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Would Todd Howard still care about RPGs?

Would Todd try to make a good RPG if he didn't need to worry about money?


  • Total voters
    53

DosBuster

Arcane
Patron
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
1,861
Location
God's Dumpster
Codex USB, 2014
Look at the whole situation this way: You have a group of people on message boards saying your game is shit and you should die. On the other side, you have millions upon millions of sales for the last few games, people dedicating shrines to you and all that other crazy praise he gets from a lot of people out there. Would you not work to appease the people who shower you with money, not the people who inhabit small message boards and have scared their developers away from the site?

As for what Todd does well he did write a lot of the conversational text for the Imperial Cult quest line and probably some other minor pieces. I do also remember him mentioning somewhere that he started work on the Construction Set way back when morrrowind was in pre-production and only had a few people. There is also this quote from a Kotaku article on game crunch (http://kotaku.com/crunch-time-why-game-developers-work-such-insane-hours-1704744577), it does sound very high praise of Todd and not very cynical but considering how Bethesda has blacklisted Kotaku I don't think a PR person wrote this statement:

We worked long hours. Our bug queue never slowed. We played the game constantly, dismayed at how slowly the iterations came. Guiding Skyrim in the right direction felt like guiding a thousand-tonne tanker through cold water. Through the fog of panic and activity, we watched as the iceberg of our deadline drew close, inscribed with that horrible prophecy: “11-11-11.” And then, under the steady guidance of Todd Howard, we made it. And as with all great undertakings, the end result was both less than we’d hoped for... and also far, far greater.

So, I guess considering in terms of hitting deadlines and shipping games that meet financial success I think you can at least admit that Todd is skilled in that regard.
 

Invictus

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
2,789
Location
Mexico
Divinity: Original Sin 2
You are giving such a hard time to Todd but lets leave it like this, he is not a auteur director in the same way that Kubrick was; he is more of an overseer who has to make do with what he got... and the second that western RPGs became big business with spoken dialogue, romancing companions and "awesome buttons" he had to follow the lead that the company directed. He comes across as one of those creative directors at McCann or Walter Thompson who have deadlines to keep and practicality + rentability comes up first on their list of priorities. You better belive that all the cool hip Sawyers and Avellones hell even Vault Dweler would sell their souls to have his job and maybe feel good about this particularly nice quest or interesting NPCs while debating pn how to make this or that accessible to a 8 year old.
Most of you come out as naive; he is not in a medium like Spielberg where he can do a ticket seller pic like Raiders and then an auteur movie like Schindler's List to feel good about it... he doesnt look at his products and say "I wish I could do it like New Vegas" he thinks that as long as it sells well his job is done
 

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