As the studio presses on with its work on Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6, Bethesda Game Studios seems to be building two of the biggest games it has ever worked on. Announcing that the team has vastly updated the Creation Engine, facilitating a bigger jump in hardware than that between Morrowind and Oblivion, and created the largest map in the studio’s history for Starfield, it seems both games are going to be huge for the popular developer.
Alongside these two huge announcements, Todd Howard has also revealed that both games will feature an innovative creation tool Bethesda Game Studios has tinkered with in the past. Talking to GamesIndustry.biz’s James Batchelor in an interview for Develop: Brighton Digital 2020, the influential video game director revealed that procedural generation will return for both Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6.
“We want to spend our time handcrafting the things that you can tell are handcrafted” Howard claims when discussing the subject of procedural generation during the interview. However, he does claim that procedural generation has imperative uses in other aspects, claiming that it will be used by the company in future projects. “If we can use procedural systems to generate content that keeps the game everlasting, then that’s what we want to lean on,” Howard states, claiming that while the studio has strayed away from procedural generation in recent years, “the stuff we’re doing now, we’re pushing procedural generation further than we have in a very long time.” The discussion begins at 8:40 in the interview below.
Although it’s unclear exactly what type of procedural generation Howard is explicitly referring to, it seems unlikely that’s he’s talking about the generation of full maps utilized by games like Minecraft, No Man’s Sky, or Spelunky. In the past, the company has dabbled in using procedural generation as a creation tool, building exterior environments with the use of a computer and then going over them to ensure they uphold the standards of the studio. Oblivion utilized the feature frequently in the large open space between its landmarks, for example.
Of course, Howard could also be referencing the procedural generation of other content as well, with Skyrim and Fallout 4 incorporating the system into its quest design. In both games, NPCs would generate quests at random, which usually tasked players with eliminating spawned enemies or defending certain settlements. It would be interesting to see if Bethesda Game Studio’s enhanced procedural generation systems could make these features more in-depth, especially as Howard seems interested in the idea of making the game “everlasting.” The interview also features a host of other interesting tidbits, including Howard’s history with Bethesda, why he thinks Skyrim was so successful, and plenty more on Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is currently in development.
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