The Elder Scrolls 6 and long-time Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard apparently touches every part of the developer’s games during production, and struggles not to, in fact, according to one former Skyrim lead.
“He’s struggled throughout his entire career in this letting go process,” Skyrim lead designer Bruce Nesmith said while talking about Howard’s leadership style in an interview with Kiwi Talkz.
“I mean, if what I said earlier is, he had a light touch on everything and then deep dives into the things he wanted. That’s a light touch literally on everything, which means that one of the issues that the studio struggled with occasionally was “‘Well, we can’t move forward because Todd hasn’t had a chance to look at it,'” Nesmith recalled of his time at the developer.
Nesmith goes on to say that the studio obviously isn’t completely blocked whenever Howard’s not around “because the games got produced on time, which is not a common thing to happen in this industry” where projects are pretty frequently delayed. Bethesda would often “have it done excellently and have it done on time, but it does mean that when he leaves, they’re going to feel it.”
Todd Howard is so well known since he’s the guy who shows up on stage or on camera every time Bethesda’s about to unleash one of its big RPGs onto the world. But it’s relatively normal for devs or otherwise to want to move on from a company after literal decades. Howard has suggested that The Elder Scrolls 6 might be his last game ever, though he’s hinted at the future of the Fallout game series more than a few times, too.