Uncanny Todd Howard role-player promotes Oblivion in Final Fantasy 14

By Austin Wood
published

At least it wasn't Skyrim?

An image illustration of Bethesda's Todd Howard before the Starfield.
(Image credit: Future)

Presumably after seeing a spike in Final Fantasy 14 players so big that the game temporarily ran out of digital copies, Todd Howard has descended upon the untapped market of Eorzea to hawk the one and only The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. 

At least, that's what some players reported over the weekend after running into Todd Howard in-game. FF14's Todd Howard flagged down Twitter user Mirihawke to give them a free copy of Oblivion during the player-run festival LunarCon (though curiously, Todd isn't on the guest list, if you can believe it). And by Oblivion, I do mean the Faded Copy of Oblivion orchestrion scroll obtained from the extreme Akh Afah Amphitheatre trial – six one way and half-a-dozen the other, really. 

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As much as I want to believe that Bethesda boss Todd Howard actually plays Final Fantasy 14 just so he can further his quest to promote The Elder Scrolls on every platform known to mankind, this Todd Howard is actually the work of FF14 doppelganger Tetenuko. Their uncanny Todd Howard lookalike has been spotted as early as January 2020, and it's impressive to see they're still going strong. Perhaps the eventual release of Starfield will give them new material to work with. That said, continually promoting rapidly aging Elder Scrolls installments is straight out of Bethesda's playbook, so maybe it's for the best that Oblivion has a perfect in-game counterpart. 

At the rate things are going, we'll have to make do with the existing Elder Scrolls games for some time. Xbox boss Phil Spencer says The Elder Scrolls 6 won't be released until after the new Fable, and Bethesda's still prioritizing Starfield in the first place. The good news is that the development of Starfield will contribute to the growth of the same game engine being used for The Elder Scrolls 6, giving Bethesda time and experience to identify and create more bespoke features. And hey, people clearly haven't gotten bored of Skyrim. Just recently one fan took it upon themselves to build a $15,000 VR setup that makes the time-honored RPG as immersive as possible. 

Here are 10 games like Skyrim that'll satisfy your thirst for adventure while we wait for The Elder Scrolls 6.

Austin Wood
Austin Wood

Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.