Todd Howard: Skyrim, Elder Scrolls 6, Fallout, and Starfield | Lex Fridman Podcast #342

1. 0:00 – 0:55

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman0:00

      Blink once if you know when Elder Scrolls VI is coming out, but are not going to tell me. 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 Scroll series, including Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowwind, Oblivian, 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. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, dear friends, here's Todd Howard.

2. 0:55 – 2:51

   Simulation

   1. LFLex Fridman0:55

      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?

   2. THTodd Howard1:15

      Actually, we do 'cause in the kind of games that we make, we want it to be as open as possible.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:20

      Right.

   4. THTodd Howard1:21

      So, you know, when you start a game, you're always testing it. What can I do? What, what would the game allow me to do? And you check everything. You try to pick up the, you know, the mugs, you try every door, you collide with everything, like, "Hey, what are the rules of this world?" We try to do games where, you know, we say yes as much as possible, that leads to some level of chaos, but if you were stuck in a video game, you would, you would try everything. And usually, you're gonna find a door or a space where the designers didn't, uh, anticipate you piling all those crates up and getting over a wall that they didn't expect.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:59

      Right, so it's not a designed doorway out. It's a accidental unintended doorway out, and it's a, it's a happy bug.

   6. THTodd Howard2:09

      You could like Truman Show, just get in the ocean and go till it stops.

   7. LFLex Fridman2:12

      Just keep going-

   8. THTodd Howard2:12

      Right, right.

   9. LFLex Fridman2:12

      ... and keep going.

   10. THTodd Howard2:13

       Right.

   11. LFLex Fridman2:14

       But the more realistic the game becomes, the harder it is to find that door. The, the bigger the world, the bigger the open world.

   12. THTodd Howard2:21

       And then as we do it, we learn they're gonna find a way, so just don't try to pen 'em in. Usually we leave like this developer test cell-

   13. LFLex Fridman2:34

       Yeah.

   14. THTodd Howard2:34

       ... area in the game that we don't anticipate anyone will find, and, and they ultimately find it.

   15. LFLex Fridman2:40

       They always find it.

   16. THTodd Howard2:40

       It usually has crates of all the weapons in the game and things like that.

   17. LFLex Fridman2:44

       (laughs) The little hints you drop now will just drive people mad, which is something I enjoy deeply.

3. 2:51 – 11:42

   NPCs

   1. LFLex Fridman2:51

      Uh, so Skyrim NPCs have, at times, hilarious dialogue. W- what does it take to build a good NPC dialogue?

   2. THTodd Howard3:01

      The main thing is to make them reactive. A lot of times when you write characters for movies or things like that, you wanna make that character interesting for themselves, right? What's their story? And there's some characters like that that the player definitely cares about, but the best characters are the ones that react to you.

   3. LFLex Fridman3:24

      Mm-hmm.

   4. THTodd Howard3:25

      So, you'll find a lot of people love our guards, and the guards are written almost purely to be reactive. "Hey, nice tie. I like your jacket. Dude, this is a cool watch." You know, "Hey, what'd you do?" And so that, "Hey, you're the man," as you walk by, that makes them interesting, or the way they react to something that you do. Lydia in Skyrim, who everybody loves, "I'm sworn to carry your burdens," that's a generic line that all of the, you know, housecarls have, and it just kinda lands when she says it.

   5. LFLex Fridman3:59

      Why does it land? What do you, what do you... Did- and did you anticipate it would land?

   6. THTodd Howard4:03

      There's a slight snarkiness in that particular read of it, and you're asking her to do something, and she's reacting to you.

   7. LFLex Fridman4:14

      What about the, the trade-off between maybe the randomness and the scripted nature of the dialogue? Like, is there any room for randomness of the dialogue tree?

   8. THTodd Howard4:29

      Oh, absolutely. We tend to write 'em in stacks with, you know, a, a, it's a, it's a very small... Think of it as a small state machine that just says, "Okay, this is what's happening. Here's a r- random list of things I could say to that." And then some of that, um, plays out in ways you don't anticipate. But we look at the things, what are the players doing that we could have the characters respond to that they don't expect? You know, jumping on tables, or stealing stuff, or, um, you know, sneaking in the middle of the night, or those kind of things. The more that we can do, the more reactive and interesting the characters appear.

   9. LFLex Fridman5:11

      And these state machines, how big are these things? Are these individual to the individual characters? That's just fascinating how you design state machines. Is it just a, just a giant database?

   10. THTodd Howard5:23

       You would- I would think of the AI as one big one. Yeah.

   11. LFLex Fridman5:27

       Oh, so-

   12. THTodd Howard5:28

       For, for sort of everybody.

   13. LFLex Fridman5:31

       So, there's an AI that's just-

   14. THTodd Howard5:33

       There's a manager for all the people.

   15. LFLex Fridman5:35

       Yeah (laughs) .

   16. THTodd Howard5:35

       And one of the things that-

   17. LFLex Fridman5:36

       It's a people manager. NPC manager.

   18. THTodd Howard5:38

       Right, right. (laughs)

   19. LFLex Fridman5:39

       Nice.

   20. THTodd Howard5:39

       One of the things that makes what we do particularly unique is... And this is a trade-off for what people are seeing, 'cause a lot of it's not on the screen, but we're using cycles to run this, which is, we're thinking about everybody in the whole world.

   21. LFLex Fridman5:54

       Mm-hmm.

   22. THTodd Howard5:55

       All the time. The ones that are further away, at a much less tick rate, they go into low, but we know if they wanna walk across the world, and we're running every quest-... at the same time.

   23. LFLex Fridman6:07

       Yeah.

   24. THTodd Howard6:08

       Whereas in other open world games, you start an activity, the rest of the world's gonna shut down, so that they can really make that as impactful. We're- I, I really prefer that the rest of it's going on, it's more of a simulation that we're building. So when those things collide, that's where it gets the most interesting. And so we're running all of those people and understanding where they wanna go and their cycles and what they wanna do. And the ones that are closer to you, we just update a lot more. It's one way to think about it.

   25. LFLex Fridman6:42

       I mean, th- that's really fascinating. That's something that people had, um, they were wondering about, to what degree is it possible to run the world without you? So there is a feeling to role playing games that you're the central, you're the center of the world and the whole world rotates around you, as it does in normal life. Like, when we walk around-

   26. THTodd Howard7:02

       Right.

   27. LFLex Fridman7:02

       ... there's a... When you forget yourself, you start to take yourself very seriously, like you are the center of the world. Uh, you forget that there's eight billion people on Earth and you forget they have lives. That's actually a sobering realization, that they all have really interesting life stories and they have their worries, they suffer in different complicated ways. And yet when you play a role playing game, there's a... When you both computationally from a storytelling perspective, you wonder if the world goes on without you. Like, if you come back, if you take a break and you come back, is there still a bustling t- town that now has a history since you have last visited? So to what degree can you, ah, create a world that goes on without you, or goes on at the same time as you do your thing, whatever the heck you're doing?

   28. THTodd Howard7:53

       We don't prioritize the stuff you can't see, so it's more like an amusement park. If you study, like, the design, our level designers did this, how did they build Disney World and these places? So it still exists for you, the player. So it is fairly, you know, when you're gonna come in, this is what you're gonna see, the shops are in the front, you're gonna do this. It's just for us to make it far more believable and get some more emergent behavior that not just make that sort of the verisimilitude of what you're in for that moment, but you, you buy it all.

   29. LFLex Fridman8:29

       Mm-hmm.

   30. THTodd Howard8:30

       I always say, like, you know, we gotta do the little things so that you buy the reality of the virtual world you're in, so we wanna do something crazy, you know, when a dragon lands or a death claw comes out of the wasteland, or those kind of things that you... It has the impact to you as the viewer that it would to the people in the world.
4. 11:42 – 19:55

   Daggerfall and Arena

   1. LFLex Fridman11:42

      We'll talk about Starfield. So, uh, just for people who don't know, and how dare you for not knowing-

   2. THTodd Howard11:47

      (laughs)

   3. LFLex Fridman11:47

      ... but, uh, we're, with Daggerfall, we're talking about the Elder Scrolls series that started, uh, sort of talking about the big titles within the series, started with Arena in '94, Daggerfall in '96. I didn't look up the years before this. This is depressing or, or, or awesome. Um, uh, so all of these games-... brought hundreds, probably for some of them, thousands of hours of joy for me. So Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. (sighs) So I don't remember Arena being th- that open world as Daggerfa-

   4. THTodd Howard12:21

      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.

   5. LFLex Fridman12:40

      There is something that... I mean, ag- I'm speaking to anecdotal experience, but I, I, I just remember it feeling wide open, Daggerfall-

   6. THTodd Howard12:48

      It definitely was, yes.

   7. LFLex Fridman12:49

      ... i- in a way Arena didn't. I don't remember... maybe, maybe because Arena, it was so cool to have the, just the role playing game aspect, you're focused on the items and the character development. You-

   8. THTodd Howard13:04

      Daggerfall has a lot more depth, particularly in the character system. That's where it introduces all of the skills and those kind of things. Arena, it's actually, it's a game I love, um, and it's very, very elegant. If you look at the first one where it's just an X- XP based system, do this, get XP, level up, very classic role playing game. Um, Daggerfall digs deep into who's your character, how you're gonna 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 two and a half D Doom style engine, um, that I, I agree with you that Daggerfall feels like there's more possibilities, uh, when you're playing it.

   9. LFLex Fridman13:49

      Were you able to, like, look up at the sky in Daggerfall?

   10. THTodd Howard13:52

       Yep. Yeah.

   11. LFLex Fridman13:52

       My, my memory s-

   12. THTodd Howard13:53

       Yeah, it's full 3D. Yeah.

   13. LFLex Fridman13:54

       It's f- so that's what full 3D means. And then you can go outside the city?

   14. THTodd Howard13:58

       You can walk outside the city. You can do that in Arena too, but it, it looks more fakey, right? It's all gonna be a flat plane, here comes things, and then a dungeon entrance is a, you know, eight bit, here comes a little, a flat coming at the camera.

   15. LFLex Fridman14:09

       So before we go to the end, uh, and the middle, so from Starfield to F- Fallout and the Elder Scrolls series, let's go to the very beginning. What's the origin story? You know what? Let's even go before then. What's, uh, when's the first time y- you remember the thing that made you fall in love with video games?

   16. THTodd Howard14:31

       Well, I think it's partly, you know, my age coming up with the arcades and playing, you know, Space Invaders at the pizza place, and then Pac-Man really... It's interesting about video games and what Pac-Man did for video games, where it popularized them in a way that was just insane at the time. It had a song, it had a cartoon, it had all of the things. Um, Nintendo comes along. So it was always part of... you know, I think if you were a kid growing up then, it was such a newness to playing things like that. And I remember being in fifth grade when the TRS-80 was brought into the classroom and there was a Star Trek game. And I was enamored with it, and they were gonna start teaching some rudimentary programming, like, "Okay, would you like to know how this is made?" And I was, I was hooked. I was like, "I need to figure out how to make this stuff." And so I was a s- you know, self-taught programmer, and my whole goal was to write my own video games. And, uh, you know, by sixth, seventh grade, I had written my own much better Star Trek clone for the-

   17. LFLex Fridman15:41

       Yeah, of course.

   18. THTodd Howard15:42

       ... Apple II. Um, and, uh, I really enjoyed programming on the Apple II then, and that, I think, was the right level of, like, complexity, you know, at that age where you could kind of... you were always learning but you could still understand a lot of the problem set for like, "This is what I, what I get on the screen." And I was also into art. So I did a lot of art and I did a lot of programming and I was always making games. That was my hobby from the time I was, you know, 10 or 12.

   19. LFLex Fridman16:12

       Wh- what was, to you, involved in making games? Like, how did you think of it? Was it from a graphics perspective, like what shows up on screen? Was it how it makes you feel? Was it about the story? Was it the text-based stuff and the dialogue and the prompting? Like, what, what, like, um, what does it mean to create a video game at that young age d- to you?

   20. THTodd Howard16:34

       Well, it was a way of experiencing things that I couldn't myself. So, you know, if you're playing, uh, Dungeons & Dragons at the time too, where you, uh, you really feel... even pen and paper, these are like, like... they feel somewhat, in quotes, real to you as you're playing them. You're very invested in your character and what you're doing. And then I loved the games, the Wizardry and Ultima, that were able to bring that to a computer so I could, you know, do it on my own time. It was very, very real to me. I'd sit in my bedroom and then go to bed and think about it (laughs) and then, oh no, I have to go to school, I wanna come home and figure out how to, how to do this problem in the game. And so whatever I was creating was something that I was excited about at the time. I made a Raiders of the Lost Ark game, um-

   21. LFLex Fridman17:25

       Like, with graphics and everything?

   22. THTodd Howard17:27

       Yeah, it was r- so it was usually, you know... I made a Miami Vice game, I made a Groo the Wanderer game, I made a Traveler game, I made... and, but every time I was doing it, I wanted to figure out a new method on the Apple II of pulling it off graphically, whether that was editing character sets to get graphics in different formats or how can I enable the secret double hi-res mode it had, or just things like that where it became kind of this limitless, what can I make this do? And I had some friends who were doing the same thing, and then you get into who can impress each other? And I was kind of middle of the pack, I would say. Um-... and th- but, but, again, this was the time where they're bringing computers into the school, and the Apples come into the school, and the teachers are learning it because they have to teach the students. But then I was, I would say I was part of a group of students that were, like, way past that. Um, and it was very much of a self-taught, uh, you know, how- how do you make this thing dance?

   23. LFLex Fridman18:29

       I'd like to ask a strange question. So at that time, a lot of people consider y- you one of, if not the greatest, game designer, creator of all time. You were middle of the pack then. (laughs) Uh, did you have a sense that this will be your life and you would also be creating, you know, the greatest games ever?

   24. THTodd Howard18:53

       Not- not in the slightest. Um, no, I don't think anybody... But I was very much like that was my dream at a- at that age. But you don't think that that's a job. You know, and the- as I got older, I was really going through college, and- and I... The com- even the computer classes then weren't where I wanted them to be, so I still kind of doing my own stuff. Um, and I ended up getting a business degree and then interviewing for some jobs, like finance jobs. So, well, I guess I should do this to make money and I can keep doing this on the side. And I remember I actually got to, like, the final level of, like, this corporate finance job at Circuit City.

   25. LFLex Fridman19:38

       Mm-hmm. Nice.

   26. THTodd Howard19:39

       And they turned me down and I was like, "Fuck them. I'm just gonna go make video games."

   27. LFLex Fridman19:44

       (laughs)

   28. THTodd Howard19:45

       So (laughs) thank you, Circuit City.

   29. LFLex Fridman19:48

       Yeah, I remember Circuit City.

   30. THTodd Howard19:50

       (laughs)
5. 19:55 – 28:19

   Bethesda

   1. THTodd Howard19:55

   2. LFLex Fridman19:55

      So what- what's the origin story of you joining, uh, Bethesda Softworks at the time?

   3. THTodd Howard20:02

      So I had gotten Wayne Gretzky Hockey 3 for Christmas, uh, from my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife. Um, I was in college, and I noticed that it was, you know, in Rockville, Maryland, and, oh, that's on my way home over Christmas break, back to William Mary where I went to college. And- and I was at this point committed, like, "This is what I wanna do, so I'm just gonna drive by and knock on the door," which is what I did. So I- I drove by and knocked on the door. It was Martin Luther King Day, '93. And someone came out and met me and said, "Well, maybe w-" and I said, well, I'm, I'm in college. I'm talking about when I'm out of school. I'm like, "Well, okay. Well, contact us then." And I will say I was- I was- I would contact them every once in a while. I did work for a small software company right, um, out of school, uh, down in that area of Williamsburg, and still would contact Bethesda. Arena had just come out.

   4. LFLex Fridman21:10

      Mm-hmm.

   5. THTodd Howard21:11

      So then we're in '94. Arena had just come out and I loved it. So I was into sports games. I liked the hockey stuff. They were doing a basketball, they did a basketball game.

   6. LFLex Fridman21:19

      Yeah, I'm just looking at, they did a lot of... They did, like, six sports games, six- Bethesda has released-

   7. THTodd Howard21:25

      Gridiron, yeah.

   8. LFLex Fridman21:25

      ... ten games, six of them sports games. NCAA basketball, hockey league s- simulator.

   9. THTodd Howard21:31

      Hockey league simulator, yeah. So it was really, like, sports, Gridiron!, which is, like, the first kind of physics based football game at the time. Um, and there's a famous story with Electronic Arts trying to do Madden and then hiring Bethesda, before my time, to make Madden because they were struggling. Um, and when I started at Bethesda, I remember the owner had John Madden's Oak- Oakland Raiders playbook-

   10. LFLex Fridman21:55

       Nice.

   11. THTodd Howard21:56

       ... in his office. Like, "Ooh, can I see that?" Um, and I love sports, right, so I still play Madden to this day. I love it.

   12. LFLex Fridman22:02

       So there's an alternate reality where...

   13. THTodd Howard22:04

       I made sports games?

   14. LFLex Fridman22:05

       Yeah.

   15. THTodd Howard22:05

       Yeah, absolutely. I- I wanted to make-

   16. LFLex Fridman22:08

       This just blew my mind. (laughs)

   17. THTodd Howard22:08

       ... I wanted to make, like, the ultimate college football game. Well, it's always, like... You know, it's like music. You probably listen to lots of type of music. Like, you don't play every type-

   18. LFLex Fridman22:15

       But I think of open worlds as fundamentally different-

   19. THTodd Howard22:19

       Well, sure.

   20. LFLex Fridman22:20

       ... you know, like, source of happiness, entertainment, storytelling, w- uh, world, gaming than, than Madden. I mean, it just... 'Cause I love both. I loved both worlds, but-

   21. THTodd Howard22:32

       They're two totally different experiences. Just like when you might watch a movie, you might be in the mood for Lord of the Rings one day, and then you want some other-

   22. LFLex Fridman22:41

       Yeah.

   23. THTodd Howard22:41

       ... I don't know, competitive show or game show or something like that, or watch football on TV, right? You watch football on TV, but then I wanna watch- get really into Game of Thrones.

   24. LFLex Fridman22:50

       Yeah.

   25. THTodd Howard22:51

       So I think all those things have validity. Um, and actually one of the first things I worked on when I started at Bethesda was, uh, NCAA Basketball Road to the Final Four 2. So that was kind of an external project, was came in, like, "Hey, you- you know sports. Get this game done," and then went on to... But they were doing everything I loved. It was like, "This is where I have to work." They're doing, like, the Terminator science fiction stuff. I love that. They're doing these open world role playing games. Like, I love that, and they're doing sports. Like, this... I have to work here.

   26. LFLex Fridman23:21

       Yeah.

   27. THTodd Howard23:22

       So started there and-

   28. LFLex Fridman23:24

       And Arena, you loved? So-

   29. THTodd Howard23:25

       I loved it. Yeah. So when I came in, it had just come out and they were doing the CD-ROM version. So CD-ROMs aren't even out yet. Um-

   30. LFLex Fridman23:35

       Oh, it used to be floppy disks. That's probably when, uh... What was Arena released?
6. 28:19 – 34:38

   Video game graphics

   1. THTodd Howard28:19

      et cetera.

   2. LFLex Fridman28:19

      So you're there very much feeling the computational constraints of the system when you're creating these open worlds?

   3. THTodd Howard28:24

      And you know what? That's the thing then, you see some of it now, but in those times, I do feel like every year, the technology moved, and maybe it's because same thing, where like that, my age at that time, where every year, somebody was coming up with some new method-

   4. LFLex Fridman28:42

      Hmm.

   5. THTodd Howard28:42

      ... or some new game system, and it was every year that innovation, innovation, innovation, and then, you know, 3D acceleration comes along, and then these things come along, and then HD comes along. And it is true that as time goes on, there is visually a diminishing return in terms of what you're able to do on the screen, and it, 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, like it's a ton of work-

   6. LFLex Fridman29:18

      Yeah.

   7. THTodd Howard29:19

      ... um, but you can pretty much do what you want now if you want to put the time in. Whereas then, okay, you're gonna, you can't do everything you want. So pick your battles really carefully, and it, technically, you couldn't do what you want, if that makes sense.

   8. LFLex Fridman29:34

      Mm-hmm. How much trade-off is there now in, um, how much effort you put into the, the, the realism of the graphics versus the story? And actually not even how much effort you put in, but is there, um, a trade-off in the experience, the feel of the game in terms of realism and story?

   9. THTodd Howard29:58

      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 w-... 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 simulation's running and all of those things. So we'll, we'll sacrifice some of that fidelity for the player experience in, in the s- the kind of things that, that I do. Um, 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. 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.

   10. LFLex Fridman31:02

       What about the experience of the beauty of the graphics? So like, um, 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.

   11. THTodd Howard31:18

       Yeah.

   12. LFLex Fridman31:19

       It's the outdoor scenery. So what does it take to create the feeling, especially of that, being outdoors of nature and just like l- (laughs) 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?

   13. THTodd Howard31:39

       It's a lot of graphics. It's a lot of mood. We just like talk about it in terms of tone.

   14. LFLex Fridman31:44

       Mm-hmm.

   15. THTodd Howard31:44

       And those are, again, going back to my previous comment, the graphics are very, very important to us because... and, 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 is, this feels real. I've never experienced this." And it's okay. I think it's okay to let just like the time settle, meaning you step out, just how does the wind sound? How are the trees moving? How are the clouds moving? Um, I enjoy strolling and watching the sunset, you know? How does it land over the water? Like it doesn't have to be like, "Hey, let's go. Let's finish a quest. Let's go kill things. Let's figure out the next step. Let's level up." Like, I like the quiet moments a lot, and I think you, when you play our games you can tell we spent a lot of time on them. Um, then you watch like the weather roll in. Um, I think that's just part of being, being that character, being that person in that space.

   16. LFLex Fridman32:54

       Yeah. The, I saw that there's a mod that removes all enemies.

   17. THTodd Howard32:58

       Huh.

   18. LFLex Fridman32:58

       I've been meaning to do, to do that, to just do like a live stream where for hours walk around Skyrim just, and then answer questions and so on. That just feels, um, that's a completely stress-free environment. It's just you are, just like you said, in this moment in time, and it's so incredible. It, it feels as incredible as going hiking or some- something like that but in another, in a totally different place, like an, like, uh, Iceland or something like that.

   19. THTodd Howard33:28

       Mm-hmm.

   20. LFLex Fridman33:28

       This, this, this whole other surreal ethereal place. It's um, yeah, it's incredible how you kind of create that. So graphics is a part of that, but also letting it, uh, the temporal aspect of that, like the wind, the, the, the rustling s- sound and look and all of that.

   21. THTodd Howard33:46

       The soundscape is really, really important, and the sky. We spend a lot of time on the sky 'cause it's taking up much more of the screen than a lot of people give credit for.

   22. LFLex Fridman33:58

       What about the rendering, the openness of it? Like how do you, is that-

   23. THTodd Howard34:02

       There's a lot of level of detail, streaming work, and, uh, you know, nowadays it's getting more common. Like frankly the systems are built better for it.

   24. LFLex Fridman34:10

       Mm-hmm.

   25. THTodd Howard34:11

       Um, hard drive speed is really prioritized, like they're so blazing fast. Um, you take Skyrim and Oblivion and the Fallouts of that 360 era, it's a, it was a lot of time spent on, how do we get all this data streaming in as you move? And then levels of detail so you can see all the way but not, you know, crush the processor.

7. 34:38 – 39:27

   The essence of a video game

   1. THTodd Howard34:38

   2. LFLex Fridman34:38

      And you know what? Let's even so- step back 'cause you mentioned tone. You mentioned tone a lot.

   3. THTodd Howard34:42

      Mm-hmm.

   4. LFLex Fridman34:42

      Wha- what do you mean by tone?

   5. THTodd Howard34:44

      It's all of it together. If you look at... I think you can flip through, let's just take fantasy, you know? You can sort of look at a couple images or things and know how does Lord of the Rings different from Game of Thrones that is different than, um, you know, uh, a Thirian like Excalibur or your, you know, Syfy channel (laughs) uh, you know, series of the month kind of thing. Um, and so finding that, what's gonna make it kind of unique and usually I lean on something that is grounded in reality for what it is and then have lesser kind of, um, fantastical things at least at the start, and then they, they kind of build. So even when we do Starfield, I mean it's a science fiction game. There are laser guns and spaceships that fly around and shoot each other and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it's grounded in, you can look at it and say, "Oh, okay, this is kind of an extension of things as we view them today in space." And we sort of take the same approach with Fallout where admittedly things can get, admittedly things can get even a little bit crazier the longer you're developing Fallout content.

   6. LFLex Fridman36:14

      So-... just to, uh, linger on this, so tone starts at, or the defining the tone starts at creating a realistic experience, like you feel like I could walk into this and this feels like life, like real life.

   7. THTodd Howard36:27

      What's their technology level? Like even for a fantasy world, like is magic, how prevalent is it, or are they making weapons and things and armor? Is it for utility? Is it for decoration? How do they live their lives? Does this feel like a place that you believe, that it has some grounding in our reality, whether that's historical or near future, or that it's grounded in some, some semblance of the reality that you and I understand so that it can feel... It's also making it feel a little bit welcoming. Like, okay, I understand this.

   8. LFLex Fridman37:04

      Is that art or science? So like what, how do you know when it feels welcoming and, and everything fits and is ground?

   9. THTodd Howard37:10

      I don't know, I mean it's, I guess it's personal taste. Some people like things that are weirder, that have more fantastical from the get-go. Even a game like Morrowind where we get into some more fantastical things, it intentionally starts a little more grounded. You know, there's a very classic medieval looking town that you come into, but you look just beyond it and there are mushroom trees and giant insects and things like that.

   10. LFLex Fridman37:37

       So in Skyrim when you put a dragon in it, w- what are your thoughts about dragons in tone? How does that fit into tone?

   11. THTodd Howard37:46

       That's a great question. (laughs)

   12. LFLex Fridman37:50

       (laughs) It's a ridiculous question, but yet-

   13. THTodd Howard37:53

       No, this is-

   14. LFLex Fridman37:53

       ... I just love dragons so I wanted to bring it up today.

   15. THTodd Howard37:54

       No, no, no, these are the things that we-

   16. LFLex Fridman37:56

       Thank you.

   17. THTodd Howard37:56

       ... we debate, um, with-

   18. LFLex Fridman37:59

       Do we include a dragon? Why didn't you include a dragon in Daggerfall? That's what I wanna know.

   19. THTodd Howard38:03

       I think there's dragon, there's dragonlings. They were hard to do. Dragons are hard to do. So when you start Skyrim and say, "Hey, look, you know dragons are gonna be a theme," you start, start visually. Because they got, you know, they're... you know, you can make the argument that dragons existed. Okay, what would they look like? How close to dinosaurs would they be, or what would they... and ours are less, I believe they are less fantastical looking in general. They look like beasts that could exist in that world. Um, and then how we introduce them, it's kind of a little bit of a slow, you know, roll in Skyrim, in that the people in the world are reacting to the dragons appearing, and that somewhat, you know, mirrors... you want something that mirrors the player experience as well, that says back to you like, "Hey, no, these are, this is... have you heard this? Someone saw a dragon."

   20. LFLex Fridman38:51

       Well, that's what Daggerfall... is there, isn't there mentions of dragons or something? 'Cause I remembers, I remember being sure that there's dragons in Daggerfall, as I'm playing it and I'm searching.

   21. THTodd Howard39:02

       I'm pretty sure... well-

   22. LFLex Fridman39:04

       Is there a dragon-

   23. THTodd Howard39:05

       There's dragon-

   24. LFLex Fridman39:05

       ... in Daggerfall? (laughs)

   25. THTodd Howard39:06

       There's dragonlings in Daggerfall, to my memory. Look, I guess someone will probably correct me, like, "Actually, there is a dragon here." Um, but I'm pretty sure they're sort of, they're not.

   26. LFLex Fridman39:14

       Yeah.

   27. THTodd Howard39:15

       And then game I did, Redguard, which, um, we bring back a dra- it takes place beforehand so we have a dragon there-

   28. LFLex Fridman39:22

       Mm-hmm.

   29. THTodd Howard39:23

       ... in that game, and that was unique to that at the time.

   30. LFLex Fridman39:26

       Yeah.

8. 39:27 – 44:27

   Redguard

   1. LFLex Fridman39:27

      Uh, just a brief tangent on that. I thought Redguard was a really, really good game. I played it. It was, um... I mean, aga- again, you don't, you know, there's... you f- you forget stuff, but I remember getting, um... I guess it was the first in the Elder Scroll series that w- put it in, into that world but it was like an adventure game, it reminded me of another game I really love, like Prince of Persia.

   2. THTodd Howard39:50

      That was the ins- one of the inspirations.

   3. LFLex Fridman39:52

      Yeah, sure.

   4. THTodd Howard39:52

      Prince of Persia is one of my favorite games.

   5. LFLex Fridman39:54

      Like, I mean, okay, if I f- I apologize if I'm forgetting, but you can like jump in buildings and stuff, like there's a jumping, there's a dynamic like airy nature, like it's a like parkour type of situation.

   6. THTodd Howard40:08

      Yeah, that was a-

   7. LFLex Fridman40:08

      Um, yeah, it was an incredible game. Why, why do you think... let me ask sort of a, a dark question. Why do you think that game was a flop? One of the, one of the few you remember. (laughs)

   8. THTodd Howard40:14

      Not a dark question.

   9. LFLex Fridman40:15

      Yeah.

   10. THTodd Howard40:15

       It was. Um, well, a lot of reasons. Um, game, game that I love, and really got us going on a handcrafted world, so we're coming off of Daggerfall, Morrowind is sort of in design, and then, you know, part of our development teams broke up to do different things. Game with the, did Battle Spire, and Redguard was my game. Um, and I wanted to do something a little more Ultima feeling, handcrafted world.

   11. LFLex Fridman40:43

       Mm-hmm.

   12. THTodd Howard40:44

       I really like things that blend up genres. So I know it's in the adventure game category, but it really does a lot of things. You know, it's, it's a, it's a love letter to Prince of Persia, there's a little Raiders of the Lost Ark in it, there's a lot of Ultima in it, um, and really see what we could do with the engine. But it very much, I think plays... like it would have had a much better home on say PlayStation or Xbox. This is predates Xbox, right? Where it's a much more like constantly Tomb Raider had come out, so do you see those influences of Tomb Raider on that game. And 3D effects cards had just come out and so, "Okay, we can do..." And it was the last, I think it's one of the last like DOS games in a Windows world. So it, I think it missed kind of a technology window as well as ultimately, not what people wanted from us, you know? Um, and I felt... I was really kind of the, the company let me make that game, and it, it was a big flop. Battle Spire hadn't done well. The company was in a really bad shape and I felt really like personally responsible. Like, they let me do this creative thing, it didn't do what we needed it to do, and now we're in a very, very bad situation. Uh, company almost went out of business. And that's when it got reformed with ZeniMax Media and Robert Altman came in, and we were starting more when we had just sort of started, and it was sort of that whole experience that made you sort of realize... someone says to you, "Okay, you're gonna get another shot."

   13. LFLex Fridman42:22

       Hmm.

   14. THTodd Howard42:23

       ... and that's where we're like, "Okay, we're gonna make Morrowind and make the biggest, best RPG we can make. We know what the audience wants from us. We know what we could do building a world." So there's like callbacks to how we built the world in Redguard. Morrowind is a large scale handcrafted, but if you were to put it, you know, pixel per pixel with Daggerfall, you wouldn't even see Morrowind.

   15. LFLex Fridman42:46

       Mm-hmm.

   16. THTodd Howard42:46

       Like, 'cause Daggerfall is so big. But the impact of playing it, I think, is in many ways equal, but different.

   17. LFLex Fridman42:55

       Just you personally, psychologically, did you have doubt about yourself from, from the performance of Redguard? Like, do I even... Do I know what it is to-

   18. THTodd Howard43:03

       Of course. Of course.

   19. LFLex Fridman43:05

       Where, where do you get the... How do you overcome that?

   20. THTodd Howard43:09

       I, I don't know. I would say this. Honestly, I enjoy it so much.

   21. LFLex Fridman43:13

       Mm-hmm.

   22. THTodd Howard43:14

       You know, like I- I'm so rorming, I'm so heads down, like that becomes, for better or worse, like my life.

   23. LFLex Fridman43:20

       Yeah.

   24. THTodd Howard43:20

       Um, and it's just something that I wanna play so much, it becomes like there's a little bit, you get a little obsessed with it.

   25. LFLex Fridman43:29

       No, but I mean, you love Redguard, right? So like, doesn't that mean... Isn't there a kind of self-doubt about, do I know what it takes to create a great game?

   26. THTodd Howard43:39

       Well, no. I think Redguard's a great game.

   27. LFLex Fridman43:41

       All right. So you were sure, even if it was-

   28. THTodd Howard43:42

       Okay. So if we're going to debate like, do I like that game? It's about finding an... Okay. So, I love Redguard.

   29. LFLex Fridman43:48

       Yeah.

   30. THTodd Howard43:48

       And the people who play it, it, it won a bunch of awards and, you know, it like critically was a pretty good game. Did not sell. And the reason for that, again, like we probably made this the wrong type of game and we missed a technology window. We also thought it was very conservative, like, "We're going to do this." So my main takeaway was, "I'm not gonna be conservative again. I'm gonna swing for the fences." And we've had... You know, there'll be some rough edges in swinging for the fences and shooting for the moon, but we'd rather do that and land where we land than be very, very conservative, um, in what we're putting out there.

9. 44:27 – 52:06

   Creating open worlds

   1. THTodd Howard44:27

   2. LFLex Fridman44:27

      You've, you've mentioned just referencing this game, uh, on a Reddit AMA that, "Long time ago during Redguard, the lead programmer made me, made all the buildings hop up and down after you played for 10 minutes just to mess with me." Uh, just on a curious tangent, what, what's, um, involved with programming an open world game? So when, when we... So we talked about... We will talk about design and so on, but specifically the programming, because I think this question came from what are some interesting sticky bugs that you've encountered throughout your life in creating these games, and this is one of them that you mentioned. So what are some of the challenges of programming these open world games?

   3. THTodd Howard45:13

      I mean, there are different flavors of them, right? Your GTAs will have different issues than, you know, the Ubisoft games versus our games. Things sort of, you know, speak to ours, which is you want to build systems, right? 'Cause they're gonna, they're gonna play the game for a very long time as well, which we've learned. And you can't go through and touch everything by hand per se.

   4. LFLex Fridman45:39

      Mm-hmm.

   5. THTodd Howard45:40

      So you have to rely on some systemic level of creation and a lot of systems that are robust enough so that when they touch another one, things aren't breaking apart.

   6. LFLex Fridman45:52

      So there's like a... What are the major systems? Is it like the physics of the game, the engine of how like stuff... yeah, like, um... Yeah, the physics, the motion, and maybe how light is rendered and all that kind of stuff.

   7. THTodd Howard46:04

      Right. So you have the rendering-

   8. LFLex Fridman46:06

      Mm-hmm.

   9. THTodd Howard46:06

      ... right? Of like, "Okay, this is how I'm going to render the data that I have." So a lot of people confuse engines with rendering. I mean, they're combined obviously, but there's the data you're gonna give to a renderer-

   10. LFLex Fridman46:19

       Mm-hmm.

   11. THTodd Howard46:19

       ... which is the thing, you know, the audience, you know, that draws the pixels on the screen. So there's a... Most of the engine is just how are you going to bring in that data and give it to the renderer to, to draw it? So you have that whole system of walking through the world, feeding in the data, and, and drawing it. You then obviously have the physics and the interactivity. What are the things that are there just to be drawn and what are the things there that are meant to be interacted with and touched? We put a big premium on the ones that can be interacted with and touched, whether it's flowers, whether the trees move, whether you can sleep on the sofa, sit in this chair, pick up all this stuff, bake bread, blah, blah, blah. You then have the AI which loops in the stuff we talked about earlier in terms of processing everybody, and combat systems, which is a lot of what, and the people end up doing combat systems on top of that AI. How do they react to those types of things? And then how, how do they look at the things that can be interacted with? One of my favorite things is when NPCs will go pick up weapons in the world, which you don't see in other games, and the first time you see it in one of ours, it's like very unexpected.

   12. LFLex Fridman47:32

       Mm-hmm.

   13. THTodd Howard47:33

       You can drop like a crazy weapon, be in a fight, and an NPC runs over, picks it up, and uses it on you. It's not something you would expect. Um, but I love that stuff.

   14. LFLex Fridman47:42

       And that's integrated into a larger system, the ability to pick up a... the NPC picking up a... So it's not like a little quirk that's hardcoded in, it's part of a bigger system.

   15. THTodd Howard47:53

       They, they have their own AI for scanning the environment, and that's one of the rules. "Hey, is there a weapon that is better than the one I have? I'm gonna go get it." Now, we do lock off if it's in a chest and that's treasure we left for the player, but it's in particular-

   16. LFLex Fridman48:09

       (laughs)

   17. THTodd Howard48:09

       ... 'cause what you don't want... We actually had this problem-

   18. LFLex Fridman48:10

       Yeah.

   19. THTodd Howard48:10

       ... started in Oblivion, I believe, which was a separate level. "Hey, let the enemies go pick up the, you know, weapons if they are better." So we make a level and go in-

   20. LFLex Fridman48:19

       Wow.

   21. THTodd Howard48:19

       ... and all of the enemies are armed to the teeth and there's no treasure for the player because the enemies went and took all the-

   22. LFLex Fridman48:24

       (laughs)

   23. THTodd Howard48:24

       ... good weapons. And you say, "Okay, they don't take those. They take the ones that are dropped-"

   24. LFLex Fridman48:28

       Yeah.

   25. THTodd Howard48:28

       "... by other NPCs or the player."

   26. LFLex Fridman48:31

       That's such a fascinating world of ex- of designing the experience for the NPC, because in part, that experience is, uh, defines the experience of the player. So how they interact with their environment defines how you- how the player experiences their environment. Is there room for further and further development of the AI that controls the NPC?

   27. THTodd Howard48:56

       Sure. We're always iterating on it. And again, as we look in the future, it's more about us finding those... More reactivity to the player, and also understanding their roles in the world. So they're not just there, they're not just there for the player to... As a signpost-

   28. LFLex Fridman49:18

       Mm-hmm.

   29. THTodd Howard49:18

       ... for the player.

   30. LFLex Fridman49:18

       But they're reacting to the player. But what about... You know, some of the richest experiences we have with people is like the chaos of it, the pull, the push and pull, the imper- unpredictability. Is there something... I don't know if you've been following, but the, the, the quick amazing development of language models, uh, the neural network n- natural language processing systems, dialogue systems. Um, do you think there's some possibility of using sort of these incredible neural nets that can have open-ended dialogue, basically chatbots?
10. 52:06 – 57:00

    Superintelligent NPCs

    1. THTodd Howard52:06

    2. LFLex Fridman52:06

       Do you ever, uh, try to sort of imagine that people fall in love with the characters, with the NPCs?

    3. THTodd Howard52:13

       I do.

    4. LFLex Fridman52:14

       Like, I mean, do they get really attached to the-

    5. THTodd Howard52:16

       Oh, yeah.

    6. LFLex Fridman52:17

       ... I mean, is it-

    7. THTodd Howard52:17

       I mean, I've done it in games.

    8. LFLex Fridman52:18

       These are like close friends, right? Like, you can... Like, you miss them.

    9. THTodd Howard52:23

       100%.

    10. LFLex Fridman52:23

        Is, isn't that part of the thing you miss?

    11. THTodd Howard52:24

        I actually like whenever I'm playing a game and there is, you know... If there's like a friendship option, or make friends, or a romance thing, I, I find those moments really... I enjoy them. I find them pretty impactful emotionally to what we're doing. And so, um, we've done a little bit of it. It's one of the things that we actually have pushed in Starfield. So we have a number of companions, but four of them, we go, you know, I won't say super complex romantic, but, but more complex relationships than we've had in terms of not just some s- s- you know, state of they like you or they don't like you, but they can be, they can be in love with you-

    12. LFLex Fridman53:05

        Mm-hmm.

    13. THTodd Howard53:05

        ... and dislike something you did and be pissed at you temporarily, and then come back to loving you.

    14. LFLex Fridman53:11

        Uh, so that, that relationship status of it's complicated, that, that... Their, their existing in that gray area is complicated. We're not dating, we're just... We're, we're-

    15. THTodd Howard53:20

        Well, it's... In a lot of games, you know, previous stuff, you just work your way up. They like you more and more and more and more-

    16. LFLex Fridman53:24

        Yeah.

    17. THTodd Howard53:24

        ... and now you're in a relationship.

    18. LFLex Fridman53:26

        Now you're in. Yeah.

    19. THTodd Howard53:27

        And you... And when you make them upset, you drift out of like it never happened, you know, you drift out of it. Whereas we wanted one where, okay, we can be in a relationship and-

    20. LFLex Fridman53:35

        Yeah.

    21. THTodd Howard53:36

        ... um, we've committed to each other in some way, but I just did something that really made you angry.

    22. LFLex Fridman53:42

        Yeah.

    23. THTodd Howard53:42

        And as opposed to just drifting out of that status, you're in a temporary, I don't like what you did state.

    24. LFLex Fridman53:48

        Wow, so some greater degree of complexity in the relationship with the companion.

    25. THTodd Howard53:51

        A little, a little bit.

    26. LFLex Fridman53:52

        A little bit.

    27. THTodd Howard53:53

        A little bit.

    28. LFLex Fridman53:53

        A little bit. Are we talking about-

    29. THTodd Howard53:55

        I don't wanna ov- I don't wanna oversell that part, but-

    30. LFLex Fridman53:56

        Sure.
11. 57:00 – 1:16:42

    Starfield

    1. LFLex Fridman57:02

       You mentioned Starfield. What is Starfield, and what's the origin story of this game?

    2. THTodd Howard57:07

       We had always wanted to do something where you explore space, you know? The explore space role playing game. So we'd take the kind of games that we make and give it a little bit of a different spin. And, you know, the other games that I love, there was a pen and paper RPG I love, Traveler, it was one of the first games I made for the Apple II. Uh, didn't, uh, ever, I never finished it, right? I'm just doing it on my own. And I love this game, Starflight was one, Star Control II was a game that I loved. Um, SunDog was a big one in the Apple II days that a lot of people don't know that I loved. And so a lot of us in the studio felt it was time to do something new, you know, we're going between Elder Scrolls and Fallout and going back and forth and, I mean, we love that, but hey, we've always wanted to do this explore the galaxy science fiction game. You know, now is the time, uh, to do that.

    3. LFLex Fridman58:06

       And, uh, that's a brave move. So Fallout's post-ap- apocalyptic on a single planet.

    4. THTodd Howard58:14

       Mm-hmm.

    5. LFLex Fridman58:15

       Uh, you know, Elder Scrolls series is, um, on a single planet. So this is going out into the open world of many star systems, many planets. I saw that it's, uh, thinking about 100 star systems and 1,000 planets available to explore. Um, what is that world of stars and planets like?

    6. THTodd Howard58:37

       Well, you mentioned Daggerfall, we go back to some of that. Well, the first one we did it was, how are we gonna render a planet, like pull it off for the player? Like, can we? Or do we have to sort of do it where you can't land on all of 'em, where you're landing in a very controlled small world space that we, you know, kind of craft and you would have a very limited set of those?

    7. LFLex Fridman59:00

       Mm-hmm.

    8. THTodd Howard59:01

       You go back to tone, like, well, that's probably the wrong tone, and how can we say, yes, like, I wanna land on that ice ball. So it started, we started the game right after Fallout 4, so 2016, and the first thing we did was can, you know, h- how can we have a system to generate these planets and make them look, you know, (laughs) I'll say reasonable as opposed to, you know, s- fractally goop, um, pff-

    9. LFLex Fridman59:31

       Well, what's the, what's the technical definition of goop?

    10. THTodd Howard59:34

        (laughs)

    11. LFLex Fridman59:35

        Fractally goop, I- I don't-

    12. THTodd Howard59:35

        Fractally goop. You've probably seen a lot of like, simulations whether they're space things or landscape things, where using fractals and just the landscape does not look real, it just is like highs and lows and it's muddy. And so we did find a way, we came up with a way, um, and prototyped of, of building tiles, like large tiles of landscape the way we would usually build them. We kinda generate them offline, hand do some things, and end up with these very realistic looking tiles of landscape, and then built a system that wraps those around a planet-

    13. LFLex Fridman1:00:09

        Mm-hmm.

    14. THTodd Howard1:00:10

        ... and blends them all together. And we had pretty successful results with that. And so we thought, "Yeah, we could, we could do this." Um, and so there was a big design kind of problem to solve in terms of, well, what's fun about landing on a planet where there's potentially nothing? 'Cause there's a lotta planets and moons if you kind of, right, in reality, that, well, there's nothing on 'em, um, except resources. And so we spent a lot of time figuring out, okay, let's just lean in on that can, A, be a lonely experience, as long as we tell the player, "Here's what's there. Here are the resources that are there. Go find them." But I equate it to that moment of we said about-... listening to the wind go and watching the sunset. And I do think there's a certain beauty to landing on a strange planet, being somewhat the only person there, building an outpost. And we are modeling all of the systems, 'cause that's w- how we like to do things. So you can watch whatever that gas giant or moon, it will rotate and go, and sunrise, sunset, and all of those things that you would expect, and it's- it's all really happening. And most people probably won't notice or appreciate all of that, but, um, I think it gives them the ability to say, "I wanna go do that and see that on that place," as long as we tell them, "Hey, the quest leads over here. Here's where the handcrafted content is that you would expect, and then here's more of the open procedural planet experience."

    15. LFLex Fridman1:01:47

        So y- y- you're p-

    16. THTodd Howard1:01:48

        Long answer. I don't know if I answered your question. (laughs)

    17. LFLex Fridman1:01:50

        I ... there's no-

    18. THTodd Howard1:01:51

        All right.

    19. LFLex Fridman1:01:51

        The questions are stupid-

    20. THTodd Howard1:01:52

        (laughs)

    21. LFLex Fridman1:01:52

        ... and the answers are brilliant, so-

    22. THTodd Howard1:01:54

        (laughs)

    23. LFLex Fridman1:01:54

        ... that- that's how this works. So this is the world's most immense simulator of, um, the human condition, of loneliness?

    24. THTodd Howard1:02:01

        (laughs)

    25. LFLex Fridman1:02:02

        C- c- 'cause I can't imagine a more lonely experience.

    26. THTodd Howard1:02:04

        Well, I mean, I mean, you put it that way. I- I don't know-

    27. LFLex Fridman1:02:06

        Just go-

    28. THTodd Howard1:02:06

        ... if that was the goal, but-

    29. LFLex Fridman1:02:07

        Just on a planet alone, I just ... I, I ... it ... that must be, I mean, the, a deep embodiment of what loneliness is like. I mean, it's the, um, both the awe and the ... like when you hike alone.

    30. THTodd Howard1:02:20

        Mm.
12. 1:16:42 – 1:36:03

    The Elder Scrolls 6

    1. LFLex Fridman1:16:42

       in.

    2. THTodd Howard1:16:42

       (laughs)

    3. LFLex Fridman1:16:42

       Okay. Back, back to dragons. So blink once if you know when Elder Scrolls VI is coming out, but are not going to tell me. Okay.

    4. THTodd Howard1:16:53

       I have a vague idea.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:16:55

       Okay, vague idea. In, in... (laughs)

    6. THTodd Howard1:16:57

       (laughs)

    7. LFLex Fridman1:16:58

       So like if you have the quantum mechanical interpretation that allows for multiple universes, in the u- in the universe where you didn't blink, uh, what would that Todd tell me about the year it's coming out? Would it be 2025?

    8. THTodd Howard1:17:12

       That's a trick question.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:17:13

       Or '26?

    10. THTodd Howard1:17:14

        I've been asked that question-

    11. LFLex Fridman1:17:15

        Yeah.

    12. THTodd Howard1:17:16

        ... many ways, but never like that.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:17:18

        Yeah. I thought I would try to sneak it into you. (laughs) Um, and I mean, th- there is, there is of course no answer because you don't-

    14. THTodd Howard1:17:24

        I wish it was soon, you know?

    15. LFLex Fridman1:17:27

        S- soon?

    16. THTodd Howard1:17:27

        Like we don't... We want them out too, you know. Um, and I wish they didn't take as long as they did, but they do. And, look, I mean, if I could go back in time, would never have been my plan to wait as long as it's, it's taken, uh, for it.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:17:46

        So you love that world, the Elder Scrolls world?

    18. THTodd Howard1:17:48

        Well, look, it's, it's part of who I am. Spent more time there than anything else in my life probably, right? So, um, I d- it's deeply love it. We, we all do. It's a part of us. And, you know, when you aren't doing it for a while, you, you really do miss it. Um, and when I look at what we're doing, uh, have planned for that game, I mean, I was in a meeting yesterday, I was like, "I just wanna play all of this right now."

    19. LFLex Fridman1:18:19

        (laughs)

    20. THTodd Howard1:18:20

        Um, but it, you know, we're gonna make sure we do it right for everybody. And we do have to approach it, people are playing games for a long time, you know. Skyrim's 11 years old, still probably our most played game. And so we don't see it slowing down.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:18:38

        Yeah.

    22. THTodd Howard1:18:38

        And people will probably be playing it 10 years from now also. So you have to think about, okay, people are gonna play the next Elder Scrolls game for decade, two decades. And that does change the way you think about how you architect it from, from the get-go.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:18:58

        What are, what are some elements that changed the way, like how do you make a game that's playable for 20 years?... so I-

    24. THTodd Howard1:19:06

        Well, we're trying to figure that out, but there... (laughs)

    25. LFLex Fridman1:19:09

        (laughs) But there is some elements, I should pause on that, you know, part of me I'm of course asking jokingly, I'm excited for it, but I think Skyrim was an amazing game still, you know, I really enjoy it still.

    26. THTodd Howard1:19:20

        Yeah, and you know what? The content, the, um... Even if, think if you step away from it for a while then play what I'll put, say, the vanilla version without mods, if you go and haven't played it in a while, there's always a new way to play it. But then if you look at the mods and what creators are doing to it, we think that is just awesome.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:19:37

        Mm-hmm.

    28. THTodd Howard1:19:37

        It's something that we've always supported, we're gonna keep supporting. We've hired a large number of modders that are now professionals. We wanna support the people who are doing on their own so they can be professionals on their own, um, and-

    29. LFLex Fridman1:19:54

        How do you- how do you create a world that's modable? So you- you think of designing the game from the start as th- that enables mods?

    30. THTodd Howard1:20:03

        Yeah, absolutely. So it starts with us, like everything we're doing, okay, a modder, a content creator's gonna have to do it, use our tools. Now, we do clean them up for release, you know, they can u- 'cause if you're like a developer in house, you can deal with some kludginess when you're putting stuff together. When you put it out for people, we do clean a lot of it up, and there's still a lo- obviously a learning curve there, um, but we have, look, we have people who've been doing it for 20 years with us, um...

Episode duration: 2:44:51