Todd Howard

“Every year, there's a new idea we can't do and a new technology for something that excites us.”

“Since I first got my iPhone and 'Super Monkey Ball' came out, I was like, 'Oh my gosh, this is great.' I'm always searching for the nirvana of mobile gaming, whether that's from a Game Boy or a Vita or a PSP or now the Switch.”

“What's funny is that by the time everyone plays the game - you know, we finish it, and then it takes a long time to make copies and ship it and get on the shelves - we probably haven't worked on it for a month, two months. So, we've already taken our break, and then we're on to the next thing.”

“Time makes a bigger difference: just making a game, shipping it, looking at what you did, how you did it, what you did well, what you didn't do well, and doing better.”

“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.”

“Ashley Cheng, who I've worked with for 20 years, he's the studio head in Rockville now. He manages more of the day-to-day stuff. I can focus creatively on what we're doing now and what we should be doing in the future.”

“I'd been playing everything and decided that this was something I maybe wanted to make a career out of. I knew where some companies were, but I saw the name 'Bethesda, Maryland' on 'Wayne Gretzky Hockey 3.'”

“A lot of times, when someone's going to pick up a game, it can be a bit daunting, like if they haven't played a roleplaying game, or they haven't played things in the series. We spent a lot of time on flow. How it feels to move through the world. How the game rewards you depending on which way you turn.”

“I liked that line in the movie 'Shakespeare in Love': 'How is this going to work out? I don't know, but it always does.'”

“There are more players on 'Fallout Shelter' than all of my games combined. That's a little sobering at times. It's not a good or bad thing.”

“One of the things that we really like about 'Fallout 76' is that we've built it so that we can support it on a month-to-month and week-to-week basis.”

“'Fallout 76' is a very different 'Fallout' game. We're very aware of that. We think a lot of people will like it, because we like it. But a lot of people probably won't. We need to balance that. This is an idea we have, and there's a lot of old 'Fallout' stuff in it, but it's a very new experience.”

“I'm a believer that players are good self-directors, and I think one thing that's good about video games is they can direct their own experience.”

“'Fallout 76' and 'Blades' get a lot of my time right now. I'm in more meetings as it's gotten bigger.”

“Batman. I like the idea that if I had enough money, time, and vengeance, I could become him.”

“The way we built 'Future Shock,' you have a height map and instanced 3-D objects rendering on top - that, believe it or not, is still how we build today. It's our basic paradigm for how to build a space.”

“'Minecraft' is like that, where you might say to one of your friends who doesn't play games, 'Hey, just sit down and try this with me.' There are other games you might put in front of somebody and say, 'I know you don't traditionally play games, but you've got to check this out.'”

“Your plan is not as important as your culture. That means you will run into problems that will disrupt your plan and schedule, and how you deal with that depends on the culture you have created within your team.”

“I liked hacking into and pirating computer games while in college. One of my favorites was Bethesda's 'Terminator 2029.' So I drove to their offices and asked for a job.”

“We didn't start at 'Fallout 3' and think about how to add to that. We take a step back and think, 'Okay, if we look at all the 'Fallout' games, what would a new one feel like?' So the focus is not ''Fallout 3' plus this'. Then we start really digging into the world.”