A former Bethesda veteran says that all decisions at the studio “run through” director Todd Howard.
26.10.2023 - 15:20 / ign.com / Bruce Nesmith
The lead designer of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has discussed the difference in design philosophy between Bethesda games and Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3.
Speaking in a fascinating interview with MinnMax, ex-Bethesda designer Bruce Nesmith expressed his love for Baldur’s Gate and Dungeons & Dragons, before delving deep into the difference in design philosophy between the likes of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, and the critically acclaimed Baldur’s Gate 3.
"I think [Baldur's Gate 3] is a triumph of trying to make the tabletop experience actually happen right there in the computer,” Nesmith said. “My hat's off to Larian and the groups there."
Baldur’s Gate 3 is praised for doing perhaps the greatest job yet of recreating the chaotic, everything matters, anything is possible gameplay Dungeons & Dragons is famous for. It is a game in which a seemingly innocuous choice can result in great swathes of story falling by the wayside, a game in which some party members will simply walk out on you — or refuse to join forces with you in the first place — if you make the wrong move (Minthara, I’m looking at you).
More than that, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game that rewards experimentation. Remarkably, it copes with players’ outlandish ideas, sometimes with unique dialogue or story development most players would never normally experience. In the weeks following Baldur’s Gate 3’s launch, Matt Mercer’s ‘very smart’ crate-stacking trick that got him to the top of a castle went viral, as did the ‘Owlbear from the top rope’ attack that deals enough damage to take down pretty much anything.
Bethesda games, including the recently released Starfield, are built differently. Choice and consequence is often limited in scope, with side quests playing out almost in isolation to the main quest so that they can be experienced by as many player types as possible. Bethesda games revolve around the awe and wonder that comes from exploring a vast open world. See those mountains over there? You can go there, any time. That’s the Bethesda promise, and the developer has over the years done a wonderful job keeping it.
In the interview, Nesmith acknowledged many of these differences, and praised Larian’s bravery when it came to locking off content. “The thing that at Bethesda we could never get ourselves to do, is that they [Larian] poked into all the darkest corners,” Nesmith said. “They've come out and said, quite bluntly, 'we don't care if only 1% of the players will ever see this. Those 1% that do are gonna be happy, and they will tell the other 99%, who will then be happy that the option existed.’
"At Bethesda, the games we were making were so big we had to take the approach of, well, everybody's got to be able to do this at some point. We can’t lock
A former Bethesda veteran says that all decisions at the studio “run through” director Todd Howard.
The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall, released way back in 1996, was the second installment in what went on to become Bethesda’s beloved, genre-defining RPG series, but it sounds like it was a particularly tricky one to get off the launchpad - and that if it hadn’t come together it could have meant the end of the studio itself.
Bruce Nesmith, a former Bethesda veteran who was lead designer on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, has said that he “probably played Skyrim for 1,000 hours" and that for "950 of those hours, it was broken”.
Stop for a second and picture your favorite video game developer or publisher. It doesn’t matter their “scale” as long as they’re prominent. More than likely, you can name-drop at least one or two people who are the “faces” of that company. For example, Nintendo has Eiji Aonuma, Shigeru Miyamoto, Doug Bowser, etc. Microsoft has Phil Spencer, Sony has/had Jim Ryan, and on it goes. For Bethesda, they have/had many people who have helped define them over the years for one reason or another. Easily, the one that most people know is Todd Howard. He’s the guy who honestly makes the biggest announcements for the company and helps crank out their best games.
If Todd Howard up and left Bethesda, it would "leave a big hole," says Skyrim's lead designer, insisting that the Starfield director has "an attribute that none of the rest of us did."
Skyrim design lead Bruce Nesmith, who's now ex-Bethesda after leaving the studio during Starfield's development, reckons the iconic RPG largely kickstarted the open-world-ification of games.
Former Skyrim lead designer Bruce Nesmith left Bethesda, and his updated role as senior systems designer, partway through Starfield's development, so he was as surprised as the rest of us when the massive space RPG was released in remarkably good condition.
A lot of big games came out this year, and we, as gamers, should be grateful for everything we’ve gotten to play. The twist is that there are still things coming out, and the farther we get from other releases, the more we will see the “cracks” in their armor or compare them to other releases to determine “who did what better.” Two big games that are serious Game of the Year Contenders that have been widely compared are Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3. Both are deep adventures full of customization and choices, but the teams’ behind them had different philosophies when it came to deciding what players experienced.
A former Bethesda developer who served as Skyrim's lead designer predicts The Elder Scrolls 6's full reveal will mirror Fallout 4's, in the sense that we probably won't hear much else about the RPG until about six months before launch.
One of Starfield's senior developers has been reflecting on the game after launch, revealing in a new interview that they reckon the space RPG could have benefited from going into greater detail on fewer planets. One of the reasons is that "some of the exploration stuff didn't come through as well as it could've."
Liked Starfield? Hated Starfield? You probably have Todd Howard to thank. A recent chat between MinnMax and Skyrim lead designer Bruce Nesmith shed some light on Bethesda's structure and organisation, and it sure sounds like pretty much every choice the company makes needs Howard's stamp of approval before it can go ahead, even as it's grown bigger over the years. To be fair to Howard, though, it seems like that's in spite of his own wishes.
In Starfield,there's a quest where you get to betray a major player. I'm going to keep the details vague to avoid spoilers, but in a lot of other RPGs this would be a massive story moment. If you walk down this path, you'll never be able to interact with that faction again. You're signing up for this life over that one.