Skyrim and Fallout 4 artist says Bethesda's Todd Howard has too many yes men: "A lot of people were afraid to say no to Todd and that hurt him"

Bethesda's Todd Howard is no ordinary game developer. Having risen to the top of the ranks at Bethesda Game Studios over his 32-year tenure, he's a household name even among people who don't write about video games for a living.

He's been instrumental in the development of some of the most beloved games of all time, including The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4, and so you'd assume he's probably made some really brilliant executive decisions over the course of his long career. And yet still, he's bound to be wrong about stuff occasionally too, and according to a longtime friend and former colleague of his, everyone he works with is too afraid to tell him that.

In a recently unearthed clip from a 2025 interview with Kiwi Talkz, former Bethesda senior artist Dennis Mejillones said Howard was surrounded by too many 'yes man' when the two worked together. Mejillones worked at Bethesda from 2009 to 2021, so he spent a long time with Howard and presumably understands a lot about the innerworkings at Bethesda, at least up until five years ago.

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"[Howard] is a phenomenal person, and is he perfect? No. Does he call all the shots perfectly? No," said Mejillones. "I can't tell you how many times I told Todd, like, 'hey man, that's not a good idea. That's bad. That's not good.' Or, that I kinda kept my mouth shut, like, 'oh, I don't think that's so great.' Typically though, I would communicate if I felt really strongly about it."

Of course, Mejillones doesn't have the same inside knowledge as he did when he was with Bethesda, so the communication system could've changed since he left, but when Mejillones was working with Howard, "a lot of people were afraid to say no to Todd," and Mejillones reckons "that hurt him."

This is an interesting insight even in isolation, but when presented in contrast with Skyrim co-lead designer Kurt Kuhlmann's recent assertion that Starfield's main problem was Howard being "pulled away" too often during development, a fascinating contrast emerges. On one hand, Mejillones is arguing that Howard needs to be challenged more, but on the other Kuhlmann seems to think Todd Howard games need more Todd Howard in their DNA. It should be interesting to see how that push-and-pull shakes out when The Elder Scrolls 6 launches hopefully sometime while we're all still alive.

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