In tandem with our news of Daggerfall, the Planet Elder Scrolls team has a new retrospective on TES -- complete with a new interview from Todd Howard.

Find it here

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/fullstory.php?id=159095

Its very interesting to read about changes to the Elderscrolls series. Thanks for posting Gstaff. Excellent interview Todd! :wub:

Exclusive Interview with Todd Howard

What is your name?
Todd Howard


:rofl:

Good interview though, interesting

Keep on pestering. If Daggerfall is anything to go by, it works. :hehe:

grrr... :meh:

But great interview! and a good synopsis of the series

Man, ya'll need work on your interviewing skills. You can't just let a guy say "can't tell you, too awesome" and get away with it.

Planet Elder Scrolls:Is there an Elder Scrolls 5 being made? And if so, is there anything you can tell us about it?

Todd:I can't talk about what we are or are not doing at this time.


(Sigh) I guess it's still the waiting game

That means YES!

:)

Totally agree with this one, would have been wonderful if Redguard was a DirectX title instead.

If TES V wasn't being made, Todd would certainly say so.

I really wish there'd been a follow-up question to the comment on how the addition of voice was for the less vocal fans. Something like this:

"How do you respond to fan concerns that the addition of voice acting drew resources away from other features, such as faction development?"

I don't see the connection between voices and mobility-friendly map designs. They don't have anything to do with eachother, and totally different kind of people work with them.

Yeah, but money is money, and how many people a given department has depends on its budget. But, you are right; that particular draw is a huge stretch. The draw against faction development is much more direct, since voice acting directly impacts the cost of dialog, a major part of faction design.

I'm gonna edit it out so I stop undermining what I'm trying to get at.

While we're on the topic of glorious Daggerfall, I'm curious as to who played Uriel and Ocato in the opening sequence. Were they Bethesda employees? The janitor? Todd Howard's grandfather?

Local actors, they don't remember who they are. Tis sad, tis sad. We searched and interviewed and all that jazz a couple years ago.

I hope that doesn't mean "we don't give a *BLEEP* to what the fans one the forums suggest", from reading that it deffinetly sounds like that.

Yeah, and now I noticed that the thread we talked about that in, has been pruned away Poor thread, still had some neat information in it and now it's all gone.

How do they get feedback from people who play but are not on the forums? Other forums? I'd expect he'd see the same praises and complaints.

Also, 99% of people who play "the game" don't use the forums? Which game is he referring to? I'd imagine that if you took up all the people who play any of TES games it'd be a good bit less than 99% that don't use the forums.

That was a good interview.

I was wondering, why is it that Bethesda cannot talk about what they are working on... to say TES V is in development (with no other details)? Is it a contract thing?

Either they are not working on it at the moment, or they want to surprise the fans when they have more info/screenshots. Those are my guesses. :shrug:

They certainly surprise the living hell out of us today when before they told us they "lost" the code!

As for the interview, its okay, I guess.

Information control mostly.


I would really like to know where he got that "99%". I understand not everyone is a dweeb enough to join the forums, but how could he know the input they gain outside the forums is representative of that "99%"? The interviewer should have made him clarify instead of letting him grossly generalize to suit his own arguement :slap:

If that surprise turns out to be the same they used for Oblivion they better announce it now, that countdown thing followed by "SCREENSHOTS... but not for you"... not a great move really...

EDIT:
Oh yea and this time if they try to keep the beast races a secret as long as possible i KNOW they screwed up, the way isn't "hide the good stuff" but "hide what we messed up until it's too late to fix"

Repost since my thread was closed, only reposting since it was closed for similar content, not inappropriateness
(I believe)

Okay, so I read the Todd Howard interview, and I'm a little disappointed with some of his responses. I definitely think he hasn't taken the criticism directed at Oblivion seriously, which is major problem since these are opinions held by a large percentage of the dedicated fanbase. He mentions as well that he wants to cater to all fans, even ones "not dedicated enough to log onto the forums" but if he continues to depend on them, he'll see his profits chiseled away as the easily amused masses buy the first shiny game with swords that comes along, if they want that kind of game anyway. And the older fans will wait for a series that takes the genre seriously again, instead of making it a 3rd grade fairy tale hand hold-y fest.

Anyways, main points.

Q: Have previous Elder Scrolls games had an effect on the development of later Elder Scrolls games? And if so, what are some examples?

A: Of course. So much of what we do is a reaction to the last game. Just listening to people's experiences with the previous game flavors what we do with the next one. If you look at Oblivion, the big new things, like the AI or the combat, were a reaction to the key criticisms of Morrowind. Most fans will usually ask for more skills or more races, things like that. But I don't see those kinds of things adding to the experience.

Okay, basically he's talking about the flaws of Morrowind that were "improved" which doesn't win points with me as 1, they were minor flaws, and 2, they weren't fixed that well. Combat in Oblivion is more fun, but combat in Morrowind was still fun at the time, and Oblivion's is just as formulaic and repetitive. Also, he admits MOST fans ask for more skills or races. I agree more races shouldn't be added, and we wouldn't need "new" skills IF YOU DIDN'T KEEP TAKING THEM OUT. SRSLY. Climbing, spears, crossbows, axe, long/short blade, medium armor, unarmored, throwing weapons, ALL REMOVED. Why don't we just have 3 skills? Magic, Melee, Stealth? That's streamlined. That's so streamlined, it's practically 2D.

Q:If you could go back in time and change one thing in one of your games, what would it be? Or would you not change anything at all?

A:I'd have no level cap in Fallout 3. Oh wait, you probably meant The Elder Scrolls, hmmm. I still regret having Redguard only support Glide for 3d acceleration. We should have made it Direct3D based. We missed the technology window on that one. That killed that game. There are other regrets, but most of those decisions made sense at the time and weren't game killers, so we fix them game to game.

Oh yea, not including Direct3D for acceleration in Redguard was a HUGE mistake, but having horses you can't fight from, making them expensive aggro magnets is fine? Or cutting the amount of armor and weapons in half? I could go on, for about a page and a half. Oblivion has more mistakes per square inch than a the world's most crowded schmaschmortion clinic. And, If I may be so bold, Redguard is not "Elder Scrolls Series" it is not an RPG, and not the kind of game Bethesda should ever have made, although I admit that it where Morrowind got the feel of it's world from.

Q: Have comments or criticism from previous games have had effects on how future games were developed? And can you give any specific examples you remember? (ex: Did comments about having to read lots of text in Morrowind lead to voice acting and lip-sync dialog in Oblivion?)
A: I guess the most recent example would be the static NPCs in Morrowind, going to Radiant AI in Oblivion. That was a major system we did to address that issue. Took us years and years to do it. In regards to voice, most hardcoe fans didn't complain about reading, fans love to read, it's everyone else who hates it. And that's something that fans should understand, that we take a very global view of things, and we may do things they don't like because we're also soliciting feedback they don't see, from the 99% of people playing the game that don't come to our forums. It's a lot of people, and they just aren't passionate enough to get online, register, and post, but that doesn't make them stupid, or their opinions any less valid.

Avoiding once again all of Oblivion's flaws, which were all the result of terrible development decisions, and instead nitpicking Morrowind's flaws, which are mostly related to the technology available at the time. Even most shooters relied on text dialogue, you just needed less of it. And I'm sorry, but when 90% of the people who DO care enough about the series to visit the forums complain about something (like level scaling, or how inane the voice dialogue REALLY is, you should pay attention to them, and ignore the other mindless players, just let them skip the dialogue and run through the quests.

And finally,

Q:Is there an Elder Scrolls 5 being made? And if so, is there anything you can tell us about it?
A:I can't talk about what we are or are not doing at this time.

"It has been in development, but I cannot supply any details such as release date, setting, main quest etc..."
IS THAT SO FRIGGIN HARD TO SAY!?? Because I CAN tell YOU something, TODD. I'm NOT buying the game you ARE or ARE NOT making.

Sorry for the rant, but they really need to address some key issues with the community, because there are widespread customer relation problems that are arising from silence and either ignorance or avoidance of key gameplay issues with the latest ES title. That being said, releasing Daggerfall for free download was the best decision Bethesda has made since 2002.