With games like Fallout 4 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim under his belt, it’s clear that Todd Howard is one of the most renowned video game designers out there.
And fans of Bethesda sure were excited when the Maryland-based video game company revealed at the E3 show that it was planning to put out three new games in the coming years: Fallout 76, Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI, the eagerly awaited sequel to 2011’s megahit Skyrim.
Of course, it was Fallout 76 that received the most attention at E3 2018, given that it will be hitting shelves this fall (on November 14 to be exact), meaning Bethesda had more to show of their upcoming post-apocalyptic game than of the other two titles.
This will be a different Fallout than the earlier entries though, with a focus on online multiplayer play instead of the epic, purely single player experiences we’ve had from Bethesda to date.
This doesn’t mean Fallout 76 won’t turn out to be great when it ships later this year, but the game’s new approach might leave some yearning for the old, classic gameplay which made the series a hit back in the 90’s and Fallout 4 such a fantastic game back in 2015.
As a matter of fact, quite a few people have asked Bethesda for a remaster of the first Fallout game, which hit shelves back in 1997. This is something that the company’s ace game designer Todd Howard addressed in a recent interview with The Guardian, even if Howard’s response did serve to douse any hopes we’ll see a remaster of the 90’s classic game anytime soon.
“We [also] get asked a lot to remaster [1997’s], and I usually say, if you have a PC you can play Fallout the way it was. I think that’s how it should be. I think streaming technology is definitely coming, and it’s gonna make people’s access to games infinitely easier. You’ve seen it happen to music and movies and I think it’s a great thing”, Howard told The Guardian.
The Bethesda man responded in a similar manner about a possible Morrowind remaster, pointing out that the game is now backwards compatible on the Xbox One, and that he’d “rather you play Morrowind the way it was … I think the age is part of its identity”.
More interesting though, is the fact that Bethesda might have given a hint or two about when The Elder Scrolls VI could be hitting shelves, even if the company’s vice president Pete Hines merely said that the sixth entry of the award-winning role-playing saga is “still two games away”, while Todd Howard himself said people looking forward to play Scrolls VI or Starfield (it’s upcoming sci-fi RPG) should be “very patient”.
“We’ve been talking about it for a decade, we started putting things on paper five, six years ago, and active development was from when we finished Fallout 4, so two and a half, three years”, Howard said about Starfield. This means a release date of late 2019 for Starfield could be on the cards, with The Elder Scrolls VI coming after that.
But given that Bethesda won’t go into full gear with part six of their next Elder Scrolls game until Starfield has been released, it’s unlikely we’ll see the next entry in the role-playing series until late 2020 at least, meaning there’s still a while to wait for those eager to return to the series’ fantasy world of Tamriel.
Let’s hope, then, that the wait will be worth it, and that Bethesda’s upcoming games do serve to remind people why the Maryland-based video game outfit has been such a success over the years.
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