Elder Scrolls Todd Howard Appreciation Thread

[BruceVC]

I still feel betrayed by the oldest TES: Arena ads and art showing slave markets, possible multi players, and more. We've all probably read the article or cutting room floor. I liked the style of the first game but thought there could be more.

You cant still be holding a grudge from the days of Arena, that was 1994?

He can hold it as long as he likes, it's his grudge.

Gee thats insightful, I thought it was my grudge. Thanks for clarifying

 

[NecroLord]

Elder Scrolls used to have TITS.
Bring those back.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Daggerfall titties eh? And there were charms that looked like packaged condoms for some reason.

 

[Saerain]

Modders will give us Better Tits about 14 seconds after release anyway.

 

[Drakortha]

Got to love Todd's damage control over why the enemy NPC's in Starfield have shit-tier AI.

"they're supposed to be dumb, duh! making the AI any smarter is not fun for the player."

See it's by design that they won't innovate, and it's more fun this way. Thanks for thinking of us Todd.

 

[EvilWolf]

What he actually means is making the AI smarter isn't fun for their hamster brained dev team who can only work with the most cookie cutter systems. It's the only reason they're still using the same engine. That 18 year old engine could barely run vanilla Skyrim, you think it can support better AI? No amount of mental gymnastics can explain that fact away.

 

[Hace El Oso]

There were the vestigial scraps of the famous 'Radiant AI' in the goblin clans in Oblivion and even was still a stretch for the game. Meanwhile, the stalker devs did 'Radiant AI' and combat AI for real while fighting over who got the last ramen flavor packet.

 

[good fucking shit happen]

Modders will give us Better Tits about 14 seconds after release anyway.

Modding is the biggest cope ever. Bitch, there is no way some guys sitting around in their underpants could model better tits between faps than professionals on an AAA budget could. Gamersoys keep buying these commie games with no tits so they keep removing them. Ever think about what modders might get up to if they didn't have to model shit and jerry-rig a tits and ass physics system into the the game?

Got to love Todd's damage control over why the enemy NPC's in Starfield have shit-tier AI.

"they're supposed to be dumb, duh! making the AI any smarter is not fun for the player."

He be right tho, players complain a shitton when you make the AI smarter than them.

 

[MajorMace]

What he actually means is making the AI smarter isn't fun for their hamster brained dev team who can only work with the most cookie cutter systems.

What Todd doesn't tell you - and he doesn't to preserve your innocence - is that the devs at Bethesda Dev Studios, helped with some people from the team of Zenimax Online (in charge of TESO atm), have actually spent the last 3 years working on a top notch, high-end, most elaborated machine-learning based AI. They've been testing it on the long run, in order not only to feed it with genuine player interactions, but also to analyse its behavioural evolution.
During the last months of the testing, this so-called "luminescent AI" started to spew out some... unsettling comments to the players. It started by what was then considered a joke made by one of the developpers : the NPCs would occasionally comment on how "the High Elves did nothing wrong". Further testing clearly revealed how this wasn't due to someone's input in the algorithm, but a natural evolution of the NPC AI which, fed with the dozens and dozens of bits of lore regarding Tamriel, has started to integrate the centuries of loathing and animosity between each nation of Tamriel to feed their unique take on the story®
During the most recent playtest which still included "Luminescent AI" (or LAI for short), the player was invited by some random breton to, I quote, "go suck a redguard's cock in High Rock" before said breton assaulted him with a dagger.
They removed it from the next build and went back to a linear, traditional scripted dialog arborescence.

TL;DR Todd's LAI made the experience very unpleasant for the player.

 

[Chunkyman]

By Azura, behold His glorious halo!

For all the grief I've given him and Bethesda for EA-style laziness and dumbing down The Elder Scrolls, his enthusiasm is really infectious. He still talks like a young person (in a good way).

 

[EvilWolf]

For all the grief I've given him and Bethesda for EA-style laziness and dumbing down The Elder Scrolls, his enthusiasm is really infectious. He still talks like a young person (in a good way).

In all seriousness I don't think it's Todd's fault. He suffers from Molyneux syndrome. All he does is sit in on team meetings and relay the spit balled pipe dreams he's told by the dev team assuming full well that they'll be in the game on release. For proof his "lying" only started with Oblivion of which he was only on the dev team for the first half of development. There is actually video of him showing off the AI he was talking about but they scrapped it before the game came out, after Todd was no longer directly involved with development. Also for the famous chess club "lie". He claims he was in the chess club in "school", people only checked if his college had a chess club and assumed he was lying, but he was most likely talking about his high school which does in fact have a chess club.

 

[Hagashager]

Daggerfall titties eh? And there were charms that looked like packaged condoms for some reason.

Not just any Daggerfall titties- D.R.E.A.M titties. Why settle for pixels when you can have some Polish guy's AI art titties?

 

[Cliffworms]

My memory's a bit fuzzy, but I think I remember Todd Howard and Pete Hines having accounts on the Codex forums during Oblivion's development. They'd answer questions and try to sell Oblivion to the Codex userbase.

They didn't remain active for long.

Is my memory right or did I make this up somehow?

 

[Roguey]

My memory's a bit fuzzy, but I think I remember Todd Howard and Pete Hines having accounts on the Codex forums during Oblivion's development. They'd answer questions and try to sell Oblivion to the Codex userbase.

They didn't remain active for long.

Is my memory right or did I make this up somehow?

They were never here. MrSmileyFaceDude was a Bethesda programmer who did post here.

 

[NecroLord]

"Why, yes, I enjoy re-releasing Skyrim every year. How can you tell?"

 

[Wunderbar]

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Bethesda-Softworks-RVW72877494.htm

Not being in Los Angeles, SF, Seattle, or even NYC means feeling more separated from industry peers at different studios. The Rockville area is suburban hellscape.

BIPOC professionals, beware. The company is made up of mostly white males, especially in leadership positions. There are ERGs, but they are volunteer-led, meaning there's no real movement for diversity initiatives or planning. Ignore the BLM statement on the job board - it's for show.

More on the hiring process, I got a peek into what that looked like internally, and leadership only relies on resumes that show you've had experience in games, which greatly limits the pool of candidates.

BASED

 

[Beastro]

All you need to know about Todd is when he goes into making a new game, he asks "What features can we REMOVE?" and finds it puzzling when players ask if he looks towards adding new things.

For instance, with Oblivion he immediately looked towards removing Morrowind's spears to condense on weapons.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Bethesda-Softworks-RVW72877494.htm

Not being in Los Angeles, SF, Seattle, or even NYC means feeling more separated from industry peers at different studios. The Rockville area is suburban hellscape.

BIPOC professionals, beware. The company is made up of mostly white males, especially in leadership positions. There are ERGs, but they are volunteer-led, meaning there's no real movement for diversity initiatives or planning. Ignore the BLM statement on the job board - it's for show.

More on the hiring process, I got a peek into what that looked like internally, and leadership only relies on resumes that show you've had experience in games, which greatly limits the pool of candidates.

BASED

Libtards are parodies of themselves.

 

[kangaxx]

Imagine the horror of only recruiting candidates based on their experience, skills and competence.

 

[NecroLord]

Imagine the horror of only recruiting candidates based on their experience, skills and competence.

 

[Duraframe300]

 

[Old Hans]

In all seriousness I don't think it's Todd's fault. He suffers from Molyneux syndrome.

I imagine the engineers and designers show Todd work in progress stuff, like an advanced AI routine, and they're all "yea this is pretty much a done deal. we just gotta work out some kinks" and Todd is like OMG THIS IS AWESOME. So he goes on TV and tells everyone how awesome it is. then several months later the designers are like "we had to scrap all that AI shit it was a total disaster."

 

[Arbiter]

I am curious what direction the Elder Scrolls franchise would've taken with Julian LeFay as director.
He is one of the most important people in the franchise's history. He is given special thanks in Morrowind credits,though he did not work on it.

Julian's last Elder Scrolls game, Battlespire, was not exactly a smashing success.

 

[Arbiter]

Modders will give us Better Tits about 14 seconds after release anyway.

The only advantage of Bethesda clinging to a 25 year old engine is that mods can be created even before the release.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Modders will give us Better Tits about 14 seconds after release anyway.

The only advantage of Bethesda clinging to a 25 year old engine is that mods can be created even before the release.

Better tits? Oh?