Bethesda’s Todd Howard Wants To Make More Complex Games With Improvements in AI and NPCs

In a recent interview with IGN, Todd Howard, the creative director of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, Fallout 4, and the upcoming Starfield talked about what he would personally want to improve in future Bethesda games. Check out the video below.

Talking about the development of 2011’s The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, Howard revealed that the development team couldn’t go as deep with each system as it wanted to, presumably due to hardware and time constraints. But moving forward, he would like future games to really hone in on making each system as deep and interactive as possible alongside improving by a significant margin in the department of AI and NPC behaviour.

“There are a number of parts of it where we don’t go deep enough, where it’s a veneer in terms of its interactivity,” Howard said. “Look, you can say that about anything, but I think when we think about games and what we want to do going forward, ok, whatever that system is, how deep can we make it? The other part is the way the AI and NPCs really react to you—I think we have a long way to go with [that]. Those are probably the main ones.”

Whether these design philosophies will be applied to the upcoming sci-fi epic Starfield remains to be seen for now. In the interview, Howard also talked about his plans for Fallout 5, saying that he currently has a “one pager” on what the team wants to do with it. But with the studio currently fully focused on Starfield, due out next year, and with The Elder Scrolls 6 next in line after that, Fallout 5 might be a long way off.