Some people fail to realize that a Todd Howard game isn't about graphics or even story.

Its the World.

Todd himself says it best during the Bethesda 2015 E3 Presentation:

"It all starts with an obsession with details. Our artists concept every button, every blinky light, not just on one terminal,

but on all of them. It is our belief, that its all these small details coming together that form a much, much larger whole."

And this isn't just marketing talk.

Who here remembers the teeny tiny little ants on the tree stumps in Skyrim?
Thats right. They go so far as to animate LITTLE ANTS in Skyrim, something that most gamers wouldn't give 2 hoots about when playing.

I'm not even gonna go into the discussion of how they even INVENT a whole new fictional language just for Skyrim.

That's how OBSESSIVE this man is.

THIS, is how you win Game of the Year Awards.

If this is your first time experiencing a Todd Howard game, welcome.

Sit back, relax, because you are not gonna wanna go back to the real world anytime soon.

It just works!

Is that what we're calling it now?

I came into this post thinking it was going to be negative. I'm pleased I was wrong.

OT: To be fair, a lot of other people besides The Todd worked on the game, they deserve credit too.

Todd's a great guy, but the games are made by a huge team. He doesn't get -all- of the credit.

Definitely. No one can deny the wonderful work that they have poured in.
That said, it's Todd's creative vision IMO that made Bethesda what it is today.

Most younger gamers probably don't remember that Pre-Morrowind era Elder Scrolls wasn't as popular.

Now i'm not dissing the teams that made them, but you can't help but feel that it is really Morrowind that really sets the standard.
It was Todd's vision for Morrowind IMO that awed gamers with how deep the world is and still do till this day.

Well this thread is...more positive then I expected.

That's a good point, though I would also suggest that Morrowind being on Xbox helped out a lot too. Perhaps that was part of The Todd's "vision", but being raised on consoles I had never heard of TES till I talked to my friendly neighborhood Electronics Boutique guys about the Xbox version. I actually preordered that game without even knowing much about it lol.

These games are made where the world is the star yes. To me these games allow me to detail a story based on my characters. I tell their stories based within Bethesdas creation.

In fallout I detail the story of a psycho and a few generations of her mentally disturbed family. The dark gritty nature of the world resonates well with the perturbed manic destructive nature of my families mental illness.

In The Elder Scrolls I detail a history of two families that ultimately chronicle the patriarch who leads both. He is a pompous egomaniac who ostracized any belief that he has ever done any wrong. He is anolytical and calculating and seeks to maintain his power and fame and vast wealth all the while establishing his bloodline to maintain forever.

I play these games to role play and enjoy my characters. That is why I love Bethesda and their designs, 2hen I was a kid I used to talk to my mother about a game that could never end and you be who you want to be and TES is that series for me my all time favorite. Then Bethesda gave us their vision of Fallout new my second favorite franchise thanks to them for using what made TES what it is and applying it to fallout.

If only they were as obsessive about gameplay and narrative RPG mechanics as they are about modeling buttons and animating ants.

^
Gotta give credit to team.

"The Todd" (to borrow TheCheshireKhajiit's nickname) has earned my eternal gratitude for making the all-important decision to include the Construction Set with Morrowind. That changed my world a little bit. I would probably not be here after all these years if it was not for that.

personally I find that they are obsessive about those to, whether the direction of there obsession is the one a person wants or not is a diffrent matter, but a obsession for making rpgs they do have.

Why do I play Bethesda games? Because they know that a real rpg is a Single Player rpg. Im not talking about Elder Srolls Online here. I think on the recent retro gaming Panel Mr Hines summed it up best saying 'Bethesda concentrates on single player games'. Too many game companies are looking to MMos at the future of gaming

A) MMO is launched

B)MMO gets a lot of subscribers

C) New MMO gets launched

D) Subscribers stop subscribing

E) Free to play model starts.

Things are never the same. I thank Bethesda because they know this too.

It's the "Todd Howard" affect!!!

Sigh...if only the Corporate N'wahs at Bethesda understood this too....
In one fell swoop, they nearly wrecked the franchise.

But back to topic, I sometimes wonder how it'll feel like to work with Todd Howard.
I'd imagine that you probably need to have OCD. Being slightly insane probably helps too. lol~

I can't stand the world as it is a dungeon themepark, inhabited primarily by hostile humans that outnumber civilized folk 10:1, who's world is so scaled down that it becomes absurd when given the tiniest criticism of it.

I really can't stand Todd Howard's worlds. They're awful.

They can detail the fleas on the dog as much as they want to, doesn't make the rest of the world any less boring, tedious, inconsistent, illogical and just weird looking when it is that scaled down.

It's been a peeve of mine about their games since Oblivion that they've been gradually moving away from all that, and towards a more conventional action adventure.

If they disgust you so much, may I ask why are you still here on the forums then?

Because he can be and has a right to disagree?

Oh he definitely has a right to do so.

I'm just VERY curious why someone would waste so much time, effort and energy to

post over 20,000 posts on a forum for a franchise, whose world disgust him so much.

Exactly. If people who hate these games want to come here and fruitlessly complain about said games, that is their prerogative.

Well I have a friend like this with another gaming franchise. Honestly maybe they hope the devs will listen to some of their ideas or just like talking about a franchise they once love(and probably still do). I don't know really.

20,000 posts was prior to knowing what Fallout 4 was going to turn out to be. And just cause the world's is bad doesn't mean that the factions, characters, quests, lore and RPG mechanics have to be bad. And the reason I'm still around is because of curiosity as to how Fallout 4 is going to turn out and how it is being received. Besides, it's not like I spend a whole lot of my day on these forums. I just check in every once in a while and skim threads and post bitter remarks to turn down the hype a little.

It becomes nauseating when the complaints are made in threads unrelated to them. When quite a few threads spiral into a pissing contest about which take on fallout is the best, it becomes more than just simply stating an opinion. It becomes disruptive. Disagreement with a games direction is fine but there comes a time where the horse has not only been beat to death but they are punching the ground beneath the rotten corpse.