The wonderful folks at Noclip has again come up with a very insightful documentary that sheds light on the development side of video games. This time, they are covering Bethesda Game Studios, the team behind The Elder Scrolls series and “adoptive parent” of the Fallout series.
The one-and-a-half-hour ad-free video is worth a watch as it go through various personnel in the studio, including Todd Howard, on what is it like to work there for all these years.
For those pressed for time, here’s some neat facts and takeaways from the video:
- Originally Bethesda Softworks, the company had to restructure in light of financial crisis due to low sales of two Elder Scrolls spin-offs, Battlespire and Redguard. New parent company Zenimax Media was formed, and Bethesda Softworks become the name of the publisher arm rather than the developers
- Morrowind was a big hit that saved the company and sold particularly well on the original Xbox
- Whenever they start designing a new game, they start with the open world map design
- With Oblivion, Bethesda were one of the first to utilise SpeedTree, a software that helps produce vegetation quick used in many popular games today
- Oblivion was supposed to have an arena for each city but was cut to only leave one. In Skyrim, it was to be for every hold but was cut entirely
- Whenever there’s a guild or group in other games, Bethesda employees will make one called “Tunnel Snakes Rule!”
- Todd Howard’s pitch for Fallout 3’s take on the V.A.T.S. system is “think Knights Of The Old Republic meets Burnout’s Crash Mode”
- Skyrim’s Dragon Shouts were inspired by the Voice in the Dune movies
- One of Fallout 4’s cut quests involved a rivalry with the town of Salem and Denver. The people of Salem would have been casted as witches, featuring magic spells from The Elder Scrolls- justified in-game as some sort of nuclear mutation.
- Fallout 4’s building mechanic was made by one person in an internal game jam. The team has been contemplated to cut the system for quite some time throughout development
Noclip has a part 2 of the documentary, which will give a behind-the-scenes look at Fallout 76, the studio’s latest work. That will be made available after Bethesda’s E3 showcase, which should show more of the game.