Todd Howard "hadn't had a break in 20 years" when Fallout 4 came out, so he took a 3-month sabbatical to "go touch some grass"

Todd Howard has led development of some of the biggest and best RPGs ever made, and it's no secret that the game industry can exact a toll on developers. But everybody needs to "touch grass" now and then, and that's why Howard finally took a break that had been decades overdue after the launch of Fallout 4.

Making RPGs like Oblivion and Skyrim means developers spend "years and years of your lives together – it's a bonding experience," as Howard tells GQ. "But I had been going really hard for a long time. I took a sabbatical after Fallout 4 for like three months. I hadn't had a break in 20 years."

Asked if he missed work during that three-month break, Howard says, "You always have a little question mark, 'How am I gonna feel coming back?' But I was so excited. The night before, I couldn't sleep. I knew we were going to be taking on new challenges with Fallout 76 and Starfield."

Titles like Fallout 76 (an online game) and Starfield (a brand-new IP) presented new challenges for Bethesda, but the "routine" of making Fallout 4 wasn't exactly a cakewalk. "If routine is working like mad dogs all the time, because we really did," Howard says. "It becomes a bit of an obsession. You get to a point in life where you spend more time in the fantasy world than with real people. So you’re like, 'Maybe I should go touch some grass.'"

Howard revealed plenty more in this interview, like the fact that Bethesda is doing play tests for The Elder Scrolls 6 and that a shadow drop is not off the table for the long-awaited RPG. Here's hoping Todd gets another day off or two by the time The Elder Scrolls 6 finally launches.

"We wanted to do something new with Starfield": 14 years after Skyrim with no Elder Scrolls 6 in sight, Todd Howard finally admits it's been "too long" since the last RPG,