It's big, it's huge, it's coming to both PC and X-Box in the near future. The "man in charge", Todd Howard, takes some time out of his schedule to answer some of our burning questions, such as climbing walls, what other names got kicked around, and on-line multiplayer games. Thanks for your time, Todd.

Newsletter

Be notified of site updates. Sign-up for the Newsletter sent out twice weekly.

Enter E-Mail Address Below:

Todd Howard (Morrowind) Interview

Conducted by Omni

August 30, 2001

What’s Morrowind all about?

It’s all about making the character you want, and living that character in another world.

How did you get involved with Morrowind?

I started with Bethesda back in 1994, did a little work on the CD-ROM version of Arena, was one of the quest designers on Daggerfall and did Future Shock and SkyNET. Near the end of Redguard, an Elder Scrolls Adventure game, which I was leading, I was asked to lead the Morrowind project and I happily accepted.

What is the estimated number of working hours put into Morrowind so far? And when can we expect to see it on store shelves?

Jeez, total man hours? Good question, my quick estimate would be 143,000 and counting.

Morrowind is a pretty good title. What other titles were kicked around?

My mom thinks we should call it "Fantasy World". The original title was "Tribunal", a title I hope to use in the future in some way. The original title for Daggerfall was "Mournhold", which was actually set in Morrowind.

Do you think Morrowind will be well received by gamers and game critics?

I hope so. If we do our jobs right I think it will be well received.

Is it easy working long hours, every day of the week to finish a game? At the end, is it worth it?

Seeing your game on a shelf in a box and witnessing someone buy is the ultimate reward. I go to the store for every game I’ve done. In the end, if you don’t love what you do…do something else.

Advertisement

When a game is part of a series, there seems to be closer scrutiny of what goes on in the game compared to what was experienced in the previous games. What steps have you taken to ensure you stay within the boundaries of the Elder Scrolls universe and timeline?

We go to extreme lengths to keep the Elder Scrolls universe alive and don’t

Advertisement

step on what happened in previous games. But it does help that this game takes place in a different part of the world than Daggerfall. But like every new Elder Scrolls game, we try to add new things to the world to make it deeper.

Morrowind seems to be so open-ended, with such a large area to explore, NPCs to interact with, beasts to defeat, and a new character building system, how easy is it for you, as lead designer, to keep track of all the details associated with Morrowind?

It’s hard, we have to reread our own documentation often. Most of the systems are pretty well documented so it’s not so bad. But we’re making rapid changes to things now at the end, so it’s getting tougher. The Construction Set allows us to manage most of the data, so we can see what’s happening pretty quickly.

On-line multiplayer games are becoming the be-all end-all of gaming. Why isn’t Morrowind going this route?

I don’t believe they are the be-all end-all, yet. They may be in a few years, but I think everyone is just chasing the "soccer ball" right now. It’s really hard to make a good successful online RPG. We do the single player stuff really well and we’re going to do it even better and better. I wouldn’t be surprised if we do an online RPG one day, but only when we have something really special to bring to the table, and if I feel we can do it better than anyone else.

Lots of games ship with construction kits to allow custom modifications but only a fraction of the people that buy the game actually use them (mostly because they’re too technical). How user friendly will the construction kit be for Morrowind? Has anyone outside the development team used it and provided feedback?

Many people have used it, and it is with-a-doubt, one of the best game tools ever made. I can honestly say that. It’s one of the best things we’ve ever done, released or unreleased.

What’s one aspect of Morrowind that has been dropped because it didn’t add anything to gameplay?

Climbing walls. There was nowhere to really use it well, and in too many areas you could climb to things in very odd ways that we didn’t want you getting to. We made all these funky rules, tried to account for all the advanced geometry we were building, but it just wasn’t working well and was exploiting areas we had built for other reasons.

Thanks for your time, Todd!

The Official Morrowind Site


PC \| Gamecube \| DS \| Wii \| PlayStation 2 \| PlayStation 3 \| PSP \| Xbox \| Xbox 360
News \| Reviews \| Previews \| Features \| Classics \| Goodies \| Anime \| Forums