Todd Howard: Skyrim, Elder Scrolls 6, Fallout, and Starfield

00:00:00.000 | Blink once if you know when Elder Scrolls 6 is coming out, but are not going to tell

00:00:05.320 | me.

00:00:06.320 | The following is a conversation with Todd Howard, one of the greatest video game designers

00:00:12.760 | of all time.

00:00:13.760 | He has led the development of the Fallout series and the Elder Scrolls series, including

00:00:19.720 | Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and the future Elder Scrolls 6, and a totally

00:00:27.640 | new world in an upcoming game called Starfield.

00:00:31.720 | Many of these have won Game of the Year awards and have been some of the most celebrated

00:00:36.160 | and impactful games ever made.

00:00:38.760 | To me, Skyrim is quite possibly the greatest game ever.

00:00:45.700 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:00:47.480 | To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

00:00:50.880 | And now, dear friends, here's Todd Howard.

00:00:55.400 | Is it possible that we are currently living inside a video game that the future you designed,

00:01:01.720 | can you give hints as to how one would escape if this was a video game?

00:01:07.280 | How can a video game character escape to outside the video game?

00:01:11.920 | Are these things you don't consider when you design a game?

00:01:15.440 | Actually we do, because in the kind of games that we make, we want it to be as open as

00:01:19.880 | possible.

00:01:21.400 | So when you start a game, you're always testing it.

00:01:26.360 | What can I do?

00:01:27.360 | What would the game allow me to do?

00:01:28.600 | And you check everything.

00:01:29.600 | You try to pick up the mugs, you try every door, you collide with everything, like, hey,

00:01:34.640 | what are the rules of this world?

00:01:37.440 | We try to do games where we say yes as much as possible.

00:01:41.800 | That leads to some level of chaos.

00:01:45.240 | But if you were stuck in a video game, you would try everything.

00:01:48.680 | And usually you're going to find a door or a space where the designers didn't anticipate

00:01:54.240 | you piling all those crates up and getting over a wall that they didn't expect.

00:01:59.000 | Right, so it's not a designed doorway out, it's an accidental, unintended doorway out.

00:02:06.800 | It's a happy bug.

00:02:09.040 | You could like Truman Show, just get in the ocean and go until it's stuck.

00:02:12.240 | It keeps going.

00:02:13.240 | Right, right.

00:02:14.240 | It keeps going.

00:02:15.240 | The more realistic the game becomes, the harder it is to find that door.

00:02:19.000 | The bigger the world, the bigger the open world.

00:02:21.960 | And then as we do it, we learn they're going to find a way.

00:02:26.160 | So just don't try to pen them in.

00:02:29.720 | Usually we leave like this developer test cell area in the game that we don't anticipate

00:02:36.800 | anyone will find.

00:02:39.080 | And they ultimately find it.

00:02:40.960 | It has crates of all the weapons in the game and things like that.

00:02:46.160 | The little hints you drop now will just drive people mad, which is something I enjoy deeply.

00:02:51.840 | So Skyrim NPCs have at times hilarious dialogue.

00:02:55.880 | What does it take to build a good NPC dialogue?

00:03:01.080 | The main thing is to make them reactive.

00:03:04.960 | A lot of times when you write characters for movies or things like that, you want to make

00:03:08.520 | that character interesting for themselves, right?

00:03:12.760 | What's their story?

00:03:14.960 | And there's some characters like that that the player definitely cares about.

00:03:20.240 | But the best characters are the ones that react to you.

00:03:25.120 | So you'll find a lot of people love our guards.

00:03:28.700 | And the guards are written almost purely to be reactive.

00:03:32.320 | Hey, nice tie.

00:03:33.640 | I like your jacket.

00:03:34.640 | Do this cool watch.

00:03:35.640 | You know, hey, what'd you do?

00:03:37.400 | And so that, hey, you're the man as you walk by.

00:03:41.920 | That makes them interesting.

00:03:43.080 | Or the way they react to something that you do.

00:03:46.280 | Lydia in Skyrim, who everybody loves, I'm sworn to carry your burdens.

00:03:51.480 | That's a generic line that all of the House Carls have.

00:03:56.520 | And it just kind of lands when she says it.

00:03:59.420 | Why does it land?

00:04:01.960 | And did you anticipate it would land?

00:04:03.560 | There's a slight snarkiness in that particular read of it.

00:04:08.160 | And you're asking her to do something.

00:04:10.320 | And she's reacting to you.

00:04:14.600 | What about the trade-off between maybe the randomness and the scripted nature of the

00:04:24.000 | dialogue?

00:04:25.000 | Like, is there any room for randomness of the dialogue tree?

00:04:28.680 | Oh, absolutely.

00:04:29.840 | We tend to write them in stacks.

00:04:32.880 | It's a very small-- think of it as a small state machine that just says, OK, this is

00:04:39.280 | what's happening.

00:04:40.640 | Here's a random list of things I could say to that.

00:04:44.760 | And then some of that plays out in ways you don't anticipate.

00:04:49.360 | But we look at the things.

00:04:50.360 | What are the players doing that we could have the characters respond to that they don't

00:04:54.600 | expect?

00:04:55.600 | You know, jumping on tables or stealing stuff or sneaking in in the middle of the night

00:05:02.040 | or those kind of things.

00:05:03.040 | The more of that we can do, the more reactive and interesting the characters appear.

00:05:12.000 | And these state machines, how big are these things?

00:05:16.120 | Are these individual to the individual characters?

00:05:19.040 | It's just fascinating how you design state machines.

00:05:21.800 | Is it just a giant database?

00:05:23.800 | I would think of the AI as one big one.

00:05:26.920 | Yeah.

00:05:28.280 | For sort of everybody.

00:05:31.120 | So there's an AI--

00:05:33.160 | There's a manager for all the people.

00:05:35.400 | And one of the things--

00:05:36.400 | It's the people manager.

00:05:37.400 | Right, right.

00:05:38.400 | Nice.

00:05:39.400 | One of the things that makes what we do particularly unique is-- and this is a trade-off for what

00:05:46.680 | people are seeing, because a lot of it's not on the screen.

00:05:48.920 | But we're using cycles to run this, which is we're thinking about everybody in the whole

00:05:53.920 | world all the time.

00:05:56.880 | The ones that are further away at a much less tick rate, they go into low.

00:06:00.800 | But we know if they want to walk across the world.

00:06:04.040 | And we're running every quest at the same time.

00:06:08.160 | Whereas in other open world games, you start an activity, the rest of the world is going

00:06:12.000 | to shut down so that they can really make that as impactful.

00:06:18.840 | I really prefer that the rest of it's going on.

00:06:21.560 | It's more of a simulation that we're building.

00:06:25.080 | So when those things collide, that's where it gets the most interesting.

00:06:31.880 | And so we're running all of those people and understanding where they want to go and their

00:06:35.920 | cycles and what they want to do.

00:06:37.360 | And the ones that are closer to you, we just update a lot more.

00:06:40.080 | It's one way to think about it.

00:06:41.840 | I mean, that's really fascinating.

00:06:43.760 | It's something that people had-- they were wondering about to what degree it's possible

00:06:50.520 | to run the world without you.

00:06:53.160 | So there is a feeling to role-playing games that you're the central, you're at the center

00:06:57.400 | of the world and the whole world rotates around you.

00:07:00.200 | As it does in normal life.

00:07:01.680 | Like when we walk around, there's a-- when you forget yourself, you start to take yourself

00:07:07.160 | very seriously.

00:07:08.160 | Like you are the center of the world.

00:07:10.080 | You forget that there's 8 billion people on earth and you forget that they have lives.

00:07:14.040 | That's actually a sobering realization that they all have really interesting life stories

00:07:18.520 | and they have their worries, they suffer in different complicated ways.

00:07:25.400 | And yet, when you play a role-playing game, there's a-- I mean, both computationally and

00:07:31.360 | from a storytelling perspective, you wonder if the world goes on without you.

00:07:36.000 | Like if you come back, if you take a break and you come back, is there still a bustling

00:07:40.280 | town that now has a history since you have last visited?

00:07:44.520 | So to what degree can you create a world that goes on without you?

00:07:49.400 | Or goes on at the same time as you do your thing, whatever the heck you're doing?

00:07:53.600 | We don't prioritize the stuff you can't see.

00:07:55.920 | So it's more like an amusement park.

00:07:58.120 | If you study like the design, our level designers did this, how do they build Disney World in

00:08:02.040 | these places?

00:08:03.040 | So it still exists for you, the player.

00:08:07.060 | So it is fairly, you know, when you're going to come in, this is what you're going to see,

00:08:10.440 | the shops are in the front, you're going to do this.

00:08:13.520 | It's just for us to make it far more believable and get some more emergent behavior that not

00:08:22.320 | just make that sort of the verisimilitude of what you're in for that moment, but you

00:08:28.800 | buy it all.

00:08:29.800 | I always say like, you know, we got to do the little things so that you buy the reality

00:08:35.400 | of the virtual world you're in.

00:08:36.760 | So we want to do something crazy, you know, when a dragon lands or a death law comes out

00:08:41.360 | of the wasteland or those kinds of things that you, it has the impact to you as the

00:08:46.080 | viewer that it would to the people in the world.

00:08:50.760 | Okay.

00:08:52.360 | But still you're simulating stuff that's close to you.

00:08:55.360 | It is a bit of a simulation going on.

00:08:57.360 | Oh, absolutely.

00:08:58.360 | Yes.

00:08:59.360 | And so that creates some interesting dynamics then.

00:09:02.280 | And the stuff that we're looking at in the future, you know, our plan is to push that

00:09:06.080 | even more to think about how these things exist in the world first.

00:09:14.560 | And we do some of this, but even more so in the future to say, how do these things exist?

00:09:20.040 | Take like a faction in the world.

00:09:22.000 | What is their role in the world as opposed to just their role is for the player to join

00:09:27.320 | it, go through a bunch of quests and become the head of the faction.

00:09:31.040 | You know, think a little bit deeper about the simulation and what would the mage's guild

00:09:35.260 | be doing in a fantasy world or the fighter's guild be doing in a fantasy world versus just

00:09:42.960 | sign up, do quests, get gold.

00:09:46.760 | And so that when you show up to that mage's guild, it's a bustling guild full of stuff

00:09:52.580 | going on.

00:09:53.580 | It's not just that it's bustling is that they feel rooted in it.

00:09:56.460 | They don't feel like a storefront for come here, do quests, get experience.

00:10:02.640 | Is that one of the essential components of randomly generated worlds?

00:10:06.900 | So when I think back to Daggerfall as gigantic world, when I first played it, I thought like,

00:10:14.240 | I mean, you're just struck by the immensity of it.

00:10:19.840 | The immensity of the possibility.

00:10:20.840 | When you're young and you look into your future, it's wide open and you can do anything.

00:10:26.720 | And that's what Daggerfall felt like.

00:10:28.840 | The openness was gigantic.

00:10:31.440 | And Daggerfall is interesting coming off Arena where Arena does the same thing, but Daggerfall

00:10:38.760 | in many ways is bigger despite focusing on an area because of how the density of, okay,

00:10:47.960 | this is how much physical game space we'll do for these villages and towns.

00:10:52.440 | And it does feel endless, even though you're looking at a map that has constraints.

00:10:59.200 | And Daggerfall actually was a touchstone for us going into Starfield for how we do the

00:11:05.840 | planets because there's a different kind of gameplay experience when you just wander outside

00:11:14.400 | a city in Daggerfall.

00:11:17.680 | Then follow a quest line and go to this place and it's completely handcrafted and everything

00:11:23.680 | around every corner we've kind of placed like Skyrim.

00:11:27.840 | Starfield's a bit more like Daggerfall in that if you wander outside the city, we're

00:11:32.560 | going to be generating things and you kind of get used to that game flow, different than

00:11:36.800 | we've done before and fun in a different kind of way.

00:11:42.400 | We'll talk about Starfield.

00:11:43.400 | So just for people who don't know, and how dare you for not knowing, but with Daggerfall

00:11:49.600 | we're talking about the Elder Scrolls series that started, so we're talking about the big

00:11:53.720 | titles within the series, started with Arena in '94, Daggerfall in '96.

00:11:58.680 | I didn't look up the years before this, this is depressing or awesome.

00:12:04.520 | So all of these games brought hundreds, probably for some of them thousands of hours of joy

00:12:10.980 | for me.

00:12:11.980 | So Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim.

00:12:18.320 | So I don't remember Arena being that open world.

00:12:21.480 | Well, it's all the provinces.

00:12:23.500 | It follows kind of the same pattern.

00:12:24.920 | It just doesn't have all the number of villages and places that Daggerfall has while Daggerfall

00:12:30.680 | focuses on the Iliac Bay area.

00:12:34.760 | Arena does it all.

00:12:35.760 | It just changes the scale in terms of one block on the map equals this much space.

00:12:40.400 | There is something that, I mean, I'm speaking to anecdotal experience, but I just remember

00:12:45.140 | it feeling wide open, Daggerfall.

00:12:48.420 | It definitely was, yes.

00:12:49.420 | In the way Arena didn't.

00:12:51.040 | I don't remember, maybe because Arena, it was so cool to have just the role playing

00:12:59.360 | game aspect.

00:13:00.780 | You're focused on the items and the character development.

00:13:04.580 | Daggerfall has a lot more depth, particularly in the character system.

00:13:08.540 | That's what it introduces, all of the skills and those kinds of things.

00:13:12.060 | Arena, it's actually, it's a game I love.

00:13:16.780 | And it's very, very elegant if you look at the first one where it's just an XP based

00:13:21.660 | system, do this, get XP, level up.

00:13:23.740 | Very classic role playing game.

00:13:26.940 | Daggerfall digs deep into who's your character, how you're going to develop it, what are

00:13:30.380 | your skills, there's advantages, there's disadvantages.

00:13:34.140 | And the environment going full 3D from Arena, which is actually like a two and a half D

00:13:39.260 | Doom style engine, I agree with you that Daggerfall feels like there's more possibilities when

00:13:48.460 | you're playing it.

00:13:49.460 | Were you able to look up to the sky in Daggerfall?

00:13:52.100 | Yep.

00:13:53.100 | My memory is...

00:13:54.100 | It's full 3D, yeah.

00:13:55.100 | So that's what full 3D means.

00:13:56.100 | And then you can go outside the city?

00:13:58.260 | You can walk outside the city.

00:13:59.260 | You can do that in Arena too, but it looks more fakie, right?

00:14:01.500 | It's all going to be a flat plane.

00:14:02.700 | Here comes things and then a dungeon entrance is an 8-bit, here comes a little flat coming

00:14:07.740 | at the camera.

00:14:09.220 | So before we go to the end and the middle, so from Starfield to Fallout and the Elder

00:14:17.900 | Scrolls series, let's go to the very beginning.

00:14:19.620 | What's the origin story?

00:14:21.300 | You know what, let's even go before then.

00:14:23.020 | What's the first time you remember the thing that made you fall in love with video games?

00:14:30.300 | Well, I think it's partly my age coming up with the arcades and playing Space Invaders

00:14:38.140 | at the pizza place and then Pac-Man really...

00:14:42.540 | It's interesting about video games and what Pac-Man did for video games, where it popularized

00:14:47.220 | them in a way that was just insane at the time.

00:14:50.860 | Had a song, had a cartoon, had all of the things.

00:14:54.020 | Nintendo comes along.

00:14:55.020 | So it was always part of...

00:14:57.420 | You know, I think if you were a kid growing up then, it was such a newness to playing

00:15:01.900 | things like that.

00:15:03.100 | I remember being in fifth grade when the TRS-80 was brought into the classroom and there was

00:15:08.620 | a Star Trek game.

00:15:10.980 | And I was enamored with it and they were going to start teaching some rudimentary programming.

00:15:17.820 | Like, "Okay, would you like to know how this is made?"

00:15:20.900 | And I was hooked.

00:15:21.900 | I was like, "I need to figure out how to make this stuff."

00:15:25.980 | And so I was a self-taught programmer and my whole goal was to write my own video games.

00:15:34.820 | And by sixth, seventh grade, I had written my own much better Star Trek clone for the

00:15:42.140 | Apple II.

00:15:44.980 | And I really enjoyed programming on the Apple II then.

00:15:50.060 | And that, I think, was the right level of complexity at that age where you were always

00:15:56.420 | learning but you could still understand a lot of the problem set for like, "This is

00:16:00.340 | what I want to get on the screen."

00:16:02.860 | And I was also into art.

00:16:04.140 | So I did a lot of art and I did a lot of programming and I was always making games.

00:16:09.380 | That was my hobby from the time I was 10 or 12.

00:16:13.300 | What was to you involved in making games?

00:16:16.340 | How did you think of it?

00:16:17.340 | Was it from a graphics perspective, like what shows up on screen?

00:16:21.660 | Was it how it makes you feel?

00:16:23.180 | Was it about the story?

00:16:24.380 | Was it the text-based stuff and the dialogue and the prompting?

00:16:31.020 | What does it mean to create a video game at that young age to you?

00:16:34.340 | Well, it was a way of experiencing things that I couldn't myself.

00:16:40.900 | So if you're playing Dungeons and Dragons at the time too, where you really feel, even

00:16:49.220 | pen and paper, these are like, they feel somewhat in quotes "real" to you as you're playing

00:16:55.420 | them.

00:16:56.420 | You're very invested in your character and what you're doing.

00:16:58.340 | And then I love the games, the Wizardry and Ultima, that were able to bring that to a

00:17:02.900 | computer so I could do it on my own time.

00:17:05.740 | It was very, very real to me.

00:17:08.260 | I'd sit in my bedroom and then go to bed and think about it.

00:17:10.820 | And then, "Oh no, I have to go to school.

00:17:12.220 | I want to come home and figure out how to do this problem in the game."

00:17:16.500 | And so whatever I was creating was something that I was excited about at the time.

00:17:22.100 | I made Raiders of the Lost Ark games.

00:17:24.780 | Like with graphics and everything?

00:17:27.100 | Yeah.

00:17:28.100 | So it was usually, you know, I made a Miami Vice game, made a Gru the Wanderer game, made

00:17:31.820 | a Traveler game.

00:17:33.980 | But every time I was doing it, I wanted to figure out a new method on the Apple II of

00:17:39.700 | pulling it off graphically.

00:17:41.740 | Whether that was editing character sets to get graphics in different formats, or how

00:17:47.400 | can I enable the secret double high res mode it had, or just things like that where it

00:17:53.900 | became kind of this limitless, "What can I make this do?"

00:17:57.940 | And I had some friends who were doing the same thing.

00:17:59.700 | And then you get into who can impress each other.

00:18:02.900 | And I was kind of middle of the pack, I would say.

00:18:08.140 | But again, this was the time where they're bringing computers into the school, and the

00:18:11.740 | Apples come into the school, and the teachers are learning it because they have to teach

00:18:16.660 | the students.

00:18:17.660 | But then I would say I was part of a group of students that were like way past that.

00:18:23.980 | And it was very much of a self-taught, you know, "How do you make this thing dance?"

00:18:29.380 | I'd like to ask a strange question.

00:18:32.200 | So at that time, a lot of people consider you one of, if not the greatest game designer/creator

00:18:39.860 | of all time.

00:18:41.660 | You were middle of the pack then.

00:18:43.900 | Did you ever sense that this would be your life, and you would also be creating the greatest

00:18:51.800 | games ever?

00:18:54.340 | Not in the slightest.

00:18:56.340 | No, I don't think anybody...

00:18:58.340 | But I was very much like that was my dream at that age.

00:19:03.880 | But you don't think that that's a job.

00:19:07.680 | You know, and as I got older, I was really going through college, and even the computer

00:19:15.060 | classes then weren't where I wanted them to be, so I was still kind of doing my own stuff.

00:19:22.180 | And I ended up getting a business degree and then interviewing for some jobs, like finance

00:19:26.740 | jobs.

00:19:27.740 | So, well, I guess I should do this to make money, and I can keep doing this on the side.

00:19:32.420 | And I remember I actually got to like the final level of like this corporate finance

00:19:36.800 | job at Circuit City.

00:19:39.280 | And they turned me down.

00:19:41.160 | And I was like, "Fuck them.

00:19:42.600 | I'm just gonna go make video games."

00:19:45.320 | So thank you, Circuit City.

00:19:48.120 | Yeah, I remember Circuit City.

00:19:50.280 | I think they went bankrupt, actually.

00:19:51.560 | Well, they were based in Richmond.

00:19:52.880 | I was going to school close to there, and so...

00:19:55.760 | So what's the origin story of you joining Bethesda Softworks at the time?

00:20:02.600 | So I had gotten Wayne Gretzky Hockey 3 for Christmas from my girlfriend at the time,

00:20:11.000 | who's now my wife.

00:20:13.800 | I was in college, and I noticed that it was in Rockville, Maryland.

00:20:23.880 | And oh, that's on my way home over Christmas break, back to William & Mary, where I went

00:20:28.080 | to college.

00:20:29.600 | And I was at this point committed, like, "This is what I want to do.

00:20:32.660 | So I'm just going to drive by and knock on the door," which is what I did.

00:20:36.520 | So I drove by and knocked on the doors, Martin Luther King Day '93.

00:20:44.040 | And someone came out and met me and said, "Well, maybe..."

00:20:47.720 | And I said, "Well, I'm in college.

00:20:48.720 | I'm talking about when I'm out of school."

00:20:50.040 | I'm like, "Okay, well, contact us then."

00:20:52.840 | And I will say I would contact them every once in a while.

00:20:58.160 | I did work for a small software company right out of school, down in that area of Williamsburg,

00:21:07.360 | and still would contact Bethesda.

00:21:09.360 | Arena had just come out.

00:21:11.160 | So then we're in '94.

00:21:12.520 | Arena had just come out, and I loved it.

00:21:14.160 | So I was into sports games.

00:21:15.160 | I like the hockey stuff.

00:21:16.560 | They were doing a basketball...

00:21:17.560 | They did a basketball game.

00:21:18.800 | Yeah, I'm just looking at...

00:21:19.960 | They did a lot of...

00:21:20.960 | They did, like, six sports games, six.

00:21:23.960 | Bethesda, at least ten games.

00:21:26.040 | Six of them sports games, NCAA basketball, hockey league simulator.

00:21:31.560 | Hockey league simulator, yeah.

00:21:33.680 | So it was really like sports gridiron, which is like the first kind of physics-based football

00:21:39.120 | game at the time.

00:21:41.440 | And there's a famous story with Electronic Arts trying to do Madden and then hiring Bethesda

00:21:45.760 | before my time to make Madden, 'cause they were struggling.

00:21:50.840 | When I started at Bethesda, I remember the owner had John Madden's Oakland Raiders playbook

00:21:56.280 | in his office.

00:21:57.280 | Like, "Ooh, can I see that?"

00:21:59.120 | And I love sports, right?

00:22:00.120 | So I still play Madden to this day.

00:22:01.600 | I love it.

00:22:02.600 | So there's an alternate reality where...

00:22:04.480 | I made sports games?

00:22:05.480 | Yeah.

00:22:06.480 | Yeah, absolutely.

00:22:07.480 | This blew my mind.

00:22:08.480 | I wanted to make, like, the ultimate college football game.

00:22:11.360 | Well, it's always like...

00:22:12.360 | You know, it's like music.

00:22:13.360 | You probably listen to lots of type of music.

00:22:14.760 | Like, you don't play every time.

00:22:15.760 | But I think of open worlds as fundamentally different.

00:22:19.640 | Absolutely sure.

00:22:20.840 | No, like, source of happiness, entertainments, storytelling, world, gaming than Madden.

00:22:28.760 | I mean, it's just...

00:22:29.760 | 'Cause I love both.

00:22:31.160 | I love both worlds, but...

00:22:32.760 | They're two totally different experiences.

00:22:35.480 | Just like when you might watch a movie, you might be in the mood for Lord of the Rings

00:22:38.960 | one day, and then you want some other, I don't know, competitive show or game show or something

00:22:44.400 | like that.

00:22:45.400 | Or watch football on TV, right?

00:22:46.400 | You watch football on TV.

00:22:47.400 | But then you kind of want to watch, get really into Game of Thrones.

00:22:51.060 | So I think all those things have validity.

00:22:54.560 | And actually, one of the first things I worked on when I started at Bethesda was NCAA basketball,

00:23:00.400 | Road to the Final Four 2.

00:23:03.140 | So that was kind of an external project.

00:23:05.000 | It came in like, "Hey, you know sports.

00:23:07.740 | Get this game done."

00:23:09.440 | And then went on to...

00:23:10.440 | But they were doing everything I loved.

00:23:11.440 | It was like, "This is where I have to work."

00:23:13.720 | They're doing, like, the Terminator science fiction stuff.

00:23:15.840 | I love that.

00:23:16.840 | They're doing these open world role playing games.

00:23:18.320 | I love that.

00:23:19.320 | And they're doing sports.

00:23:20.320 | Like, "This, I have to work here."

00:23:23.000 | So I started there.

00:23:24.000 | And Arena, you loved.

00:23:25.840 | I loved it.

00:23:26.840 | Yeah.

00:23:27.840 | So when I came in, it had just come out, and they were doing the CD-ROM version.

00:23:32.000 | So CD-ROMs aren't even out yet.

00:23:34.200 | Oh, it used to be floppy disks.

00:23:37.440 | That's probably when...

00:23:38.440 | What was Arena released?

00:23:39.440 | We would burn them in the basement.

00:23:40.680 | We had the disk replicators.

00:23:42.880 | Right.

00:23:44.240 | So Arena was not released on floppy.

00:23:48.960 | It was.

00:23:49.960 | Yeah, I believe it's six floppy disks.

00:23:52.440 | Six floppy disks.

00:23:53.440 | Maybe it was eight.

00:23:55.080 | Yeah.

00:23:56.080 | But in those days, the number of floppy disks was very, very important to what the money

00:24:02.200 | you were making.

00:24:03.960 | So if you wanted to do a big, huge game, like, "Well, that's just too many disks."

00:24:07.760 | So the CD-ROM became this jumping off point for the whole industry where, "Oh, it's unlimited

00:24:15.440 | data."

00:24:16.440 | By the way, I played Arena.

00:24:23.400 | So that was, of course, attained legally, as one does.

00:24:30.720 | Alternate means?

00:24:31.720 | By alternate means.

00:24:32.720 | Right.

00:24:33.720 | On floppy disks.

00:24:34.720 | And that was such an incredible...

00:24:39.520 | As you probably have seen, interacting with a large number of people.

00:24:43.280 | It's a whole world.

00:24:44.920 | It's a world that you escape to in the way...

00:24:48.080 | Your favorite book, like Lord of the Rings.

00:24:51.520 | It was just...

00:24:54.520 | It was unlike anything else.

00:24:55.760 | It was incredible.

00:24:56.760 | It's probably...

00:24:57.760 | I mean, of course, as people say, the first game you play is the one that really sentimentally

00:25:03.220 | means the most to you.

00:25:04.920 | I think the first role-playing game I played, and it just changed everything.

00:25:10.080 | Was Arena?

00:25:11.080 | It was Arena, yeah.

00:25:12.280 | I think Daggerfall is what I really played, especially because, like you said, the character

00:25:19.880 | development was really rich.

00:25:21.600 | But just that you can feel like you travel to this whole other world that's less about

00:25:28.320 | entertainment like a shooting game and more about a world.

00:25:32.200 | It felt like it's a world.

00:25:35.040 | Like you're literally there.

00:25:36.600 | You can travel there.

00:25:37.600 | You can live there.

00:25:38.600 | You actually feel like that person versus like a Pac-Man, like an arcade, fun, entertaining

00:25:47.120 | adventure game.

00:25:50.960 | So you joined...

00:25:53.540 | You made it.

00:25:56.820 | What did you work on first there?

00:25:59.040 | I worked...

00:26:00.040 | Well, everyone did a bunch of stuff.

00:26:01.440 | So I worked on the basketball game really just to get it out the door.

00:26:06.520 | And Terminator Future Shock.

00:26:08.840 | So we were doing Future Shock and Daggerfall at the same time.

00:26:13.680 | They were developing a new engine.

00:26:15.180 | So it was one of the first 3D engines, the X-Engine.

00:26:17.520 | There were a bunch of guys from Denmark, actually.

00:26:21.800 | There's like a big Danish demo scene in those days on the PC.

00:26:26.160 | And so a bunch of the top programmers there...

00:26:28.440 | Well, look, this is not big.

00:26:29.440 | This is not a big company.

00:26:30.480 | There's 20 people in development.

00:26:34.280 | And we were doing both Daggerfall and the new Terminator.

00:26:38.320 | And so Daggerfall was a bit more, again, behind the Terminator game.

00:26:43.080 | So I was one of the main people on the Terminator team.

00:26:47.200 | And I don't know.

00:26:48.400 | Things kind of worked out.

00:26:49.400 | I very quickly...

00:26:50.400 | I don't know why.

00:26:51.400 | Like I quickly became the producer and I was making levels and doing all these things.

00:26:55.400 | And it was awesome.

00:26:58.680 | And looking back now, I can understand it better.

00:27:01.680 | But at the time, I didn't appreciate it, which is no one quite owned the Terminator license.

00:27:06.240 | It was in this limbo, legally.

00:27:09.680 | So there was no one to tell us, "No, you can't do that."

00:27:13.720 | So we would pick apart the movies and, "Oh, how does he mention the gun he wants and the

00:27:18.440 | wattage of the laser and all these things?"

00:27:21.080 | And so Future Shock is a game that I still love today.

00:27:24.880 | It does a lot of things that if you go back and look at it, we're frankly still doing.

00:27:30.320 | It's a large, open world, post-apocalyptic landscape height map with instanced objects

00:27:39.320 | all over it.

00:27:40.320 | And that is still a lot of how we build our worlds.

00:27:45.200 | What's an instanced object?

00:27:48.060 | Some games, every wall or building is unique in its data, whereas we would just build these

00:27:57.600 | little husks of buildings and then place them all over the place.

00:28:00.460 | So the memory and the way you render it is much more optimal.

00:28:04.600 | So that allows you to build a bigger world, a more open world?

00:28:06.960 | It allows you to build a bigger world much faster.

00:28:11.900 | Not every single version of that building is in its own unique architecture that is

00:28:16.300 | going to take up memory and processing speed, et cetera, et cetera.

00:28:19.740 | So you're there very much feeling the computational constraints of the system when you're creating

00:28:23.920 | these open worlds?

00:28:24.920 | And you know what?

00:28:25.920 | That's the thing then.

00:28:26.920 | You see some of it now, but in those times, I do feel like every year the technology moved.

00:28:34.180 | And maybe it's because, same thing, we're like that my age at that time, where every

00:28:38.300 | year somebody was coming up with some new method or some new game system.

00:28:45.340 | And it was every year that innovation, innovation, innovation, and then 3D acceleration comes

00:28:53.700 | along and then these things come along and then HD comes along.

00:28:56.940 | And it is true that as time goes on, there is visually a diminishing return in terms

00:29:03.420 | of what you're able to do on the screen.

00:29:06.740 | And there's a ton of work that goes into it now because just rendering this cup to

00:29:11.620 | the perfect shine and material and roughness and how does the global illumination off this

00:29:16.780 | wall, it's a ton of work.

00:29:20.060 | But you can pretty much do what you want now if you want to put the time in.

00:29:24.060 | Whereas then, okay, you can't do everything you want.

00:29:27.740 | So pick your battles really carefully and technically you can do what you want, if that

00:29:34.060 | makes sense.

00:29:35.060 | - How much trade-off is there now in how much effort you put into the realism of the graphics

00:29:45.020 | versus the story?

00:29:46.900 | And actually not even how much effort you put in, but is there a trade-off in the experience,

00:29:52.780 | the feel of the game in terms of realism and story?

00:29:58.300 | - Usually we will start with let the player have as much agency and do as many things

00:30:03.580 | as they can as possible.

00:30:05.380 | And we will sacrifice some graphic fidelity for that, some speed for that.

00:30:11.220 | We could make a game that, traditionally our games are, we're okay with 30 frames a second

00:30:17.760 | as long as it looks really good and the simulation's running and all of those things.

00:30:20.820 | So we'll sacrifice some of that fidelity for the player experience and the kind of

00:30:26.740 | things that I do.

00:30:29.460 | But from a manpower standpoint, the graphics programmers work on graphics, the artists

00:30:34.300 | work on art, and we have an awesome team of artists and designers and writers and programmers.

00:30:40.100 | It's usually where we find as time goes on, the amount of art time that it takes to create

00:30:47.180 | a cup compared to what it used to be, that has increased.

00:30:51.700 | So we do use, most people use art outsourcing as well so that we're not, we still relatively

00:30:57.820 | compared to our industry and what we're doing, have smaller teams.

00:31:03.060 | - What about the experience of the beauty of the graphics?

00:31:07.860 | So like one of the most amazing things about Skyrim, and maybe you could say that about

00:31:14.780 | some of the other games, but for me Skyrim is the outdoor, when you step outside, it's

00:31:19.260 | the outdoor scenery.

00:31:20.860 | So what does it take to create the feeling, especially of that, being outdoors of nature

00:31:28.620 | and just like lost in the beauty, whatever it is when you go hiking and you feel the

00:31:34.620 | awe of it, how do you create that awe?

00:31:36.940 | Is that graphics?

00:31:37.940 | What is that?

00:31:39.100 | - It's a lot of graphics.

00:31:40.420 | It's a lot of mood.

00:31:41.420 | Let me just talk about it in terms of tone.

00:31:44.860 | And those are, again, going back to my previous comment, the graphics are very, very important

00:31:51.700 | to us because, and we always push them, because when you're doing the kind of things we do

00:31:57.540 | where you step into a virtual world, it does have to have that moment of wow, this feels

00:32:02.940 | real.

00:32:03.940 | I've never experienced this.

00:32:06.780 | And it's okay, I think it's okay to let just like the time settle, meaning you step out,

00:32:17.220 | how does the wind sound?

00:32:19.300 | How are the trees moving?

00:32:20.300 | How are the clouds moving?

00:32:24.380 | I enjoy strolling and watching the sunset.

00:32:29.060 | How does it land over the water?

00:32:31.300 | Like it doesn't have to be like, hey, let's go, let's finish a quest, let's go kill things,

00:32:35.420 | let's figure out the next step, let's level up.

00:32:37.780 | I like the quiet moments a lot.

00:32:39.900 | And I think when you play our games, you can tell we spend a lot of time on them.

00:32:44.060 | Then you watch the weather roll in.

00:32:47.780 | I think that's just part of being, being that character, being that person in that space.

00:32:54.060 | - Yeah, I saw that there's a mod that removes all enemies.

00:32:58.740 | I've been meaning to do that, to just do like a live stream where I for hours walk around

00:33:04.620 | Skyrim just, and then answer questions and so on.

00:33:08.060 | That just feels, that's a completely stress-free environment.

00:33:13.740 | It's just, you are just like you said, in this moment in time.

00:33:17.380 | It's so incredible.

00:33:19.300 | It feels as incredible as going hiking or something like that.

00:33:22.540 | But in another, in a totally different place, like Iceland or something like that, this

00:33:30.060 | whole other surreal, ethereal place.

00:33:32.940 | So yeah, it's incredible how you kind of create that.

00:33:35.500 | So graphics is a part of that, but also letting it, the temporal aspect of that, like the

00:33:41.500 | wind, the rustling sound and look and all of that.

00:33:46.900 | - The soundscape is really, really important.

00:33:50.460 | And the sky, we spend a lot of time on the sky, because it's taking up much more of the

00:33:54.340 | screen than a lot of people give credit for.

00:33:58.980 | - What about the rendering, the openness of it?

00:34:01.020 | Like how do you, is that?

00:34:02.020 | - There's a lot of level of detail, streaming work.

00:34:05.540 | And nowadays it's getting more common.

00:34:08.060 | Like frankly, the systems are built better for it.

00:34:11.780 | Hard drive speed is really prioritized.

00:34:14.340 | Like they're so blazing fast.

00:34:17.380 | You take Skyrim and Oblivion and the fallouts of that 360 era.

00:34:23.220 | It's a, and it was a lot of time spent on how do we get all this data streaming in as

00:34:30.420 | you move, and then levels of detail so you can see all the way, but not crush the processor.

00:34:38.940 | - You know what, let's even step back, 'cause you mentioned tone.

00:34:41.460 | You mentioned tone a lot.

00:34:43.100 | What do you mean by tone?

00:34:44.620 | - It's all of it together.

00:34:46.220 | If you look at, I think you can flip through, let's just take fantasy.

00:34:52.500 | You can sort of look at a couple images or things and know how does Lord of the Rings

00:34:57.260 | different from Game of Thrones that is different than a Thurian like Excalibur, or your sci-fi

00:35:11.220 | channel series of the month kind of thing.

00:35:21.060 | And so finding that, what's gonna make it kind of unique, and usually I lean on something

00:35:27.180 | that is grounded in reality for what it is, and then have lesser kind of fantastical things,

00:35:39.740 | at least at the start, and then they kind of build.

00:35:43.580 | So even when we do Starfield, I mean it's a science fiction game, there are laser guns

00:35:47.500 | and spaceships that fire around and shoot each other and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

00:35:50.560 | but it's grounded in, you can look at it and say, "Okay, this is kind of an extension of

00:35:57.060 | things as we view them today in space."

00:36:01.940 | And we sort of take the same approach with Fallout, where admittedly things can get even

00:36:08.120 | a little bit crazier the longer you're developing Fallout content.

00:36:14.300 | So just to linger on this, so defining the tone starts at creating a realistic experience,

00:36:23.180 | like you feel like, "I could walk into this and this feels like life."

00:36:27.020 | What's their technology level, even for a fantasy world?

00:36:29.780 | Like is magic, how prevalent is it?

00:36:31.420 | Or are they making weapons and things and armor?

00:36:34.980 | Is it for utility?

00:36:36.820 | Is it for decoration?

00:36:38.700 | How do they live their lives?

00:36:40.420 | Does this feel like a place that you believe that has some grounding in our reality, whether

00:36:48.260 | that's historical or near future, or that it's grounded in some semblance of the reality

00:36:55.860 | that you and I understand so that it can feel, it's also making it feel a little bit welcoming.

00:37:01.500 | Like, "Okay, I understand this."

00:37:04.100 | Is that art or science?

00:37:05.540 | So how do you know when it feels welcoming and everything fits and is grounded?

00:37:10.700 | I don't know.

00:37:11.700 | I guess it's personal taste.

00:37:13.220 | Some people like things that are weirder, that have more fantastical from the get-go.

00:37:18.820 | Even a game like Morrowind, where we get into some more fantastical things, it intentionally

00:37:23.900 | starts a little more grounded.

00:37:26.580 | There's a very classic medieval-looking town that you come into, but you look just beyond

00:37:33.020 | it and there are mushroom trees and giant insects and things like that.

00:37:37.980 | So in Skyrim, when you put a dragon in it, what are your thoughts about dragons and tone?

00:37:44.020 | How does that fit into tone?

00:37:46.420 | That's a great question.

00:37:51.700 | It's a ridiculous question, but yeah, I just love dragons, so I wanted to bring it up.

00:37:54.900 | No, no, no.

00:37:55.900 | These are the things that we debate with...

00:37:59.140 | Do we include a dragon?

00:38:01.100 | Why didn't you include a dragon in Daggerfall?

00:38:02.940 | That's what I want to know.

00:38:03.940 | I think there's dragonlings.

00:38:04.940 | They're hard to do.

00:38:06.940 | Dragons are hard to do.

00:38:07.940 | So when you start Skyrim, say, "Hey, look, dragons are going to be a theme."

00:38:11.340 | Start visually.

00:38:14.260 | You can make the argument that dragons existed.

00:38:16.060 | Okay, what would they look like?

00:38:17.380 | How close to dinosaurs would they be?

00:38:19.900 | And ours are less...

00:38:20.900 | I believe they're less fantastical-looking in general.

00:38:24.460 | They look like beasts that could exist in that world.

00:38:29.060 | And then how we introduce them, it's kind of a little bit of a slow roll in Skyrim,

00:38:35.860 | and that the people in the world are reacting to the dragons appearing.

00:38:41.460 | And that's somewhat mirrors...

00:38:43.880 | You want something that mirrors the player experience as well.

00:38:46.500 | It says back to you, like, "Hey, no, these are...

00:38:48.660 | This is...

00:38:49.660 | Have you heard this?

00:38:50.660 | Someone saw a dragon."

00:38:51.660 | That's what Daggerfall...

00:38:52.660 | Isn't there mentions of dragons or something?

00:38:55.780 | Because I remember being sure that there's dragons in Daggerfall as I'm playing it and

00:39:02.100 | I'm searching.

00:39:03.100 | You're pretty sure...

00:39:04.100 | Well...

00:39:05.100 | Is there a dragon in Daggerfall?

00:39:06.100 | There's dragon wings in Daggerfall.

00:39:07.500 | To my memory...

00:39:08.500 | Look, I guess someone will probably correct me.

00:39:09.500 | Like, "Actually, there is a dragon here."

00:39:11.940 | But I'm pretty sure they're not.

00:39:15.140 | And then a game I did, Redguard, which we bring back a dragon...

00:39:20.340 | It takes place beforehand, so we have a dragon there in that game, and that was unique to

00:39:25.060 | that at the time.

00:39:26.540 | Yeah.

00:39:27.740 | Just a brief tangent on that.

00:39:29.300 | I thought Redguard was a really, really good game.

00:39:32.020 | I played it and there's a...

00:39:35.380 | Again, you don't...

00:39:37.780 | You forget stuff, but I remember getting...

00:39:41.180 | I guess it was the first in the Elder Scrolls series to put it into that world, but it was

00:39:45.500 | like an adventure game.

00:39:46.820 | It reminded me of another game I really love, like Prince of Persia.

00:39:50.940 | That was one of the inspirations.

00:39:51.940 | Prince of Persia is one of my favorite games.

00:39:54.940 | I apologize if I'm forgetting, but you can jump in buildings and stuff.

00:40:00.700 | There's a dynamic, airy nature.

00:40:04.100 | It's a park-more type of situation.

00:40:07.100 | Yeah, it was an incredible game.

00:40:09.420 | Why do you think...

00:40:10.420 | Let me ask a dark question.

00:40:11.420 | Why do you think that game was a flop?

00:40:13.340 | One of the few...

00:40:14.340 | Not a dark question.

00:40:15.340 | It was.

00:40:16.340 | Well, a lot of reasons.

00:40:20.420 | One that I love and really got us going on a handcrafted world.

00:40:25.300 | We're coming off of Daggerfall.

00:40:27.300 | Morrowind is sort of in design.

00:40:30.140 | Then part of our development teams broke up to do different things.

00:40:34.500 | The game that did Battlespire and Redguard was my game.

00:40:39.820 | I wanted to do something a little more Ultima feeling, handcrafted world.

00:40:44.100 | I really like things that blend up genres.

00:40:46.820 | I know it's in the adventure game category, but it really does a lot of things.

00:40:52.300 | It's a love letter to Prince of Persia.

00:40:54.140 | There's a little Raiders of the Lost Ark in it.

00:40:56.060 | There's a lot of Ultima in it.

00:40:58.980 | Really see what we could do with the engine.

00:41:01.380 | It's very much, I think, plays...

00:41:04.540 | It would have had a much better home on, say, PlayStation or Xbox.

00:41:08.100 | This predates Xbox.

00:41:10.820 | It's much more constantly Tomb Raider had come out.

00:41:14.660 | You see those influences of Tomb Raider on that game.

00:41:20.300 | 3D effects cards had just come out.

00:41:22.540 | Okay, we can do...

00:41:23.940 | It was the last.

00:41:25.460 | I think it's one of the last DOS games in a Windows world.

00:41:29.940 | I think it missed a technology window,

00:41:33.180 | as well as, ultimately, not what people wanted from us.

00:41:42.860 | I felt I was really kind of...

00:41:45.500 | The company let me make that game, and it was a big flop.

00:41:50.260 | Battlespire hadn't done well.

00:41:51.700 | The company was in really bad shape,

00:41:53.700 | and I felt really personally responsible.

00:41:57.020 | They let me do this creative thing.

00:41:59.140 | It didn't do what we needed it to do,

00:42:01.180 | and now we're in a very, very bad situation.

00:42:05.220 | Company almost went out of business.

00:42:07.620 | And that's when it got reformed with ZeniMax Media,

00:42:12.660 | and Robert Altman came in, and we were starting Morrowind.

00:42:15.300 | We had just sort of started,

00:42:16.460 | and it was sort of that whole experience

00:42:18.180 | that made you sort of realize...

00:42:20.300 | Someone says to you, "Okay, you're gonna get another shot."

00:42:23.620 | And that's where you're like, "Okay, we're gonna make Morrowind

00:42:27.620 | and make the biggest, best RPG we can make.

00:42:31.300 | We know what the audience wants from us.

00:42:32.820 | We know what we could do building a world."

00:42:35.900 | So there's callbacks to how we built the world in Redguard.

00:42:39.180 | Morrowind is a large-scale, handcrafted...

00:42:41.740 | But if you were to put it pixel per pixel with Daggerfall,

00:42:44.780 | you wouldn't even see Morrowind,

00:42:46.180 | because Daggerfall is so big.

00:42:48.180 | But the impact of playing it, I think,

00:42:50.820 | is in many ways equal, but different.

00:42:54.020 | - Just you personally, psychologically,

00:42:57.460 | did you have doubt about yourself

00:42:59.300 | from the performance of Redguard?

00:43:02.100 | Do I even know what it is?

00:43:03.740 | - Of course, of course.

00:43:05.500 | - Where do you get the...

00:43:07.380 | How'd you overcome that?

00:43:08.620 | - I don't know.

00:43:11.500 | I would say this, honestly, I enjoy it so much.

00:43:13.740 | I'm so heads down, that becomes, for better or worse,

00:43:19.020 | like my life.

00:43:19.980 | - Yeah.

00:43:20.820 | - And it's just something that I wanna play so much,

00:43:25.420 | it becomes like there's a little bit...

00:43:26.980 | You get a little obsessed with it.

00:43:28.940 | - No, but I mean, you love Redguard, right?

00:43:32.180 | So doesn't that mean...

00:43:34.740 | Isn't there a kind of self-doubt about,

00:43:36.660 | do I know what it takes to create a great game?

00:43:39.060 | - Well, no, I think Redguard's a great game.

00:43:40.940 | - Right, so you were sure, even if it wasn't...

00:43:42.420 | - Okay, so if you're in a debate, like, do I like that game?

00:43:44.340 | It's about finding an...

00:43:45.660 | Okay, so I love Redguard.

00:43:48.780 | And the people who play it, it won a bunch of awards.

00:43:51.460 | Critically, it was a pretty good game.

00:43:54.580 | Did not sell.

00:43:55.860 | And the reason for that, again,

00:43:59.180 | we probably made the wrong type of game,

00:44:01.420 | and we missed a technology window.

00:44:03.260 | We also thought it was very conservative.

00:44:05.780 | We're gonna do this.

00:44:07.260 | So my main takeaway was,

00:44:08.980 | I'm not gonna be conservative again.

00:44:11.220 | I'm gonna swing for the fences.

00:44:13.860 | And we've had...

00:44:15.660 | There'll be some rough edges in swinging for the fences

00:44:17.900 | and shooting for the moon,

00:44:19.180 | but we'd rather do that and land where we land

00:44:21.860 | than be very, very conservative

00:44:23.660 | in what we're putting out there.

00:44:27.140 | - You've mentioned, just referencing this game,

00:44:31.580 | on the Reddit AMA,

00:44:33.340 | that long time ago during Redguard,

00:44:35.260 | the lead programmer made me,

00:44:37.540 | made all the buildings hop up and down

00:44:39.860 | after you played for 10 minutes just to mess with me.

00:44:43.180 | Just an curious tangent.

00:44:44.900 | What's involved with programming in open-world game?

00:44:49.020 | So we talked about, we will talk about design and so on,

00:44:54.020 | but specifically the programming.

00:44:56.340 | 'Cause I think this question came from,

00:44:58.420 | what are some interesting sticky bugs

00:45:00.780 | that you've encountered throughout your life

00:45:03.060 | in creating these games?

00:45:04.260 | And this is one of them that you mentioned.

00:45:06.220 | So what are some of the challenges

00:45:08.420 | of programming these open-world games?

00:45:13.180 | - I mean, there are different flavors of them, right?

00:45:16.500 | Your GTAs will have different issues

00:45:19.260 | than the Ubisoft games versus our games.

00:45:23.140 | I can sort of speak to ours,

00:45:25.740 | which is you wanna build systems, right?

00:45:28.780 | 'Cause they're gonna play the game for a very long time

00:45:31.460 | as well, which we've learned.

00:45:33.420 | And you can't go through and touch everything by hand,

00:45:38.420 | per se.

00:45:39.900 | So you have to rely on some systemic level of creation

00:45:44.620 | and a lot of systems that are robust enough

00:45:48.060 | so that when they touch another one,

00:45:49.740 | things aren't breaking apart.

00:45:52.700 | - So there's like a, what are the major systems?

00:45:55.860 | Is there like the physics of the game,

00:45:57.540 | the engine of how like stuff,

00:46:00.060 | yeah, like, yeah, the physics, the motion,

00:46:02.740 | and maybe how light is rendered and all that kind of stuff.

00:46:04.900 | - Right, so you have the rendering, right?

00:46:06.980 | Of like, okay, this is how I'm gonna render

00:46:09.860 | the data that I have.

00:46:11.460 | So a lot of people confuse engines with rendering.

00:46:15.220 | I mean, they're combined, obviously,

00:46:16.900 | but there's the data you're gonna give to a renderer,

00:46:19.620 | which is the thing, you know,

00:46:21.420 | that draws the pixels on the screen.

00:46:24.060 | So there's a, most of the engine is,

00:46:26.140 | how are you gonna bring in that data

00:46:29.020 | and give it to the renderer to draw it?

00:46:32.500 | So you have that whole system of walking through the world,

00:46:34.820 | feeding in the data and drawing it.

00:46:36.580 | You then obviously have the physics and the interactivity.

00:46:41.580 | What are the things that are there just to be drawn?

00:46:44.660 | And what are the things there

00:46:45.780 | that are meant to be interacted with and touched?

00:46:48.740 | We put a big premium on the ones

00:46:51.540 | that can be interacted with and touched,

00:46:53.620 | whether it's flowers, whether the trees move,

00:46:56.180 | whether you can sleep on the sofa, sit in this chair,

00:46:58.780 | pick up all this stuff, bake bread, blah, blah, blah.

00:47:01.580 | You then have the AI, which loops in the stuff

00:47:05.980 | we talked about earlier in terms of processing everybody,

00:47:08.260 | and combat systems, which is a lot of what,

00:47:13.140 | and the people end up doing,

00:47:14.460 | combat systems on top of that AI.

00:47:17.380 | How do they react to those types of things?

00:47:20.220 | And then how do they look at the things

00:47:24.220 | that can be interacted with?

00:47:25.420 | One of my favorite things is when NPCs

00:47:27.540 | will go pick up weapons in the world,

00:47:29.100 | which you don't see in other games.

00:47:30.220 | And the first time you see it in one of ours,

00:47:31.500 | it's very unexpected.

00:47:33.140 | You can drop a crazy weapon, be in a fight,

00:47:35.940 | and an NPC runs over, picks it up, and uses it on you.

00:47:38.380 | It's not something you would expect, but I love that stuff.

00:47:42.420 | - And that's integrated into a larger system,

00:47:45.860 | the ability to pick up, the NPC picking up,

00:47:48.340 | so it's not like a little quirk that's hard-coded in.

00:47:51.540 | It's part of a bigger system.

00:47:53.180 | - They have their own AI for scanning the environment,

00:47:56.820 | and that's one of the rules.

00:47:57.660 | Hey, is there a weapon that is better than the one I have?

00:48:02.460 | I'm gonna go get it.

00:48:03.720 | Now, we do lock off if it's in a chest,

00:48:05.420 | and that's treasure we left for the player.

00:48:07.300 | But it's in particular, 'cause what you don't want,

00:48:09.780 | we actually had this problem, started in Oblivion,

00:48:11.620 | I believe, which is we set up a level.

00:48:13.060 | Hey, let the enemies go pick up the weapons

00:48:16.500 | if they're better.

00:48:17.440 | So we make a level and go in,

00:48:18.700 | and all of the enemies are armed to the teeth,

00:48:21.180 | and there's no treasure for the player,

00:48:22.540 | because the enemies went and took all the good weapons.

00:48:25.060 | And you say, okay, they don't take those.

00:48:26.820 | They take the ones that are dropped

00:48:28.660 | by other NPCs or the player.

00:48:31.660 | - That's such a fascinating world

00:48:33.500 | of designing the experience for the NPC,

00:48:36.900 | because in part, that experience

00:48:39.380 | defines the experience of the player.

00:48:43.380 | So how they interact with their environment

00:48:45.540 | defines how the player experiences their environment.

00:48:49.240 | Is there room for further and further development

00:48:52.440 | of the AI that controls the NPC?

00:48:55.940 | - Sure, we're always iterating on it.

00:48:58.240 | And again, as we look in the future,

00:49:02.040 | it's more about us finding those,

00:49:06.120 | more reactivity to the player,

00:49:07.960 | and also understanding their roles in the world.

00:49:11.460 | So they're not just there.

00:49:14.640 | They're not just there for the player

00:49:16.740 | as a signpost for the player.

00:49:18.840 | - But they're reacting to the player.

00:49:20.240 | But what about some of the richest experiences we have

00:49:24.700 | with people is like the chaos of it,

00:49:26.880 | the push and pull, the unpredictability.

00:49:30.760 | Is there something, I don't know if you've been following,

00:49:32.940 | but the quick, amazing development of language models,

00:49:37.780 | the neural network, natural language processing systems,

00:49:42.660 | dialogue systems.

00:49:44.160 | Do you think there's some possibility of using

00:49:48.200 | sort of these incredible neural nets

00:49:50.780 | that can have open-ended dialogue, basically chatbots?

00:49:55.580 | - Yep, I've seen some incredible demos.

00:49:57.960 | I do think it's coming.

00:49:59.660 | I don't know when.

00:50:00.700 | And there's a little bit of a question,

00:50:03.860 | like what's ready for real deployment and release

00:50:09.320 | versus, hey, let's use that to generate some things

00:50:14.320 | that is then static that we're giving to the players,

00:50:17.040 | versus it's generated on the fly.

00:50:21.720 | But it's definitely coming.

00:50:23.400 | It's definitely coming.

00:50:24.320 | And I think you'll see it in the types of games that we do.

00:50:27.600 | It has great application.

00:50:29.680 | - I love the idea that you'll be using that

00:50:33.000 | to design different NPCs and then testing

00:50:35.720 | if they're good enough.

00:50:37.800 | If they're a little too crazy,

00:50:40.000 | you don't want the super--

00:50:41.600 | - Right, but if we go back to it being reactive,

00:50:43.680 | some of that bot stuff, it's incredible.

00:50:47.520 | It's then translating that into voice.

00:50:50.800 | And then is that being done by the client?

00:50:54.400 | Is it being done on a server?

00:50:56.400 | Is it baked into the game?

00:50:58.160 | There's different flavors of it.

00:51:00.240 | - So there's still computational challenges,

00:51:02.440 | like how do you actually make that happen?

00:51:03.720 | - Right.

00:51:04.700 | - Well, what about in terms of creating

00:51:07.840 | the feeling of an NPC,

00:51:09.500 | what's the role of voice actors?

00:51:12.800 | - Awesome, yeah.

00:51:14.160 | We work with a ton of voice actors

00:51:17.120 | and they bring so much to it.

00:51:19.240 | And that's the thing.

00:51:20.540 | We can write some stuff and the best ones get in there

00:51:26.240 | and make it so much better, or even ad lib things.

00:51:30.160 | And so we do a lot of voice recording.

00:51:33.920 | And we used to do it kind of like at the end of the project.

00:51:37.720 | And now we do it throughout.

00:51:39.560 | We start really early and we just start recording.

00:51:42.500 | So we're recording for years and years, literally.

00:51:46.220 | Probably three years, four years.

00:51:48.240 | - So part of the actual experience of the recording

00:51:51.060 | will help define the characters and the tone of the game.

00:51:53.920 | - Right, and we'll go back sometimes

00:51:55.120 | and, "Hey, we really like this.

00:51:56.200 | "We want more of this.

00:51:57.240 | "Let's write, let's do another session."

00:51:59.040 | Or, "Hey, we don't think this character's actually working.

00:52:02.700 | "We want you to do a different,

00:52:03.720 | "you're gonna be someone else now.

00:52:04.800 | "Sorry, that got cut."

00:52:06.640 | - Do you ever try to sort of imagine

00:52:10.480 | that people fall in love with the characters,

00:52:12.160 | with the NPCs?

00:52:13.040 | - I do.

00:52:13.880 | - Like, do they get really attached to the--

00:52:16.800 | - Oh yeah, I mean, I've done it in games.

00:52:18.760 | - These are like close friends, right?

00:52:20.600 | Like, you can, like you miss them.

00:52:23.320 | - 100%. - Isn't that part

00:52:24.160 | of the thing you miss? - I actually,

00:52:24.980 | like whenever I'm playing a game and there is, you know,

00:52:26.920 | if there's like a friendship option

00:52:28.800 | or make friends or a romance thing,

00:52:30.320 | I find those moments really, I enjoy them.

00:52:34.420 | I find them pretty impactful emotionally

00:52:36.980 | to what we're doing.

00:52:37.820 | And so we've done a little bit of it.

00:52:40.300 | It's one of the things that we actually have pushed

00:52:42.260 | in Starfield.

00:52:44.020 | So we have a number of companions, but for them,

00:52:48.500 | we go, you know, I won't say super complex romantic,

00:52:53.100 | but more complex relationships than we've had

00:52:56.460 | in terms of not just some, you know, state of they like you

00:53:01.460 | or they don't like you, but they can be in love with you

00:53:05.880 | and dislike something you did and be pissed

00:53:08.800 | at you temporarily and then come back to loving you.

00:53:11.480 | - So that relationship status, if it's complicated,

00:53:14.940 | that they're existing in that gray area, it's complicated.

00:53:18.040 | We're not dating, we're just, we're--

00:53:20.640 | - Well, it's in a lot of games, you know, previous stuff,

00:53:22.360 | you just work your way up, they like you more and more

00:53:24.160 | and more and more, and now you're in a relationship.

00:53:26.560 | - Now you're in, yeah.

00:53:27.400 | - And when you make them upset, you drift out of,

00:53:29.920 | like it never happened, you know, you drift out of it.

00:53:32.240 | Whereas we wanted one where, okay,

00:53:34.400 | we can be in a relationship and we've committed

00:53:38.320 | to each other in some way, but I just did something

00:53:40.680 | that really made you angry.

00:53:42.800 | And as opposed to just drifting out of that status,

00:53:44.760 | you're in a temporary, I don't like what you did state.

00:53:48.400 | - Wow, so some greater degree of complexity

00:53:50.720 | in the relationship with a companion.

00:53:52.200 | - A little bit.

00:53:53.040 | - A little bit, a little bit.

00:53:54.480 | Are we talking about--

00:53:55.320 | - I don't wanna oversell that part, but my point is,

00:53:58.040 | I think those things where you meet a character in a game

00:54:01.240 | and you do spend time with them, a companion in a game,

00:54:04.360 | and it leads to romance, you know, myself and others,

00:54:07.640 | and I find a lot of players,

00:54:09.560 | those moments are really, really impactful,

00:54:12.680 | and special to them 'cause they did put in the time.

00:54:15.680 | That's another thing that I always commit it with,

00:54:18.080 | which is, I think people who don't play video games,

00:54:20.820 | they sometimes think like, oh, that's, I don't know,

00:54:22.800 | that's a waste of time, or that's not real,

00:54:24.040 | or that's not like, you're not getting a lot out of that.

00:54:25.760 | Like, well, you haven't really experienced it

00:54:27.720 | in the way that you can,

00:54:29.240 | because these moments that I spent in games,

00:54:32.560 | not the ones I made, other ones when I was growing up,

00:54:35.280 | or even now, that is important time to me.

00:54:38.420 | Like, I love those moments.

00:54:40.260 | I felt really, like, proud of what I accomplished.

00:54:45.000 | And we want people to have that in our games,

00:54:49.120 | and the fact that they have had those experiences,

00:54:51.800 | and we hear from them, and how important it is to them,

00:54:54.320 | it's like, no, this is really, really special.

00:54:59.240 | - Yeah, it's fun.

00:55:01.280 | I mean, from a game design perspective,

00:55:03.520 | I wonder if you can honor the time you spent

00:55:05.720 | together with a game, because, you know,

00:55:10.200 | sometimes there's a heartbreak at the end of the game.

00:55:13.040 | Like, when you're, when you leave a game, there's a,

00:55:18.040 | yeah, it's a really complicated relationship, actually,

00:55:21.200 | because when you leave a game,

00:55:22.840 | it's almost like leaving a romantic partner,

00:55:25.480 | because it's like you spent so much meaningful time

00:55:29.160 | together, and there's a sense in which it was,

00:55:34.160 | it was ephemeral.

00:55:37.920 | Like, this is not, this doesn't--

00:55:40.520 | - It didn't happen.

00:55:41.360 | - Yeah, it didn't really happen.

00:55:42.480 | It was good, it was like you went to Vegas,

00:55:44.440 | you got drunk and stuff, and now life goes on.

00:55:49.040 | I wonder if there's a way to sort of

00:55:50.560 | always carry that with you.

00:55:52.440 | I mean, I guess with words, you can kinda

00:55:54.920 | share with others, like--

00:55:56.080 | - It's weird, I don't, like, now that we're in the age

00:55:59.320 | where you have achievements, and you can look

00:56:00.880 | at your library and see your hours in games,

00:56:03.720 | like, that's, like, it's almost like a scrapbook now.

00:56:07.320 | Like, I wish, one of my wishes was, like,

00:56:10.080 | I wish I had that achievement list for everything,

00:56:14.040 | like, back to the late '70s.

00:56:16.640 | - Like, every game you played--

00:56:17.720 | - Right, when, yeah.

00:56:19.000 | - Yeah, like, you, I mean, that's one of the cool things

00:56:22.040 | with Xbox, like, we're moving towards that direction.

00:56:25.240 | It'd be cool to be, from, like, childhood,

00:56:27.880 | the first time you play a video game,

00:56:29.400 | it will actually tell you what is the first game you played.

00:56:31.880 | - But you know what?

00:56:32.840 | Kids today, they will have that.

00:56:34.560 | - They will have that.

00:56:35.720 | And see--

00:56:37.880 | - But you could look back and see, oh my God,

00:56:39.640 | I put 1,000 hours in Daggerfall.

00:56:41.080 | - What is the first game--

00:56:41.920 | - And my last save was 1997.

00:56:46.360 | - Last save.

00:56:47.200 | Man, I don't know, Golden Axe, maybe?

00:56:51.480 | I'm trying to think, what was the first game I ever played?

00:56:54.920 | No, it was probably Commodore 64 games, yeah.

00:56:57.160 | Yeah, arcade games.

00:56:59.880 | Okay.

00:57:00.720 | You mentioned Starfield.

00:57:03.280 | What is Starfield?

00:57:04.440 | And what's the origin story of this game?

00:57:06.520 | - We had always wanted to do something

00:57:10.760 | where you explore space, you know?

00:57:12.600 | The explore space role-playing game.

00:57:14.520 | So take the kind of games that we make

00:57:16.520 | and give it a little bit of a different spin.

00:57:20.680 | And the other games that I love,

00:57:23.880 | there was a pen and paper RPG I loved, Traveler.

00:57:26.200 | It was one of the first games I made for the Apple II.

00:57:28.840 | I never finished it, right?

00:57:32.080 | I'm just doing it on my own.

00:57:33.600 | And I love this game, Starflight was one.

00:57:37.240 | Star Control II was a game that I loved.

00:57:41.120 | Sun Dog was a big one in the Apple II days

00:57:43.800 | that a lot of people don't know that I loved.

00:57:46.120 | And so a lot of us in the studio felt

00:57:50.120 | it was time to do something new.

00:57:52.000 | You know, we're going between Elder Scrolls and Fallout

00:57:53.840 | and going back and forth.

00:57:54.720 | And I mean, we love that, but hey,

00:57:57.600 | we've always wanted to do this,

00:57:59.280 | explore the galaxy science fiction game.

00:58:01.720 | You know, now is the time to do that.

00:58:06.480 | - And that's a brave move.

00:58:08.400 | So Fallout is post-apocalyptic

00:58:12.200 | on a single planet.

00:58:14.480 | You know, Elder Scrolls series is on a single planet.

00:58:20.880 | So this is going out into the open world

00:58:23.320 | of many star systems, many planets.

00:58:26.040 | I saw that it's thinking about a hundred star systems

00:58:30.920 | and a thousand planets available to explore.

00:58:33.400 | What is that world of stars and planets like?

00:58:37.440 | - Well, you mentioned Daggerfall.

00:58:38.640 | We go back to some of that.

00:58:39.800 | Well, the first when we did it was

00:58:42.000 | how are we gonna render a planet,

00:58:45.120 | like pull it off for the player?

00:58:46.560 | Like, can we?

00:58:47.600 | Or do we have to sort of do it

00:58:49.800 | where you can't land on all of them,

00:58:51.960 | where you're landing in a very controlled,

00:58:54.080 | small world space that we, you know,

00:58:56.960 | kind of craft and you would have a very limited set of those.

00:59:01.400 | You go back to tone, like,

00:59:02.440 | well, that's probably the wrong tone.

00:59:04.800 | And how can we say yes?

00:59:07.320 | Like, I want to land on that ice ball.

00:59:09.120 | So it started, we started the game

00:59:11.040 | right after Fallout 4, so 2016.

00:59:14.760 | And the first thing we did was,

00:59:17.040 | how can we have a system to generate these planets

00:59:22.000 | and make them look, you know,

00:59:24.840 | I'll say reasonable as opposed to, you know,

00:59:28.400 | fractally goop.

00:59:29.920 | - Well, what's the technical definition of goop?

00:59:34.920 | Fractally goop?

00:59:35.880 | - Fractally goop.

00:59:36.720 | You've probably seen a lot of like simulations,

00:59:38.560 | whether they're space things or landscape things,

00:59:40.480 | where they're using fractals

00:59:42.080 | and just the landscape does not look real.

00:59:43.960 | It just is like highs and lows and it's muddy.

00:59:47.400 | And so we did find a way, we came up with a way,

00:59:50.240 | had prototyped of building tiles,

00:59:53.160 | like large tiles of landscape,

00:59:55.320 | the way we would usually build them.

00:59:57.280 | We kind of generate them offline,

00:59:58.960 | hand do some things and end up with these

01:00:01.280 | very realistic looking tiles of landscape.

01:00:04.640 | And then built a system that wraps those around a planet

01:00:10.000 | and blends them all together.

01:00:12.520 | And we had pretty successful results with that.

01:00:15.480 | And so we thought, yeah, we could do this.

01:00:17.580 | And so there was a big design kind of problem to solve

01:00:24.120 | in terms of, well, what's fun about landing on a planet

01:00:28.920 | where there's potentially nothing?

01:00:31.680 | 'Cause there's a lot of planets and moons,

01:00:34.080 | if you kind of, right?

01:00:35.680 | In reality that, well, there's nothing on 'em,

01:00:38.440 | except resources.

01:00:39.560 | And so we spent a lot of time figuring out,

01:00:41.560 | okay, let's just lean in on that can A,

01:00:44.200 | be a lonely experience, as long as we tell the player,

01:00:47.040 | here's what's there, here are the resources that are there,

01:00:49.980 | go find them.

01:00:51.440 | But I equate it to that moment of we said about

01:00:54.440 | listening to the wind go and watching the sunset.

01:00:56.960 | And I do think there's a certain beauty

01:00:59.520 | to landing on a strange planet,

01:01:01.480 | being somewhat the only person there, building an outpost.

01:01:05.160 | And we are modeling all of the systems

01:01:08.500 | 'cause that's how we like to do things.

01:01:09.800 | So you can watch whatever that gas giant or moon,

01:01:12.880 | it will rotate and go and sunrise, sunset,

01:01:17.280 | and all of those things that you would expect.

01:01:20.160 | And it's all really happening.

01:01:23.120 | And most people probably won't notice

01:01:25.440 | or appreciate all of that,

01:01:26.680 | but I think it gives them the ability to say,

01:01:31.680 | I wanna go do that and see that on that place,

01:01:36.200 | as long as we tell them,

01:01:37.480 | hey, the quest leads over here,

01:01:39.160 | here's where the handcrafted content is

01:01:41.320 | that you would expect,

01:01:42.400 | and then here's more of the open procedural

01:01:46.060 | planet experience.

01:01:47.200 | - So you're-- - Long answer,

01:01:48.560 | I don't know if I answered your question.

01:01:50.840 | - There's no, the questions are stupid

01:01:52.840 | and the answers are brilliant, so that's how this works.

01:01:55.760 | So this is the world's most immense simulator

01:01:58.360 | of the human condition of loneliness.

01:02:01.260 | 'Cause I can't imagine a more lonely experience.

01:02:04.560 | - You mean you put it that way?

01:02:06.120 | I don't know if that was the goal, but--

01:02:07.720 | - Just on a planet alone,

01:02:09.640 | that must be a deep embodiment of what loneliness is like.

01:02:16.160 | I mean, both on, like when you hike alone,

01:02:21.360 | there's a deep loneliness to that.

01:02:24.560 | It's like, it's humbling that this thing

01:02:29.100 | will last much longer than you,

01:02:30.840 | it's been here way before you.

01:02:32.720 | - Is it the line from the moon landing?

01:02:35.040 | Beautiful desolation, the Buzz Aldrin, is it?

01:02:39.440 | - Beautiful desolation, is that what you said?

01:02:40.920 | - I think so. - Beautiful desolation.

01:02:42.880 | Well-- - Something like that.

01:02:44.120 | - But that's just words, there's a feeling to it,

01:02:46.600 | and you want that feeling to be real.

01:02:49.160 | You just hear, there's some resources here.

01:02:51.680 | I just feel like it'll hit people at a certain moment,

01:02:54.200 | like it does for me with Skyrim,

01:02:55.640 | like, holy shit, I'm here alone.

01:02:58.100 | And whatever cruel nature that's out there,

01:03:02.640 | it doesn't really care about me.

01:03:04.720 | (laughing)

01:03:05.720 | - Exactly. - That's the experience.

01:03:08.320 | So you wanna create the whole planet,

01:03:10.480 | and you wanna have many of them.

01:03:12.200 | - We have, we do have many,

01:03:15.560 | but once you build that system,

01:03:17.360 | I think the numbers become, I mean, honestly,

01:03:20.080 | a little bit, we wrap it in so we can name them all

01:03:23.600 | and have a finite set, even though

01:03:25.920 | it's a very, very large number,

01:03:27.940 | but a set that we can validate and know about,

01:03:33.140 | even though it's a huge number.

01:03:34.940 | But once you're building a system that can build a planet,

01:03:38.360 | I mean, a planet is sort of infinite space,

01:03:40.400 | we go back to the dagger fall analogy, right?

01:03:43.320 | If you have systems to build that much space,

01:03:45.260 | doing 100 planets or 1,000 or 10,000 or a million planets

01:03:48.800 | is not, it's just, you just press,

01:03:50.720 | you just change the number and press the button.

01:03:53.400 | But you can't name them all, you can't control,

01:03:56.040 | like, when you're getting in really big numbers,

01:03:59.440 | hey, what does this system way out here feel like

01:04:02.480 | if you take your ship and jump that far?

01:04:05.940 | We do level the systems, when you go to system,

01:04:08.180 | you'll see, oh, this is like a level 40 system.

01:04:11.080 | And us being able to at least control that scale

01:04:14.400 | is how we kind of ended up

01:04:15.600 | with the hundred-ish systems we have.

01:04:17.840 | - What are the levelings?

01:04:20.080 | What do you mean by level?

01:04:21.320 | - It would be like when you look at a map in a game

01:04:23.400 | and it says, this is the area for low-level players,

01:04:25.480 | this is level one. - Oh, got it, got it.

01:04:26.880 | - Yeah, yeah, so we do that on a system basis.

01:04:31.040 | Star system.

01:04:31.880 | - I read that space travel is considered dangerous

01:04:35.480 | in this game, can you explain?

01:04:37.840 | - That's more of, that goes back to a tone thing, right?

01:04:41.040 | When you actually play the game, 'cause it's a game,

01:04:43.480 | like, we don't really kill you when you fly out in space.

01:04:48.120 | But it has a tone of, there's some effort involved,

01:04:51.680 | and we've dialed it back as we've been making the game,

01:04:55.080 | whereas we used to run out of fuel,

01:04:57.600 | you'd jump and get stranded,

01:04:59.060 | which on paper was a great, like, it's a great moment

01:05:01.240 | when you get stranded and you have to press this beacon,

01:05:03.240 | you don't know who's gonna come.

01:05:04.840 | Turns out that's not, it just stops your game.

01:05:08.680 | We found, you'd be playing the game and I ran out of fuel,

01:05:11.740 | okay, I guess I'll just wander these planets

01:05:14.720 | trying to mine for fuel so I can get back

01:05:16.520 | to what I was doing.

01:05:18.160 | It just, it's a fun killer.

01:05:20.400 | - That's too realistic of a simulation

01:05:22.600 | of the human condition.

01:05:23.760 | - Yeah, no, the idea was, well, games do that.

01:05:27.080 | If you had a hardcore, you're right,

01:05:29.900 | a hardcore survival mode,

01:05:31.500 | that's the kind of thing you would do.

01:05:32.740 | Maybe we'll do it in the future.

01:05:34.940 | But it's more of a tone, how they build their ships,

01:05:37.020 | do they have all the right things for safety?

01:05:39.700 | We do get into environmental things on the planets,

01:05:44.220 | in your space suit, obviously,

01:05:45.460 | a lot of different space suits and buffs for the gases,

01:05:49.380 | the toxicity, or the temperature on various planets.

01:05:56.020 | - Are there robots?

01:05:57.320 | - Yes.

01:05:58.160 | - Those companions, are they robots by chance?

01:06:00.820 | Can you say?

01:06:01.660 | - One of the companions is a robot, Vosko, yeah.

01:06:03.960 | - Okay, so they have a name and a personality and so on.

01:06:07.360 | - Vosko does, and then there's a whole bunch of,

01:06:09.920 | I call 'em generic robots.

01:06:12.140 | We use them for utility.

01:06:15.320 | We actually dialed them back, 'cause if you think about,

01:06:19.380 | well, you know a lot about this more than me in terms of--

01:06:22.680 | - I'm offended right now, you're calling robots generic

01:06:25.300 | and you dialed them back. - No, no, no,

01:06:26.140 | the ones we use, the ones we use.

01:06:27.960 | We made them more generic.

01:06:28.960 | We didn't say actually-- - Sorry, I'm very sensitive

01:06:31.080 | about this stuff. - I understand.

01:06:32.720 | If you were to chart the future, you would say robots

01:06:36.240 | would have a much bigger role in our future

01:06:38.920 | than we are presenting.

01:06:40.360 | But that was a tone thing.

01:06:42.160 | So most of our robots are there as utility robots,

01:06:47.040 | and there are some combat ones as well as enemies.

01:06:49.760 | - So it's a deeply human world.

01:06:52.120 | - Very much, yes.

01:06:52.960 | - In terms of tone. - Yes.

01:06:55.100 | - So have you talked to Elon about this game?

01:07:00.100 | - A little bit.

01:07:02.220 | - How much of reality, like the work of SpaceX,

01:07:04.660 | is it an inspiration for the decisions made in this game?

01:07:08.820 | - I wouldn't say it's for the decisions we made,

01:07:12.900 | but visiting SpaceX and walking in there,

01:07:17.220 | it was, it's like the Avengers meet NASA.

01:07:21.940 | It's like the most amazing,

01:07:24.160 | and here we're building the next gen,

01:07:25.920 | like see the dragon stuff before it was,

01:07:29.040 | other people saw it.

01:07:31.040 | Like just, I was really in awe.

01:07:35.360 | This giant machine that looks for imperfections

01:07:41.480 | on the surface of these giant, you know, fuselage.

01:07:46.480 | Just whenever, and 'cause we're in DC,

01:07:50.500 | go to the Air and Space Museum a lot,

01:07:52.160 | and so whenever I look at those kind of things,

01:07:55.420 | or you'll visit the space shuttle,

01:07:57.440 | sort of overcome with how big it is,

01:07:59.640 | and I go stand back by the engines

01:08:01.520 | and think about that thing leaving orbit.

01:08:04.440 | And one of the things Elon really impresses,

01:08:07.800 | we're reaching the edge of physics on a lot of this stuff

01:08:10.640 | where how hard it is to leave orbit,

01:08:14.640 | the gravitational pull.

01:08:18.640 | And like so the engineering that has gone into that,

01:08:22.240 | our space program, what he's doing now,

01:08:24.660 | I just marvel at.

01:08:26.960 | I don't understand, right, I'm not at that level,

01:08:29.680 | but I marvel at the kind of human ingenuity and scale.

01:08:34.540 | I was on the Delaware coast last month,

01:08:40.380 | and I went, I was outside for some reason, it was dark,

01:08:44.080 | and I saw this crazy light in the sky.

01:08:48.120 | And I thought it was like a helicopter,

01:08:50.360 | and then it didn't go away.

01:08:52.400 | And I'm like, is someone, what is that?

01:08:54.520 | I call my, we had some friends,

01:08:56.960 | hey, does everybody see this?

01:08:58.560 | What is that?

01:08:59.600 | And we just stood dumbfounded

01:09:01.080 | looking at this thing in the sky.

01:09:02.680 | And like that is a UFO, nobody takes their phone out.

01:09:08.680 | Everyone, I'm with like four people,

01:09:11.240 | everyone is too dumbstruck.

01:09:12.480 | You would think, why don't you take a picture of this thing?

01:09:15.300 | And the next day we found out, it was in the news,

01:09:17.800 | it was the SpaceX launch in Florida.

01:09:20.440 | And I'm seeing it from Delaware, Maryland area.

01:09:26.600 | It was one of the most, it was incredible.

01:09:28.840 | It's just even just that, I am in complete awe of.

01:09:33.040 | - Is there some aspect to that that you can replicate,

01:09:36.200 | the majestic nature of that in a video game?

01:09:39.660 | - I wish I had the answer to that.

01:09:43.600 | I think some of it we were doing

01:09:46.400 | when you're standing on a planet

01:09:47.840 | and you see the other moons go by,

01:09:50.120 | and then you realize, I could get my ship blast off

01:09:52.960 | and land there and build myself a home.

01:09:55.280 | I think that's pretty cool.

01:09:57.400 | There's a minor thing we do,

01:09:58.720 | which is we have other ships come and go

01:10:01.620 | from the starports when you're there.

01:10:03.320 | So you'll be in a city and then you hear this,

01:10:05.480 | you hear the engine, you look up

01:10:06.760 | and a ship is taking off or coming.

01:10:08.560 | - That's great.

01:10:09.400 | - There's nothing for you to do,

01:10:10.440 | but I think it's awesome.

01:10:13.800 | - Yeah, yeah.

01:10:15.720 | And then that's all about creating the soundscape,

01:10:18.280 | the feel.

01:10:19.520 | - Seeing it and like, oh, that's real.

01:10:21.040 | That's a ship that, or you jump into a system

01:10:24.000 | and you see these freighters

01:10:25.560 | and sometimes they contact you.

01:10:27.920 | It's not all just like jump in and combat.

01:10:32.600 | - Do you ever think about the fact

01:10:34.460 | that science fiction seems to make,

01:10:36.260 | it has a way of creating reality,

01:10:41.000 | not just kind of predicting it or imagining it.

01:10:46.000 | It's almost like the thing you put out there

01:10:48.400 | with a video game like this, like Starfield,

01:10:51.520 | that you can't anticipate.

01:10:54.560 | It kind of fuels people's imagination of what is possible.

01:10:58.920 | - Maybe, I don't know.

01:11:02.400 | I don't know, I can't say.

01:11:04.960 | You're making me think now about other science fiction

01:11:07.840 | that, movie I love, "Minority Report."

01:11:10.880 | It's more of like a, not a space movie,

01:11:12.800 | but more like looking at the future.

01:11:15.520 | If you look at a lot of the things in that movie,

01:11:17.360 | it's almost like, I think those are coming true.

01:11:20.120 | - Yeah.

01:11:21.120 | I mean, is that the one that you do interface this like--

01:11:25.760 | - It's the interfaces and then the,

01:11:28.200 | the way he looks as a child's more like a holographic,

01:11:30.400 | almost AR, VR kind of thing, or digital billboards,

01:11:35.400 | or trying to predict human behavior.

01:11:40.920 | There's just a lot of future stuff in that movie.

01:11:43.560 | As it comes to sci-fi, to your other question,

01:11:45.600 | I don't know, I don't know.

01:11:47.840 | - Well, I think it does, and it's interesting.

01:11:50.760 | I mean, I suppose you're trying to create the most realistic,

01:11:55.600 | sticking to the tone, the most immersive, realistic world,

01:11:59.560 | and almost by accident,

01:12:01.080 | you create the thing that is possible,

01:12:03.120 | because you want it to be realistic in some deep sense.

01:12:05.840 | So, accidentally it can become the possible,

01:12:10.080 | and then that places, that idea in people's heads.

01:12:13.520 | I mean, if humans are ever to become

01:12:15.240 | a multi-planetary species, we need to play games.

01:12:20.240 | We need to read sci-fi to help imagine that that's possible,

01:12:26.400 | to look outside of Earth, to look outside,

01:12:29.160 | look up on the stars,

01:12:30.280 | then we can actually travel out there.

01:12:32.320 | I don't know, there's power to sci-fi to do that.

01:12:35.160 | I guess you shouldn't feel the pressure of that.

01:12:37.560 | - I don't know if I'd make the leap now, that's all,

01:12:42.000 | that what we're doing might.

01:12:43.720 | Now, maybe, you know, one of our,

01:12:47.920 | hopefully it might inspire some young people

01:12:50.920 | who are headed in that direction,

01:12:52.880 | are like, oh, I thought about getting into space

01:12:56.480 | and space exploration, and being an engineer,

01:12:58.720 | or doing these things, and I played this game,

01:13:00.480 | and it really sparked that interest in me,

01:13:04.840 | so I'm gonna go take that as a field,

01:13:06.520 | and maybe that's the person who goes

01:13:09.040 | and does some of these things.

01:13:10.560 | - Yeah, because in the next couple decades,

01:13:13.600 | likely a human being will step foot on Mars,

01:13:17.360 | which are the first steps

01:13:18.680 | towards us becoming multi-planetary.

01:13:22.000 | - And if you read some of the stuff they're doing

01:13:24.420 | with the James Webb Telescope,

01:13:26.320 | and them being able to look for signs of life

01:13:30.040 | on other planets, it's quite fascinating,

01:13:33.360 | and, you know, recent stuff I read say

01:13:35.200 | they think in 20 years they will.

01:13:37.200 | So it's actually quite encouraging to think,

01:13:41.880 | I almost have a dream in mind, like in our lifetimes,

01:13:45.760 | that we discover life on another planet.

01:13:49.180 | - Yeah, especially if it's intelligent life.

01:13:52.400 | I've been talking to a lot of biologists,

01:13:54.080 | and a lot of folks, I imagine there's life

01:13:56.200 | everywhere out there.

01:13:57.740 | - The numbers would say so, yes.

01:14:00.300 | - The challenging question is, what it looks like,

01:14:02.820 | and how much of it is intelligent.

01:14:04.880 | So a lot of biologists tell me the big difficult leap

01:14:08.400 | is from the Prokaryotes to the Eukaryotes,

01:14:11.120 | so like the complex life.

01:14:13.520 | It could be that a lot of our universe

01:14:15.640 | is just filled with bacteria.

01:14:17.960 | - I believe, if I'm understanding it right,

01:14:20.440 | that there's two ways they're gonna look at planets.

01:14:22.800 | When they can look, you know, they can read,

01:14:24.440 | hey, this planet has this kind of gas.

01:14:26.760 | They can now look at the ones that are created

01:14:28.600 | by potential life forms, and then the ones

01:14:31.080 | that are created, the byproducts of industry.

01:14:34.760 | There's only certain ones that are created

01:14:36.720 | if you have a society there,

01:14:38.340 | and that they can start looking on these types of,

01:14:42.560 | in these types of star systems, in these planets,

01:14:45.680 | but it takes a lot of time, 'cause you have to book time

01:14:47.720 | on that telescope, you have to like look at that planet

01:14:50.420 | over a long period of time, but in theory,

01:14:53.840 | given enough time, given the amount of space out there,

01:14:57.160 | we would find one.

01:15:01.400 | That would be a cool thing in this short life of ours

01:15:03.640 | to find out definitively that there is

01:15:06.480 | an industrial intelligent civilization out there

01:15:11.480 | before you contact them, so like die, end your life,

01:15:15.280 | not knowing the rest of the story,

01:15:18.980 | but just know that it's out there.

01:15:20.520 | That's a cool, and then if you have kids,

01:15:23.480 | be like, well, this one's on you.

01:15:25.940 | F this, I'm out.

01:15:28.680 | And I'm fascinated by what it would do to the way,

01:15:32.760 | I think in a positive way,

01:15:33.920 | the way humanity thinks about itself here.

01:15:37.680 | Like no, there is a definitively other life out there.

01:15:42.520 | - I mean, both things, if there isn't life out there,

01:15:46.000 | that's also a huge responsibility.

01:15:48.960 | Both are super exciting.

01:15:51.080 | If we're alone, it's super exciting

01:15:52.680 | because there's a responsibility to preserve

01:15:54.800 | whatever special thing we have going on here,

01:15:57.300 | this, whether you call it the flame of consciousness

01:16:01.240 | or whether it's consciousness or intelligence,

01:16:03.960 | that's a special thing, preserve it, have it expand.

01:16:07.920 | But if there's others out there,

01:16:10.080 | I mean, that sparks that drive for exploration

01:16:15.080 | of reaching out into the stars and meeting them.

01:16:18.600 | Most of them probably wanna kill us.

01:16:21.240 | (laughing)

01:16:23.880 | But luckily, we have the military industrial complex

01:16:26.680 | on Earth that builds bigger and better weapons

01:16:29.380 | all the time. - We have Space Force.

01:16:30.600 | - Space Force.

01:16:31.780 | It will both protect us and destroy all our enemies.

01:16:34.860 | (laughing)

01:16:38.100 | This is 100% a video game we're living in.

01:16:42.540 | Okay, back to dragons.

01:16:45.060 | So blink once if you know when Elder Scrolls VI

01:16:48.140 | is coming out, but are not going to tell me.

01:16:51.280 | - I have a vague idea.

01:16:55.180 | - Okay, vague idea.

01:16:56.100 | In, (laughing)

01:16:58.240 | so like if you have the quantum mechanical interpretation

01:17:01.460 | that allows for multiple universes,

01:17:03.540 | in the universe where you didn't blink,

01:17:05.800 | what would that, Todd, tell me about the year

01:17:09.900 | it's coming out?

01:17:10.900 | Would it be 2025? - That is a trick question.

01:17:13.740 | - Or 26? - I've been asked

01:17:14.940 | that question many ways, but never like that.

01:17:18.100 | - Yeah, I thought I would try to sneak it.

01:17:20.200 | I mean, there is, of course, no answer because--

01:17:24.780 | - I wish it was soon.

01:17:27.060 | - Soon. - Like we don't,

01:17:28.860 | we want 'em out too, you know?

01:17:30.980 | And I wish they didn't take as long as they did,

01:17:35.940 | but they do.

01:17:36.900 | And look, I mean, if I could go back in time,

01:17:40.500 | would never have been my plan to wait

01:17:42.640 | as long as it's taken for it.

01:17:46.620 | - So you love that world, the Elder Scrolls world?

01:17:48.980 | - Look, it's part of why I've spent more time there

01:17:51.740 | than anything else in my life probably, right?

01:17:54.260 | So I deeply love it.

01:17:59.260 | We all do, it's a part of us.

01:18:00.900 | And when you aren't doing it for a while,

01:18:04.580 | you really do miss it.

01:18:06.640 | And when I look at what we're doing,

01:18:11.180 | have planned for that game,

01:18:12.740 | and I was in a meeting yesterday,

01:18:16.340 | I was like, I just wanna play all this right now.

01:18:18.920 | (Todd laughs)

01:18:21.240 | But we're gonna make sure we do it right

01:18:23.860 | for everybody, and we do have to approach it.

01:18:27.900 | People are playing games for a long time.

01:18:29.460 | You know, Skyrim's 11 years old,

01:18:31.680 | still probably our most played game,

01:18:35.580 | and so we don't see it slowing down.

01:18:38.180 | And people will probably be playing it

01:18:40.900 | 10 years from now also.

01:18:43.100 | So you have to think about, okay,

01:18:45.380 | people are gonna play the next Elder Scrolls game

01:18:49.080 | for a decade, two decades.

01:18:51.860 | And that does change the way you think about

01:18:55.060 | how you architect it from the get-go.

01:18:58.940 | - What are some elements that changed the way,

01:19:02.500 | like how do you make a game that's playable for 20 years?

01:19:05.600 | - Well, we're trying to figure that out.

01:19:08.300 | (laughs)

01:19:09.140 | - There are some elements, I should pause on that.

01:19:11.020 | You know, pardon me, I'm of course asking,

01:19:13.340 | jokingly, I'm excited for it,

01:19:15.020 | but I think Skyrim is an amazing game still.

01:19:18.580 | You know, I really enjoy it still.

01:19:20.260 | - Yeah, and you know what, the content,

01:19:22.260 | even if you step away from it for a while,

01:19:25.500 | then play, what I'll put, say,

01:19:26.660 | the vanilla version without mods.

01:19:28.420 | If you go and haven't played it in a while,

01:19:30.100 | there's always a new way to play it.

01:19:32.060 | But then if you look at the mods

01:19:33.420 | and what creators are doing to it,

01:19:35.700 | we think that is just awesome.

01:19:37.580 | It's something that we've always supported,

01:19:39.820 | we're gonna keep supporting.

01:19:41.900 | We've hired a large number of modders

01:19:45.240 | that are now professionals.

01:19:46.620 | We wanna support the people who are doing it on their own

01:19:49.700 | so they can be professionals on their own.

01:19:52.400 | - How do you create a world that's moddable?

01:19:56.540 | So you think of designing the game from the start

01:19:59.940 | as that enables mods.

01:20:03.260 | - Yeah, absolutely.

01:20:04.600 | So it starts with us, like everything we're doing,

01:20:07.940 | okay, a modder, a content creator,

01:20:10.140 | is gonna have to do it, use our tools.

01:20:12.620 | Now we do clean them up for release,

01:20:15.140 | 'cause if you're like a developer in-house,

01:20:16.980 | you can deal with some kludginess

01:20:18.860 | when you're putting stuff together.

01:20:19.980 | When you put it out for people,

01:20:21.820 | we do clean a lot of it up.

01:20:23.340 | And there's still obviously a learning curve there.

01:20:26.860 | But look, we have people

01:20:27.700 | who've been doing it for 20 years with us.

01:20:29.660 | - What's involved with modding?

01:20:31.940 | I'm actually quite newbish at this.

01:20:34.380 | - Okay, so you-- - And I'm almost afraid

01:20:35.580 | to ask, 'cause now that you explained to me,

01:20:38.820 | I fear I will spend a very large amount of time

01:20:41.460 | creating mods.

01:20:42.660 | - Well, we have an editor you can download on Steam,

01:20:45.340 | the creation kit for our games,

01:20:47.100 | and then it loads up the world,

01:20:48.860 | and you could do something really, really small,

01:20:50.860 | like change the color of the weather.

01:20:52.860 | And it creates a little plugin file, we call it,

01:20:54.980 | you know, a modification to the game.

01:20:56.780 | And then you can run your game with that.

01:20:59.260 | It's on console now, the mods, not the editing.

01:21:03.860 | And it's just been incredible.

01:21:06.700 | Our community there has been amazing

01:21:09.700 | what they do with the games.

01:21:11.220 | - So a lot of it is the visuals.

01:21:14.300 | - A lot of people do visual things,

01:21:15.820 | 'cause it's the easiest thing to do first,

01:21:17.580 | or they're building new space.

01:21:19.100 | There's some great things with,

01:21:20.780 | like I love the Khajiit follower mod for Skyrim.

01:21:25.020 | It's awesome.

01:21:26.060 | There have been quest lines.

01:21:29.900 | Those things just take a really, really long time.

01:21:32.900 | And so someone who's gonna do that,

01:21:35.500 | that's almost like it takes them a long time.

01:21:37.780 | It's more than a hobby.

01:21:39.620 | And we're always looking at ways that we can make it like,

01:21:43.460 | hey, they can turn a career into it,

01:21:45.820 | 'cause it's just awesome.

01:21:47.660 | - What about, is there any possibility in doing a mod

01:21:53.340 | for some of the AI stuff?

01:21:56.980 | - There is, and I've seen some,

01:21:59.980 | but to really move it along,

01:22:02.100 | if they're using the tools that we already put out there,

01:22:04.100 | so to really move the AI along,

01:22:05.820 | you'd have to get in the code,

01:22:07.420 | which some people have figured out ways to hack in

01:22:10.700 | and do things with script extenders.

01:22:12.900 | But for the most part, like really pushing it,

01:22:15.580 | it does take us, which is why you see

01:22:17.860 | when we have a new game come along,

01:22:20.180 | the palette that they have is there's so many more things

01:22:23.260 | they can do.

01:22:24.220 | - Well, I've built bots that play the driving games,

01:22:29.220 | but they do that by just taking, reading the screen

01:22:33.420 | and doing basic, not basic, it's actually pretty complicated

01:22:36.500 | but computer vision and doing the control,

01:22:38.140 | but you're basically simulating the human player.

01:22:40.980 | To do that for Skyrim or for some of the open world games,

01:22:44.500 | that's literally, you have to create AGI

01:22:46.500 | to be able to play those open, well, maybe not,

01:22:51.060 | maybe you can create a super dumb,

01:22:52.980 | like just a two handed sword

01:22:54.700 | and just keep swinging until everybody's dead.

01:22:56.900 | - Look, there's some bot stuff out there that does it.

01:22:58.740 | We have some very, very dumb bots that we use

01:23:01.900 | to run through the world to test it,

01:23:04.460 | that we'll deploy on a whole bunch of servers

01:23:06.260 | just to, we do it every day.

01:23:08.260 | We run through every space, we're doing it in Starfield.

01:23:10.900 | And then just running, they're all out there.

01:23:13.220 | - Well, it does it very quickly.

01:23:14.740 | It loads up every place in the game

01:23:18.940 | and runs around a little bit

01:23:19.980 | and then loads the next place and runs around a little bit.

01:23:21.980 | We're just testing, like, did it crash?

01:23:23.740 | What's the memory growth?

01:23:24.580 | What's the, get a report,

01:23:25.980 | here are all the places where the frame rate

01:23:27.420 | wasn't up to snuff.

01:23:29.100 | And then we do have one that will play on its own.

01:23:32.020 | It's heavily scripted, but it lets us test,

01:23:34.440 | every time we make a build,

01:23:36.420 | there's a bot that runs through

01:23:38.060 | the first one or two main quests.

01:23:40.700 | Like, it'll just play it.

01:23:42.260 | That way we know, did we break anything?

01:23:44.860 | 'Cause you don't wanna waste QA's time,

01:23:47.020 | like you guys broke it again within five minutes, so yeah.

01:23:50.620 | - Yeah, so that's for broken stuff.

01:23:54.940 | I wonder if you can build a bot

01:23:56.900 | that estimates the quality of the experience.

01:23:59.740 | - Oh my gosh, okay, can you do that?

01:24:01.380 | - I don't know.

01:24:02.300 | But just like the number,

01:24:04.260 | like how boring or not boring, the boring meter.

01:24:07.060 | - How many times you die.

01:24:08.820 | - How many times you die.

01:24:09.740 | - Is death boring or exciting?

01:24:11.620 | That's the question.

01:24:12.460 | I mean, I feel like there's a balance to be struck there,

01:24:15.940 | 'cause you always want to be in fear of death.

01:24:18.500 | - Yeah, we always, we have this chart at work we use,

01:24:20.620 | which is like, if you think about any game

01:24:22.660 | that you've played that you've put down,

01:24:24.820 | it's either about a frustration/confusion or boredom.

01:24:29.820 | You gotta put the player right in the middle of that.

01:24:34.340 | - But I've sometimes put down games from frustration

01:24:37.700 | only to return again stronger.

01:24:41.460 | - Dark Souls, yeah.

01:24:42.620 | - So I mean, the challenge, that's part of it.

01:24:48.820 | Well, I don't know, actually, Skyrim, I'm one of those,

01:24:51.460 | I mean, I'm sure there's all kinds of humans

01:24:53.420 | that you've interacted with about what they enjoy.

01:24:56.640 | But to me, I could enjoy Skyrim

01:24:59.700 | on any difficulty level.

01:25:02.020 | It doesn't, all of it, so it depends.

01:25:04.900 | The open world nature of it is what's really compelling.

01:25:08.340 | Not necessarily the challenge

01:25:10.740 | of the particular quest and so on.

01:25:12.940 | But I'm not sure if that's the same experience for everybody.

01:25:15.340 | - Do you play the survival mode?

01:25:16.920 | There's a survival mode in Skyrim.

01:25:18.760 | It was a creation club thing.

01:25:20.140 | It does some hunger, it does hot and cold,

01:25:24.220 | it does some other systems that make it,

01:25:26.720 | you know, in our minds, more believable.

01:25:31.000 | It was actually a creation club thing

01:25:34.100 | made by an external creator who is now full-time with us.

01:25:37.520 | - So can we actually, thinking about Starfield,

01:25:42.460 | thinking about Elder Scrolls VI,

01:25:44.660 | go through the full life of a video game you've created?

01:25:49.660 | So what's it take to take a game

01:25:53.380 | from the idea to finally the final product?

01:25:56.580 | What are the different steps along the way?

01:25:59.340 | - Great question.

01:26:01.740 | Well, usually it starts with,

01:26:04.620 | I mean, honestly, lunchtime conversations

01:26:06.680 | with a number of us.

01:26:08.100 | Hey, we think we wanna do this.

01:26:09.940 | This is what it's gonna be like.

01:26:11.140 | I mean, look, with an Elder Scrolls,

01:26:12.420 | you know you're gonna do it.

01:26:13.860 | It's a matter of when.

01:26:15.900 | You say, okay, what's the tone we're going for, right?

01:26:18.780 | Where is it set?

01:26:20.340 | So we usually start with the world.

01:26:22.300 | And then we're always overlapping.

01:26:26.820 | So while we're making one game,

01:26:29.660 | as we're getting in the throes of it or wrapping it,

01:26:34.300 | probably by the midpoint of one game,

01:26:37.260 | we've had enough conversations

01:26:38.980 | to understand what the next one's gonna be.

01:26:44.060 | What are the big ticket, like, where's it set?

01:26:46.460 | What's the tone?

01:26:47.820 | Is there a big ticket feature or two

01:26:49.740 | that make it really unique?

01:26:51.320 | And then when we're finishing one game,

01:26:55.260 | we start prototyping.

01:26:59.140 | Sorry, before that, we start concepting.

01:27:01.100 | So we'll do concept art.

01:27:03.660 | And for one reason or another,

01:27:06.100 | I usually have the beginning of the game worked out.

01:27:09.540 | I like to think about, okay, how's the game start?

01:27:11.700 | What's the player do first?

01:27:13.060 | We do music early.

01:27:15.340 | So take Elder Scrolls VI, we forgot where it's set.

01:27:18.380 | What's the tone?

01:27:19.220 | What are the big features?

01:27:20.380 | We discuss the beginning of the game,

01:27:22.340 | which we've had for a very long time.

01:27:24.380 | - Where's it set again?

01:27:25.980 | - Yep.

01:27:26.820 | (Luke laughs)

01:27:27.660 | In Tamriel.

01:27:28.860 | - Damn it.

01:27:32.300 | Well, at least we know we narrowed it down that.

01:27:34.460 | - Yeah.

01:27:35.300 | - That would be epic if it was like

01:27:36.860 | a portal into another dimension.

01:27:38.780 | Anyway.

01:27:39.620 | - Then I like to do music.

01:27:41.200 | So we've already done a take on the music

01:27:45.420 | for Elder Scrolls VI.

01:27:46.900 | - So you can sit there with the concept art

01:27:49.500 | and the music and you can feel it.

01:27:50.900 | - No, no, the music, we put in the teaser for it.

01:27:53.340 | This was 2018.

01:27:56.380 | We've taken that further, obviously.

01:27:58.700 | And again, we're working on the world.

01:28:03.180 | You're then doing concepting and design for the world.

01:28:06.020 | And then once we're wrapping up one game,

01:28:08.540 | we can really start prototyping the new one.

01:28:11.540 | And you're usually building kind of your initial spaces.

01:28:14.500 | And so we do like to do like a first playable,

01:28:16.520 | a smaller section of the game

01:28:18.820 | that we can sort of prove out and show to people,

01:28:21.500 | hey, this is how it feels different.

01:28:23.100 | This is what it looks like.

01:28:23.980 | This is what's unique about it.

01:28:25.540 | Then we turn that into a larger chunk

01:28:27.300 | when more of the team comes on, when the other game is done.

01:28:30.300 | And that's still what we call a VS, vertical slice.

01:28:34.860 | So you still don't have the full team on it.

01:28:37.420 | And it's a larger chunk of the game that you can play.

01:28:40.660 | And then once you feel good about that,

01:28:42.380 | you're gonna bring on the rest of the team.

01:28:46.260 | And we're fortunate that the other games we've done

01:28:48.280 | are popular enough that we can be doing DLC and content

01:28:51.020 | and those kinds of things while we're getting the one going.

01:28:53.180 | And then we're at full production

01:28:55.500 | where we're sort of at maximum size.

01:28:58.060 | We just call that production.

01:28:59.740 | That's like the full production period.

01:29:01.700 | And that, depending on the game,

01:29:05.060 | you know, can run a year, two years, maybe more.

01:29:08.940 | And then you kind of have a finalizing final six months

01:29:14.020 | to a year on a game, which is,

01:29:15.900 | okay, we've built everything now.

01:29:17.740 | And usually it needs a lot of glue

01:29:23.100 | where we have a lot of very different elements

01:29:26.300 | that maybe aren't clicking together the way you want

01:29:28.460 | outside of the regular polish for levels and features.

01:29:31.380 | And we're shaving and gluing and sticking things together

01:29:34.500 | so that it's not the schizophrenic game experience

01:29:37.220 | that things flow from one into another.

01:29:40.060 | - In terms of story, like on that level?

01:29:42.180 | - It's really, no, usually the story,

01:29:43.940 | the designers have done a really good job.

01:29:45.700 | It's more about game features, you know,

01:29:48.580 | and then how they interact with the story or,

01:29:50.620 | hey, I went from this experience to this experience,

01:29:53.060 | or picking flowers in alchemy feels like a different game

01:29:56.780 | and then how is another character referencing that?

01:30:01.620 | And how is that intersecting with the skill system

01:30:05.900 | and the interface?

01:30:07.060 | Like the skill system and the interface is the party host.

01:30:11.860 | If you think about a game, most games,

01:30:14.820 | particularly what I like to do,

01:30:17.340 | is that's your person that says,

01:30:19.900 | welcome, do this, go here, check this out.

01:30:22.620 | And the skill system and the way it reacts on the HUD,

01:30:26.900 | the interface of the game,

01:30:28.060 | is sort of leading you to the next thing.

01:30:31.620 | And once you get that flow down

01:30:34.820 | and the rate at which the game is giving you activities,

01:30:39.580 | then you're in like what we describe as a game flow.

01:30:43.580 | And it's not till really that last year.

01:30:46.580 | Before that, the game flow was just,

01:30:48.860 | it doesn't even exist in the way that you see it

01:30:52.620 | in the final game.

01:30:54.620 | And that's what we were working on a lot that last year.

01:30:57.460 | - So at which point is like the set of skills,

01:31:00.820 | a skill tree, the characteristics

01:31:03.460 | of the role-playing aspect of it,

01:31:05.300 | when is that set, the ideas?

01:31:07.220 | - We usually have it in the beginning,

01:31:08.660 | but it's just, we know it won't be done

01:31:11.220 | until that last year.

01:31:12.100 | We'll have one, but we know it's gonna get honed

01:31:15.420 | because it's not until you really see,

01:31:18.620 | okay, how impactful is that one?

01:31:20.500 | How much are you doing it?

01:31:21.660 | Like how much are you really,

01:31:22.980 | and the main combat ones, they always win.

01:31:25.380 | You always know the players will drift

01:31:26.700 | toward the combat type skills

01:31:28.940 | 'cause every character needs some amount of that.

01:31:31.380 | But okay, well, how important is cooking?

01:31:34.300 | How important is alchemy?

01:31:35.500 | How important is these other type of activities?

01:31:39.100 | And then how do you balance them

01:31:40.740 | where when you load up the skill menu,

01:31:42.620 | it isn't automatically give me plus 10 damage?

01:31:47.940 | - How do you get the, what about the combat system?

01:31:51.060 | That does seem to be an important part of a lot of games.

01:31:53.860 | - You start it in the beginning, yeah, every time, yep.

01:31:56.780 | So usually when we're making that first playable,

01:31:59.180 | it's an area you can go through,

01:32:01.260 | some amount of dialogue, some amount of combat.

01:32:03.860 | - How do you get the combat right?

01:32:06.780 | What's the secret to a great combat system?

01:32:09.660 | - Well, first on a control side,

01:32:12.780 | helping the player when they don't realize it.

01:32:15.060 | There's a lot of tricks you can do with magnetism

01:32:17.940 | in terms of the controller and where the attacks go.

01:32:20.260 | So it has to feel, the minute to minute

01:32:22.540 | has to feel really good in your hand.

01:32:23.900 | So there's a lot of animation time, right?

01:32:26.460 | And changing animation so they're impactful

01:32:28.660 | and they happen at a rate that the player feels

01:32:32.180 | like they're really doing it.

01:32:35.500 | And then ultimately it's the illusion

01:32:38.620 | that the enemies are smart,

01:32:41.340 | but they really are there for you to kill them, right?

01:32:46.020 | So they do a lot of things to just let themselves get killed.

01:32:51.020 | They're not near as smart as we can make them

01:32:54.900 | 'cause it turns out that is not fun.

01:32:56.740 | - Right, so there's a balance between,

01:32:59.780 | but that is, I guess, a kind of AI

01:33:04.780 | and it's a very intimate interaction with an AI

01:33:09.380 | 'cause there's a lot of stuff going on.

01:33:11.300 | It's not just very kind of shallow,

01:33:13.860 | like a dialogue or something like that.

01:33:15.500 | It's like, there's a time critical nature

01:33:19.260 | where a lot of stuff is happening.

01:33:20.900 | And if anything feels off, it's gonna feel wrong.

01:33:25.180 | - Yep, all the games do it.

01:33:26.940 | It's not unique to what we do

01:33:29.380 | in terms of how they handle combat scenarios.

01:33:32.460 | And there's some games that just do it extremely well

01:33:35.140 | in terms of, even in multiplayer where you're playing bots

01:33:39.060 | and most people don't know it,

01:33:40.620 | or how a multiple enemy scenario is really,

01:33:46.620 | they don't all shoot you, they trade off.

01:33:49.900 | They're gonna wait.

01:33:50.740 | And I was like, "All right, I'll just wait my turn

01:33:52.020 | "'cause we don't wanna overwhelm them."

01:33:53.260 | But you feel like you're overwhelmed

01:33:55.660 | when there's six enemies, but a good game will,

01:33:59.340 | no, they're gonna take their time.

01:34:02.540 | - Is there a science to it?

01:34:04.260 | Is it art?

01:34:05.300 | Is it like, how do you--

01:34:08.860 | - Yes, I mean, it's all of that.

01:34:11.140 | - So it's like an iterative process

01:34:12.540 | where you try different things, you have different ideas.

01:34:14.900 | - There's a lot of-- - Mixture of animation.

01:34:16.260 | - There's a lot of timing, animation work, HUD work also.

01:34:20.740 | How does the reticule change?

01:34:22.580 | What are the little sound effects?

01:34:26.540 | - What about the gamify, like that is fun?

01:34:30.460 | That aspect. - Again, that goes back

01:34:31.380 | to the winning.

01:34:32.220 | - So winning is fun.

01:34:34.820 | - Yes. - Death is not.

01:34:36.140 | - Yes, let the Wookiee win.

01:34:38.100 | (laughing)

01:34:39.620 | I like how you have to dumb down the AI

01:34:41.420 | to make it fun for humans.

01:34:42.940 | Because if you didn't, it would just be just slaughter

01:34:47.700 | nonstop for all humans.

01:34:50.380 | That's good to know.

01:34:51.340 | What about things like, you said cooking, like crafting,

01:34:56.340 | making potions and poisons and smithing,

01:35:03.300 | weapons and armor, cooking?

01:35:06.340 | How do you get that right?

01:35:07.620 | What's interesting there?

01:35:08.980 | It's such an interesting, a lot of games

01:35:13.420 | don't have that kind of thing.

01:35:14.980 | So what role does that play in the game's creation?

01:35:16.700 | - I think we really cracked it in a way I like

01:35:20.380 | with Fallout 4, actually, where when we're doing

01:35:23.020 | Elder Scrolls, we have the flowers and things

01:35:26.180 | and you have alchemy, and we took this to,

01:35:29.940 | okay, if it's post-apocalyptic, what if everything

01:35:32.220 | in the world was an alchemical ingredient in some kind?

01:35:36.620 | So breaking it down to their components.

01:35:38.460 | So when you walk around a world, again,

01:35:40.780 | we like the simulation, we like the forks and the spoons

01:35:43.020 | and the cups and all that.

01:35:43.860 | Okay, how can I use those to create?

01:35:46.380 | So I love how it starts working in Fallout 4,

01:35:49.620 | where, okay, all these things I find,

01:35:53.780 | they have some value in creating or crafting

01:35:57.820 | outside of a cup is worth one gold piece or one cap.

01:36:02.380 | - By the way, I have to be honest,

01:36:05.540 | I haven't played Fallout 4.

01:36:06.700 | I played Fallout 3.

01:36:07.980 | I thought that was a legendary game.

01:36:09.780 | Can you make a case for Fallout 4?

01:36:13.420 | Or should I just wait till Fallout 5?

01:36:15.740 | And when does that come back?

01:36:16.580 | - I think you should play Fallout 4.

01:36:17.580 | Love to hear your thoughts.

01:36:18.940 | It's a different game.

01:36:20.060 | - Skyrim is too.

01:36:20.940 | I mean, it's--

01:36:21.940 | - We try to make them all different.

01:36:23.460 | They all have-- - They are fundamentally

01:36:25.060 | different. - They all have

01:36:25.900 | their own tone. - Keep the tone.

01:36:26.720 | - So Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 are intentionally

01:36:28.700 | a very different tone.

01:36:29.540 | - Oh, really?

01:36:30.380 | Interesting.

01:36:31.660 | So what's that world like?

01:36:33.780 | What's the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout,

01:36:37.740 | if you can just briefly take a stroll

01:36:39.740 | into that world, tone-wise?

01:36:41.580 | - Well, there's, look, in entertainment,

01:36:43.060 | there's a lot of post-apocalyptic stuff.

01:36:45.660 | And what makes Fallout tick is the world

01:36:50.100 | that was left behind, the world that blew itself up,

01:36:53.300 | this utopian world of nuclear energy,

01:36:56.380 | and it all goes wrong.

01:36:57.460 | So I love the American dream of that,

01:37:00.700 | like how they visioned the future in the '50s

01:37:03.180 | and that blowing itself up.

01:37:05.620 | I think that's a super interesting place to explore,

01:37:08.620 | which is why we always wanted to play in that world.

01:37:11.520 | And it does an amazing job of sort of weaving

01:37:15.740 | the drama and darkness of a post-apocalyptic world

01:37:21.220 | with B-movie humor.

01:37:26.180 | Winks at the camera sometimes, often, actually.

01:37:30.980 | And that when you're in that world,

01:37:35.980 | it just has its own unique flow and vibe

01:37:41.300 | outside of anything else kind of in that genre.

01:37:45.020 | - So Elder Scrolls has, or at least Skyrim has,

01:37:47.660 | some humor.

01:37:49.300 | - Has a little bit.

01:37:50.220 | - But Fallout leans into it a little more.

01:37:52.540 | - A little bit more, a little bit more.

01:37:54.100 | Yeah, yeah, it does.

01:37:55.660 | It's like ironic humor.

01:37:56.900 | It's the duck and cover.

01:37:57.860 | It's a get under your desk if the bomb comes

01:37:59.940 | and everything will be fine.

01:38:01.500 | It's that type of humor.

01:38:02.840 | - So the funny thing is, I do think Fallout 3

01:38:05.100 | is one of the greatest games ever.

01:38:07.820 | You've said that, quote,

01:38:10.220 | "When we started Fallout 3 in 2004,

01:38:13.220 | "we obviously had big ideas of what we could do with it,

01:38:16.000 | "and I talked to a lot of people,

01:38:17.820 | "from ex-developers to press folks to fans,

01:38:20.960 | "what made it special?

01:38:22.300 | "What are the key things you'd want out in a new one?

01:38:26.180 | "The opinions," and I'll put this mildly, "varied a lot,

01:38:30.100 | "but they would all end the same,

01:38:33.020 | "like a stern father pausing for effect,

01:38:35.860 | "but do not screw it up."

01:38:38.820 | How do you not screw up a game?

01:38:41.340 | You have not screwed up many games yet.

01:38:44.300 | - I mean, back to the Fallout one.

01:38:47.260 | - Yeah.

01:38:48.100 | - Yeah, that was, look, I remember that.

01:38:52.100 | We were met with a lot of skepticism in terms of,

01:38:55.140 | "Oh, what are they gonna do with this?"

01:38:56.820 | It was a beloved kind of isometric,

01:38:58.820 | turn-based role-playing game.

01:39:00.340 | You know, awesome for when it came out.

01:39:02.660 | And actually, it was announced,

01:39:05.300 | we had finished Morrowind, but not announced Oblivion.

01:39:08.700 | But because we'd acquired the rights,

01:39:10.780 | we had to announce it,

01:39:12.420 | 'cause I think Interplay was a public company.

01:39:14.060 | I don't remember.

01:39:15.620 | I just remember we had to announce it,

01:39:17.220 | and we're thinking there,

01:39:18.340 | "Well, we're gonna piss off all the Elder Scrolls fans,

01:39:21.480 | "'cause we're announcing a Fallout game.

01:39:22.780 | "We're probably gonna piss off the hardcore Fallout fans,

01:39:25.460 | "'cause we didn't make the original,

01:39:27.820 | "and clearly we'll probably make a different kind of game."

01:39:30.500 | So I do remember, you know,

01:39:32.620 | there was a lot of concern with all of our fans,

01:39:37.260 | and fans of Fallout at the time.

01:39:39.580 | And so, I think it was pretty rewarding for us

01:39:44.580 | that that game found the audience and success that it did.

01:39:50.620 | It's one of my favorite projects that I've ever worked on.

01:39:54.420 | And because it was so fresh for us,

01:39:57.660 | and we had a very clear,

01:39:59.780 | even before we had the rights,

01:40:01.140 | this is the game we're gonna make.

01:40:03.300 | This is the kind of thing we're gonna do.

01:40:05.540 | And we had done Morrowind,

01:40:07.940 | and we were working on Oblivion.

01:40:09.740 | And it was kind of a breath of fresh air to do it.

01:40:13.460 | And what's kind of remarkable is,

01:40:15.220 | Fallout 3 comes out just two and a half years after Oblivion.

01:40:19.820 | And we did all this DLC for Oblivion.

01:40:21.740 | So we were really, really kind of prolific

01:40:24.660 | in how our development, how it was going.

01:40:27.660 | So, I just remember enjoying making that game so much,

01:40:32.660 | 'cause it was, everything we were doing was new.

01:40:37.900 | - Which, as to the world creation,

01:40:40.500 | was there some innovation,

01:40:42.020 | like technically that was happening to it?

01:40:43.500 | - The world creation, like it was, you know,

01:40:45.500 | obviously a different look,

01:40:46.820 | even though some of us,

01:40:48.140 | very few of us had worked on the Terminator things.

01:40:51.260 | The VAT system, the skill system,

01:40:53.540 | and we loved the original game so much.

01:40:55.660 | So you felt this responsibility

01:40:58.460 | to bring it back in a big way,

01:41:00.460 | and reintroduce it in a way that, you know,

01:41:03.740 | as much as we could, scratch the same itch

01:41:07.780 | when you played the original game,

01:41:10.020 | that it had the same tone.

01:41:11.900 | - Are there some favorite things to you about that world

01:41:14.860 | that just kind of connect you to the humor?

01:41:16.260 | - Fallout 3, I love,

01:41:17.700 | again, I usually start with the beginning.

01:41:19.380 | I love the beginning.

01:41:20.820 | I love the character generation.

01:41:22.620 | If you go, if you played it a lot,

01:41:24.740 | or you're developing it,

01:41:26.180 | it starts to feel really long.

01:41:28.780 | But the first time you play it, or second,

01:41:31.620 | I just think it's awesome.

01:41:34.380 | And this idea, it's a hard thing to say,

01:41:37.900 | okay, we want you to feel like your character on the screen.

01:41:42.900 | Even when you play like a Skyrim,

01:41:44.340 | you don't know what you were doing before that.

01:41:46.860 | But Fallout 3, you were born in the vault,

01:41:50.900 | and you raised in the vault, and you lived in the vault,

01:41:53.020 | but you experience a part of that.

01:41:55.300 | So it's a very different, when you step out,

01:41:58.380 | I think you're really,

01:41:59.820 | I mean, the visuals are the visuals,

01:42:02.900 | but the emotional moment of stepping out of the vault,

01:42:05.460 | you feel like you lived your whole life in the vault.

01:42:08.780 | - And you feel like you have a sense of your past.

01:42:13.540 | - Right, and I need to find my father.

01:42:16.980 | - Isn't it possible to have that sense

01:42:20.420 | with Elder Scrolls, like a life story,

01:42:23.660 | like childhood trauma and stuff?

01:42:25.500 | Back to the human condition.

01:42:27.420 | - I mean, you'd have to, look, you do some of that stuff,

01:42:30.020 | but they go through menus.

01:42:31.300 | Pick your background.

01:42:32.140 | We're doing that in Starfield.

01:42:33.100 | Hey, pick your background.

01:42:33.940 | What were you doing before this moment?

01:42:35.340 | - Can you pick your traumas and stuff?

01:42:36.900 | (laughing)

01:42:39.260 | - Say hey, if you wanna make a mod, you wanna make a mod.

01:42:40.780 | - Yeah, thank you.

01:42:41.620 | - Go for that.

01:42:42.660 | - And then also make a mod for a therapist.

01:42:44.500 | - But a lot of it is in your head,

01:42:45.620 | so you're gonna pick this background,

01:42:47.540 | and you do these things,

01:42:48.380 | and you're sort of like, this is who I was.

01:42:49.820 | And we intentionally with Elder Scrolls

01:42:51.420 | kind of make it as much of a blank slate.

01:42:54.660 | Elder Scrolls is a little bit more of a blank slate game

01:42:56.860 | to who you are, which has a lot of positives,

01:43:00.140 | and Fallout for us has been more of a,

01:43:02.420 | this was your life before.

01:43:04.540 | Here's who you were.

01:43:06.140 | Go be who you wanna be, but this is the background.

01:43:08.620 | It's a little more strict.

01:43:10.400 | - Now, this might reveal something about me,

01:43:14.660 | and speaking of childhood trauma,

01:43:18.540 | but I feel like there's a lot of the meaningful experience

01:43:23.540 | of a role-playing game is not just the development

01:43:28.180 | of the character throughout the game,

01:43:30.200 | but the initial character creation, like you said.

01:43:33.060 | Is there something to that process

01:43:35.780 | that you found to be powerful?

01:43:39.380 | Like the design of that process,

01:43:41.180 | because you think so much about that beginning.

01:43:44.420 | How much should be controlled?

01:43:46.740 | How much should be defined?

01:43:48.960 | The interface itself?

01:43:50.820 | The visual appearance of the character, too?

01:43:53.500 | 'Cause I feel like that you're loading in,

01:43:55.980 | you start to load in the world that you're about to enter

01:43:58.940 | by creating that character, right?

01:44:00.660 | - Yeah, we think about it a lot.

01:44:03.620 | It's a really, really good comment and question.

01:44:07.960 | And it's more than, it has to set the whole stage.

01:44:12.380 | Has to peak your interest for the world you're gonna enter.

01:44:15.800 | And we've done it so many different ways

01:44:21.740 | in terms of when you actually go to make your character,

01:44:26.740 | when you're making the choice.

01:44:28.740 | And one of the things over time that we've wanted to avoid

01:44:35.140 | is people starting over.

01:44:39.840 | So there's a lot of intentionality around

01:44:43.200 | the types of choices you have

01:44:45.360 | that can be undone or not undone.

01:44:48.160 | 'Cause what game players want to is,

01:44:50.280 | I'll play it and then I'll make a new character.

01:44:53.200 | But sometimes they do that because they realize

01:44:55.960 | they made the wrong type of character.

01:44:58.200 | And as a designer, you don't want that to happen.

01:45:01.900 | So some people, and we get this comment in Elder Scrolls,

01:45:07.400 | like, oh, you simplified it.

01:45:08.760 | No, no, no, no, we moved those choices into the gameplay

01:45:12.360 | so that you don't make this character in the beginning

01:45:17.920 | and then eight hours later realize

01:45:19.960 | you make a horrible mistake.

01:45:22.320 | And so, okay, I'm gonna start out like that,

01:45:24.200 | to me is a really, really bad experience.

01:45:26.360 | - Also like life itself, but yes, go ahead.

01:45:31.280 | - But like life is, okay, so you can then--

01:45:34.040 | - Fix it in game.

01:45:35.200 | - Right, I wish I had learned archery.

01:45:38.360 | - Well, I'm gonna start tomorrow.

01:45:40.320 | So you can do that, like the Skyrim character system,

01:45:44.000 | it was really designed around that.

01:45:46.320 | All you pick is like, what's your race?

01:45:48.200 | And that gives you some things,

01:45:49.760 | but there's nothing you can't get then on your own.

01:45:52.120 | Mostly, it sounds weird, but you mostly want that

01:45:57.120 | beginning character generation to be visual,

01:46:00.520 | which you then can also change in the game.

01:46:03.480 | And some starting skills that get you off

01:46:07.800 | to the type of play that you want,

01:46:10.440 | but if you discover you don't like that type of play

01:46:13.400 | as you play, you can move your character along.

01:46:16.600 | So we have moved away, post-Oblivion, to a classless,

01:46:21.600 | meaning you don't have a strict character class,

01:46:27.120 | warrior, mage, thief, whatever, in our games.

01:46:30.840 | - And that's continuing for the,

01:46:32.840 | are you like thinking of Elder Scrolls VI,

01:46:36.520 | you're already thinking about that kind of stuff?

01:46:39.080 | So you think of early on, like you said,

01:46:42.560 | the first few experiences in the game,

01:46:44.360 | you're already thinking through them.

01:46:45.560 | - Yeah, yeah, we know what the first few hours are like,

01:46:48.600 | we know what the character system is basically like.

01:46:53.600 | - So tonally, what's the difference to you

01:46:57.320 | between Oblivion, Skyrim, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim,

01:47:01.600 | and Elder Scrolls VI?

01:47:04.760 | - Like, to me, man, stuff blends together.

01:47:08.520 | - Yeah.

01:47:09.360 | - But Oblivion, that's when you could make spells and stuff.

01:47:14.360 | - You could, you could do it in Morrowind as well.

01:47:16.560 | Oblivion has some more guardrails on it.

01:47:19.360 | Morrowind's where you can really go, and Daggerfall.

01:47:21.960 | I don't remember if you can make spells in Arena.

01:47:25.520 | I think you can.

01:47:27.120 | Someone will correct me.

01:47:28.200 | You definitely can in Daggerfall, it gets crazy.

01:47:29.840 | Morrowind, you can somewhat.

01:47:32.640 | And then we start putting guardrails on it,

01:47:34.640 | 'cause people started breaking the game in certain ways.

01:47:37.920 | - Yeah, why is it bad to break the game?

01:47:39.480 | Like, you always want it to be--

01:47:41.280 | - Well, there's like one people love in Morrowind

01:47:43.920 | where you can make these recall stones,

01:47:47.640 | and you could teleport to different areas,

01:47:51.840 | which you really need in that game.

01:47:53.320 | It breaks so many quests.

01:47:55.000 | - Yeah.

01:47:55.840 | - And so as we, any quests, we would do this exercise

01:48:00.280 | of designing a quest, and then someone would say,

01:48:02.480 | "And then I recall away."

01:48:03.880 | And you're like, "Oh, okay, the quest is broken."

01:48:06.400 | And then one day someone says,

01:48:07.940 | "Can we just get rid of that spell effect?"

01:48:09.880 | Everyone's like, "Yes, please."

01:48:11.600 | And so it allowed us to make better content.

01:48:13.560 | - So, a tangent upon a tangent upon a tangent.

01:48:17.520 | How do you create a compelling quest?

01:48:19.840 | 'Cause there's all kinds of personalities of humans

01:48:22.160 | that play these games, right?

01:48:23.760 | 'Cause I like the grind.

01:48:25.000 | - Well, there's, look, there's multiple flavors

01:48:29.040 | of a compelling quest.

01:48:33.160 | Some of them have very good upfront storytelling.

01:48:35.960 | You just like the story and the NPC

01:48:38.560 | that's giving you this task.

01:48:40.800 | And you'll go through a more handcrafted experience

01:48:45.040 | that the designers have done a really, really good job

01:48:48.360 | on the space.

01:48:49.640 | It has some twist or surprise in the middle,

01:48:52.920 | and then the ending has some multiple options

01:48:57.920 | that the player feels like they got to do something,

01:49:00.920 | they made an interesting choice.

01:49:02.520 | But the best ones for me are actually where

01:49:05.320 | all of that was far more open-ended.

01:49:09.280 | The how I am going to accomplish this task

01:49:12.680 | is completely up to me,

01:49:18.280 | and I'm gonna find some ingenious solution.

01:49:21.880 | A silly, this sounds very basic.

01:49:24.600 | It's gonna sound quite cliche and silly.

01:49:26.800 | It's like, "Go find me five daedric hearts," or whatever.

01:49:30.720 | Like, "Find me X of something that's hard to get."

01:49:33.280 | It's a very simple,

01:49:35.600 | you can give a simple story set up for that.

01:49:38.720 | And we're not telling the player where to get those,

01:49:40.800 | and they're thinking, "Now, where could I get those?"

01:49:44.040 | And I actually find those to be just as rewarding

01:49:48.520 | as the really handcrafted, well-done,

01:49:51.760 | little bit more linear with an interesting choice

01:49:54.020 | at the end, if those objects are in the world

01:49:57.840 | in some believable way,

01:50:00.600 | that there's usually some challenge at getting them.

01:50:04.000 | - How do you place objects in a world in an interesting way?

01:50:08.240 | 'Cause it's a big part.

01:50:09.880 | - We have a level design.

01:50:11.760 | You cannot, people, if they only knew how much we spend,

01:50:16.360 | we have a clutter group, a group of people who clutter.

01:50:19.120 | - What's clutter?

01:50:21.520 | - Clutter is all the stuff around.

01:50:22.720 | It's like interior decorators for treasure and stuff

01:50:26.400 | and trash, and they go through every space

01:50:30.020 | and they clutter it.

01:50:32.080 | Our level designers think about it a lot.

01:50:34.400 | These also become landmarks for the player

01:50:37.520 | when you're walking through a space and,

01:50:39.000 | "Oh, this is the place with this."

01:50:40.480 | And there is a logic to making a good level,

01:50:44.940 | as they say, with, even if you walk by

01:50:48.160 | like a little T intersection,

01:50:49.800 | that becomes like a decision point in the player's head.

01:50:52.440 | Like, "Oh, I didn't go down that way."

01:50:54.300 | But the more you do that, it looks easy on paper,

01:50:56.640 | but when you're playing a game,

01:50:58.520 | you actually kind of want to limit those

01:51:01.440 | because he's trying to keep track

01:51:03.120 | of all these decision points, then they get lost.

01:51:07.040 | And yes, we have maps, but anytime the player's going

01:51:09.280 | to check a map in a place like that,

01:51:10.960 | I feel that it's more of like a backstop

01:51:13.900 | for certain players.

01:51:14.880 | If they need to check the map,

01:51:17.200 | I feel like we've kind of failed.

01:51:18.880 | - Got it.

01:51:21.660 | There's a momentum to it, just pulls them in.

01:51:25.500 | It doesn't feel like they're-

01:51:26.340 | - And you know, look, you played a lot of games,

01:51:27.160 | you played a lot of levels where you're just like,

01:51:28.580 | "I'm a little confused," or, "I don't know."

01:51:30.260 | And you play other levels where like,

01:51:31.740 | "Man, it was great.

01:51:34.100 | "I went through it.

01:51:34.920 | "It was well-balanced.

01:51:36.040 | "I knew where I was going."

01:51:37.700 | And you don't want to ever be mazy.

01:51:39.860 | As long as you know where you're going,

01:51:41.340 | as long as you know you made those choices,

01:51:44.020 | then it feels fine.

01:51:46.460 | But as far as the treasure and all of the loot,

01:51:50.600 | it is really an art.

01:51:52.620 | We will not do enough clutter,

01:51:55.060 | and then we will over clutter,

01:51:57.140 | and then there's too much stuff everywhere,

01:51:58.740 | and then we declutter every single game.

01:52:01.220 | I wish we got better at it.

01:52:02.860 | It would save us a lot of time.

01:52:04.460 | - But you're constantly going by feel,

01:52:06.140 | like this is not, this is too much, this is not enough.

01:52:08.300 | - Right, right, because the other thing is,

01:52:10.560 | look, it creates, people want to pick everything up.

01:52:13.720 | They want to click everything.

01:52:15.220 | So if you have too many things of importance in a room,

01:52:19.580 | it's like, it actually makes you feel

01:52:22.060 | a little tight as a player.

01:52:23.300 | You're like, "Well, I'm basically an idiot

01:52:25.860 | "if I don't pick all this stuff up."

01:52:28.460 | You probably felt this way.

01:52:29.300 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

01:52:30.140 | - And the moment where you decide,

01:52:32.380 | that you're just like, "I've clicked so many things

01:52:34.200 | "in this room, I actually am gonna leave

01:52:36.500 | "that ammo canister there," but you feel like a dope.

01:52:39.780 | You've probably experienced this.

01:52:41.660 | - Yes, but also you have a joy from,

01:52:45.180 | if there's not many items, and you found the one,

01:52:47.140 | and you got it, and you feel good.

01:52:49.100 | - I got it.

01:52:49.940 | - And then it's finding, like,

01:52:50.760 | "Oh, I stuck my head in this corner,

01:52:51.940 | "and I picked this lock, and I opened this locker,

01:52:54.500 | "and oh, there was this thing I've been waiting for."

01:52:57.340 | - Yeah, what about rare and rare items?

01:53:01.420 | - That's an art, even more so of an art.

01:53:03.820 | I will say we have a ways to go there

01:53:07.860 | in terms of finding the right drop rate

01:53:11.480 | for special items, we call them,

01:53:13.780 | and your epic rare legendary.

01:53:16.140 | You look at games, so many games do it,

01:53:19.020 | and there are ones that you just play and love

01:53:23.020 | 'cause they have it down.

01:53:25.260 | Destiny 2 is great at it.

01:53:27.580 | Diablo, a series I love, sort of famously,

01:53:32.100 | Diablo III, which I think is great,

01:53:34.580 | and they did an update, it mostly just changed

01:53:36.460 | the loot drops, and it's like this whole new experience,

01:53:39.540 | and there's a really, real art to it.

01:53:42.100 | I think that we're still learning.

01:53:44.600 | We're still learning a lot, and we're trying

01:53:46.740 | to get better at it 'cause it's one of those things

01:53:49.000 | where it drives you through the game.

01:53:51.540 | It's fun to get the treasure in.

01:53:54.020 | - Diablo and Skyrim have this interesting quality

01:53:56.840 | of being extremely popular,

01:54:00.200 | and there's a lore around rare items,

01:54:04.300 | so it changes the dynamic of you could afford

01:54:08.540 | to have really rare items,

01:54:10.440 | - Yes.

01:54:11.280 | - and then somebody finds it,

01:54:14.460 | and that becomes a thing.

01:54:16.300 | I mean, as you release a game,

01:54:18.040 | a lot of people play, and they start sharing stories,

01:54:22.120 | and so on.

01:54:22.960 | It's so interesting 'cause that's part

01:54:24.200 | of the game experience is the stories of others, right?

01:54:26.920 | - For us, 100%.

01:54:28.640 | Because we've been classically,

01:54:30.160 | with most of our stuff, single player,

01:54:32.820 | that that water cooler shared experience,

01:54:35.360 | we would have a thing where we call them

01:54:36.960 | did you know moments.

01:54:38.320 | Like, we gotta have a bunch.

01:54:39.340 | So, you meet someone, they do, what are you doing?

01:54:42.560 | And then they say, did you know?

01:54:45.760 | If you go here and do this, what did you know?

01:54:49.200 | And that, to us, is where a lot of our community

01:54:54.200 | has been sharing their stories,

01:54:56.680 | and here's what you can do.

01:54:58.200 | - Has there ever been a temptation to create

01:55:00.960 | not a single player game that's gigantic,

01:55:05.720 | that's open world? - Well, we did Fallout 76.

01:55:08.100 | We have Elder Scrolls Online, not a game I created,

01:55:11.080 | but look, that started as more classic MMO.

01:55:14.460 | Know the folks, they're part of our company

01:55:16.120 | who made that game.

01:55:17.140 | And it's insanely, insanely popular.

01:55:21.160 | - It is, okay, so I should try it out.

01:55:22.840 | - They do some great storytelling quests.

01:55:25.080 | Like, the actual mechanics aren't the same as Skyrim,

01:55:27.520 | but the world is awesome.

01:55:29.880 | They've just done an incredible job.

01:55:31.880 | You know, it's about to be 10 years for that game as well.

01:55:36.680 | And it's just, you know, great community around that.

01:55:40.000 | - Yeah, it's, I haven't played,

01:55:43.000 | 'cause there's a mobile Fallout game, right?

01:55:46.620 | I need to play that.

01:55:48.220 | I was thinking of playing Diablo Mobile too.

01:55:50.940 | - I mean, you can debate the monetization,

01:55:52.620 | but I would not, it's, I think they did a phenomenal,

01:55:55.180 | it's really fun. - On Fallout?

01:55:56.380 | What's it? - Diablo.

01:55:57.660 | - Oh, Diablo? - Yeah, well, Fallout,

01:55:58.980 | I definitely recommend that one.

01:56:00.300 | Fallout Shelter, completely different game.

01:56:02.580 | Diablo Immortal is, I was very, very impressed with it.

01:56:05.780 | I had a lot of fun. - On the mobile?

01:56:06.980 | - Yeah. - What's the challenge

01:56:08.220 | of designing a game for mobile versus the PC and console?

01:56:12.300 | - Well, obviously the screen size, right?

01:56:15.340 | - Is that what you feel first?

01:56:16.840 | What's the fundamental change in the philosophy of design?

01:56:21.840 | Does it constrain, does it change the tone of the game?

01:56:26.560 | - Well, we've done a few things,

01:56:29.140 | and we have a new mobile game that we're working on

01:56:31.220 | that we haven't announced yet that I'm in love with.

01:56:34.020 | There are a couple of things that you approach on mobile.

01:56:38.300 | Now, I can give you sort of the classic mobile gaming thing

01:56:41.380 | than what we do.

01:56:42.380 | You know, a classic mobile gaming

01:56:46.900 | is really for short play sessions.

01:56:51.300 | 'Cause for the amount of people you're gonna get,

01:56:56.780 | the number that have the amount of time to sit there

01:57:00.140 | for a long time and play it,

01:57:01.740 | like a console game or a PC game, is lower,

01:57:04.140 | 'cause people are playing mobile games

01:57:05.460 | on the move or whatever.

01:57:07.180 | And how it onboards you,

01:57:09.540 | 'cause obviously most of them are free,

01:57:11.140 | so how the tutorial works, how it gets you into the game,

01:57:16.140 | because you haven't bought it,

01:57:17.380 | you haven't done this investment of buying it

01:57:19.060 | and then saying, "No, I'm gonna learn it."

01:57:20.820 | People don't care.

01:57:22.020 | So really understanding how they get into the game.

01:57:24.460 | Those two things are really the magic to mobile gaming.

01:57:28.140 | We have found, though, with our games,

01:57:29.740 | you know, particularly "Fallout Shelter,"

01:57:31.860 | people will sit there for an hour or two.

01:57:33.580 | Like, they will just sit there and play it.

01:57:35.520 | Like, large numbers of people will play it for hours a day.

01:57:39.540 | - So there is a more, I don't know,

01:57:42.540 | addicting element to the mobile?

01:57:44.420 | 'Cause I guess you can spend more time with it.

01:57:45.740 | - And if you look at, you know,

01:57:47.860 | if you look at kids these days,

01:57:49.740 | they can stare at their phone for hours.

01:57:51.340 | That's all they do.

01:57:52.180 | That's where they watch everything.

01:57:53.560 | So it's also like a demographic thing.

01:57:55.980 | The younger audience,

01:57:57.740 | they would rather sit and stare at their phone

01:58:00.280 | than play it on a big screen.

01:58:02.900 | - I would just love to sort of list out

01:58:05.980 | throughout human history the evolution of sentences

01:58:09.240 | that began with, if you look at kids these days.

01:58:11.700 | (laughing)

01:58:12.940 | - It's true, it's true.

01:58:14.820 | - The kids of the kids these days

01:58:17.340 | will probably be talking about,

01:58:19.060 | be doing like virtual reality.

01:58:20.660 | - Like, I love mobile games, though.

01:58:22.940 | I play a ton of 'em.

01:58:24.580 | I am, like, my favorite game this year is "Marvel Snap,"

01:58:28.940 | this card game from the folks who did "Hearthstone."

01:58:32.340 | You should really play it.

01:58:33.540 | If you like, do you like card games?

01:58:35.580 | - Yeah.

01:58:36.420 | - Do you like superheroes?

01:58:37.340 | - No.

01:58:38.180 | - It's genius.

01:58:39.000 | - You don't like superheroes?

01:58:39.840 | - No, I don't like superheroes.

01:58:41.140 | I never understood, listen, this never,

01:58:43.380 | this is growing up in the Soviet Union.

01:58:47.020 | What, I don't understand the,

01:58:49.340 | all right, well, I don't understand,

01:58:51.060 | you're wearing a costume, it's silly to me.

01:58:54.020 | I can't, so you have to suspend,

01:58:56.900 | like, you have to be able to immerse yourself,

01:59:01.140 | and for some reason there's something about costumes,

01:59:03.700 | it doesn't get me.

01:59:04.680 | But then again, I'm like into elves and dragons,

01:59:06.780 | so I don't understand, and I'm fine.

01:59:08.740 | - I think I get it.

01:59:09.720 | - Yeah, but the rest, at least the American,

01:59:13.040 | the Western world disagrees with me, so.

01:59:15.040 | Even Batman, you have, like, little ears,

01:59:17.960 | but all right, that's fine.

01:59:19.320 | Well, back to "Elder Scrolls Starfield."

01:59:26.740 | So one thing I didn't ask you about,

01:59:29.920 | when you look at the timeline of five, six, seven,

01:59:32.960 | eight years, whatever it is, to create a game,

01:59:35.440 | what's the role of the deadline internally,

01:59:38.240 | not publicly announced? - Keeps you honest.

01:59:40.060 | - Do you try to keep, in your own brain, a deadline,

01:59:43.140 | for the team, a deadline?

01:59:44.780 | - Yeah, all the time.

01:59:46.400 | - And when you set that deadline early in the development,

01:59:50.360 | do you try to set deadline, like,

01:59:53.140 | that's really tough to reach?

01:59:55.660 | - No, we try to make it, like, hey, this is our best guess.

01:59:58.300 | If you make it tough to reach, it's sort of,

02:00:00.140 | you know you're gonna miss it, it's arbitrary.

02:00:02.560 | We really try to, you know, keep ourselves honest,

02:00:05.620 | 'cause it'll let you know where you're at, right?

02:00:08.000 | We wanna have first playable,

02:00:08.980 | we wanna be done with prototyping or design by this date,

02:00:11.180 | we wanna have first playable this date, we wanna have this.

02:00:13.260 | But, look, you know, things happen.

02:00:15.500 | Pandemic happens, people go home, it throws everything off.

02:00:18.700 | Or, you know, what you needed to do,

02:00:21.580 | because we're not just like making a game

02:00:23.060 | and then moving everybody on, you know,

02:00:25.140 | what you needed to do, like Skyrim was so popular,

02:00:27.660 | we kept people on that game for longer.

02:00:30.380 | So it delayed a little bit,

02:00:31.940 | we were doing with "Fallout 4" at the time,

02:00:33.540 | 'cause we can't, you know, hey,

02:00:35.800 | we really shouldn't move the people on to "Fallout" yet,

02:00:38.100 | 'cause we're doing these things in Skyrim and we should.

02:00:40.420 | So it just sort of keeps you honest for where you're at.

02:00:43.940 | - Does it get super stressful as you get closer?

02:00:46.700 | You try to avoid announcing anything?

02:00:48.460 | Is there a temptation to announce?

02:00:49.660 | - Well, I've done it all ways, right?

02:00:51.260 | I've announced, you know, "Starfield,"

02:00:53.540 | we were pretty loud with a release date

02:00:55.980 | that we then had to delay, so.

02:00:58.660 | - Was that tough?

02:01:01.020 | - It was, it was, but it was the right thing to do.

02:01:05.700 | - How do you know it's the right thing to do?

02:01:07.960 | Like when you sat down and looked at it,

02:01:10.280 | like, this is not ready?

02:01:12.080 | - It's not an exact science,

02:01:13.920 | but you can look at what needs to be done

02:01:15.960 | and the amount of time you have.

02:01:17.820 | And, you know, we've done it in the past

02:01:20.360 | where we can get it done, we believe we can.

02:01:23.480 | And so you're fighting that personal belief

02:01:25.960 | that you can get something done.

02:01:28.360 | But there's a lot of things that go into release date

02:01:30.800 | with marketing and publishing.

02:01:33.160 | And, you know, we've reached a point where on "Starfield"

02:01:37.540 | where it was pretty clear to us,

02:01:41.100 | even though you wanna say you can get it done,

02:01:43.220 | that the risk involved with that to the fans,

02:01:47.540 | to the game, to the team, to the company,

02:01:49.220 | we're part of Xbox now, to everybody was,

02:01:52.220 | we should really move it and give it the time it needs.

02:01:57.220 | - So you mentioned part of Xbox,

02:02:02.340 | Microsoft bought Bethesda and ZeniMax for $7.5 billion.

02:02:07.340 | Well, what's it like joining the Xbox team?

02:02:14.020 | You've, I think, written about it.

02:02:17.420 | What are the exciting aspects of that?

02:02:22.300 | - You know, when your company goes through a change like that

02:02:25.780 | no matter what it is,

02:02:26.760 | even if it's somebody that you've worked with

02:02:28.500 | for a long time, you never know what you're in for.

02:02:31.120 | You hope, and I had worked with them for,

02:02:36.020 | since we started doing console stuff with "Morrowind"

02:02:38.700 | was, you know, they came to us, came to me and,

02:02:40.700 | "Hey, you should make this game for the Xbox."

02:02:42.740 | And so when they were making that console,

02:02:45.200 | had a great experience with them.

02:02:48.580 | And then on the 360 with "Oblivion,"

02:02:50.860 | and so I guess the point is,

02:02:52.820 | we felt that we had a very good relationship

02:02:55.740 | with everybody there,

02:02:57.220 | and we understood what their culture was,

02:03:00.300 | but you never really know.

02:03:01.700 | And I mean this honestly, it's been awesome.

02:03:06.220 | That the culture inside of Microsoft and Xbox

02:03:09.220 | that people see from the outside is the culture inside,

02:03:12.120 | the way they talk about players,

02:03:14.180 | the way they'll invest in the players,

02:03:17.140 | the risks they'll take,

02:03:19.060 | the thoughtfulness from Phil Spencer on down

02:03:23.320 | has been, you know, Phil really, really lucky.

02:03:27.020 | And then a game like "Starfield" where,

02:03:28.660 | look, we've had a lot of success

02:03:30.300 | with the games that you talked about,

02:03:31.860 | but we've never been kind of the platform seller,

02:03:36.240 | you know, the game for a platform for a period of time.

02:03:40.580 | And so, you know, there is a lot of pressure there.

02:03:43.580 | There's a lot of responsibility there

02:03:44.860 | to make sure we deliver for everybody.

02:03:46.900 | - Is there a chance that "Starfield" is exclusive to Xbox?

02:03:51.620 | - It is exclusive.

02:03:52.740 | - It's officially ready. - Xbox PC, yep, yes.

02:03:55.060 | - So you're...

02:03:58.580 | I get it.

02:03:59.700 | So extra pressure also creating a new world.

02:04:03.420 | - Yeah, it's new, but keep in mind,

02:04:05.540 | for us that exclusivity is not unique,

02:04:08.340 | even though we've done PlayStation stuff.

02:04:09.940 | And I think the PlayStation 5 is just an insane machine.

02:04:12.500 | They've done a great job

02:04:13.900 | and we've had great success on PlayStation.

02:04:16.580 | We were traditionally a PC developers in the beginning.

02:04:21.100 | We transitioned to Xbox, became our lead platform.

02:04:23.540 | Like "Morrowind" is basically exclusive to Xbox.

02:04:25.700 | "Oblivion" was exclusive to Xbox for a long period of time.

02:04:29.740 | "Skyrim" DLC was exclusive.

02:04:31.260 | So we've done a lot of like,

02:04:32.380 | our initial stuff is all Xbox.

02:04:33.900 | So we get into development and saying,

02:04:36.300 | we're focused on Xbox

02:04:37.460 | and it's not abnormal for us in any way.

02:04:41.500 | It's been kind of the norm.

02:04:42.900 | And from a development side, I, you know,

02:04:46.460 | I like the ability to focus.

02:04:48.180 | So our ability to focus and say, and have help from them,

02:04:52.180 | you know, the top engineers at Xbox to say,

02:04:54.500 | we are gonna make this look incredible on the new systems

02:04:58.900 | is like, from my standpoint, it's just awesome.

02:05:02.460 | - What's the difference in creating the console

02:05:04.780 | versus the PC?

02:05:05.660 | I also have to admit, I've never, is this shameful?

02:05:10.340 | Actually, you should recommend to me.

02:05:11.580 | I've never played "Skyrim"

02:05:13.060 | or any of the games you've created on Xbox.

02:05:17.420 | - Really?

02:05:18.260 | - Yeah, and on console.

02:05:19.380 | I played, I mean, I've played very little Xbox.

02:05:21.500 | - Yeah, sure.

02:05:22.340 | I mean, look, there's the obvious interface part.

02:05:24.420 | - Yeah. - Between mouse and keyboard

02:05:25.700 | and then a controller.

02:05:27.300 | But when you're looking at hardware, PCs, it's tough, right?

02:05:30.940 | 'Cause you're looking at, well,

02:05:32.500 | you know, what are their driver versions?

02:05:35.700 | You know, what kind of monitor do they have?

02:05:37.580 | What is the actual refresh rate of X, Y, and Z?

02:05:41.020 | We're used to it.

02:05:43.540 | - Yeah. - But if, you know,

02:05:44.500 | anyone will tell you, give me the hardware

02:05:46.860 | that I know I'm writing it for, you know this.

02:05:49.900 | And the Series X is just a incredible machine.

02:05:54.900 | And now that- - And you know what it is.

02:05:57.700 | You know- - You know what it is.

02:05:58.820 | And now that we're part of Xbox,

02:06:00.500 | getting the people who built it to show you

02:06:03.340 | how to make it really, really dance is just awesome.

02:06:07.260 | - Is there a case to be made?

02:06:10.220 | Do you get people that enjoy,

02:06:12.300 | people that do both PC and Xbox,

02:06:14.500 | that enjoy Xbox more?

02:06:16.340 | Like if they have a choice- - Yeah, absolutely.

02:06:18.300 | - That they enjoy it?

02:06:19.700 | - I think that depends on,

02:06:21.300 | and look, now that you can kind of cross,

02:06:25.100 | you can take your save and go between and all those things.

02:06:27.620 | - You can? - Yeah.

02:06:28.860 | Depends on if- - For which games?

02:06:33.220 | So for Skyrim?

02:06:34.940 | - If you have the Game Pass PC version of it versus Steam.

02:06:39.700 | Not via Steam right now.

02:06:41.500 | Not via Steam. - Got it, got it.

02:06:42.460 | And so there's the Game Pass.

02:06:43.660 | So I'm like learning about this.

02:06:44.900 | So there's a Microsoft, so this is gonna be on Game Pass.

02:06:48.020 | And then you can, yeah, if you can take it from PC

02:06:50.500 | through Game Pass- - But I think it depends on,

02:06:52.260 | like for me, what's my physical mood?

02:06:57.140 | Do I wanna lean back on a sofa?

02:06:58.660 | - Exactly. - Right?

02:06:59.500 | Like the actual physicality of it

02:07:01.700 | is what determines where I wanna play.

02:07:04.540 | Do I wanna be two feet from a thing right now?

02:07:07.460 | And sometimes I like that.

02:07:09.020 | I am more of a console player just because

02:07:12.220 | I sit at my PC at work all day.

02:07:14.060 | Like I play a lot of video games.

02:07:17.100 | So when I get home and I wanna play something else,

02:07:18.980 | like I am a sofa, screen, controller person.

02:07:22.420 | - Let me ask you a ridiculous question.

02:07:26.100 | So you've created some of the greatest games ever.

02:07:28.340 | I think there's, the question would be

02:07:31.260 | what's the best game of all time?

02:07:32.940 | All right, all right, just give me a second.

02:07:34.660 | - Tetris. - Tetris?

02:07:36.340 | All right, yeah, that's interesting.

02:07:37.180 | - Have you read the book on Tetris?

02:07:38.620 | - No. - You should read it.

02:07:39.820 | Basically someone who grew up in Russia.

02:07:42.340 | - Yeah, I'm sure there's an interesting story.

02:07:44.980 | The fact that there's a book about Tetris

02:07:46.620 | is fascinating.

02:07:47.700 | Is there a book about Mario?

02:07:49.100 | I would love to find out more,

02:07:53.380 | but I think I would put, personally I would put Skyrim.

02:07:57.220 | - I'll take that, good answer.

02:07:58.540 | - At number one for me,

02:08:01.580 | which is tough, however you put it,

02:08:04.740 | 'cause you could also make the case

02:08:06.060 | out of the Elder Scrolls series.

02:08:08.420 | Like what do you actually value more?

02:08:09.780 | If you put Tetris and Super Mario up there,

02:08:12.420 | then like the credit goes to Morrowind maybe over Skyrim.

02:08:16.380 | I don't know where the biggest leaps are,

02:08:18.700 | but overall I think it's Skyrim.

02:08:21.660 | But for you, if you're not allowed to pick

02:08:24.980 | any of the games you were involved with,

02:08:27.340 | what are some interesting candidates for you

02:08:29.700 | that are just games that inspired the world,

02:08:34.700 | impacted the world, shook the world

02:08:37.420 | in terms of what video games are able to do?

02:08:40.140 | - Well, first, I'm just sort of like hearing you say

02:08:44.340 | that you think Skyrim's the best game of all time

02:08:46.180 | is quite, like thank you.

02:08:49.380 | And it's an incredible thing to hear.

02:08:52.300 | And when I think about,

02:08:57.780 | well, I have a couple of answers.

02:08:59.540 | There's ones that are like personal to me.

02:09:01.700 | Ultima VII is probably my--

02:09:03.220 | - Yeah, can you talk about Ultima?

02:09:04.340 | Like you said that as an inspiration.

02:09:06.500 | I never crossed that world.

02:09:09.660 | - Well, it was-- - What kind of game is it?

02:09:12.100 | - It's a role-playing game.

02:09:13.900 | Circa 1992, '93, '94, Ultima Online,

02:09:18.180 | first really visual online world in that way.

02:09:22.940 | But for me, that was a virtual fantasy world

02:09:26.100 | where you could bake bread, you could pick all this stuff up.

02:09:28.820 | I mean, anyone who's played Ultimas and plays our stuff

02:09:31.820 | can see the kind of touchstones

02:09:35.340 | and callbacks to that or inspirations.

02:09:38.540 | And the other thing that I loved about Ultima

02:09:42.660 | was, they were all different, right?

02:09:47.660 | That they iterated and there weren't necessarily

02:09:51.140 | what I'll call a plus one sequel

02:09:52.860 | outside of Ultima VII part two,

02:09:54.740 | clearly a plus one sequel,

02:09:56.660 | but they each had their own tone.

02:09:58.460 | I love like the boxes.

02:10:01.380 | It's something that we get into as well.

02:10:03.740 | I love this idea that a game also is this tangible thing.

02:10:08.660 | - Oh, when you buy it--

02:10:10.260 | - You buy the cardboard boxes

02:10:11.820 | and the way they were designed,

02:10:12.940 | and Ultima VII is black and Ultima VIII is the fiery gate

02:10:16.140 | and the paintings on them.

02:10:18.220 | - Does that break your heart a little bit

02:10:21.300 | that that culture is a bit gone?

02:10:23.700 | - A little bit, a little bit.

02:10:25.500 | And that's also why I like,

02:10:27.740 | this goes to video gaming or any other digital things

02:10:31.900 | where digital ownership has great value to people.

02:10:34.900 | So I like looking at my collections of games,

02:10:37.900 | even digitally, I wanna see nice,

02:10:41.500 | in the same way you wanna see nice album art,

02:10:43.940 | wanna see nice cover art for our games.

02:10:47.060 | And we spend a lot of time in them

02:10:48.420 | so that you take a look at Elder Scrolls

02:10:50.300 | and Mormon Oblivion and Skyrim.

02:10:52.100 | We want those boxes to look good next to each other.

02:10:55.700 | Going back to the video games,

02:10:57.340 | I always mentioned Tetris because I think it's,

02:11:01.900 | obviously I love virtual worlds and those kinds of things,

02:11:05.860 | but for the time and what an interactive like video games

02:11:10.220 | for the simplest form,

02:11:11.700 | I sort of think you can put Tetris

02:11:14.900 | in front of just about anybody and they'll enjoy it.

02:11:19.900 | It's got some moment of challenge and it's just so elegant.

02:11:27.100 | It's like to me, like this very pure game

02:11:32.260 | that only works 'cause it's a video game.

02:11:34.300 | - And I think mobile games figured out

02:11:38.260 | some of the magic of Tetris,

02:11:39.740 | the simple-- - Some of them have, yeah.

02:11:43.380 | - But Tetris did it a long, long time ago.

02:11:46.660 | You can really create that immersive experience without--

02:11:49.940 | - But for me, the ultimate civilization

02:11:52.740 | as far as a grand strategy game.

02:11:58.660 | Pac-Man I mentioned in terms of bringing games

02:12:03.260 | into the mainstream in a way that captured people

02:12:06.820 | that nothing before it had.

02:12:09.140 | Super Mario, Donkey Kong, everything.

02:12:10.620 | Nintendo, probably the best game makers in the world still.

02:12:13.780 | They know who they are, they know what they wanna do,

02:12:17.820 | always in awe of what they create.

02:12:20.040 | - I gotta ask you about a game I haven't played

02:12:25.660 | but people put up there as one of the greats,

02:12:29.300 | Zelda Breath of the Wild.

02:12:30.900 | Have you gotten a chance to play?

02:12:32.500 | - A lot of it, yes, yes, it's fantastic, it's fantastic.

02:12:35.100 | - What do you think about, I mean,

02:12:36.300 | it's a very different experience.

02:12:37.620 | I've played other Zeldas than the open worlds

02:12:39.580 | you've created but it is also an open world.

02:12:42.380 | - It is, it's my favorite Zelda

02:12:45.420 | 'cause I obviously like open world stuff.

02:12:47.380 | And the one thing that they do really, really well

02:12:52.280 | is they don't constrain you.

02:12:53.760 | Some people, you know, even some of the things we do

02:12:55.820 | constrain you a little bit more.

02:12:57.020 | Zelda says, here's the whole thing.

02:12:58.960 | And you are constrained by the actual

02:13:05.620 | player abilities you haven't earned yet,

02:13:07.860 | not some arbitrary barriers.

02:13:11.220 | And so I think they just did a phenomenal job.

02:13:13.580 | It's a magical game.

02:13:15.140 | - It really feels open.

02:13:16.620 | - It's 'cause it truly is, yes.

02:13:19.140 | - What about, I mean, I just like asking

02:13:21.980 | about some open world.

02:13:24.180 | A very different one is the world of either

02:13:28.140 | Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption.

02:13:30.900 | - Both love.

02:13:32.100 | I would put GTA 3, Grand Theft Auto 3 up there

02:13:35.700 | with the landmark kind of usher in the open world.

02:13:38.620 | When that comes out on the PlayStation 2,

02:13:41.620 | even though there was GTA 1 and 2,

02:13:43.260 | this was an all new thing with the mobster storytelling.

02:13:46.140 | - Is that the first 3D version, I guess?

02:13:49.540 | - It was, then Vice City's kind of a fast follow,

02:13:51.940 | which could be my favorite one.

02:13:55.720 | I loved all the Grand Theft Autos.

02:13:58.420 | I think they're really phenomenally well-made games.

02:14:01.900 | Same with Red Dead.

02:14:03.260 | I think Red Dead Redemption 1 could be my favorite story.

02:14:08.260 | Highly recommend finishing that game.

02:14:14.100 | - So you like both the story.

02:14:15.380 | You like the grittiness of that,

02:14:16.820 | 'cause they have a bit of the,

02:14:18.480 | I guess if you like the fallout, there's the humor.

02:14:22.560 | I don't know what it is.

02:14:25.260 | It's the lighthearted humor of it,

02:14:27.340 | but also the brutality of human nature's in there too.

02:14:31.740 | But it's like, and also some of the fun

02:14:35.380 | they create with the music when you drive

02:14:36.860 | and stuff like that.

02:14:37.700 | They create a world.

02:14:39.540 | There's a tone.

02:14:40.380 | There's a very strong tone.

02:14:41.220 | - There is a very strong tone.

02:14:43.500 | The satire on the world is just so well done.

02:14:48.500 | The gameplay is great.

02:14:49.840 | I think they've just done a phenomenal job.

02:14:54.620 | - And yeah, there's that Pop to Mind.

02:14:57.340 | - Portal.

02:14:58.500 | - Portal, yeah.

02:15:01.060 | That's another weird creation.

02:15:04.500 | - I could just sit here and list games forever.

02:15:06.260 | - For a while, I'm enjoying this.

02:15:08.060 | - Hearthstone's a game I love.

02:15:10.220 | I love all type, like sports.

02:15:11.460 | College football, NCAA football was my favorite.

02:15:14.180 | It's like, I would say this is a great role-playing game.

02:15:15.700 | - Oh, you would actually keep getting role-playing?

02:15:17.620 | - It's a role-playing game,

02:15:18.500 | 'cause I have all these characters.

02:15:19.940 | I have like 60 characters, and they're all leveling up,

02:15:24.060 | and then I have to play them.

02:15:25.100 | And then the college ones, I like college football.

02:15:26.980 | They graduate, so you lose your players,

02:15:28.540 | and then they stop making the series.

02:15:30.660 | You know the folks at EA, and they will say,

02:15:32.380 | "I have bugged them.

02:15:33.220 | "When is this coming?"

02:15:34.060 | And they're doing it, so it's finally coming back.

02:15:35.740 | - Nice.

02:15:36.660 | What would you say is the greatest sports game of all time?

02:15:40.900 | - Well, it's NCAA football.

02:15:45.620 | I have to pick the year.

02:15:46.820 | - NCAA versus Madden?

02:15:50.020 | - Oh, yeah.

02:15:51.020 | Yeah, but there's more teams.

02:15:52.620 | You get the college fight songs.

02:15:55.660 | There's more pageantry, and the players turn over.

02:15:58.900 | They're only there for four seasons,

02:16:00.580 | so you have to,

02:16:01.420 | so it's more dynamic.

02:16:05.980 | - So you like variety versus--

02:16:07.420 | - So what was the last one?

02:16:08.780 | 2014, maybe it was.

02:16:10.540 | - And you don't like FIFA?

02:16:15.060 | - I like, look, FIFA's incredible.

02:16:18.060 | Look, I'm a college football fan.

02:16:19.940 | They give you that fantasy.

02:16:21.020 | If you like European football/soccer, FIFA's incredible.

02:16:25.180 | Yeah, I love that game, too.

02:16:27.300 | - Have you been paying attention

02:16:28.540 | to the game design of that world, of those worlds?

02:16:32.300 | - Yeah, and the thing people, I think,

02:16:33.740 | with those kind of games, it is really,

02:16:37.860 | or racing games, Forza, put up there.

02:16:39.500 | I love Forza.

02:16:40.460 | Play them all.

02:16:42.260 | When you have to recreate something that's real

02:16:44.980 | in the real world, say it's cars or it's sports games,

02:16:47.220 | everybody knows how it should work.

02:16:48.980 | That's a really difficult task

02:16:52.500 | when people know how it should work.

02:16:54.580 | Then you're gonna balance it for single player.

02:16:56.500 | The multiplayer parts of it, they're very, very competitive.

02:17:00.500 | In many respects, you're forced

02:17:03.180 | to put out a new version every year.

02:17:04.980 | I say forced in quotes 'cause they're,

02:17:09.020 | you count them as big updates.

02:17:10.860 | But it's a much more difficult development process

02:17:14.860 | than I think people understand

02:17:19.460 | and how hard those teams work.

02:17:21.060 | I know a lot of people who do it,

02:17:22.460 | and I think they just do.

02:17:25.060 | I've enjoyed them all.

02:17:25.980 | I buy Madden every year.

02:17:27.220 | - Yeah, every single year.

02:17:30.220 | Yeah, they do refresh it.

02:17:31.180 | There's a feeling of freshness.

02:17:32.540 | I don't know what that is.

02:17:33.380 | - Yeah, look, there have been years

02:17:34.380 | where it feels like less was done and more was done,

02:17:36.820 | but I enjoy it every year.

02:17:38.780 | - Yeah, yeah.

02:17:40.100 | What does a perfectly productive day

02:17:43.460 | in the life of Todd Howard look like?

02:17:45.500 | Maybe not perfectly,

02:17:49.100 | but just like a perfectly average productive day.

02:17:53.500 | Are you a morning person, evening person?

02:17:55.980 | Is it chaos?

02:17:57.060 | Is it pretty regular schedule?

02:18:00.660 | - I'm in a good flow right now.

02:18:02.340 | I'm still doing a lot of stuff.

02:18:03.940 | So there's things I'm executive producing

02:18:06.940 | and then Starfield I'm directing.

02:18:09.980 | So I sort of view that as that's an everyday thing.

02:18:13.180 | Fortunately, I get to do a lot of stuff

02:18:14.700 | from look at the TV show we're making

02:18:18.860 | and this Indiana Jones game

02:18:21.420 | that's being developed at Machine Game.

02:18:23.060 | So we get to look at that.

02:18:24.340 | But the best really day or where I feel it's fulfilling

02:18:30.220 | is get to play some of a game,

02:18:35.220 | the game we'll say Starfield,

02:18:36.420 | get to play some of Starfield,

02:18:37.820 | look at the problem set of what it is doing

02:18:42.460 | and then get in a room with the other developers

02:18:46.340 | that I work closely with

02:18:47.340 | and we solve that problem together.

02:18:50.020 | So that's the most rewarding thing

02:18:53.420 | when you can say, okay, what do we want this to do?

02:18:55.580 | What's the real player experience we want?

02:18:58.700 | What are all the pieces in front of us?

02:19:00.540 | Where you know the actual tangible pieces

02:19:02.820 | as opposed to the beginning,

02:19:04.420 | the pie in the sky part is always fun.

02:19:08.220 | But it's like anything is possible, that's fun,

02:19:10.860 | but it's not rewarding in the same way

02:19:14.060 | 'cause you haven't solved something.

02:19:15.420 | Whereas these are the elements you have to play with.

02:19:18.820 | How do we make this all work together?

02:19:20.700 | And you come out of it at the end of the day

02:19:22.260 | like now that feels great.

02:19:24.580 | - So brainstorming about specific big picture,

02:19:30.100 | both big picture and very specific detail

02:19:34.060 | of a game that's not working,

02:19:35.260 | something's not working,

02:19:36.100 | you wanna fix it, that kind of stuff.

02:19:38.220 | - 'Cause you feel like, okay,

02:19:39.380 | you've made tangible progress

02:19:41.020 | on the actual build of the game.

02:19:42.980 | Where something you played in the beginning of the day

02:19:44.820 | didn't feel great, you've figured out a solution

02:19:48.260 | with a group of people, it's always with a group.

02:19:51.500 | And then the next day you're like, yeah,

02:19:52.860 | that worked out.

02:19:55.180 | - Who's on the team?

02:19:56.180 | Is it designers, engineers?

02:19:58.580 | - All of the above.

02:19:59.420 | - Artists, voice, over folks?

02:20:01.700 | - So internal to the studio,

02:20:03.940 | it's a lot of programming, a lot of art,

02:20:06.380 | you have design, which breaks into some quest design,

02:20:09.620 | writing, systems design,

02:20:11.300 | who are doing all the treasure and the loot

02:20:14.020 | and the skill systems.

02:20:15.900 | And then level design is making the spaces like those

02:20:18.980 | that you'll play through.

02:20:20.420 | Production is a big part of it,

02:20:21.900 | the producers who organize everything.

02:20:23.900 | Can't remember if I mentioned art, a lot of artists.

02:20:27.140 | QA staff as well, they're hugely valuable in saying,

02:20:30.660 | hey, we broke your game in these magical ways,

02:20:32.700 | what are you gonna do about it?

02:20:34.620 | - Is the loot design team still hiring?

02:20:36.700 | How do I apply?

02:20:38.180 | That seems like the most fun job.

02:20:40.100 | - Always.

02:20:40.940 | - I mean, all of this seems like a super fun job.

02:20:43.300 | - You know what, it's the best.

02:20:44.180 | Then you have audio and it by far is the greatest job

02:20:49.180 | you could possibly have.

02:20:51.980 | Even if you're into technology, it's great.

02:20:54.900 | If you're into storytelling and creativity and art,

02:20:56.940 | it's great.

02:20:57.780 | And it's really the gaming, the combination of that.

02:21:01.900 | - And like I mentioned to you offline,

02:21:03.580 | I think of video games, to me,

02:21:06.100 | it's brought thousands of hours of happiness.

02:21:09.500 | And so when you're designing the game,

02:21:11.340 | whatever you're doing,

02:21:12.460 | you have a part to play in a thing that's going to bring

02:21:15.500 | like millions, hundreds of millions of hours

02:21:21.220 | of happiness to people.

02:21:23.260 | It's crazy, right?

02:21:24.460 | - It is, and I'm gonna play you saying that back to our team

02:21:28.780 | 'cause people forget, your head's down,

02:21:30.660 | you're trying to solve these problems,

02:21:32.100 | and then you do forget how many people it touches.

02:21:37.100 | - Like even tiny decisions.

02:21:39.260 | You make tiny little things, you create.

02:21:41.620 | - Yeah, it's weird.

02:21:42.460 | I wish there was a way to like,

02:21:44.100 | I would notice things in a video game,

02:21:47.540 | and it's like, huh, okay.

02:21:48.740 | It feels good, but you don't get that signal.

02:21:52.780 | The creator doesn't get that signal.

02:21:55.340 | I wish they did.

02:21:57.020 | I guess you could get that signal by,

02:21:59.020 | why is Lux stuck in this room,

02:22:02.020 | like digging through the loot?

02:22:04.820 | - We do now get a lot of good data

02:22:06.940 | on what the players are doing.

02:22:08.340 | - Enjoying and not that kind of--

02:22:09.540 | - Well, we know where they've been and where they've died

02:22:11.980 | and how long they play in certain sections,

02:22:13.860 | and we can sort of tell, outside of people just telling us

02:22:16.660 | on forums or calling or other things,

02:22:19.460 | we can tell for some data where people are dropping off

02:22:23.100 | or having a, we can tell if there's a key frustration point.

02:22:27.340 | - Do you ever think about making people feel

02:22:33.140 | like human feelings when they play?

02:22:36.100 | Like designing, like make them feel fear or excitement,

02:22:41.100 | anger, longing, loneliness, stuff.

02:22:45.340 | - All of the above, yeah, of course.

02:22:47.300 | The big one I like to say is the video games give you

02:22:50.860 | is pride outside of other, you know,

02:22:54.420 | if you watch movies or things like that,

02:22:56.860 | like, yeah, but you never think like, look what I did.

02:22:59.560 | And that feeling of like accomplishment and pride

02:23:04.100 | in what you did or you overcame,

02:23:07.420 | you talked about going back to a game that,

02:23:09.100 | like, those are real feelings of like accomplishment

02:23:13.780 | that I've felt in games that I've played.

02:23:18.780 | And when we get to see a player feel that,

02:23:23.780 | it's really, really special.

02:23:26.860 | The other one is there is a, you know,

02:23:30.060 | there is an escape or to be someone else

02:23:33.520 | that's more powerful in our games

02:23:36.760 | that you aren't in real life

02:23:38.720 | that gives you a confidence or a perspective.

02:23:41.420 | We're doing one next week,

02:23:45.420 | we've done a number of make a wish visits,

02:23:47.340 | kids who could wish for anything,

02:23:50.420 | and they wanna come and I wanna see the next game

02:23:53.700 | and meet the creators and see how you do it.

02:23:55.820 | And they come with their family.

02:23:58.100 | And it is like the greatest thing that we do.

02:24:02.820 | And it reminds you of like how important it is.

02:24:07.080 | And the other really awesome thing is

02:24:09.360 | that you can see like the family change

02:24:13.600 | by the end of the day.

02:24:14.540 | Like they don't, they didn't even realize what it meant

02:24:17.660 | to their child or what went into it.

02:24:19.960 | And it's just, that to me is like,

02:24:23.880 | been involved with that foundation for a number of years.

02:24:26.880 | And it's been really good, you know,

02:24:29.900 | reminder of how lucky we are.

02:24:33.300 | - And in general for young people,

02:24:35.260 | that sense of accomplishment is hard to find.

02:24:37.740 | - Yeah, where they don't,

02:24:40.440 | not everybody has it in the outlets that real life provides.

02:24:45.440 | - Well, that's the thing.

02:24:47.980 | I mean, the world is cruel to when you're young.

02:24:51.320 | Nobody takes you seriously.

02:24:53.860 | You don't get like,

02:24:55.180 | that's why you, everybody always wants to grow up

02:24:57.700 | and get old as quickly as possible.

02:24:59.340 | It's the hardest, it's hard.

02:25:02.300 | - And then video games allow you,

02:25:04.780 | I mean, to build that sense of confidence,

02:25:06.780 | a sense of pride in something.

02:25:08.500 | That's why when people talk down to video games,

02:25:11.220 | like it's a culture and so on,

02:25:12.660 | it's not, it misses out

02:25:15.620 | on that really deeply meaningful thing.

02:25:18.220 | Especially with like single player,

02:25:20.340 | there's some darker aspects to multiplayer

02:25:22.300 | that people create communities and, you know,

02:25:24.140 | it can go off the rails a bit,

02:25:26.420 | but the actual experience of the game,

02:25:29.240 | especially one where you stick with for a while,

02:25:32.520 | that's really beautiful.

02:25:33.740 | Do you have advice for those same young folks?

02:25:38.820 | Given that your life is an interesting one,

02:25:43.440 | given what kind of degree you got

02:25:45.100 | and being a legendary game designer,

02:25:47.840 | do you have advice for young folks in high school,

02:25:49.960 | maybe college, how to have a career or a life

02:25:53.920 | they can be proud of?

02:25:56.720 | - Well, you have to find something that you love so much

02:26:00.280 | that it's never gonna feel like a job.

02:26:04.120 | And don't do it for money,

02:26:07.200 | don't do it for, find something you love

02:26:08.680 | and the rest of it will come.

02:26:13.520 | It won't be a straight path.

02:26:15.760 | And do not ever underestimate yourself.

02:26:21.640 | It's gonna take hard work,

02:26:25.240 | but the worst thing that young people do

02:26:28.360 | is think they can't accomplish something

02:26:30.240 | or they underestimate themselves.

02:26:32.920 | And maybe those first few times through

02:26:36.400 | where they do fail, if they love it enough,

02:26:40.360 | they're gonna be resilient and push past that.

02:26:43.120 | Anyone who's had success or gotten somewhere,

02:26:46.040 | they've had those times, right?

02:26:49.520 | And they've stayed resilient because they love it so much

02:26:54.080 | that this is what they wanna do.

02:26:56.720 | When you do it for other reasons,

02:26:59.200 | just don't think it's gonna work out the same.

02:27:01.440 | - Did you have low points in your life,

02:27:06.280 | dark points where your mind went to a dark place,

02:27:10.040 | whether it's struggling to get a job,

02:27:12.520 | but that's the soft works,

02:27:14.960 | or maybe with a red guard flop

02:27:19.960 | where you kind of started to doubt yourself

02:27:23.800 | or any of that?

02:27:24.640 | - Well, I think what's weird looking back,

02:27:27.000 | I was always so in love with doing this

02:27:32.760 | that I didn't view them as dark per se.

02:27:37.760 | Looking back, I was like, oh, that was,

02:27:41.520 | I just wanted to, okay, let me find a way to make this work.

02:27:45.800 | - Even when it's hard and it's failing

02:27:47.400 | and all that kind of stuff, you just kind of like,

02:27:49.320 | it's a problem before you to solve.

02:27:51.440 | - Yeah, when I started at Bethesda,

02:27:54.160 | I don't know, my father had moved nearby to the office.

02:27:57.880 | I was moving and I slept on a sofa.

02:28:01.800 | I didn't care.

02:28:03.120 | I don't need a bedroom.

02:28:03.960 | I'll sleep on the sofa and work there.

02:28:06.280 | It's all I wanna do.

02:28:07.280 | When the company almost went out of business,

02:28:10.480 | it was, well, I hope it doesn't.

02:28:12.080 | I feel somewhat responsible,

02:28:15.360 | but hey, let's, okay, that's a learning lesson.

02:28:19.600 | Let's go.

02:28:20.440 | I think I was pretty resilient to it all.

02:28:23.240 | Fallout 76, really bad launch.

02:28:27.160 | And okay, what did we do wrong?

02:28:29.400 | What can we learn?

02:28:30.240 | Let's go at it.

02:28:31.080 | Now it's a success.

02:28:33.120 | But those kind of ups and downs

02:28:35.640 | for the length of developments that we have,

02:28:38.280 | people don't see them, but we have them all the time.

02:28:43.160 | And so it's that sort of belief that with the team

02:28:46.800 | having done it time and time again,

02:28:49.040 | to know that now we're gonna make it

02:28:52.520 | as good as we possibly can.

02:28:53.760 | And whatever we're experiencing now,

02:28:56.080 | when we solve it and we get it out,

02:28:57.560 | and we see the millions of people who love it,

02:29:00.640 | it's all worth it.

02:29:01.520 | - And you're getting into new spaces.

02:29:05.120 | First of all, new worlds with Starfield,

02:29:06.840 | but also new, I saw the TV show you're working on.

02:29:09.960 | On Fallout with Amazon.

02:29:15.920 | What's that like?

02:29:16.920 | Worlds that you created in the digital realm

02:29:20.520 | becoming, going on the screen.

02:29:23.120 | - Yeah, people asked, I can remember 10 years ago

02:29:26.160 | after Fallout 3 was a hit,

02:29:28.120 | movie producers coming and,

02:29:29.640 | "Hey, we think this would make a great movie."

02:29:32.200 | And taking a lot of meetings.

02:29:33.640 | And I think most people would jump at that.

02:29:35.960 | Like, sweet.

02:29:37.240 | And I sort of paused and like, I don't know.

02:29:41.960 | What is this gonna do?

02:29:44.280 | I feel like they're gonna synthesize.

02:29:45.640 | I met great people, like well-known creatives.

02:29:48.160 | Like, it's gonna get synthesized into this two hour,

02:29:50.960 | I don't know.

02:29:51.800 | I'm not seeing the great thing here yet.

02:29:56.120 | So, I think the advent of television

02:30:01.120 | in terms of what it's become nowadays

02:30:04.640 | with big budget TV series,

02:30:06.400 | it kind of came up again and met with people.

02:30:08.400 | And Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy who do Westworld.

02:30:11.480 | And I always love the work he did

02:30:16.400 | writing Interstellar and the Dark,

02:30:17.920 | like movies I just love.

02:30:18.760 | - Wait, Jonathan Nolan's involved with this?

02:30:20.720 | - Yeah, he's the EP.

02:30:23.160 | - That's epic.

02:30:24.000 | - And he's directed the first--

02:30:24.840 | - Westworld's incredible.

02:30:25.680 | - Yeah. - Okay, this is awesome.

02:30:27.520 | - And he's the EP, he's directed the first few episodes.

02:30:32.520 | And when I connected with him, Jonah,

02:30:37.720 | he was like, "Hey, you're the person I want to do this."

02:30:42.160 | So, I met with people, kept saying like,

02:30:44.160 | just let me see if he wants to do it.

02:30:47.400 | And to my joy, he was like,

02:30:49.320 | "Oh yeah, Fall 3 is one of my, yeah, sign me up."

02:30:51.360 | It was like, "No, how do we get this done?"

02:30:53.920 | And at that time, he was at HBO

02:30:56.400 | and we were trying to figure out,

02:30:59.480 | it was put a little pause on it.

02:31:01.120 | And got to visit the sets, reading scripts

02:31:07.280 | and things like that, it's all new to me.

02:31:09.920 | But they're doing such an incredible job.

02:31:13.360 | Like, I think if you like this world,

02:31:15.720 | you are gonna be just blown away.

02:31:18.360 | - Some of the tone. - I've never made

02:31:19.360 | a TV show. - Right.

02:31:20.560 | - Those are all the best, no one ever does it

02:31:22.960 | wanting it to not be great,

02:31:24.880 | but they've just done their attention to detail

02:31:27.600 | and just obsessive with what's on the screen

02:31:32.440 | and the storytelling and how it looks, the whole thing.

02:31:36.720 | - Yeah, I think obsession is really a prerequisite

02:31:40.600 | for greatness, what they did, HBO did with Chernobyl.

02:31:45.360 | Like, the attention to detail. - Great series.

02:31:47.000 | - It's just incredible. - And he's doing

02:31:48.600 | The Last of Us now, that showrunner.

02:31:51.520 | - If you really care and you really put a lot of effort

02:31:55.360 | into the details, you can basically truly expect it.

02:31:57.720 | - I was stunned.

02:31:58.800 | I mean, I don't wanna spoil it, but when people see it,

02:32:03.400 | I think they'll just be like, "Wow."

02:32:06.040 | The other thing, we were approaching it,

02:32:07.680 | it's very different where when it was,

02:32:09.640 | people would say they wanna make a movie,

02:32:10.800 | they wanted to tell the story of Fallout 3

02:32:13.120 | or then tell the story of Fallout 4.

02:32:15.480 | And for this, it was, hey, let's do something

02:32:18.080 | that exists in the world of Fallout.

02:32:20.680 | It's not retelling a game story.

02:32:22.760 | It's basically an area of the map

02:32:26.120 | and let's tell a story here that fits in the world

02:32:30.680 | that we have built, doesn't break any of the rules,

02:32:35.800 | can reference things in the games,

02:32:37.560 | but isn't a retelling of the games

02:32:39.560 | that exists in the same world, but is its own unique thing.

02:32:43.040 | So it adds to it, while also people who don't,

02:32:46.000 | haven't played the games, who can't experience

02:32:48.360 | how crazy cool Fallout is, can watch the series.

02:32:52.720 | - Are there some similarities or interesting differences

02:32:58.120 | between the creation of a game and a TV show

02:33:00.400 | that you notice from the story perspective?

02:33:03.720 | - Well, for them, it's much more character-driven.

02:33:06.720 | You can do all these things with the world

02:33:08.520 | and stuff that we already have.

02:33:10.120 | It's the main characters, who they are,

02:33:13.800 | what their motivations are, that really is the engine.

02:33:18.800 | Finding the right actors to do those, yeah.

02:33:23.520 | - 'Cause there's no interaction.

02:33:26.360 | You don't get to enter that world.

02:33:30.120 | They have to do the work for you.

02:33:32.000 | The NPCs are on the show.

02:33:34.240 | Yeah, I can't wait to see how it turns out.

02:33:35.720 | You also mentioned Indiana Jones.

02:33:38.240 | That's a weird, that's a different one.

02:33:40.560 | How do you work with a famous protagonist?

02:33:44.360 | When the character's known, how do you work with that?

02:33:49.300 | - Well, it's different.

02:33:53.000 | Indiana Jones is different where the name,

02:33:57.480 | it is the, it's Indiana Jones, not a world, it's him.

02:34:00.360 | Right, you can talk about the world of Indiana Jones,

02:34:01.880 | but at the end of the day, it's about this character.

02:34:05.000 | And Raiders, still my favorite movie of all time.

02:34:09.600 | No debate, it's the best movie ever.

02:34:11.840 | - Best movie ever. - Ever.

02:34:13.360 | - On a tangent, what do you love about it?

02:34:16.740 | - Well, I saw it, obviously, when I was younger,

02:34:20.680 | and I believed it.

02:34:21.880 | I believed this happened.

02:34:23.360 | And when they found the Ark, I literally,

02:34:25.160 | I could not believe that they found it.

02:34:29.400 | And I have found over my life,

02:34:31.680 | it's still really watchable every time.

02:34:35.880 | I enjoy it every single time.

02:34:38.080 | Love the character, love the story.

02:34:41.560 | The opening is the greatest movie opening ever.

02:34:45.360 | And I just love everything, I love everything about it.

02:34:49.600 | - What was the opening?

02:34:50.560 | Is this when the-- - What?

02:34:51.640 | It's the temple, and then the ball rolls

02:34:53.400 | and tries to crush him.

02:34:54.240 | - Oh, that's the opening. - That's the opening

02:34:55.720 | of Raiders, yeah, he steals the idol.

02:34:58.520 | - I think you're deeply offended.

02:35:00.840 | - I was like, what's the opening of Raiders?

02:35:03.680 | So I've always wanted to, it's one of those things,

02:35:06.040 | like what's on your bucket list?

02:35:07.400 | Like, oh, I wanna make an Indiana Jones game.

02:35:10.000 | And I had pitched Lucas, I met some people there

02:35:12.320 | and pitched them back in '09,

02:35:15.800 | this Indiana Jones game concept.

02:35:17.560 | And they wanted to publish, kind of the deal fell apart.

02:35:23.000 | They wanted to publish it, and we were a publisher,

02:35:24.760 | and so we didn't do it.

02:35:26.360 | And I didn't really have the team to do it,

02:35:28.720 | I just was gonna figure that out after we agreed to a deal.

02:35:32.520 | And well, we made Skyrim, so it worked out.

02:35:35.720 | And then, fast forward 10 years plus,

02:35:38.640 | and Lucas, now part of Disney,

02:35:41.720 | and they're doing a lot more of licensing

02:35:43.640 | and working with people, and so I knew some folks there

02:35:45.600 | and said, oh, I have this idea

02:35:48.640 | that I pitched a long time ago.

02:35:50.840 | And they loved it, and again,

02:35:54.120 | the internal team that I had,

02:35:56.480 | not only didn't have the time,

02:35:57.920 | they probably weren't as good a fit as Machine Games,

02:36:01.800 | who's done the Wolfenstein series,

02:36:03.440 | who is the perfect fit for this game,

02:36:06.240 | with storytelling and how they record it.

02:36:08.080 | And they are, it's awesome,

02:36:10.280 | they're just doing an incredible job with that game.

02:36:14.440 | People are gonna be, if you like Indiana Jones,

02:36:17.280 | it is a definite love letter to Indiana Jones

02:36:20.840 | and everything with it.

02:36:22.400 | - Can you say if it's more on the action adventure side,

02:36:27.400 | like the actual experience of the game?

02:36:29.400 | - I could go back, I would just say it is a mashup.

02:36:33.560 | It is a unique, it isn't one thing intentionally.

02:36:37.920 | So it does a lot of different things

02:36:42.600 | that we've, myself and Jurek

02:36:46.320 | and the folks at Machine Games have wanted to do in a game.

02:36:50.120 | So it's a unique thing.

02:36:52.980 | - Before I forget, who do I,

02:36:55.680 | how many humans do I have to kill,

02:36:59.000 | I mean dragons do I have to kill

02:37:00.440 | to get myself somehow into Elder Scrolls VI?

02:37:04.600 | So mod, if anyone wants to create mods of me,

02:37:08.280 | and is that possible?

02:37:09.920 | - Yeah, of course. - Yeah, it's possible.

02:37:12.160 | While maintaining realism somehow.

02:37:14.720 | You don't want a person in a suit and tie.

02:37:17.320 | Doesn't make sense. - You put you in both,

02:37:19.280 | put you in Fallout, you can wear that.

02:37:21.960 | - Yeah, please put me, so Fallout,

02:37:25.040 | there's also a culture of--

02:37:26.800 | - You do a mod where you replace the mysterious stranger.

02:37:30.240 | - There you go.

02:37:32.880 | That's a to-do task. - Top mod, right there.

02:37:35.800 | - And you will have my deep gratitude

02:37:38.600 | and more, dear stranger, for doing so.

02:37:41.440 | What's the programming language for mods?

02:37:44.440 | Is it mostly-- - They use our internal

02:37:47.120 | scripting language that's built into the tool.

02:37:50.280 | - Okay, I'm almost afraid to explore that world,

02:37:53.240 | 'cause you will never, never, never turn back.

02:37:55.560 | How long, you've created so many incredible games,

02:38:01.880 | is there, what does the future hold?

02:38:06.280 | Is there, so going through this process,

02:38:09.080 | do you still have the energy, the passion, the drive--

02:38:12.040 | - I do. - To keep creating?

02:38:13.520 | - I cannot imagine doing anything else.

02:38:16.800 | I'd like to do it as long as possible.

02:38:20.240 | I will say, though, as I've done it,

02:38:22.520 | soon it'll be 30 years at Bethesda,

02:38:27.000 | I've learned that to appreciate the developments

02:38:32.040 | a little bit more, that the time it takes,

02:38:36.760 | I should prioritize all of us enjoying

02:38:42.320 | the development process more than I did in the past.

02:38:45.800 | It was like, just wanted to, the end,

02:38:49.320 | that's all that mattered.

02:38:50.520 | And the more you do it, you realize,

02:38:52.920 | no, I'm spending the majority of my life

02:38:55.440 | in Tamriel and the Wasteland and Fallout,

02:38:58.560 | so the moments that we're all doing this together,

02:39:02.040 | we need to enjoy it.

02:39:03.320 | It's a lot of work finishing Starfield,

02:39:05.120 | but hey, we gotta enjoy this.

02:39:07.120 | This is incredible.

02:39:08.240 | We don't get that many shots.

02:39:12.080 | So the actual process of creating the struggles

02:39:14.320 | along the way of stuff not working,

02:39:16.720 | like you said, at this point,

02:39:18.280 | with Starfield probably creating some of the glue

02:39:20.680 | of how stuff feels and going back again and again and again

02:39:24.200 | to try to make the beginning better,

02:39:25.720 | all that kind of stuff.

02:39:26.560 | - And I would say it for anybody's vocation,

02:39:28.680 | whatever you're doing, whatever people do,

02:39:31.360 | you're gonna have harder times.

02:39:33.960 | And sometimes people, you gotta maybe recalibrate yourself

02:39:39.280 | to like, okay, how can we make this more enjoyable

02:39:42.080 | for all of us, no matter what you're doing, and rewarding.

02:39:46.440 | - So if life is a video game, which it most likely is,

02:39:49.680 | what do you think is the meaning of life?

02:39:51.600 | From having created so many games,

02:39:53.720 | or the character has to try to figure out,

02:39:58.280 | I mean, there's bigger questions

02:40:00.520 | than just solving the quest.

02:40:02.120 | You're asking the big questions of why am I here?

02:40:04.920 | I feel like that's good practice

02:40:06.200 | for answering the same question for this video game we're in.

02:40:10.080 | What do you think is the meaning of life, Todd Howard?

02:40:13.680 | - That's a very...

02:40:17.440 | I can say what motivates me.

02:40:27.200 | - That's a good start.

02:40:31.720 | - Having a curiosity.

02:40:34.920 | The ability to not assume a lot

02:40:38.920 | and be curious about the world around you.

02:40:42.920 | It's more, it's not the same

02:40:47.560 | as just wanting to learn everything,

02:40:49.480 | but what makes other humans tick?

02:40:52.840 | How do they feel, how do they love?

02:40:55.400 | It might be cliche to say the meaning of life is to love.

02:40:58.920 | - So that curiosity is just, is about--

02:41:04.000 | - Noticing the world.

02:41:06.680 | - Noticing the world around you.

02:41:08.320 | Look, there's an anecdote someone says,

02:41:11.080 | everybody has two lives,

02:41:13.800 | and the second one starts when you realize there's only one.

02:41:17.960 | And I think, I usually preach to my children

02:41:21.920 | and everything else, like have a curiosity

02:41:24.040 | to the world around you,

02:41:25.440 | and you'll have the most fulfilling days.

02:41:28.080 | - Are you able to be inside the worlds that you've created

02:41:32.680 | and be able to notice them, like really enjoy them?

02:41:37.680 | - It takes time, so Skyrim had its 10th anniversary,

02:41:40.800 | so when I went back into it,

02:41:42.840 | I think I got to see it for what it is.

02:41:45.040 | My younger son got really into it

02:41:47.680 | a few years back on the Switch.

02:41:50.200 | That's what we noticed, people age up into it.

02:41:52.520 | So one of the reasons it's so popular is,

02:41:56.040 | you know, people come into,

02:41:57.720 | they're now becoming teenagers,

02:42:01.200 | and oh, okay, I'll finally play Skyrim.

02:42:03.640 | And, you know, he got obsessed with it.

02:42:07.280 | And he wasn't, usually I'd say, hey, check out my games,

02:42:10.360 | and he'd be like, ah, shut up, Dad,

02:42:12.040 | we're playing this other stuff.

02:42:13.280 | And he got obsessed with Skyrim,

02:42:14.640 | like we're having deep Elder Scrolls lore conversations

02:42:18.080 | at dinner, and I saw it through his eyes,

02:42:22.920 | and that was pretty special.

02:42:25.000 | And then the mods he was downloading,

02:42:26.680 | and the YouTubers he was following, talking about stuff.

02:42:29.520 | So the people who like the Elder Scrolls people

02:42:31.800 | don't realize how much of that I have watched with my son.

02:42:35.120 | And then I kind of, when the 10th anniversary came out,

02:42:37.280 | like, oh, I'm gonna check out a build,

02:42:39.320 | I have to check out the build out,

02:42:40.520 | but I hadn't played it in so long.

02:42:42.120 | And it was like, it does, it has this flow,

02:42:47.040 | where like, oh my God, I just played for four hours.

02:42:49.320 | I need to turn it off.

02:42:51.400 | - Yeah, I mean, there's something about enjoying

02:42:56.160 | video games with the people you love, too,

02:42:57.760 | or the water cooler discussion, and with kids.

02:43:02.160 | So I actually, I would love to have kids,

02:43:04.240 | and hopefully soon in the future.

02:43:06.720 | So I guess the thing I need your advice on

02:43:09.480 | is how do I time it in such a way

02:43:12.120 | when they're old enough,

02:43:14.280 | right at the age they're old enough,

02:43:16.880 | like, I wanna know when to have them

02:43:18.680 | so that when they're old enough,

02:43:21.200 | that's exactly when Elder Scrolls VI comes out.

02:43:24.240 | So I wanna, can you give me a hint when I should have kids?

02:43:26.960 | All right, nevermind.

02:43:27.800 | - You are a genius at how to ask that question.

02:43:30.840 | - The number of times.

02:43:32.840 | Yeah, you told the anecdote

02:43:33.920 | that your son asked you the same question.

02:43:36.240 | But of course, it's all for good fun.

02:43:39.600 | Take as much time as is needed.

02:43:42.120 | Skyrim is still an incredible game,

02:43:43.760 | and it has an impact on millions of people,

02:43:46.520 | as do all of your games.

02:43:48.240 | Thank you for everything you've done for the world.

02:43:51.480 | - Thank you.

02:43:52.320 | - It's a huge honor that you would talk with me.

02:43:54.760 | - This has been an honor.

02:43:55.920 | And it has to be said,

02:43:57.840 | look, I have a huge team of people I've worked with

02:44:00.320 | for some of them for 20 years,

02:44:03.520 | and it's really all of us together.

02:44:08.520 | - Keep doing a great job.

02:44:10.480 | Guys and gals, I can't wait to see what you create next.

02:44:13.240 | It really, really does have an impact

02:44:15.520 | on silly kids like me,

02:44:17.440 | and millions of silly kids like me.

02:44:19.440 | So I really appreciate everything.

02:44:21.160 | - Thank you.

02:44:22.000 | - Thanks, Todd.

02:44:23.400 | Thanks for listening to this conversation

02:44:24.920 | with Todd Howard.

02:44:25.920 | To support this podcast,

02:44:27.080 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

02:44:29.680 | And now, let me leave you with some words from Tolkien.

02:44:32.640 | So come snow after fire,

02:44:36.120 | and even dragons have their end.

02:44:38.520 | Thank you for listening,

02:44:40.520 | and hope to see you next time.

02:44:42.480 | (upbeat music)

02:44:45.080 | (upbeat music)

02:44:47.680 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Todd Howard: Skyrim, Elder Scrolls 6, Fallout, and Starfield | Lex Fridman Podcast #342

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