Icons of the games industry: Todd Howard - the man behind The Elder Scrolls, Fallout and Starfield

PC Games

14.2.2022

Translation: machine translated

Todd Howard of Bethesda Game Studios is one of the most internationally renowned game developers. In this report, we trace his story: From his beginnings as co-designer of Terminator: Future Shock, to his numerous project lead roles on hit series like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, to future games like the highly anticipated Starfield.

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Todd Howard, born in 1971, grew up in Lower Macungie Township, a community of 30,000 in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Even as a child, he was fascinated not only by mathematics, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and D&D board games, but also by everything to do with PCs - especially computer games. One title that has taken his fancy right from the start is the role-playing game Wizardry by Sir-Tech, released in September 1981. But also Ultima 3: Exodus from the pen of Richard Garriott and his team at Origin Systems, released on August 23, 1983, won't let him go. Especially the exploration of the huge fantasy world and the conversations with NPCs always give him a fascinating feeling of freedom. Not least because of these two classics, Howard decided at a young age to develop games himself one day.

He organizes the computer he needs for this with his one-year older brother - who later becomes Director of Creative Affairs at Disney and co-produces the animated film Bambi 2 - thanks to an irresistible offer. "I remember when my brother and I really wanted an Apple computer, so we made a crazy promise to our parents to clean the house every day," says Todd Howard in a 2006 interview with local newspaper The Morning Call.

Meanwhile, the two taught themselves their first programming skills with the help of books they had bought themselves and the support of friends. To further his dream job, Howard graduated from high school at the age of 18 and transferred to the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, about 550 kilometers south in the US state of Virginia. Howard is a dedicated economics student, but can't resist spending every free minute in the college's computer lab playing a brand-new product from his favorite developer, Origin Systems: the space-baller Wing Commander (1990). When Howard isn't attending lectures, pulverizing Kilrathi ships or honing his coding skills, he's busy tinkering with his own little PC games.

Todd Howard: A man with clear goals and big ambitions

He also regularly visits his parents on important holidays. This was also the case during the Christmas break in his senior year at college. What was special then: Before heading back to college, he notices something interesting while looking at the box of Wayne Gretzky Hockey - a Bethesda ice hockey game released in 1988 that he loves to play. Bethesda's corporate headquarters is practically on his route to college! Howard doesn't think twice, seizes the opportunity and pays the company a visit on his own.

Once there, he immediately introduces himself with great motivation, raves about his enthusiasm for Bethesda games and bluntly asks if he could be hired as a developer. The people at Bethesda like his enthusiasm, but kindly turn him down and ask him not to try again until he has his degree in the bag. No sooner said than done! No sooner had he finished college than Howard approached Bethesda again - and once again received a rejection. Reason: There are currently no positions available.

However, the freshly graduated business specialist is not discouraged by this. On the contrary: shortly thereafter, he organizes a job at a small software company in Yorktown, Virginia, near his former university. There he develops small games and takes every opportunity to visit industry-relevant trade shows, first and foremost the CES in Las Vegas. Typical Howard: Because his favorite game company is also there at the time, he visits the Bethesda booth and once again proposes himself as a new employee. This same persistence ultimately paid off and landed the then 24-year-old a producer position at Bethesda Softworks in Rockville, Maryland, in 1994.

From sci-fi shooter producer to Elder Scrolls expert

With the employment contract in his pocket, he got right down to business. Under the direction of project manager Kaare Siesing, Howard was given the opportunity to drive forward the development of Terminator: Future Shock as a producer and supporting designer. The first-person shooter uses a new 3D engine developed by Bethesda called XnGine and scores points at the release in August 1995 with very detailed 3D environments, a high degree of freedom in exploring the world and the possibility to look around freely at any time using the mouse - even before id Software's Quake makes this type of control acceptable a year later. Future Shock turns out to be a surprisingly entertaining licensed game and even leads to a sequel, in which Howard once again participates as producer and designer. The most important innovation in The Terminator: SkyNET: In addition to a new, seven-mission campaign, a Versus multiplayer mode is on board, which can be played either by eight on a LAN or by two over the Internet.

Two months before The Terminator: Skynet is released in November 1996, Bethesda also releases The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall - a monstrous role-playing game that boasts a whopping 209,331 square kilometers of open world, 15,000 towns and 750,000 inhabitants thanks to procedurally generated content. Together with Kurt Kuhlmann, Howard again assists the core design team of Julian Lefay, Bruce Nesmith and Ted Peterson, gaining further valuable experience in designing open game worlds. In retrospect, Daggerfall is a highly ambitious work, but one that left the trade press with mixed feelings: While the depth of the game, the size of the world, and the possibilities that come with it receive a lot of approval, the title also has to put up with a fair amount of criticism due to its numerous bugs and logic errors, as well as partially outdated technology. Nevertheless, Daggerfall turned out to be a sales hit in the fall of 1996, and the creators managed to get rid of the roughest quirks with more than half a dozen patches after the release.

To build on this success, Bethesda tackles three new The Elder Scrolls projects after Daggerfall. While the trio of designers consisting of Julian Lefay, Daniel Greenberg and Richard Guy will take care of the first-person action role-playing game An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire, Howard will hand over project coordination for the action adventure The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, inspired by Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider and Ultima, among others. The twist here: Instead of assembling a hero before the game starts, as is typical for the series, you take on the role of mercenary Cyrus, who does everything he can to find his missing sister Iszara on the island of Stros M'Kai.

However, neither Battlespire, which is released on December 2, 1997, nor the essentially well-made Redguard, which sees the light of day on November 14, 1998, can even begin to follow in Daggerfall's footsteps commercially. This is quite a disaster for Bethesda, as the flops gradually make themselves felt financially. To make matters worse, the space game The 10th Planet, which has been in development since 1994, has not made the necessary progress and has to be discontinued due to this. The consequence: Bethesda's parent company Media Technology Limited is bought by ZeniMax Media in July 1999, creating new liquidity.

Morrowind: Howard's breakthrough

Bethesda's entire hopes rest on The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind from this point on. And on Todd Howard, because he is given the central position of game director. Howard feels honored and sets a new course in several respects. The outdated XnGine is mothballed and replaced by NetImmerse - a cross-platform 3D engine written entirely in C++ with full support for the important Direct3D graphics interface.

At the same time, the decision is made to make the game world significantly smaller than in Daggerfall and - similar to Redguard - to rely more on hand-created content again. In order to simplify and accelerate this process, the team size is tripled and the development of The Elder Scrolls Construction Set is the main focus in the initial phase. This refers to an extremely versatile and flexible editor, which Howard himself likes to call a "role-playing operating system" and which allows his developers to work specifically on very specific areas of the game.

Howard first highlights another strength of the Construction Set in an official press release in June 2000: "The ES3 Construction Set allows users to create, modify and edit data for Morrowind. From creating landscapes, towns and dungeons to writing dialogue as well as creating characters, weapons, races, magic and more - it can do it all. Users can create their own adventure and other players will be able to download it directly into their game."

Morrowind is Bethesda's biggest undertaking to date and continues to push the team to its limits - for better or worse. "Morrowind was a very complicated crunch," Howard recalled to U.S. gaming magazine Polygon in 2019. "The team was under immense external pressure to finish the game, and I felt a huge drop in team morale. Normally you can tell when people are doing their best work - they're focused and enjoying it. But the team was just burned out and not exposed to a healthy work environment at times." In particular, the fact that Morrowind could be delayed and then not appear at all is a palpable concern for many employees.

When Howard realizes the seriousness of the situation, he first sends an e-mail to his employees. In it, he asks each individual what he or she should be remembered for. He then calls a large team meeting in a nearby hotel and has the answers to his e-mail question printed on individual business cards. Many Bethesda employees initially believe that they will soon be facing termination. But the opposite is the case. Howard gives a very emotional speech in which he expresses great understanding for the current situation and motivates everyone present not to throw in the towel half a year before release. "If you're still on board, grab your new business card and come back tomorrow," are Howard's forceful words. His address is honest and direct - and achieves the desired effect. A huge emotional burden suddenly falls from the shoulders of many employees, motivation returns, and Morrowind is actually completed within the next six months.

However, the real liberation comes when the launch of the Windows version on May 1, 2002, also on the basis of magazine reviews, it becomes clear that all the sacrifice was worth it. Although the final game still has various teething troubles, thanks to an exciting story, complex scenario, impressive gameplay freedom, flexible ability system and a presentation that was groundbreaking in the genre at the time, it nevertheless collects heaps of top ratings and even numerous "Game of the Year" awards. In addition, thanks to a continuously growing modding community, Morrowind doesn't get boring even after you've completed the 100+ hours of main and side missions.

Oblivion: Better quests, smarter AI

While Morrowind soon breaks one sales record after another and goes through the roof on Microsoft's first Xbox console from June 6, 2002, Howard is already throwing himself into his next big project - but this time in the role of executive producer. The game director position, on the other hand, is held by his longtime colleague Ken Rolston. Their common goal for The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion is to tell an even more intense story with even better quests. At the same time, characters are to appear much more believable than before.

All of this is to be achieved with new developer tools for procedural generation of content and a greatly improved engine that, among other things, allows for significantly better lighting, masters more believable physics effects and greatly improves artificial intelligence. The latter system goes by the name of "Radiant AI", is being created internally at Bethesda and allows non-player characters to make decisions in order to achieve goals set by the developers. For example, such a goal might be to dine at a certain place at a certain time or to accumulate a certain amount of money. Exactly how an NPC then achieves their goal depends on a variety of factors, and the bottom line is that the world of Oblivion feels very dynamic and alive.

A whole four years have gone by, within which an almost 41 square kilometer large game world has matured, which the team has filled with over 200 quests. In addition, there is an impressive soundtrack with 26 pieces of music and a very elaborate soundtrack, for which Howard and Co. have enlisted Hollywood celebrities such as Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean, Terence Stamp and Lynda Carter. On March 20, 2006, the time has come: The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion is released simultaneously for PC and Xbox 360 and - fueled by countless dream ratings in the media - conquers the hearts of role-playing game lovers worldwide in no time at all. In the first ten months alone, Bethesda sells over three million copies. Over the course of its life cycle, that figure even exceeds 9.5 million.

Fallout 3: Howard's first end-time epic

Bethesda and Todd Howard - at the latest since Morrowind and Oblivion, an entire gaming generation has associated these names with top-class role-playing fare. Bethesda is aware of this good reputation and is already trying to position itself even more broadly in this market segment during the development of Oblivion. The means to this end is a deal with Interplay Productions, which makes headlines in July 2004. At this time, it becomes known that Bethesda has acquired the license to realize part three of the legendary role-playing game series Fallout. Preparatory development work begins early on. However, the team coordinated by Todd Howard does not really step on the gas until after the completion of Oblivion.

The plan of the role-playing professionals from Rockville: Instead of continuing the cult series with another 2D role-playing game from the iso-perspective, a paradigm shift towards 3D graphics and real-time combat is to take place. They also want to go much broader than before with a simultaneous release on PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

The focus on a strong story, a huge open world and non-linear gameplay will be maintained and flanked by black humor and a rough pace typical for the series. And that's exactly how it turns out: Based on the Gamebryo engine also used in Oblivion, Howard's team is working on their own vision of the apocalypse with full vigor. The scenario of Fallout 3 is the so-called Capital Wasteland, consisting of the ruins of Washington D.C. as well as the northern and western surroundings. What many people don't know: Initially, Howard even wanted to recreate the entire U.S. government capital, but he had to scrap this plan and limit himself to about half of it, because the development would have otherwise blown up any time frame.

Fallout 3, which presents many beloved elements of the predecessors in a contemporary guise (including the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system, the Pip-Boy, the bunkers called Vault and the 1950s serving as a design template), hits like a Fatman nuclear warhead at launch in October 2008. Buoyed by a Metacritic score of 91 out of 100 for the PC version and 4.7 million units shipped, Bethesda turns over $300 million by early November 2008 alone. Seven years and five DLC expansions later, the Americans can even report 12.4 million units sold.

Skyrim: The fifth Elder Scrolls surpasses everything

Fallout 3 is considered a milestone in the role-playing game genre. Todd Howard's biggest success to date, however, is yet to come: Skyrim. The fifth part of The Elder Scrolls series, which was launched in 1994 with Arena, will go into full production at the end of 2008 with a team of almost 100 developers after a lengthy planning phase. The technical framework this time is the so-called Creation Engine - a new engine that builds on the Gamebryo technology from Fallout 3, but greatly enhances it. Better visibility, fancier flora and fauna, new weather effects, smoother character animations, more NPC interactions - the range of innovations is long.

Even in the past, Howard put a lot of emphasis on reshuffling the deck with each installment of the series. In the case of Skyrim, this happens on several levels. The game world, for example, is now set in the northern region of Tamriel of the same name, and its geographic location is peppered with mountain ranges that present players with completely new navigation challenges. In order to make the world particularly varied and worth discovering, Bethesda also designs nine individual regions with a total of over 300 different points of interest, invests even more time in the development of the background story and thematically trims the whole thing towards a rough fantasy world with a strong Viking influence.

Dungeons and cave systems are also to play a more important role, which is why Howard is expanding the dungeon design team to a total of eight people, who will then design 150 different "dungeons". For comparison: In Oblivion, only one person was responsible for this job. In addition, they come up with no less than 244 quests, noticeably expand the combat system, and teach the "Radiant AI" new tricks. Since Skyrim is also supposed to set new standards acoustically, Bethesda enlists more than 70 voice actors (including Max von Sydow, Christopher Plummer and Joan Allen) to speak more than 60,000 lines of dialogue. Initially, the dragons are only vaguely outlined in a one-page design document. However, because they immediately fit in well with the overall concept, the feature is expanded further and further - later even with its own dragon language.

The mammoth project Skyrim devours costs of over 100 million dollars and is - after five years of development - finally completed on 11.11.2011 (Howard's dream date!). The expectations of the community are gigantic and are even exceeded by Bethesda in some points. Especially with regard to the incredibly detailed open world and the possibilities to develop your own hero in any direction. Apart from a few exceptions, critics worldwide have given it top marks and more than 250 "Game of the Year" awards. Combined with enthusiastic online user reviews, it quickly becomes clear why The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim conquers the top positions of many sales charts shortly thereafter.

Unlike many competing games of the time, however, Skyrim turns out to be a chart-topper in the years that follow. The main reason for this: Howard's team of developers continuously ironed out remaining bugs, added new features (such as Kinect support, another difficulty level, etc.), added three expansions by the end of 2012, and never tired of pulling one new edition after another out of the hat. Whether it's the Special Edition from 2016, the Switch implementation from 2017 that many didn't think possible, the interesting VR adaptation for Playstation VR and PC, and the Anniversary Edition released in November 2021 - Skyrim, which has now sold well over 30 million copies, simply can't be killed. "If you want us to stop releasing Skyrim ports, stop buying them," Howard joked in a 2018 talk at the Gamelab conference in Barcelona.

Fallout 4: Return to the East Coast

After completing Skyrim and its DLCs and updates, Howard doesn't hesitate long to put his next vision into action. In doing so, he is once again following a motto that has served him well for years and which he sums up once again in an interview with Gamasutra in 2016 as follows: "Build a world that arouses the curiosity of the player. A world that rewards curiosity and exploration in every way possible." In the case of Fallout 4, that world is set in and around the U.S. metropolis of Boston, some 25.23 square miles in size, and the setting for an 80+ hour odyssey of a resident or inhabitant of Vault 111 who sets out to rescue his or her kidnapped son. As with Skyrim, Howard also relies on the Creation Engine for Fallout 4 - once again expanded in many ways and now able, among other things, to grant players access to an extensive crafting system. This in turn allows not only the modification of the 50 weapons, but also the construction of own settlements for the first time. Another highlight: Mods that are compatible with the PC version will also work on the console.

Fallout 4 takes four years to develop, is shown by Howard for the first time at E3 2015, and is released on November 10 of the same year - again accompanied by a multitude of top ratings. The testers praised the dense atmosphere, the motivating main quest, the humor typical for the series, the improved combat system compared to Fallout 3, the game world overflowing with funny ideas, the companion system, and the excellent background music and voice output.

Nevertheless, Fallout 4 does not manage to break through the magic mark of 90 points on Metacritic like Fallout 3 once did. Apart from the unfortunately often not very clever companion AI and too many game time-consuming 08/15 quests, technical inconsistencies like annoying loading pauses when entering or leaving indoor areas, frame rate drops, clipping errors, mud textures and a few other things are the main problems at the start. Nevertheless, the game is a lot of fun and sells brilliantly, especially in the initial phase. On Steam alone, 1.2 million players picked up the game in the first 24 hours.

But Howard also has reason to be happy: As in 2012 for Skyrim, he is also honored with the award for Best Game Director for Fallout 4 at the DICE Awards in 2016. A year later, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences also inducts him into its Hall of Fame as the 22nd member. "Both The Elder Scrolls and Fallout are known for their experimental approach to world-building and storytelling. The size of these open worlds, the variety of quest lines, and the nearly endless choice of characters have ensured that no two players have the same experience," reads the letter of appreciation from the Academy, which in previous years has honored Sid Meier, Will Wright, Gabe Newell, and other industry icons.

The Fallout 76 debacle

Actually, Howard could have already retired at this point. But the then 47-year-old doesn't even think about it, especially since he has long been involved in new projects, first and foremost Fallout 76. The first multiplayer game from Bethesda Game Studios is unveiled on May 30, 2018, with a teaser trailer. Within a very short time, a huge hype is created around a game, which Howard then presents in detail at E3 2018. And admittedly, the prequel to all previous Fallout titles sounds fantastic.

A world four times the size of Fallout 4, set in apocalyptic West Virginia, divided into six regions, each with its own unique style, heaps of brand-new creatures, catchy country music background (keyword: "Take Me Home, Country Roads") and all of this powered by a heavily modified Creation Engine, which, among other things, can depict weather phenomena even over gigantic distances - at first glance, Fallout 76 promises huge potential and arouses incredible curiosity. So curious, in fact, that even the US state of West Virgina recorded a gigantic increase in tourist numbers shortly thereafter.

However, when the game is released on November 14, 2018, Bethesda has to take one rating hit after another. No wonder, because the range of problems is huge and extends from boring, partly unfinished quests and missing human NPCs to massive performance and AI problems to nasty complete crashes. Almost a quarter of a century into his career at Bethesda, Todd Howard, executive producer at the time, is experiencing a disaster that is on the verge of seriously damaging the image of the Fallout brand. These worries are reinforced by the fact that the mood in the community is rapidly deteriorating.

Fortunately, Bethesda quickly takes this criticism to heart and tries to fix the worst blunders with various software patches. In addition, the Fallout Classic Collection on PC will be made available to all players for free shortly before Christmas 2018 as compensation. Howard also states that it was a mistake not to have collected further feedback in a beta test before release. At the same time, he promises the community continued support. Because a lot of criticism refers to individual gameplay elements, it was also decided internally to tackle a gigantic all-round update.

The latter is called Wastelanders, will be released on April 14, 2020, and indeed manages to fix many gameplay problems, or at least greatly mitigate them. Meanwhile, the fallen Icarus is slowly becoming a phoenix, slowly rising from the ashes and henceforth turning into a very entertaining online game thanks to more and more updates. "We let people down and were able to learn and get better as a result," Howard openly admits during an Ask Me Anything event on Reddit in November 2021. "Three years later, we're fortunate that Fallout 76 is one of our most played titles. And in turn, we owe that to the eleven million players who have made it an incredible community. In the end, it's made us much better developers."

Future prospects: Starfield, TES 6 and Indiana Jones

And what does Howard have planned for the future? Quite a few! At the top of his agenda is Starfield, the action role-playing game first announced in 2018, for which he is largely responsible as game director. Starfield uses Creation Engine 2, is scheduled for release on Nov. 11, 2022 (exactly eleven years after Skyrim) for Windows PCs and Xbox Series X/S, and is so far vaguely outlined by Howard as "Skyrim in space." Istvan Pely, lead artist on Starfield, meanwhile, describes it as "NASA Punk," alluding to the fact that many technologies in the game can be traced back to NASA tech.

Bethesda has also leaked some details about the story. Accordingly, it takes place in a small solar system 50 light-years away from Earth and sketches a world in which a fragile peace between the two largest, once hostile spacefaring nations prevails. As a newcomer to the Constellation space agency, your mission in 2330 is to explore the so-called "Settled Systems," uncover their secrets, and contend with a variety of factions, including the Ecliptic mercenaries, the Crimson Fleet pirates, the savage Spacers, and the religious fanatics of House Va'ruun. Sounds promising? Definitely! In order to get a better idea of the project, Captain Howard and his crew have to show actual gameplay first, though.

The same goes for The Elder Scrolls 6. Also announced in 2018 with a short teaser trailer, the next part of the fantasy saga will only be released after the completion of Starfield, according to Howard. Realistically, we can't expect a release before the end of 2023 or 2024. Nevertheless, Howard would like to keep the waiting time between gameplay reveal and release short in the best case scenario. "I like it when you don't really get to see a game until it comes out a short time later," Howard said in 2020 in an interview with US portal IGN.

That leaves Howard's third baby: an as-yet-unnamed Indiana Jones game currently being developed by Wolfenstein makers MachineGames in Sweden. Howard serves as executive producer there and already announced in November 2021 that Indy fans can look forward to a completely new story that he has designed together with MachineGames. When exactly the legendary treasure hunter will embark on his next journey, however, he left open as well as concrete details about gameplay and story.

"Great games are played, not made: With this motto, which ultimately aims at the fact that a developer has to play and refine his own game again and again, Todd Howard has made Bethesda one of the most respected role-playing game studios in the world.

But how do you actually see it? After the bumpy start of Fallout 76, are Bethesda Game Studios' best days already behind them? Which of Howard's games have you been most excited about? And which of his three new projects are you most excited about? We look forward to your feedback in the comments.

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