Todd Howard is a legendary video game designer at Bethesda Game Studios. He led the development of the Elder Scrolls series and the Fallout series, and an upcoming game Starfield. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Shopify: https://shopify.com/lex to get free trial - Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/lex to get special savings - InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off - LMNT: https://drinkLMNT.com/lex to get free sample pack EPISODE LINKS: Bethesda: https://bethesda.net Bethesda Game Studios: https://bethesdagamestudios.com Creation Club: https://creationclub.bethesda.net PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (05:53) - Simulation (07:49) - NPCs (16:40) - Daggerfall and Arena (24:53) - Bethesda (33:18) - Video game graphics (39:37) - The essence of a video game (44:25) - Redguard (49:25) - Creating open worlds (57:04) - Superintelligent NPCs (1:01:58) - Starfield (1:21:40) - The Elder Scrolls 6 (1:41:01) - Fallout (1:48:09) - Character creation (1:53:11) - Quests & items (2:06:57) - Xbox (2:12:22) - Greatest game of all time (2:22:38) - Day in the life (2:30:32) - Advice for young people (2:34:00) - Fallout TV show (2:38:32) - Indiana Jones game (2:44:44) - Meaning of life
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
The following is a conversation with Todd Howard, one of the greatest video game designers of all time. He has led the development of the Fallout series and the Elder Scrolls series, including Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and the future Elder Scrolls VI, and a totally new world in an upcoming game called Starfield.
Many of these have won Game of the Year awards and have been some of the most celebrated and impactful games ever made. To me, Skyrim is quite possibly the greatest game ever. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast.
We got Shopify for e-commerce, 8sleep for napping, InsideTracker for biomonitoring, and Element for salty greatness. Choose wisely, my friends. And now onto the full ad reads. Never any ads in the middle. I hate those. I try to make these interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too.
This show is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, anything, whatever they enjoy making, whatever they enjoy selling. It makes it easy to reach a huge audience. The whole thing looks super sexy. It's a great-looking online store, and it allows you to take your idea, convert it into a product,
and uh hopefully spread joy to other people who want to buy that product and it gives you tools to do day-to-day management of that selling of the product i've been asked a bunch of times to do merch man there's so much cool stuff because i'm a fan of merch myself like uh when i'm a fan i'm a fan of a lot of podcasts a lot of shows a lot of people i just like wearing things that I'm a fan of.
It's a kind of cool celebration of a beautiful thing. I just, in general, like celebrating others and merch is one of the ways to do that. Anyway, get a free trial and full access to Shopify's entire suite of features when you sign up at shopify.com slash Lex. That's all lower case Shopify. This episode is also brought to you by Eight Sleep and its new Pod 3 mattress.
There are very few things in life I enjoy as much as a nap. I am ultra-caffeinated at the moment, but shortly, or rather shortly into the past, whatever the expression for that is, English is in fact my second language. I took a nap recently, I guess, shortly into the past. Into the recent past, I took a nap that was about 20 minutes, I want to say, and I woke up completely refreshed.
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Chapter 2: How does Todd Howard view the impact of Skyrim on gaming?
I think there's probably really good science on that of just napping. Is there a book, not on sleep, but specifically on napping? I'm mastering napping. Master napper. If there isn't a book, I'm going to write one. It will forever be remembered, and it'll be a short one. I really enjoy napping.
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The signal that's pulled off from that data using machine learning algorithms. And we're talking about blood data, DNA data, fitness tracker data, all kinds of data. I'm actually going to a Neuralink event. very shortly. And that event is about extracting data from your mind.
Long-term vision of brain-computer interfaces, two-way communication between computers, maybe artificial intelligence-enhanced computers, and the human mind. That data is extremely powerful to tell you what's going on in your mind, in your body.
And I think Insight Tracker is at the cutting edge of what can actually lead to positive lifestyle changes using that data coming from the person, personalized to that person. All right, get $200 off InsideTracker's Ultimate Plan or 34% off the entire store when you go to InsideTracker.com slash Lex. This episode is also brought to you by Element Electrolyte Drink Mix, spelled L-M-N-T.
I drink a lot of Element. There's some guest that was on recently. It might have been Grimes or Liv. I'm not sure exactly. But they said they're a huge fan of element. Who was it? But they said, we had like a debate about favorite flavors and what to drink and how much to drink. And they discovered that I drink like way too much element. from their perspective. From my perspective, never enough.
So it makes me feel great in terms of diet. It makes sure that I get enough hydration. It makes water taste great. For all the crazy exercise and mental and physical stuff I do, diet stuff I do, it's just really important to make sure your electrolytes are done correctly. Get a simple pack for free with any purchase. Try it at drinkelement.com. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Todd Howard. Is it possible that we are currently living inside a video game that the future you designed, can you give hints as to how one would escape if this was a video game? How can a video game character escape to outside the video game?
Are these things you don't consider when you design the game?
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Chapter 3: How do graphics influence the player's experience in video games?
brought hundreds, probably for some of them, thousands of hours of joy for me. So Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. So I don't remember Arena being that open world.
Well, it's all the provinces. It follows kind of the same pattern. It just doesn't have all the number of villages and places that Daggerfall has. While Daggerfall focuses on the Iliac Bay area, Arena does it all. It just changes the scale in terms of, you know, one block on the map equals this much space.
There is something that, I mean, I'm speaking to anecdotal experience, but I just remember it feeling wide open, Daggerfall.
It definitely was, yes.
In the way Arena didn't. I don't remember. Maybe because Arena... It was so cool to have just the role-playing game aspect. You're focused on the items and the character development.
Daggerfall has a lot more depth, particularly in the character system. That's what it introduces, all of the skills and those kind of things. Arena, it's actually a game I love. And it's very, very elegant. If you look at the first one, where it's just an XP-based system, do this, get XP, level up. Very classic role-playing game.
Daggerfall digs deep into who's your character, how you're going to develop it, what are your skills, there's advantages, there's disadvantages. And the environment going full 3D from Arena, which is actually like a 2.5D Doom-style engine, I agree with you that Daggerfall feels like there's more possibilities when you're playing it.
Were you able to look up at the sky in Daggerfall? Yep. It's full 3D, yeah. So that's what full 3D means. And then you can go outside the city?
You can walk outside the city. You can do that in Arena too, but it looks more fakey, right? It's all going to be a flat plane. Here comes things, and then a dungeon entrance is 8-bit. Here comes a little flat coming at the camera.
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Chapter 4: What are the challenges of creating NPC dialogue?
There's a ton of work that goes into it now because just rendering this cup to the perfect shine and material and roughness and how does the global illumination off this wall, it gets a ton of work. But you can pretty much do what you want now if you want to put the time in. Whereas then, okay, you can't do everything you want. So pick your battles really carefully.
And technically you couldn't do what you want, if that makes sense.
How much trade-off is there now in how much effort you put into the realism of the graphics versus the story? And actually not even how much effort you put in, but is there a trade-off in the experience, the feel of the game in terms of realism and story?
Usually we will start with let the player have as much agency and do as many things as they can as possible. And we will sacrifice some graphic fidelity for that, some speed for that. You know, we could make a game that you know, our traditionally our games are, you know, we okay with 30 frames a second, as long as it looks really good and the simulations running and all of those things.
So we'll, we'll sacrifice some of that fidelity for the player experience and the kind of things that, that I do. But from like a manpower standpoint, the graphics programmers work on graphics, the artists work on art, and we have a, you know, awesome team of artists and designers and writers and programmers and,
It's usually where we find as time goes on, the amount of art time that it takes to create a cup compared to what it used to be, that has increased. So we do use, like most people use, you know, art outsourcing as well so that we're not, we still relatively compared to our industry and what we're doing have smaller teams.
What about the experience of the beauty of the graphics? So like one of the most amazing things about Skyrim, and maybe you could say that about some of the other games, but for me, Skyrim is the outdoor, when you step outside, it's the outdoor scenery. So what does it take to create the feeling, especially of that?
being outdoors of nature and just like lost in the beauty, whatever it is when you go hiking and you feel the awe of it. How do you create that awe? Is that graphics? What is that?
It's a lot of graphics. It's a lot of mood. We just talk about it in terms of tone. And those are, again, going back to my previous comment, The graphics are very, very important to us because, and we always push them, because when you're doing the kind of things we do where you step into a virtual world, it does have to have that moment of, wow, this feels real. I've never experienced this.
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Chapter 5: What is the balance between challenge and boredom in video games?
Oh my gosh. Okay, can you do that?
I don't know. But just like the number, like how boring or not boring, the boring meter.
How many times you die.
How many times do you die? Is death boring or exciting? That's the question. I mean, I feel like there's a balance to be struck there because you always want to be in fear of death.
Yeah, we always have this chart at work we use, which is like if you think about any game that you've played that you've put down, it's either about a frustration slash confusion or boredom. You got to put the player right in the middle of that.
But I've sometimes put down games from frustration only to return again stronger.
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Chapter 6: How do you create engaging open worlds in video games?
Dark Souls? Yeah. So, I mean, the challenge, that's part of it. Well, I don't know. Actually, Skyrim, I'm one of those. I mean, I'm sure there's all kinds of humans that you've interacted with about what they enjoy. But to me, I could enjoy Skyrim on any difficulty level. It doesn't... All of it... So it depends. The open world nature of it is what's really compelling.
Not necessarily the challenge of the particular quest and so on. But I'm not sure if that's the same experience for everybody.
Do you play the survival mode? There's a survival mode in Skyrim. It was a creation club thing. It does like some hunger. It does hot and cold. It does some other systems that make it, you know, in our minds, a more believable thing.
Chapter 7: What steps are involved in taking a video game from concept to final product?
It was actually a Creation Club thing made by an external creator who is now full-time with us.
So can we actually, thinking about Starfield, thinking about Elder Scrolls VI, go through the full life of a video game you've created? So what's it take to take a game from the idea to find the final product? What are the different steps along the way?
Great question. Well, usually it starts with, I mean, honestly, lunchtime conversations with a number of us. Hey, we think we want to do this. This is what it's going to be like. I mean, look, with an Elder Scrolls, you know you're going to do it. It's a matter of when. So, okay, what's the tone we're going for, right? Where's it set? So we usually start with the world.
And then we're always overlapping. So while we're making one game, as we're you know, getting in the throes of it or wrapping it up, you know, probably by the midpoint of one game, we've had enough conversations to understand what the next one's going to be.
Chapter 8: How does the development process change when creating a game for a well-known franchise?
What are the big ticket? Like, where's it set? What's the tone? Is there a big ticket feature or two that make it really unique? And then when we're finishing one game, we start, um, Prototyping. Sorry, before that, we start concepting. So we'll do concept art. And for one reason or another, I usually have the beginning of the game worked out. I like to think about, okay, how's the game start?
What's the player do first? We do music early. So take Elder Scrolls VI. We forgot where it's set. What's the tone? What are the big features? We discuss the beginning of the game, which we've had for a very long time.
Where's it set again?
I'm just kidding. Yep. In Tamriel.
Damn it. Well, at least we know we narrowed it down. That would be epic if it was like a portal into another dimension. Anyway.
Then I like to do music. So we've already done a take on the music for Elder Scrolls VI.
So you can sit there with the concept art and the music and you can feel it.
No, the music, we put in the teaser for it. This was 2018. We've taken that further, obviously. And again, we're working on the world. You're then doing concepting and design for the world. And then once we're wrapping up one game, we can really start prototyping the new one. And you're usually building kind of your initial spaces.
And so we do like to do like a first playable, a smaller section of the game. that we can sort of prove out and show to people, hey, this is how it feels different. This is what it looks like. This is what's unique about it. Then we turn that into a larger chunk when more of the team comes on, when the other game is done. And that's still what we call a VS, vertical slice.
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