Todd Howard Emphasizes Fresh Beginnings for Each Elder Scrolls Game, But Skyrim’s 15th Anniversary Raises Questions About the Need for a Complete Reset

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Todd Howard is known for going back to the drawing board with each new Elder Scrolls installment. This is especially evident with the long wait for The Elder Scrolls 6, coinciding with Skyrim’s 15th anniversary this year. This approach reflects Bethesda’s philosophy of revisiting its most iconic franchises.

“When we set out to create an Elder Scrolls game,” Howard shared during a Fallout interview, “I prefer to start fresh. We reflect on the franchise and ask, ‘What’s essential? How do we strip away the age? What lies beneath? What feelings do certain game mechanics evoke, beyond their functionality? What makes this world unique?'”

Bethesda’s readiness to reinvent key elements of the series is clear when you examine its evolution. Morrowind moved away from the procedural generation of Arena and Daggerfall to create a fully handcrafted world. Skyrim replaced the complex number-crunching of its predecessors with a more intuitive stat system.

This philosophy also applies to Fallout, which is the focus of Howard’s comments. Instead of solely looking at their own titles, the team draws inspiration from the original 1997 Interplay classic. “The tone and world of Fallout 1 became our template for any new direction we take,” Howard explained.

The original Fallout’s dark atmosphere influenced Bethesda’s first entry into the series with Fallout 3, but the developers aimed for a different vibe with Fallout 4. “Coming off Skyrim, we wanted to create something that wasn’t as visually and tonally grim as Fallout 3,” Howard noted. “Each game should have its own identity, just like we do with Elder Scrolls and Fallout. One of our main goals was to research and photograph decayed areas and destroyed buildings, revealing an unexpected beauty in some of that decay.”

Howard acknowledges the “anxiety” surrounding Fallout 5, admitting that “we do like to take our time,” but reassures fans that “we never stopped developing Fallout.”