographic of people new to video games does not exist anymore. Substantially the taste of an average player, even casual has improved. You can't impress someone with a poor open world game if that person have already played a few open world games before.

Didn't Elden Ring do exactly this? It's a poor open world game by any standard. The legacy dungeons are decent but as an open world game it's surpassed by Dying light and even Dead island.

 

[destinae vomitus]

I go straight to that cave under the Ebonheart castle and grab the Lord's Mail from that thieving Imperial deserter.

Did you ever ponder why he's just squatting in the castle's hidden escape route, right below the headquarters of the people he's supposed to be bailing and where he stole his shiny armor from?

 

[NecroLord]

I go straight to that cave under the Ebonheart castle and grab the Lord's Mail from that thieving Imperial deserter.

Did you ever ponder why he's just squatting in the castle's hidden escape route, right below the headquarters of the people he's supposed to be bailing and where he stole his shiny armor from?

It's Morrowind, brah.
It doesn't have to make sense.
He was probably planning his next move.
In Daggerfall the lore said that the Lord's Mail tends to pick its champion on a whim and does not stay in one's possession for a long time. The dude probably got lucky or something...

 

[Tyranicon]

We are at the point that video games became so mainstream that a big demographic of people new to video games does not exist anymore. Substantially the taste of an average player, even casual has improved. You can't impress someone with a poor open world game if that person have already played a few open world games before.

Like I said earlier, I agree that the average gamer has improved taste, but not in any way that substantially matters to these large game companies producing slop.

Has anything in the last few years indicated that quality (especially something as lol as better writing, combat and dungeons) matters?

They'll slap some survival crafting elements and even more color-coded gear into the game and call it a day.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

We are at the point that video games became so mainstream that a big demographic of people new to video games does not exist anymore. Substantially the taste of an average player, even casual has improved. You can't impress someone with a poor open world game if that person have already played a few open world games before.

Like I said earlier, I agree that the average gamer has improved taste, but not in any way that substantially matters to these large game companies producing slop.

Has anything in the last few years indicated that quality (especially something as lol as better writing, combat and dungeons) matters?

They'll slap some survival crafting elements and even more color-coded gear into the game and call it a day.

I see that with every year even more people recognize AAA games for what they are. It's true that mainstream games just need to be a a little better than they are for the mainstream audience to be content again,but I feel that there is a general trend towards people having higher expectations.

 

[Delicieuxz]

Something I should've included in the OP is that the undue success of Todd's Bethesda's TES is certainly also a product of their soundtracks. If they didn't have unique and gorgeous soundtracks, people would've cared about them far less.

 

[NecroLord]

Something I should've included in the OP is that the undue success of Todd's Bethesda's TES is certainly also a product of their soundtracks. If they didn't have unique and gorgeous soundtracks, people would've cared about them far less.

Daggerfall has one of the best soundtracks in the series.
I'm rather torn choosing between who's got the better soundtrack - Daggerfall or Morrowind...

 

[ind33d]

Todd's a dude bro when it comes to games. He doesn't see them as anything that should be taken seriously and is just dumb fun. He'd have been fine making games in other companies, but he has TES and Fallout of all settings to inflict his mentality on.

Worse than that, he clearly doesn't have a strong vision. He's made himself irreplaceable at Bethesda by directing all of their hit games and by being the face of the company for 20 years, and he could've leveraged that to make himself the American Kojima. "Here's my dream game, the game that's never been done before, and here's how I want it made." Apparently his dream game was Starfield, and it's a clusterfuck of bad ideas rehashed from other games that don't fit together, and even his core audience thought it was trash. The only reason his earlier games succeeded was by riding the talents of better writers and designers. At his best, he's a net zero contribution to a project.

I like MGS, but Kojima is a clown compared to Todd. MGSV is at best 75% of a game and Death Stranding is a demo stapled to creepy social engineering. Even Starfield and FO4 are fun if you turn your brain off

 

[Late Bloomer]

FO4 are fun if you turn your brain off

How dare you...

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Hey, OP, I got a mind blowing idea for you: Pre-Todd Bethesda also sucked. Fact is, Bethesda was never good.

They started with the idea that they will combine the perspective and interactivity of Ultima Underworld with the open world and interactivity of Ultima 7: The Black Gate. Not a bad idea, but the result was Arena, which had neither UUW's brilliant cerebral gameplay and systems nor U7's living world with the NPC schedules and such. It was a bland RPG, the Oblivion of its time. Then they jacked the size and scale a thousand times with the largely procedurally generated Daggerfall, but other than the scale, everything else was just as bland and boring. Morrowind was their best game, but it was also, guess what, bland and boring, a giant world filled with copy-pasta dungeons and points of interest and wikipedia style NPCs, and some of the worst combat in the history of the genre.

Bethesda was never any good except as easy to get into open world games for casuals.

Play good open world games instead: Gothic 1/2, Risen, ELEX, Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Fallout: New Vegas, Days Gone, Witcher 3.

 

[NecroLord]

Todd's a dude bro when it comes to games. He doesn't see them as anything that should be taken seriously and is just dumb fun. He'd have been fine making games in other companies, but he has TES and Fallout of all settings to inflict his mentality on.

Worse than that, he clearly doesn't have a strong vision. He's made himself irreplaceable at Bethesda by directing all of their hit games and by being the face of the company for 20 years, and he could've leveraged that to make himself the American Kojima. "Here's my dream game, the game that's never been done before, and here's how I want it made." Apparently his dream game was Starfield, and it's a clusterfuck of bad ideas rehashed from other games that don't fit together, and even his core audience thought it was trash. The only reason his earlier games succeeded was by riding the talents of better writers and designers. At his best, he's a net zero contribution to a project.

I like MGS, but Kojima is a clown compared to Todd. MGSV is at best 75% of a game and Death Stranding is a demo stapled to creepy social engineering. Even Starfield and FO4 are fun if you turn your brain off

Kojima seems to get really high off his own farts.
By comparison, Todd seems to have fully embraced the Meme...

 

[Cologno]

Todd's a dude bro when it comes to games. He doesn't see them as anything that should be taken seriously and is just dumb fun. He'd have been fine making games in other companies, but he has TES and Fallout of all settings to inflict his mentality on.

Worse than that, he clearly doesn't have a strong vision. He's made himself irreplaceable at Bethesda by directing all of their hit games and by being the face of the company for 20 years, and he could've leveraged that to make himself the American Kojima. "Here's my dream game, the game that's never been done before, and here's how I want it made." Apparently his dream game was Starfield, and it's a clusterfuck of bad ideas rehashed from other games that don't fit together, and even his core audience thought it was trash. The only reason his earlier games succeeded was by riding the talents of better writers and designers. At his best, he's a net zero contribution to a project.

I like MGS, but Kojima is a clown compared to Todd. MGSV is at best 75% of a game and Death Stranding is a demo stapled to creepy social engineering. Even Starfield and FO4 are fun if you turn your brain off

Like what? Not even giving you grief, just legit curious what you enjoyed in those two. Myself, I liked Bethesda games up until Skyrim (including Oblivion, after modding out the scaling system, then Skyrim i just bored after 15 hours).

 

[Butter]

FO4 could be sorta fun if you mod it into a hardcore survival game. I refuse to believe anyone has fun playing Starfield.

 

[Cologno]

Now there is an exception there. There's some decent survival mod out there, and I thought it was decent that way. But vanilla game, nah.

 

[janior]

I like Todd, Todd's great guy.

 

[ADL]

The author of the post criticizes Bethesda, particularly under Todd Howard's leadership, arguing that the studio's recent work is no different from its past efforts. They believe that Howard's Bethesda has never made a good game aside from Morrowind, which they attribute to influences from the pre-Howard era. The post also criticizes Bethesda's writer, Emil Pagliarulo, calling him one of the worst writers in the games industry.

The author asserts that Bethesda games were popular in spite of Todd Howard, not because of him, and that Howard's design philosophy of simplifying and dumbing down games has harmed the franchise. They argue that Todd Howard is not talented or smart but has received undue praise and hype, leading to an inflated sense of his abilities. They also criticize Pete Hines, another Bethesda figure, as lacking intelligence.

The post claims that TES's success is due to its rich concept, which was not created by Todd's Bethesda but by earlier developers. It suggests that Todd Howard's management decisions have turned Bethesda into a low-quality studio, and that the praise and hype surrounding Howard and Bethesda are undeserved.

The author believes that Bethesda's quality and fortune would improve if Microsoft let go of Emil Pagliarulo, whom they criticize as a terrible writer with a negative impact on the games he works on. They also suggest that Todd Howard, the studio's leader, should possibly be let go as well, as they feel he hasn't earned his positive reputation and has contributed to a decline in Bethesda's games by simplifying and stripping away elements from them. They advocate for forming a new Bethesda development team focused on positive creativity, talent, and skill, with someone capable of recognizing those qualities leading the studio's reformation. The author criticizes Pagliarulo's writing in Fallout 3 as emblematic of his overall work, describing it as harebrained and nonsensical, and suggests that Bethesda's games have received a pass on their development quality due to low expectations set by such writing.

I believe this is the definition of preaching to the choir.

 

[Sinder Velvin]

No he didn't, but he finished it after Douglass Goodall left

No, Goodall left when work was about to start on Tribunal.

According to Mark Nelson:

We were about to start on Tribunal, and everybody was pretty fried. We had really been working crazy hours, and no one knew if the game was going to be a success. We just had no idea. This whole RPG-on-a-console thing was a stupid idea, right? Everybody thought that was gonna be dumb — except Todd, who was right. And it was like five o’clock on a Tuesday night or something when we were starting this design meeting to figure out Tribunal. At that point, it was Ken, it was me, and it was Doug Goodall. I don’t think anyone else was there for design at that point. But it just became this really contentious meeting with Doug and Ken.

Ken wanted to do some stuff, and Ken is perverse. He will throw out just ridiculous ideas for stuff, and he knows they’re bad ideas, but it gets you talking. He wanted to have like weird Amazons who are stealing your shit, and it was all horrible. At the same time, Doug was this lore purist, and he knew the lore backwards and forwards, and he’s like: “That doesn’t make sense.” They’re getting into this argument, and by the end of it Ken had left. Doug had stormed out of the room; he took his ID card and a note and left it on Todd’s desk, saying, “I quit.” And I went home and was like, “What all just went on in this meeting?”

I had a dentist appointment or something the next day, and so I was gonna be an hour late, and I get into the office and everyone’s running around going: “Todd’s looking for you! Todd’s looking for you!” Todd had come into his office, and Doug had quit, apparently. Ken wasn’t there — although it turned out that was planned. And I wasn’t there. So there’s no design department anymore.

Todd’s going, “What the fuck happened in this design meeting? I have no design department.” And, as it turned out, Doug quit and stayed quit.

He was just like, “You know what? This isn’t good for my health. I’m getting too stressed.”

It got weird sometimes.

Source.

 

[The Wall]

Todd Howard is a Jew btw and was high school class president. I don't know a single class president who wasn't narcissist charismatic jerk. Who cared only about two things: looking cool & being loved. Charisma is form of intelligence, and while most powerful in context of Human societal hierarchies, it demands other forms of intelligences to exist so it can sit on top of them. Those intelligences would be: creativity, engineering, management etc. Once Todd remained as only "intelligent" guy in Bethesda, and WOKE virus castrated or drove off others, he became Captain of Ship with retarded crew. Shipwreck known as Starfield was mathematical certainty

Our boy Todd ran out of luck and got fucked. Once upon a time, in high school I wanted to be him and make Oblivions with Morrowind gameplay. I grew up and see him now as False Saint

 

[NotSweeper]

Play good open world games instead:

Witcher 3.

 

[luj1]

No he didn't, but he finished it after Douglass Goodall left

No, Goodall left when work was about to start on Tribunal.

According to Mark Nelson:

We were about to start on Tribunal, and everybody was pretty fried. We had really been working crazy hours, and no one knew if the game was going to be a success. We just had no idea. This whole RPG-on-a-console thing was a stupid idea, right? Everybody thought that was gonna be dumb — except Todd, who was right. And it was like five o’clock on a Tuesday night or something when we were starting this design meeting to figure out Tribunal. At that point, it was Ken, it was me, and it was Doug Goodall. I don’t think anyone else was there for design at that point. But it just became this really contentious meeting with Doug and Ken.

Ken wanted to do some stuff, and Ken is perverse. He will throw out just ridiculous ideas for stuff, and he knows they’re bad ideas, but it gets you talking. He wanted to have like weird Amazons who are stealing your shit, and it was all horrible. At the same time, Doug was this lore purist, and he knew the lore backwards and forwards, and he’s like: “That doesn’t make sense.” They’re getting into this argument, and by the end of it Ken had left. Doug had stormed out of the room; he took his ID card and a note and left it on Todd’s desk, saying, “I quit.” And I went home and was like, “What all just went on in this meeting?”

I had a dentist appointment or something the next day, and so I was gonna be an hour late, and I get into the office and everyone’s running around going: “Todd’s looking for you! Todd’s looking for you!” Todd had come into his office, and Doug had quit, apparently. Ken wasn’t there — although it turned out that was planned. And I wasn’t there. So there’s no design department anymore.

Todd’s going, “What the fuck happened in this design meeting? I have no design department.” And, as it turned out, Doug quit and stayed quit.

He was just like, “You know what? This isn’t good for my health. I’m getting too stressed.”

It got weird sometimes.

Source.

Todd didn't come up with the Imperial Cult

 

[luj1]

. I don't know a single class president who wasn't narcissist charismatic jerk.

only immature people fall for narcissoid type of charisma