Iron is forged from rocks and flame, and, just as strong, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion sounds like it was made with a lot of trust. Sorry, not "made" – "The great Todd Howard says that great games are played, not made," explains former Bethesda marketing executive Pete Hines in a new interview.
"Meaning, every idea you have about what's good or not only matters if somebody starts playing it, and then that's what's going to define whether it's good or not," Hines tells DBLTAP. Howard apparently applied this philosophy to Oblivion's development, which saw several versions of the RPG's, ultimately, simple but calculated combat.
"Oblivion changed combat systems three times during development," Hines says. "So we were careful not to talk about how combat works, because we don't even know if the version we've got is final. So we're trying to place our bets on what parts of the game we feel confident are going to resonate with people."
This perspective leads publisher Bethesda to many unturned stones – like in the case of Arkane Studios' 2012 action-adventure game Dishonored, which wasn't supposed to allow players to momentarily possess its gloopy fish to better sneak around waterways, until it did. A QA tester discovered the bug, and Dishonored devs decided to lean into it.
"All of a sudden," Hines remembers, "the game's water goes from not mattering at all to, 'Oh, it really matters,' because we're not going to take that out. But now we have to account for it. So the pivot is we should talk about embracing player creativity."
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