Todd Howard likes "to start over" on every Elder Scrolls game, and as we approach Skyrim's 15th anniversary I don't know that Bethesda needed to start over that hard

News
By published

"You look back across the franchise and say, 'Okay, what's important?'"

Skyrim
(Image credit: Bethesda)

Todd Howard likes to go back to the drawing board every time Bethesda makes a new Elder Scrolls game. That fact is laughably obvious given the long, long wait for The Elder Scrolls 6 – we're hitting Skyrim's 15th anniversary this year – but it's an important part of the studio's philosophy about revisiting its most notable franchises.

"When we go to do an Elder Scrolls game," Howard tells Game Informer in a tangent during a Fallout interview, "I do kind of like to start over, so you look back across the franchise and say, 'Okay, what's important? How do you sort of file away the age? Like, okay, what's underneath that? Why do certain game mechanics… how do they make you feel, as opposed to the actual mechanic? What are the unique things about the world?'"

Dustin Bailey
Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.