Interview Road To Skyrim: The Todd Howard Interview

[ksjav]

Except we have the facts that every game Todd Howard has worked on is a shit/mediocre RPG. r00fles!

No. He worked on that awesome Terminator shooter and decent adventures/dungeon crawlers in TES spinoffs. Oh and some hockey games it seems.

 

[denizsi]

We'd give him shit for his views on ... fast-travel

No, "we" wouldn't. Fast travel isn't inherently bad.

 

[torpid]

"LOOK GUYS I PLAYED ULTIMAS JUST LIKE YOU AND IS TOTALLY HARDCORE AND STUFF, PLEASE BUY MY GAMES SINCE THEY ARE HARDCORE RPGS JUST LIKE YOU USED TO PLAY"

This.

The idea that Todd Howard is pretending to like these old games in order to attract the hardcore crowd strikes me as implausible, and as an overestimation of your importance in the scheme of things. It's wishful thinking, a hope that they still care about you. But what does Todd Howard care about the hardcore players? Skyrim will sell millions regardless of our opinion, he'll have gaming journalists at his feet and just like a bunch of kiddies thought Oblivion was the greatest game evar, a new batch of kids will view Skyrim as a super innovative gaming milestone for years to come.

Maybe it hurts your feelings to see it that way, but he's not even addressing himself to us in those videos.

 

[Arcanoix]

Stop having sympathy with the guy and start hating him.
HES ALRIGHT: HES A PRETTY COOL GUY: HES OK IN MY BOOK:

NO HE ISNT

QFT.

 

[Decado]

"LOOK GUYS I PLAYED ULTIMAS JUST LIKE YOU AND IS TOTALLY HARDCORE AND STUFF, PLEASE BUY MY GAMES SINCE THEY ARE HARDCORE RPGS JUST LIKE YOU USED TO PLAY"

This.

The idea that Todd Howard is pretending to like these old games in order to attract the hardcore crowd strikes me as implausible, and as an overestimation of your importance in the scheme of things. It's wishful thinking, a hope that they still care about you. But what does Todd Howard care about the hardcore players? Skyrim will sell millions regardless of our opinion, he'll have gaming journalists at his feet and just like a bunch of kiddies thought Oblivion was the greatest game evar, a new batch of kids will view Skyrim as a super innovative gaming milestone for years to come.

Maybe it hurts your feelings to see it that way, but he's not even addressing himself to us in those videos.

This x 1000. The fact that someone thinks he and his fellow troglodyte 30 year old virgins are important enough for Todd Howard to lie to is just hilarious. Yes, Todd Howard is lying about his gaming cred so a bunch of retards on a message board can be fooled about his pedigree and whether or not he masturbated to the hot elf chick in the AD&D player's manual back in 1989, otherwise he won't sell his game. Seems perfectly plausible to me!

Howard et. al. already know who their audience is. Most ironic of all, his audience includes the people who hate his guts, who will buy his stupid game anyway, even if they wait 3 years and pay 8 dollars for it on steam. And every sentence about the guy that you write is just more free publicity for him, Bethesda and his game.

 

[Black Cat]

Stop having sympathy with the guy and start hating him.
HES ALRIGHT: HES A PRETTY COOL GUY: HES OK IN MY BOOK:

NO HE ISNT

Of course he isn't. He made a game we do not like! Such heresy is without words nor excuses, indeed. Burn the bastard, but gut him first.



If you have the time and the inclination to hate someone because he makes videogames you don't like, well, good for you I guess.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The idea that Todd Howard is pretending to like these old games in order to attract the hardcore

He's not doing it to attract hardcore gamers, he's doing it to gather street creed among the mainstream press, which does recognize the old classics, though it does not care about what made those games good in the first place. And of course, he had to pick something from that era because he's from that generation. Thus, he's choice is doubly meaningless.

 

[Lyric Suite]

He made a game we do not like!

He made a shitty game that set the industry standard for the genre, thus helping ensure we will never get a good RPG ever again. That's reason enough to rage last i checked. The Codex is truly going down the drain if we really need to explain why Dickhead Howard deserves our scorn.

 

[Black Cat]

He made a shitty game that set the industry standard for the genre, thus helping ensure we will never get a good RPG ever again. That's reason enough to rage last i checked. The Codex is truly going down the drain if we really need to explain why Dickhead Howard deserves our scorn.

That does not change the fact this is about people hating other people because of videogames, and even I, who no one will ever accuse of being particularly mature about anything, can understand such thing as being completely retarded. Also, industry standard? Maybe you people live in a strange world where the market is being flooded by Oblivion clones, but here where I am roguelikes and dungeon crawlers are still being released, and the only people trying to clone Oblivion last time I checked were a bunch of low budget studios from the world's arsehole, and no one cared much about them. And I doubt most people here in Fair Codexia has already gone and cleared without a walkthrough all, or even most, the ridiculous long backlog of good games you can find in PC, Amiga, those Apple thingies, and most consoles if you know what to look for instead of going baaaw, no one tells me what can change the nature of a man or whatever the fuck is that makes you people so angry, other than being a bunch of morons.

And let's not even mention that here you seemingly need permision to be reasonable and think his games are, indeed, awful but he seems like a pretty harmless, or even likeable, guy to be around and talk about stuffies, and quite an enthusiastic fellow if you are into that kind of thing. The heresy, indeed. He's the enemy. Our life has been ruined by him. Our values has been tramped by him. Our beliefs have been destroyed by him. Games are now coming with a quest compass and level scaling, the last seal has broken! For a bunch of people who likes to think themselves as so much of an elite some of you sure are a bunch of emotional, touchy, and immature jerks who are mighty worried because, oh my gawd, the role playing videogame scene will never be the same again!

Teh bloody horror! Why haven't the perpetrators been murdered, yet? Maybe you do not hate enough, infidel?! Why are you here discusing this instead of purging the streets by fire and steel, I wonder?

A monocled and cooly refined people, indeed.

 

[Excommunicator]

Some of you people are real simpletons to an embarrassing degree. You get nothing about anything. torpid and Decado I am sickened to be from the same join year as you, and Black Cat stop living up to feminine stereotypes so much. It doesn't reflect well of rational behaviour.

I don't hate Todd Howard. The fact his personal temperament should have any effect on the way I feel towards him as a game "designer" is ridiculous. You are all ridiculous, and Lyric Suite is spot on.

It is not a personal attack that he is a shit designer doing a job that doesn't show any respect to the people who gave him the lore or designs that put him in the position he is in now. It is entirely a professional path he has followed and I reserve the right to withdraw all respect and concern on that basis, just as he reserves the right to withdraw all concern or responsibility to keep creating the games that his studio once aimed to make.

As others have said, if he was a Codexer in here he probably wouldn't even be noticed let alone disliked, because there would be no reason to do so. He is just a guy with a rather large concern for broader opinions of his community (broader than the hardcore fanbase), something which clearly contributes to the kinds of games that he produces.

People that say they hate him mean it for a single central reason: they hate the decisions he makes and the influence he has to be able to lead a studio away from a direction that once made them proud to like RPGs. The main professional difference between a designer with their potential audience and a politician and their electorate is that the designer isn't scared of people judging them on integrity because they can simply switch to an audience that is more easily pleased. Of course people will withdraw support from someone who shifts to having ideals that serve a different group. The increased profitability is just an additional perk for him.

If you want to cry about that ladies, don't do it on the Codex. We don't want your kind of fragile emotional mentalities cluttering up the room.

 

[Lyric Suite]

And let's not even mention that here you seemingly need permision to be reasonable and think his games are, indeed, awful but he seems like a pretty harmless, or even likeable

But that's the thing. He doesn't come out like an harmless, likable guy. He comes out like the asshole he is. He is the very definition of a douchebag. Every time i see his face i can't help but feel this deep loathing and disgust.

 

[SimpleComplexity]

Anime avatar

Location: The land of (truly) EMO witches.

Let's play jRPG's

Extensive use of the rolleyes smilie

 

[denizsi]

Stop the bullshits and start the truths. Todd isn't just some guy doing the games he likes. He is an usurper who is raping an otherwise decent series after the original visionaries were shown the door. You wouldn't hate a kid just because he's dating your daughter. You would want to beat the shit out of him because he's abusing her.

 

[hanssolo]

 

[Black Cat]

Let's play jRPG's

I would love to be able to take seriously someone who considers any of the old Shin Megami Tensei games to be a JRPG. I seriously would.

 

[torpid]

Some of you people are real simpletons to an embarrassing degree. You get nothing about anything. torpid and Decado I am sickened to be from the same join year as you, and Black Cat stop living up to feminine stereotypes so much. It doesn't reflect well of rational behaviour.

I don't hate Todd Howard. The fact his personal temperament should have any effect on the way I feel towards him as a game "designer" is ridiculous. You are all ridiculous, and Lyric Suite is spot on.

It is not a personal attack that he is a shit designer doing a job that doesn't show any respect to the people who gave him the lore or designs that put him in the position he is in now. It is entirely a professional path he has followed and I reserve the right to withdraw all respect and concern on that basis, just as he reserves the right to withdraw all concern or responsibility to keep creating the games that his studio once aimed to make.

As others have said, if he was a Codexer in here he probably wouldn't even be noticed let alone disliked, because there would be no reason to do so. He is just a guy with a rather large concern for broader opinions of his community (broader than the hardcore fanbase), something which clearly contributes to the kinds of games that he produces.

People that say they hate him mean it for a single central reason: they hate the decisions he makes and the influence he has to be able to lead a studio away from a direction that once made them proud to like RPGs. The main professional difference between a designer with their potential audience and a politician and their electorate is that the designer isn't scared of people judging them on integrity because they can simply switch to an audience that is more easily pleased. Of course people will withdraw support from someone who shifts to having ideals that serve a different group. The increased profitability is just an additional perk for him.

If you want to cry about that ladies, don't do it on the Codex. We don't want your kind of fragile emotional mentalities cluttering up the room.

I didn't complain about hating him, you pretentious dumbfuck, as there are a bunch of peeps/games in the industry I hate -- I was remarking on your preachy enjoinder that other posters should, as if doing otherwise somehow weakened "the Cause" or whatever fantasy you entertain about the power of the Codex.

Nearly everyone agrees that he makes shit games and that Bethesda has gone down the drain under his leadership; doesn't change the fact that he seems fairly decent on a personal level in this interview, and that's the only thing people were saying earlier in the thread. They didn't mean anything else, they weren't signaling a change of heart regarding Bethesda, but you had to jump in like a firebreather to try to whip up the faltering hate, because we can't have normal reactions to some random interview about a game designer's career.

 

[SimpleComplexity]

Let's play jRPG's

I would love to be able to take seriously someone who considers any of the old Shin Megami Tensei games to be a JRPG. I seriously would.

I didn't explicitly state which of those games in your sig are jRPG's. I win again.

 

[Black Cat]

I didn't explicitly state which of those games in your sig are jRPG's. I win again.

The only other role playing games on my Let's Play list aren't even japanese, you retard.

 

[SimpleComplexity]

Fuck off bitch

 

[torpid]

troll gets owned, good job Black Cat

 

[SimpleComplexity]

Where exactly did i get owned you baguette sucking frog loving Todd's cock loving newfag?

 

[torpid]

Aww, how cute. This is why Andhaira is still the best troll on the Codex, despite his limited repertoire: he never breaks down like this. What's wrong, SimpleComplexity? Butthurt about getting owned by an emo gurl?

 

[hanssolo]

Where exactly did i get owned you baguette sucking frog loving Todd's cock loving newfag?

Fuck off bitch

you owned your own self, bro.

 

[catfood]

Anime avatar

Location: The land of (truly) EMO witches.

Let's play jRPG's

Extensive use of the rolleyes smilie

Must be a Chefe alt.

Fixed.

 

[dextermorgan]

I don't care if he's a nice guy or not but after having been suckered into upgrading my rig so I could run his falsely marketed abortion of a game (Oblivion) and subsequently closely following the development Oblivon reskin butchering of my favorite game and all that that entailed, I can safely say that, in the unlikely event that I ever meet the guy face to face, I'll cheerfully serve him with a nice thank-you knuckle sandwich.