Former Bethesda veteran Bruce Nesmith claims Todd Howard had the final say on almost all creative decisions, which had to “run through” him to be greenlit despite the size of the studio.
Speaking with YouTube channel MinnMax, Nesmith, who served as senior systems designer for Starfield and lead designer for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in his almost thirty-year tenure with Bethesda, discussed his career and the evolution of the studio throughout the years before his departure to become a writer.
According to Nesmith, Bethesda’s success caused the team to grow, and the dynamic and culture in the studio changed as the size grew slightly uncomfortable, which was, in part, one of the reasons for his departure. “There were a lot of changes going on,” he said, “and the structure of the company also was such that – half because of the pandemic and half just because of the necessary changes – you didn’t get to interact with Todd [Howard] as much anymore.”
“When you’re running six different studios and you’ve got a dozen projects…going on at the time, he’s only one man,” Nesmith added, explaining that lines of communication became a “lot more rigid” as growth at Bethesda continued out of necessity. Despite this, Nesmith claimed Howard still had the final say on a majority of creative decisions.
“All decisions run through Todd…He would hate, hate, hate me for saying that because he doesn’t believe it’s true. But unfortunately, it is true,” Nesmith said. According to him, if developers wanted to do “anything different other than the Bethesda usual,” it would have to get “in front” of Todd Howard before they could move ahead.
However, despite the supposed bottlenecked creative pipeline through Howard, Nesmith did give the Bethesda exec credit and said he tried “really, really hard to not be the ‘last say’ guy…it hasn’t worked out that way, but it’s not something he wants intellectually.” He claimed the way decisions ran through Howard ran due to him being “somebody that has opinions, and whose opinions are highly valuable.”
Nesmith says having someone like Todd Howard as the “creative centre and heart of the studio” at Bethesda does impose somewhat of a limit on the size a studio can grow to. According to him, Howard was “able to put himself in the seat of your everyday player to a far better extent than the rest of the design team” which made him near “invaluable” to the studio.
Howard’s ability to see things from the “Joe Average player” perspective when working on Bethesda’s titles helped the studio to avoid a disconnect from their audiences, according to Nesmith. Clearly, Bethesda is onto something with the slightly disjointed-sounding bottleneck of creative choices all having to funnel through Howard first if Starfield’s success commercially and critically is anything to go by, though.
Lead Image Credit: Bethesda
Leave a Reply