Todd Howard Interview

Eurogamer managed to corner Bethesda’s Todd Howard during QuakeCon for a three-page interview about Fallout: New Vegas, their acquisition of Arkane Studios, their collaborations with id Software, the unannounced projects they’re working on at the moment, and more.

Eurogamer: You’ve been working on something secret now for two years. Do you have any sense yet of when you will be able to talk about it or even say what it is? Are going to be sat here next year answering the same question?

Todd Howard: I don’t know [laughs]. I have a sense but we’re not ready even to talk about that, because it might change. I don’t want to disappoint people.

One thing I can say is that from when you first hear about it to when it’s out will be the shortest it’s been for us. It’s pretty far along. When we show it, we want to show a lot, because there’s a lot of game there to play right now.

You know, if Pete Hines came in and said, “I want you to show it,” I’d be like, “Okay, I’m ready to show it.” But we’ve just decided for now not to yet.

Eurogamer: Is it fair to say then that it’s based on existing technology?

Todd Howard: The technology is ours and it is inspired by the technology we have. We have a lot of it. But that’s our starting point – the Fallout 3 tech. It started with Morrowind, we went to Oblivion, we did a lot between Oblivion and Fallout 3 because now we had final hardware – with Oblivion we had six months on final hardware, so Fallout 3 technically does a lot more than Oblivion. The new stuff is an even bigger jump from that.

I can say it is on the existing platforms, which we’re really happy with. You almost feel like you have a new console when you see the game.

Hmm. So if it’s a console game, that actually suggests that it might not be an MMORPG. My guess is that we’ll finally hear about this next year sometime.