Elder Scrolls boss admits team reads Reddit for ideas from fans
If you've ever posted an idea for an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game, there's a high likelihood that game director Todd Howard has read it.
In the wake of the massive changes at Bethesda and Xbox, esteemed game director Todd Howard has made his first Reddit post in years, and it turns out he gets a lot of his ideas from reading fan posts on the site.
Last week was a bit of a bombshell at Bethesda as the usually secretive company revealed almost all of its plans moving forward. We now know that Fallout 5 is in pre-production, remasters of both Fallout 3 and New Vegas are in the works, and a new Fallout project is being worked on at Obsidian.
The open communication between Bethesda and its fans is a huge change that’s likely been mandated by Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s new direction for the company, and it’s something that game director Todd Howard appears to be adopting too.
Over on Reddit, Howard replied to Bethesda’s big news drop with a lengthy comment. “Hey Reddit. I’m a professional lurker and read your comments all the time,” he starts.
“Many here do and we deeply appreciate all the passion for our work. I know I don’t really post, and we’re usually very quiet. Today’s info was an attempt at changing that and letting everyone know what we’ve been working on the past several years, and a look at what’s coming.”
What’s interesting is that Howard goes on to explain that, although he might stay quiet for years at a time on the internet, he’s actually reading a lot of what fans post on subreddits relating to his games.
“So know we’re constantly listening and keep telling us how to be even better,” he writes “You’d be surprised how many great ideas I get from Reddit. So upvote your favorite and we’ll do it. Maybe.”
That’s not an outright promise that fans can get their ideas planted straight into the next Elder Scrolls or Fallout game, but it is encouraging for fans that want to feel like their voices are being heard.
Of course, the replies to Howard’s comment were quick to fill up with ideas of what they’d like to see next from Bethesda Software. Interestingly, there were actually quite a few comments related to last year’s remaster of Oblivion rather than Bethesda’s upcoming titles.
“Please get Virtuous to keep patching Oblivion and give it as much love as you guys gave Skyrim, because it feels abandoned right now which is a shame,” reads one of the most upvoted replies.
The Oblivion remaster launched last April as a stealth drop, a collaboration between Bethesda and Virtuous. It uses Unreal Engine 5 to render the graphics while utilising the original game’s Gamebyro coding for the game’s framework.
It mostly works well in practice, but that does mean it’s prone to bugs and issues that both engines are known for – that being stuttering and frame rate slowdowns on the Unreal Engine 5 side, and the usual bugginess that Bethesda titles are typically known for.
That comment isn’t the only one that mentions the poor performance of the Oblivion remaster with some gamers hoping that the reworks of Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3 don’t suffer the same fate.
“On the subject of remasters, I really hope FNV will perform better technically than Oblivion remastered does. It really feels like the latter was abandoned very quickly and in a not great state which is such a shame. Would it be possible to get more performance fixes for it...?,” reads another gamer’s post.
There’s no word yet on when the Fallout remasters will release, but with the prequel expansion for Fallout 76, ‘Raven Rock’, set to launch in 2027 – as well as the third season of the Fallout TV show, it wouldn’t surprise me to see them surface around then.
