Todd Howard Interview

The folks at EDGE have published a very interesting – albeit brief – interview with Bethesda’s Todd Howard, which, among other things, touches upon whether or not The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will present some of Morrowind’s “idiosyncratic otherness”, whether there is the possibility of seeing an Elder Scrolls game developed by an external studio, whether it took some adjustment to move back to Tamriel after developing a Fallout game and more. Here’s an excerpt:

Was Oblivion’s setting weird enough? Will Skyrim reintroduce some of Morrowind’s idiosyncratic otherness?
I think some people, when they go to explore the world, want to be surprised more. I don’t know that I’d categorise it as weird per se, but more culturally different. Skyrim has a much more unique sense of culture to it than we did in Oblivion, where one was relatively the same as another, whereas here they’re vastly different. If you’ve seen the trailer, that first city shot, that big stone city is actually an ancient dwarven ruin carved into this mountain. It’s one of the main five cities. We wanted Morrowind to feel alien, like you were a stranger in a strange land. Whereas this we want to feel instantly familiar but that it does have it’s own unique culture. We kind of walk that line in between the two games, if that makes sense.

Can you ever see and Elder Scrolls game being developed externally like with Fallout: New Vegas?
I don’t know, we kind of take it bit by bit. I mean New Vegas was unique: as a publisher, we wanted to do something with Obsidian; we knew we were moving on Elder Scrolls; they had a team available. They gave us the pitch and we were like, ‘˜That would be a really fun game’. But they had experience with the IP, and with Elder Scrolls we don’t have that. I wouldn’t rule that out, but generally with everything we want to keep it internal.