"I won't say anything bad about Fallout 3, but we wanted this not to make any excuses for the fact that it's a role-playing game, for how the action felt," he said.
"Because we feel we can layer all the role playing and stats on top. Let's have our cake and our ice cream."
Bethesda's background is in fantasy RPGs, but it has a respected pool of veteran shooter talent to call on: the team behind DOOM, Wolfenstein and Quake (oh, and that other one I suppose).
"Since id Software is part of our company, that's the first thing we did, we call them," Howard added.
"Like 'alright, we're gonna do this from scratch, give us some tips.'"