Todd Howard says Bethesda will return to 'that classic style' for Elder Scrolls 6: 'Fallout 76 and Starfield are a little bit of a creative detour'

5 hours ago 8

Todd Howard Returns! - Kinda Funny Gamescast - YouTube

Bethesda game director Todd Howard recently emerged blinking into the light of day for an interview with Greg Miller on the Kinda Funny Gamescast. During that interview, he pointed out that Starfield's next update isn't going to change your mind on Starfield if you didn't already love it.

"I think we've—if you look at our games—we've always evolved," Howard said. "We do have a certain style that we like and our fans like that we want to get better and better at. I think in some ways—in many ways, Fallout 76 and Starfield are a little bit of a creative detour from that classic Elder Scrolls, Fallout, you know, a Skyrim, or a Fallout 3, or a Fallout 4, Oblivion, where you're exploring a world in a certain way. And, as we come back to Elder Scrolls 6 that we're doing now, we're coming back to that classic style that we've missed, that we know really, really well."

But while we can hope The Elder Scrolls 6 returns to Bethesda's strengths as a developer, one thing that will be changing is the engine. "We spent the last several years bringing Creation Engine 2, which powers Starfield, up to Creation Engine 3. That's gonna power Elder Scrolls 6 and beyond," he said.

While Bethesda used Gamebryo for Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3, it switched to the Creation Engine for Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76, and then upgraded that to Creation Engine 2 for Starfield. While the assumption was that this upgrade would be enough to handle Elder Scrolls 6 as well, I guess not. Let's hope the upgrade means we get less loading screens in The Elder Scrolls 6, whenever it comes out.

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Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.