Todd Howard Visualising Skyrim and Starfield From “the Average Joe’s perspective” Ensured Bethesda’s Success

In just two weeks, Bethesda Game Studios’ space RPG Starfield, which has 1,000 planets, amassed 10 million players. Players were given the keys to a spaceship by Starfield, who instructs them to explore the planets, moons, and star systems of an entire galaxy.

There is a lot for players to do in Starfield, including joining multiple factions, finding romantic partners, building their own ships and settlements almost anywhere in the galaxy, and more. Now, the huge success of this game is actually because of Bethesda boss Todd Howard, whose words were the final at the time of developing the game.

Todd Howard had the final say in making major decisions in Starfield development

Being the director of Bethesda, Todd Howard ought to put his opinions on major decisions. However, here in Bethesda, Howard always had the final say when taking major steps in developing Starfield.

This information was shared by the former lead designer of Skyrim, Bruce Nesmith. In an interview with MinnMax, this is what the ex-Bethesda employee told about the decision-making approach of Howard:

“All decisions run through Todd. He would hate, hate, hate me for saying that because he doesn’t believe it’s true. But unfortunately, it is true. If you want to have anything different other than the Bethesda usual, or something else you want to propose, you somehow have to get the idea in front of him.”

One of the major points of contention even within the team itself was an uncertainty in how much Bethesda wanted to rely on procedural generation to expand the scope of the game.

Nesmith preferred a more traditional approach, focusing on just a dozen handcrafted worlds to tell an immersive story. Conversely, Todd Howard had an idea of “a hundred star systems” for Starfield players to sink their teeth into, and it was becoming apparent that these visions were irreconcilable.

This approach could have backfired

Obviously, it is the developers and the company personnel who are going to make decisions that matter to the game the most. Not only in Starfield, Howard played a major role in shaping Skyrim as well.

Nesmith claims that even after Morrowind, Howard was able to put himself in the shoes of a casual player much more effectively than the majority of the design team and that this capacity to see things from “the Average Joe’s perspective” was crucial to Bethesda’s success.

However, entirely depending upon your own brain without discussing the ifs and buts with the team could have majorly impacted the game. Not only that, paying heed to the fans’ concerns and feedback is one of the most needed approaches any company can implement on its game because it’s the fans who gradually become more emotionally attached and connected to these games and know more than anyone else what exactly is needed for the betterment of those titles.

This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire