Dude it's even crazier, Bethesda is finally doing play tests of ES6 and putting full focus on it, Fo5 is in pre-production, Obsidian is back to make another Fo game AND Fo 3 & NV are getting remakes. Fo is SO BACK!!
This is irrelevant but I hate how the way you said “overlook” and not “overlooks” is actually the grammatically correct way to say it 💀 it does not sound right 😭
I love how everyone shits on him when empirically old guard devs leaving a studio is a bad thing.
Call me crazy but Todd’s been the director of every game since Bethesda had made since morrowind. To cheer for his ousting is…… strange and disconnected imo
Bethesda lost a lot of trust with Starfield and it’s been 15 years since Skyrim and 11 years since Fallout 4. FO New Vegas is regarded as one of the better games in the series and that was done by Obsidian. Fans want more Elder Scrolls and Fallout, and we’re only getting news of more after the new xbox ceo is making things happen and overruling Todd. So yeah, I’m happy things are finally moving along after over a decade of nothing and that’s no thanks to Todd. I want to play more Elder Scrolls and Fallout
Except the fallout games that Todd had been in charge of were largely meh, and were lacking original ideas, starfield was a disaster, and he's spent the better part of the last 15 years rereleasing the same game that was mid on launch.
Sure Oblivion was okay but the combat was awful and the level scaling system that Bethesda games use for making a fight harder means that you objectively don't want to level too much to keep the fights interesting.
His track record is like a 6/10 at best and while others could do worse at the rate things are deteriorating Fallout 7 will be a mobile game that comes out in 2075 for my grandson to play an get bored with the lack of RPG mechanics
I say this as a self admitted new Vegas Stan, new Vegas is a cult classic. Meaning its popularity is centered around gamers who are dedicated to the franchise. Fallout 4 alone outsold new Vegas twice over and 3 just adds to that. Oblivion and Skyrim are both universally lauded games that have aged mechanics when looking back 2 decades later (duh).
Todd Howard is not the reason you have 17 copies of Skyrim. Consumers are. He said in an interview that if you wanted Bethesda to stop re releasing Skyrim, then stop buying it. This finally ended up happening with anniversary and it’s debacle. It also didn’t halt development on starfield because aside from the special edition, every port was offloaded to a side team.
You want to blame Howard for something? It’s starfield. That’s the reason es6 has taken so long. Heaven forbid a dude that made his entire life about making games try something new. Sure, it’s a mid game, but where’s your studio? Where’s your IP? Also ironically enough the rebuilt creation 2 engine that made starfield take sooo long, would have been needed for es6 anyways, so it effectively made progress on both games at a time. You would understand this if you worked as a game dev.
Look what happened to Mass effect when Casey Hudson left. Look what happened to obsidian after all of them left. Look at what happened to dragon age when Gaider left. The last thing you want is some Microsoft plant making ES6. I’ll take Todd “it just works” Howard over that any day of the week personally
I'm not surprised that the shinier game sold more, fortnite outsells everything on the market I'm not going to call it a good game as a result.
And no, the age of Skyrim and oblivion do not excuse poor mechanics. Skyrim and Dark souls came out the same year, even on release day it was a dated system.
As for asking me where my gaming company is:
A: that's a really weird ass defensive way to discuss this as if the only way to criticize and critique something is to be involved in the same field
B: I actually do play testing for tabletop games. It's not my job but I am formally credited for the help. I do work with 3D modeling and know some programming as well. So I'm aware of how messy game development is. Bethesda has enough money to actually get these games up and running with in depth mechanics and chooses not to.
So yes, I'm ready to see what someone else can do with a setting that's been done better three times before previously when handled by someone else.
I shouldn’t have been so rude (and gatekeeping). I apologize for that. I like Bethesda and there one of my last bastions of hope in gaming.
I agree with your point that sales do not equal quality, but I do find the comparison between dark souls and Skyrim to be a little far stretched, they are entirely different genres and styles of game.
I’ll give you this, the only reason Skyrim is as big as it is, is due to the modding scene keeping it alive, but the base had to be good enough to keep people invested enough to make modding worth it. The game didn’t just sell well, it set review records across the board. Not just IGN or other corporate slop shops either, pretty much everyone loved Skyrim on release. Same for oblivion, tho its combat was considered heavily flawed even at the time, again fair credit due.
Fallout 4? Whole different story. That game was categorically mid, and I can’t and won’t defend it. I still like it for what it is and the modding scene is also monstrous there, but like I said originally, I’m coming at all of this as a new Vegas Stan. I wish obsidian / black isle / interplay never lost the IP
Also game testing for table top sounds cool as hell. I couldn’t do it personally. I do a single dnd campaign once a week and it eats my social battery until the next one.
Yeah the modding scene for Bethesda is huge and I wish more devs were as open and accepting as mods as they are. That I will give them all of the credit for.
I'm with you on wishing that Interplay/obsidian had kept the IP which is why I'm really interested to see Obsidian take another crack at it. Hopefully this time with a full budget and time to work
Sometimes you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Same story as Neil Druckmann. Dude is insanely ate up that people aren't infatuated with every idea. Todd still had bosses at Zenimax. Todd used to have to try harder. Todd may have been director of Bethesda, but not every game, whicb downgrades his importance massively. Fallout 4 was mediocre, and Starfield was plain bad. Since those pitiful attempts, he's done nothing, much less a Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, New Vegas, etc. Josh Sawyer would have been better in Todd's place.
Yeah this is how I feel too lol. Sure he hasn’t been perfect, but he’s also been the guy that’s (in part) brought nearly every game that’s so beloved in bethesdas catalog. I’m excited that the ball is rolling again but I can’t lie that I’m not a little nervous about the quality of what we are gonna get.
I watched a new movie the other day, and at one point a characters says, "thanks Obama" and the main characters face looked just as confused as my own.
"What are you talking about, Obama has been out of office for a while now"
Apparently the new CEO of Microsoft head of Xbox probably had a little talk with Todd, and then tweeted about how excited she is for the remasters for F3 and FNV or something like that, "things to come" - not the exact words, I just remember it having a similar meaning.
Tod Howard is not involved in Fallout decisions anymore
We have no evidence of this? It is just as likely that Microsoft talked to Bethesda and they agreed to let Obsidian do this as opposed to them being forced to do it. People are literally just speculating their weird fantasies about Todd Howard.
Plus, Bethesda is still doing Fallout 5 still and said it is in pre-production. If Todd was not involved at all anymore, then why not just have Obsidian do Fallout 5 instead of a spin-off game if you are Microsoft?
It seems just as likely you could argue they Microsoft were not happy Obsidian wasted years on two underperforming RPGs (I personally loved Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed) and decided if they were going to make one it would be from a IP that would make money since Bethesda is busy with ES6 and thus Fallout 5 would be a ways off.
He is still, they are still working on fallout 5, the new fallout title that obsidian is working on isnt fallout 5. Todd will still eventually be creative director on 5.
Besides the new CEO seems to actually be trying to make Xbox better, so it's like the new CEO is giving Xbox a kick in the ass and that's waking up everyone else lol
Like for reference she has:
lowed Gameplass some
Pushed back on AI
Got rid of the 14 person chain to get someone proved
Xbox then announced a bunch of exclusive games
Bethesda is actually making games again
Been pretty open about how Xbox has been losing money for a long time and was only really being held up by Minecraft (like, bc Minecraft was making so much they were funding other projects bc of it)
Tried to make the Halo CE remake and Xbox exclusive (but bc of a deal the last CEO made it was impossible and she was forced to also release it on PS5)
The only really bad thing she's done was the HUGE layoffs she did (like 20,000 people got fired), but she was extremely transparent in doing this and said that it was this or close a bunch of studios and have potential sequels for beloved games never made
The new CEO is a massive breath of fresh air, so glad we're finally getting something from Xbox that isn't killing the brand for once
I genuinely will disappear into my room for weeks never to leave when they drop all these remasters, and then when ES6 drops… despite bugthesda being a uh… lovely company Fallout and Elder Scrolls are both of my favourite game series ever. As a kid I spent soooo much of my time playing either series, I can’t even count how many times I’ve played FO4, New Vegas, and Oblivion. Hell I have a high amount of hours on FO76!
I can't say much about ES (not really my cup of tea unfortunately) but I absolutely love Fo, and dude same here with 76, it's just a really good game to pass the time walking around like that map is absolutely GORGEOUS and listening to the music is so relaxing lol
It really is a comfort game, plus I met and made some amazing friends over the years playing it.
We all load up every once in awhile just to chill, we last played a lot when they dropped the raids, we made HELLA loot off it all. Glitches to redo the first one multiple times, and do it in like 3 mins or something short like that.
We’d also go thru the entire 5 levels multiple times over, the amount of stimpacks and other stuff in all of our alt characters stash boxes… heh. My mule is filled to the brim, not to mention my main…
I found that I don’t really care for Skyrim if I’m being honest, it’s actually the only ES game that I have never actually finished… but I loved oblivion (OG & the remaster), along with Morrowind and even ESO!
Idk why, but Skyrim never clicked for me, and when I would play it… I’d get so side tracked doing random stuff hardly if ever progressing in the actual main story.
Obsidian I haven't played yet, I should really try it one day, as for Skyrim I totally agree I did two playthroughs one on the Switch, one of the Xbox and half a playthrough on the PSVR ver and the only one I enjoyed was the VR one but not bc it was Skyrim but bc I just really like VR lol. Morrowind was really cool from what I remembered, I LOVED that it gave you directions and not just a map marker (I have like 3 hours on ESO so I can't really comment on it much, seems ok tho ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
Great news. If I was Microsoft with their Xbox existential crisis. I'd be cleaning house over there, putting in people that actually want to ship games and make them pump out a new fallout, remastered new Vegas, new elder scrolls and some new ip. Make them Xbox exclusives and away they go. There is your two year road map
Bethesda is finally doing play tests of ES6 and putting full focus on it
They've been putting full focus on it? They said back in August 2023 that since Starfield was done and shipped ES6 had entered active development out of pre-production.
I hope we can get a morrowind remaster with those but still this is amazing. I’ve never played fo3 or NV because I can’t get past the graphics but now I can see what the hype is about
I’m playing through FO:NV again, this time on a much better computer, and I just don’t know if it will have the same charm if it doesn’t crash every 40 mins. Hopefully they leave that feature in.
Fair enough, I like the dialogue for NV mostly bc it kinda makes the world feel bigger than it actually is, like these characters talk about little stuff or reference other things and I think that's cool, I will say the NV gameplay is VERY hit or miss, I feel like the workbench and repair bench just don't really matter, the gunplay sucks, the radio is just kinda really disappointing I think it's the worst radio in the 3D Fo's imo.
NV is like a very solid 7/10, pretty good but not super great for me
Why why not, I'm sure they're be entertaining nonetheless and let's be real, most of Bethesda's games have a TON of jank or are kinda just alright at best but over hyped (Skyrim)
If you played Starfield and FO76 and thought oh yeah that is some good shit then I guess no reason not to keep playing their games. Those are the only games they've released in the last decade.
Dude you are actually talking to the wrong person here, I don't really like RPGs (besides a very select few) and I don't really like sci-fi (besides a very select few IPs), so I didn't care about Starfield even when everyone was hyped about it (hell I only heard of the game when it came out and people were complaining about it). And I absolutely LOVE 76, it's my favorite Fo game and I have hundreds of hours in it. If you're going to preach to me about how terrible Bethesda is RIGHT NOW you're preaching to the wrong guy, all I know is Bethesda makes fairly decent games...
The map is absolutely GORGEOUS imo and one of if not the best looking map of the IP, and sometimes I just log in to just go around, it's like a confront game ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Please keep in mind all of these announcements were made after a massive round of layoffs. This was good PR and we may never actually see some of these games.
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u/DominikFalconX Jul 29 '26
Fallout New Vegas