Todd Howard says no to world-building being based solely on making them bigger, on a larger scale.
With the new generation of consoles already on the market, it is time to reflect on the future. The power of the new machines will offer the possibility of doing things previously impossible. In an interview with The Guardian, Todd Howard, the head of Starfield at Bethesda, shared his point of view regarding the construction of open worlds. The creative, who also has The Elder Scrolls VI in his sights, has ensured that he hopes that the next titles will put aside the fact of making worlds bigger by making them. Instead, you prefer that these have more possibilities.
“The kind of game we do is the one that keeps players sitting and playing for hours,” says Howard. For the Bethesda veteran, accessing “a title more easily, no matter what device you’re playing on,” is what truly awaits us in the next five to ten years. “I would like to see more reactive worlds, more systems mixing that allow players to express themselves. I think that looking for scale by scale is not always the best objective ”.
Increasingly extensive games
Todd Howard recalled that traditionally, players enjoyed their titles for about 3 months, while the long term was about 6 months. “Now, they play them for years.” On the other hand, the discursive line that talks about the fact that in the future the device will not be so important as such a house with the idea of Xbox. One of Phil Spencer’s goals is that as many user users as possible can enjoy video games in the Xbox ecosystem.
Microsoft announced months ago its intention to acquire ZeniMax Media, Bethesda’s parent company. Both companies agreed to the operation, which will be closed in 2021 if everything goes according to plan. Once that happens, all of the company’s studios, including Bethesda Softworks, will become part of Xbox Game Studios.