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As Starfield developers begin to depart Bethesda after the release of the studio's massive RPG, some fans are despondently casting their minds forward to the eventual departure of studio lead Todd Howard.
Earlier this week, Bethesda marketing exec Pete Hines announced that he was retiring from the studio after 24 years. Shortly after came the news of lead quest designer Will Shen departing to join a new open-world project.
This is far from cause for concern - both developers are Bethesda veterans who have been working on Starfield for many years, and it's relatively normal for devs to hold out at a studio just long enough to finish one big project before moving elsewhere to start work on another. But in spite of that, in the eyes of some Bethesda fans, these departures are merely foreshadowing of another: Todd Howard's.
On Reddit, the top comment under one news post for Hines' retirement reads: "I know they're only small pieces of a bigger whole but it's going to be so weird when both he and Todd are retired." That sentiment is echoed throughout the thread. "To many, Todd and Pete are what Bethesda is," observes one fan. "I can't even imagine what a Bethesda game would look like without Todd['s] influence," says another. "Todd is Bethesda and TES is Todd," an Elder Scrolls fan asserts.
That first comment is important, of course - any major video game is the result of years of work, often by hundreds of people, and the auteur-ization of some of the industry's biggest names isn't always helpful. But there's no doubting the presence that Todd Howard maintains at Bethesda, for better or worse. There are a few other names - design director Emil Pagliarulo and the now-departing Will Shen - who were pushed further into the spotlight by Starfield, but Howard has been the de facto face of the studio for well over a decade now. And Starfield, in particular, was repeatedly described as Howard's baby.
Many Starfield players have reacted similarly. "Only Todd Howard is more synonymous with Bethesda to me," one user says of Hines' retirement. "I just hope in the coming years even when Todd decides to retire, the torch is passed on to people equally as deserving and passionate," adds another.
Howard is likely to remain in his role for a good while longer. In the run up to Starfield, Howard, now 53, began discussing how long he's likely to keep working. Back in June, he suggested that The Elder Scrolls 6 might be his final game. He's also confirmed that Fallout 5 would follow the next Elder Scrolls game, and with the former still at least three years away and the latter likely to follow several years after that, there's every chance that in a decade's time, Howard is no longer at the helm.
Both The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 remain little more than pipe dreams, rough drafts on a whiteboard somewhere, but the impact that Howard's version of Bethesda will have on the eventual shape of both of those games probably can't be overstated. After all, even with as much as a decade left, some fans are already preparing for Howard's departure as he approaches his final games.
More than Skyrim or Fallout, Howard says Starfield was "intentionally made to be played for a long time" and Bethesda's looking 5+ years ahead.
