14 DAY TRIAL // The world of role-playing games can only evolve as long as development teams are able to create situations and mechanics that allow characters in the game world to react in a meaningful way to the player and his choices, according to Todd Howard.
The man in charge of the Elder Scrolls franchise at Bethesda, has told Will Wheaton that, “I still think you see role-playing creeping into everything. I see it in all games, with like–how do you reward the player, with whatever he’s doing? Exploring, building up his character, you see it with everything.”
The designer also believes that, “The thing in general with gaming, and you see it with RPGs more, is having characters react to you in a way that you believe, or is really meaningful, with the choices you made.
“I think we can build pretty good environments. A lot of people can, not just us. In gaming, doing realistic and nice-looking environments, I think people are pretty good at that.”
The veteran Bethesda developer was arguing against the trend towards creating more and more complex game world that at times it can feel devoid of any meaning or emotion.
Despite the impressive experience that Bethesda has delivered with The Elder Scrolls V: Oblivion, Howard has acknowledged that his own games fall short of the mark he has set, but he says that he will be able to get there in the near future.
At the moment the team is working on patching Skyrim in order to eliminate all the issues and bugs that gamers are reporting.
At the same time they are putting the finishing touches on the Dawnguard expansion for the game, which will focus on undead adversaries and will be launched before the end of the year.
Another development team, ZeniMax Online, is also working on an Elder Scrolls MMO set to arrive during 2013.