Skyrim lead praises Todd Howard for trying 'desperately' not to micromanage and be a ‘bottleneck’, even though he still 'does what he calls seagulling where he swoops in and changes things'

In a new interview with PressBoxPR, Bethesda veteran and Skyrim's lead designer Bruce Nesmith has gone over his time at the studio, addressing topics like why it wouldn't make sense to switch to Unreal Engine. One of the questions he's asked is about studio head Todd Howard, and how the public perception of him differs from the man he worked with for decades.

"Well, you'll have to tell me what you think the public perception of him is," says Nesmith. "I've known the man for a long time. For me to see the forest for the trees is a little difficult.

"I can tell you candidly that when working at Bethesda up through the Skyrim days, Todd is probably one of the best bosses I've ever had. I can also tell you he's keenly aware of the fact that he is a bottleneck and he works his ass off to not do that. Unfortunately, he doesn't succeed very well."

Nesmith is keen to emphasise that this isn't about mismanagement or "something where he is being an ogre about it. It's part of the culture of the studio and that is extremely difficult to get away from because it's baked into how things are done. Even though he tries desperately not to, he does what he calls seagulling where he swoops in and changes things. It still happens."

Nesmith says this has to be seen in the context of Bethesda’s games, which are obviously large-scale projects with tonnes of moving parts. "When you build games as big as Bethesda games, Todd was very good about saying I care about this and this and this and this, and he spends a lot of time and attention on those things," says Nesmith. "We were left to go our own way on it, not that he wouldn't come in and have to approve the work, but he would give a lot of leeway."

The example he offers is revamping Skyrim's magic system. "I felt it was very old and clichéd and it needed to be redone," says Nesmith. "We had talks about it. [Howard] approved the general idea and he was very involved in that. Then he let me have my head. Not that we didn't have discussions about this particular thing or that but I had a lot of freedom to create that. A lot of freedom.

"It was the same with a lot of the character systems. He was very involved in the perks because he had a vision for what he wanted for that. On the underlying stuff, I had a tremendous amount of freedom to do what I wanted to do.

"I would say that the reputation you just said is both earned and unearned because it's a big studio. It's a big project. We do big projects. We did big projects. You can have both of those things be true at the same time."

Nesmith was giving the interview to promote his Loki Redeemed books, a trilogy of novels he's released after leaving Bethesda. Elsewhere, he discusses his past work on The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, and speculates about where both series' could go next.