Making games like Skyrim requires a lot of collaboration. Disagreement is inherent to such projects, and in one instance, a tenured Bethesda developer remembers not seeing Todd Howard's vision for character progression before players demonstrated it was the right course to take.
Bruce Nesmith, a designer who worked on Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim at Bethesda, explained the situation on The Examined Game podcast. "Todd had this vision for how the constellations would reflect your skills," he starts.
"He was looking at the art and wanted the art to drive some of how the skills related to one another," he continues. "I was like, 'No, you're going up you're looking at these, why can't we just put a list out, it's far more functional. People are going to get confused by these constellations, it's not going to work, I'm not seeing it.'"
Skyrim's skill trees being literally made up of stars in the night sky was a visual leap from the number sets of Oblivion. It's an eye-catching approach, and I remember it took me a second to get used to what I was seeing. But once I did, I enjoyed the added flair, and plenty of others did too, according to Nesmith, who wound up with a little egg on his face.
"I held that all the way through production, and the game gets out there, and people loved the constellations," he recalls. "They thought they were fantastic. I was clearly wrong."
He credits Howard with having both the better idea and the leadership position to take the risk on it. A foundational requirement of good collaboration is someone at the helm who can sense what the right direction is when there are split decisions, regardless of who comes up with it. This is one instance where Howard had the pleasure of being both.
We'll see what lays in store in The Elder Scrolls 6, and who'll take the blame for the problems. Howard seems like a good default candidate either way.
