Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Todd Howard Interview: Fallout, Starfield Updates, and More - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Bethesda's Todd Howard sits down for a one on one with Greg! Let's talk Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Starfield, and more! Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping - What Made Adapting Fallout Make Sense? - How Involved was Todd/Bethesda in the Show? - Todd on Retiring One Day - Did Bethesda Want a New Fallout for the Show? - Bethesda’s Thoughts on Collaborating - Fallout 76’s Current Popularity - What is a “Bethesda Game” and how does Starfield fit that? - Ads - SuperChats - Learning from Starfield - Todd on Baldur’s Gate 3 - What Todd has Been Playing - Crossplay for Fallout 76 - Todd’s Thoughts on the Technical Leaps in the Industry - Starfield’s New Creation Kit - Todd on Obsidian and Fallout: New Vegas - Other Locations for Fallout - Starfield Console Mod Support - Why Todd Listens to Kinda Funny Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Monday, April 29th, 2024. I'm one of your hosts Greg Miller alongside as I live and breathe. Todd Howard. Hello, Todd. What's up? Not much, man. How are you? Thanks for having me. Thank you for doing this, of course. This is a big deal for us. Our first ever daily, kind of funny games cast, you were able to call in. I'm sure you're shaking off Hollywood directors left and right,

to adapt all your properties. So this is a big deal for me. I've turned them all down, so it's good. Okay, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. How are you doing now that you've become a Hollywood suit? I'm sure you're ready to leave games behind, just move all away from it. Just like Neil Druckman. It's much easier than games, right? You tell me.

Look, obviously, it's gone great. We're kind of over the moon. You never expect it to go this well. And we, you know, it was a long road to doing the fallout. TV show and like many things in your life, it's about people. And, you know, when I met Jonathan Nolan and we started working together, it just felt, hey, this could be something special.

And he and everybody around it did a great job. And it was honestly like one of the most fun things I've ever got to work on in my career. So all of us here are super, super happy with how it turned out. I have about 19,000 questions. I want to ask you, Todd. But before I dive into that, I'm going to get the rigamarole out of the way, all right?

Remember everybody, this is the kind of funny games. each and every weekday we get together to talk about the biggest reviews, previews and topics in video games live on YouTube, Twitch and podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, please support us with a kind of funny membership. Of course, you get all of our shows ad-free.

You can watch us record the afternoon podcast live as we record them, and of course you'd get the daily multimedia experience Gregway for your listening and viewing pleasure. If you want to be part of this show and ask Todd Howard questions, of course use the YouTube super chat function. wherever you're watching. Housekeeping for you, of course,

Kind of Funny Games is an 11-person, small business. That's what we do. We talk about shows live. We talk about games live. That is what we're doing. And today, you've already gotten

Kind of Funny Games Daily talking about the Kingdom Hearts movies. After that, of course, after this, you'll be getting my birthday marathon stream of Hell Divers 2, YouTube, Twitch,

podcast services. You know where to get our stuff. If you're a kind of funny member, of course, today's Greg Way is up, and it's all about the huge programming changes here.

and kind of funny. Thank you for making our dreams reality Patreon producers Carl Jacobs, Kieran Hovesapien, and Delaney Twining. Today we're brought to you by Aura Frames, but we'll tell you about that later for now. Let's start with topic of the show, Todd Howard. Now, again, you talk about

things in your life, in the people in your life, and all these things. I feel like for years I've seen you or, you know, God rest his soul, Pete Hunts, in the press. He's alive, but he's dead to us. He's dead to you and me. I don't know where he is.

He's always on some island or something. It doesn't matter. I saw you guys in the press for years and years and years talking about like not adapting, not doing the Hollywood thing, not doing a show or a movie. What made this one different? I think, look, it was less about, hey, you should take a game. And everybody says, you should take your game and your property and make a TV show. And it didn't come out of this desire to,

we must have a TV show. It's like you hit it off with another creator, someone I respect immensely. You know, Jonah's work has inspired me so much from what he did in the dark night, interstellar prestige, memento, and then Westworld, where you felt like,

okay, this could, we could do this at a high level. You know, we could have a really high quality kind of show, and I wanted to approach it as an entry in the franchise as opposed to, you know, a direct translation of an existing story. So, and he and I just kind of clicked. He was obviously had played the games a lot. So he didn't come to it like, you know,

I just want to make a TV show. He came to it as a fan of Fallout. He had played so much Fallout 3. He could speak to it naturally. And that's really what it came out of. And so I think what's really, really unique here, what's unique about Fallout, unlike other, whether it's comics or video games,

it's not really about this. particular character or this set of characters, it's about the world. So that led us, you know, do something and say, hey, let's treat it like a game and do this as an entry, move the timeline forward a little bit. So it takes place, you know, within 10 years after Fallout 4. And seeing how that has resonated with people who are fans of the series or play the games, but then like the games, people who have never played a Fallout, or they don't even play video games at all. I think

the games are, their one lens into the world of Fallout and the show is another lens into the world of Fallout. But it's still the world of Fallout. And I think that's one of the things I love the most about it. Like, I'm sure, I know you listen to every games cast, so you've heard everything I've said. But like

I listen to the most. I know. We'll get into why you're a fan of our content. I don't know what you get out of this, but I'm glad you listen. One of the things I appreciated the most was, you know, you're in it. I'm watching it. It's episode one. right, and to see her grab a stem pack and use it to heal the knife wound, right? I was like, I had to stop it and turn to Jen who hadn't played the games and be like,

you don't understand like, this is the same sound effect and the same look and the same, and like, you know, a Bresos or anything else you find in the world. Was there, when you, when you sit down with Nolan and you talk about this and that's what's going to happen, is there at all a pushback of like, well, to set it in the game world is cool, but to do one-to-one some of the game mechanics or noises, like, I, I would think, is it penciling them into a box? Is it something that wouldn't work in live action? Was there a conversation about all that?

There's a conversation about all of it. And look, I think when you work with another creative, you want to give them, particularly when someone like Joan Nolan, you want to give them the room to do what they do best. And the writers, Graham and Geneva, like here's the room where you can do the best job you can do without someone like me

or somebody else nitpicking every little detail. Like, hey, we want it to be authentic. And that can mean a lot of different things. There are some areas, I wouldn't say it. The main thing I would point out to Jonah and them is, we change things every game also. You don't respect your own lore. I knew it. I knew you don't respect your own lore.

Well, we try to as much as possible. But like the power armor changes from game to game, how it worked from three to four, even it's very different. And so it was, hey, look, there may be some things that you need to evolve because that's what we do in the games. And let's just make that a conversation. Let's have it be intentional. One of the ones we talked about is the pit boy changes. It changes every game. But the one in the show,

kind of like this gunmetal color. And Jonah was sort of consistent. Hey, look, I have a lot of colors in camera. Very particular with how these scenes are going to look. The vaults who doesn't very, like, that should be where the color is coming from. I kind of debated it a little bit. He pointed out, like, hey, here's what we do with Batman.

Here's what we did with this. And I think some of those things are really, really worthwhile. But I say the good news is everybody, involved on the show on the cast and cruise side, everybody, Kiltre, Amazon, they wanted to be authentic. So, you know, sound effects. I love when Norm is playing the game on his pit boy. Yeah. So all of those things and bringing them in where they still feel if you're watching a show, like that feels like the kid at the table who's playing a game on his phone and not paying attention. It works in the show, but it's if you played the games, you're like, wow, that really feels

like a deep cut. Well, and I mean, that's the thing, you know, I mean, like it's been quoted and I'm not, I'm going to butcher the quote, obviously, but it is the same thing of the ghoul being like, right, the first rule of the wasteland, right, is to get distracted by side shit. And it's like, yeah, that's how we all feel about it. And to translate a game world to a show world

and have them fit so seamlessly. It's just, I think it's nothing short of amazing. And it makes me wonder with you of like, you know, obviously you're a busy dude. You know what I mean? We got Starfield D.L.C. going on over here. We're worried about the other scrolls.

You've already talked about the next fallout way out there. Like, how much are you hands on with the show? Are you in every meeting for pre-pro? Are you on set? Like, what did they have you doing in terms of that? You know, my main involvement was up front, you know, and finding that box, you know, what are we going to do? What are we not going to do?

What are the rules? When we want to break the rules, how do we go through that? So I would do script reviews. But look, it's not just me. East von Pelle has been the art director on the series, Emily Paglerulo, has been the design director in the series, James Altman, I was the executive producer along with me. So I got to go to a set, you know, a number of times and check things out, but I'm not going to set to be like, yeah, I don't like the lighting.

I mean, you leave that up to the professionals. But James was there, you know, most of the time when they were shooting. And that was, we would have sometimes daily callbacks to, hey, there's this question on this and we would have, you know, call back to the studio, give them an answer, or they're going to be shooting something in a couple days and they're building this prop. This is what it looks like. Can we verify this? Do we need any changes?

So it was pretty active. But look, all the credit to Jonah, Graham and Geneva, script writers, for so much of what they did and making it as good as it is. Was this hard to let go? Obviously, Fallout New Vegas exists.

You've let someone play in the sandbox in the world of Fallout before, but to let someone play in a new space, right, a live action television show. Like, is that exciting but also terrifying? Or are you not that? Like, let them have their interpretation? Both of those things, right? But I don't think you can be, you're, there is a little bit of, uh, you don't know how it's going to go till you're in the middle of it. Sure. And look, I'm a believer of as a creative myself, having some close. collaboration and a checkback to letting those other creatives do their best work.

Right? And so there's still a checkback to make sure, hey, this fits in the franchise, this moves it forward in ways that we think are appropriate. But it is, you never know. You never know how these things are going to work out. Everybody has the best intentions. And sometimes doesn't always go the way you want when you do stuff. And sometimes it goes great and everybody, you know, reacts the way they have on the TV show.

Was there a moment in production or a pre-pro where you're like, this ain't going to be it. No, actually, I can honestly say every step along the way, it was sort of like, is this as good as we think it is? I would ask people on the crew and stuff like, it was like this, or like, this one's special. Yeah, because you'd have people who were Fallout fans just signing up to be on the crew, work the cameras or do whatever.

And from the first script we got, you sit down and you don't, you're kind of a little bit worried, like you get your pen, out, like I have to make a lot of notes. And you just started reading. And from the get-go was, I told them, this is a really, a real gift. You send them some notes, you know, obviously, but the overall, the way they were capturing fallout was really, really, it was a gift to sort of read that stuff and get to work with these awesome people.

So, you know, you're so storied as a video game developer, decades into this, you've made these worlds, you've done all these things, and you're used to them being on the screen, seeing them from the smallest idea on a whiteboard, I assume, to being in players' hands. What's it like to go to set then? Like, your first time going to set and seeing what they were doing? I mean, surreal. I keep saying, I thought there'd be more movie magic. Like, they're going to fake a lot of stuff. A lot of it's going to be CG. Shot a lot of it up in New York in Brooklyn. So it was a little bit easier to get to from where we are in Maryland. And you step in and they've built this two-story ball. And the lights are all, they're not fake lights. Like the buttons were, like, it's incredible

attention to detail. A lot of credit goes to Howard Cummings, a production designer on who just really was meticulous about translating every little thing. We were sharing the files right from the games and they were 3D printing things. And, you know, Howard would apologize when they had to change the scale of a hallway. I'm like, like, I assume we had to take the scale of some things. and so there was such a one-to-one correlation what we're doing but we've done VR and stuff but when you step into it for real and you're just walking around the set like picking up stuff and magazines my favorite anecdote is they had the overseer's office yeah and I sit down like hey sit behind the desk we'll like do a little interview here and you sit down they have all

the papers and they have this note that no one will ever see that's like to the overseer that they had written I'm reading like oh then you have the stack of paper and you flip it over, and then they have, like, the power report in the vault, and then, like, the food supply. I'm like, you didn't even, like, fake the stack of papers. And so it's sort of that attention. You don't know what's going to be in camera. There's a shot, like, in the town of the dentist who pulls the teeth for money. Yeah.

And when you go over an inspectant in person, they have, like, the most realistic, gross-looking teeth sitting in this bucket of, like, stuff they've just pulled. And they kind of have that attention kind of everywhere. So just awesome. And it's like surreal to see it come to life in that way. Is that, and I guess it's a dumb question because yes, of course it is. But I guess how rare inexperience is something like that for you, right? Because to dial it back, of course, you're God Howard, right?

Your internet memes, you're all these game of the years, you're this, that, and the other. Everybody's got an opinion of Todd Howard, right? But you're talking about the camera operators being fans or Nolan being a fan. or this, that the other, like, blah, blah, and then I have to imagine, like, I've been lucky enough to walk around Dice with you and see people come up to you and say, you're one of the reasons I'm in games.

I'm doing this because of that, blah, blah, blah. Like, is this a new level of seeing the impact you have on people's lives and what your creation means to them? I think seeing it out there, and, you know, I'll say again, it's not just me, you know, it's the whole team here. We have over 400 people here currently of the work on Fallout. you see the developers from the past, Tim Kane, Leonard Wariarski, all of them at Interplay over the days, the folks of obsidian. So I think, honestly, it's everybody who worked on Fallout to see it kind of hit out there in this way. And that, I think, is what's really special. You know, I view whatever I'm working on, the time I'm working on it, I'm a caretaker to it. And so, seeing it resonate, particularly people who don't play games. So I do give a mature warning to, like, my family and my mother, people like, no, it's not, get ready. Hold on. It's got some, you know,

acts of violence, bad words, all stuff, you know, that we like, but we'll see. I thought this was a game for children. Yeah, what have you been doing? This is terrible. And, you know, to your point, though, look, I'm often, I'm mostly in the office. You know, I walk around, hey, Todd, what are we doing here? And then when you, you know, sometimes when I'm out, people say that really is a good reminder how much this work affects people. Um, It's always great. And when I got to set, people are, like, giving me the Mr. Howard. I'm like, stop.

Like, you guys are the pros here. You know what you're doing. Fair enough. I'm glad to see it hasn't gone to your head like Neil Druckman. I won't let this thought. You know what I mean? He's got stylists now, Todd. You know what I mean?

I can't even ring this guy on the phone. I have the same, like, four things I wear. Chat earlier did pop off and wanted me to ask you where you get your jackets because you do have fantastic jackets. I have, like, three jackets. They look great. Banana Republic and Soul Revolver. Love it.

See, there you go, ladies and gentlemen. Soul Revolver. I never heard of that. What is that? What's Soul Revolver? Is that a dot com or is that a place? I think some leather jacket store in the UK. They're awesome.

Okay. Fair enough. Oh, there it is. Bears got it. Oh, my God. Yeah, these do look good. Yeah, there you go. Right there, the cafe racer.

I love that jacket. Everyone's like, hey, that's your jacket. You wear for events. Like, no, that's my jacket. I just like, what do I have that I, you know, doesn't look for. rumbled over that. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I respect that. I respect that a lot. So you talk about being a caretaker. And this is a theme I wanted to get into in this interview with, right? Because you have been on the record. There's been comments. There's people worried all the time about you retiring. There's been, you know what I mean?

There was this conversation when you guys came out and talked about Starfield, Elder Scrolls fallout, right? And you said, I forget in which interview you were like, listen, these games take forever to develop. up and I don't know how long I'm going to keep doing it kind of thing. How much is that on your mind right now, right? You're, you what, 54 now? You're right there in the mid, mid-50s, like...

53, yeah. Okay, I don't want to put too much on you. How much are you thinking about the timeline and how much you have left or want to do? I mean, I sure you want to see your family at some point. First, you know, I don't want to ever stop. I just, you know, it's too much fun. You know, I love the work. I love the products.

If I didn't make these games, I would just be playing them all the time. Even this weekend, I was jumping between Starfield and Fallout 76 and Fallout 4. That's how I spent my weekend playing games. Very nice. And, you know, they do take a long time. And so I think one of the things that we're focused on here is obviously making sure of the highest quality, but also, you know, finding ways to increase our output. Because we don't want to wait that long either, right?

It's never our plan, but we want to make sure that we get it right. And so my hope is to do it kind of as long as possible. I have no plans of retiring or anything like that. And so. Was there a moment in the lead up to Fallout where you're like, oh, man, I wish we had a new one out. And I know the next gen patch just dropped. And I know Fallout 76 is ongoing.

But I think for so many of us, and you've seen obviously the numbers across these games of people jumping back in, was there a damn i wish we could have had five or fallout colon whatever out alongside the game or the show no not necessarily um you know we sort of first i view it top down franchise how healthy is the franchise and how relevant is fallout to the world and i think we're we're doing well really well there and we have a whole team on fall at 76 and so we've always been doing a lot of fallout work really for the last that game came out five six years ago and so i think what's about this moment is seeing all of that work in Fallout 76.

Understand a lot of people dismissed it from how it launched, understandably. It's kind of been sneaky popular for the last three or four years. And seeing all that attention come onto 76 now, and people coming in and saying, oh, you know, really, really enjoying this as a fallout experience. And I think right now, as of today, it's the most people we've ever had.

in that game. And so seeing all that response to particularly 76 that hadn't had that level of success before. Sure. I'm super proud of the team here that's been working on it. And so, you know, to your larger question, we're always making plans. And we kind of have in some ways or another five kind of separate teams within the studio. We move people between both the work we do on fallout, the work we're doing on Starfield. We have some stuff coming that we really excited people to see. Elder Scroll 6, mobile team, and then kind of external projects and co-development we're doing

on things. Obviously, we do, you know, backports or other things we're going to other platforms with games that still have big audiences such as Fallout 4.

Sure. And of course, you got a remaster fall at some point. I'm just putting that out there. Just putting that out there. It's not a question. I've heard that request.

I'm sure you've heard a lot of them, and that's where there's two things I want to jump off of right there with you, right? talking about the team in 76, but before then I want to jump to you talking about, okay, caretakers, as you've said, and then also the fact of like, yeah, we know we wish we had more bandwidth. Again, with Fallout now having, I would say, even more success, being even bigger, bigger than it's ever been, thanks to this show, do you sit there and think more about that co-development, external development, let people go, not make Fallout 5, but make Fallout,

colon, whatever, more stuff like the mobile game, more stuff like the mobile game, more stuff like, in New Vegas? I would say we're all, we've always had those conversations. We did a lot of things for the show. It might seem like, hey, there isn't a big new game out, but we added content into 76 for the show. 76 has a really great map expansion that's coming this summer with Skyline Valley. And so we look at what we're doing with the franchise and then we say, do we still feel

good about, I can't reveal it now, but here's our runway for the fallout. you can do it as a franchise. You can reveal it now. It's fine. And it's season two happening. What are we doing on mobile? What are we doing in 76? What are we doing with this thing?

What are we doing with this other thing? And when are these landing? And again, if I could snap my fingers and have them all be out and ready, I would. But the main thing is, like, how do we deliver these at a high quality level? That's always most important. Double back with me then, in this vein, talking about 76, right? You're talking about it having come so far since launch, being quietly popular.

Right now for so many people to be finding that out, to be jumping into the game, what does that do? As you always talk, it's not just you. What does that do for the team? Right? Like, I think it's always funny when you see anytime you guys do the press conference

or the joint things with Xbox, where when Elder Scrolls online comes up and like, we're live reacting. And for the most part, we're all like, okay, and it's kind of a quiet part for us because it's not our game. But obviously, to mean,

investing resources that way, there is an audience playing it. There is an audience playing 76 and there has been. And now there's this bigger audience than ever. Is it like how does that do, what does that do for a team that has been working quietly on something being proud of it, but not being able to necessarily get out from behind the shadow? Well, it does everything that you said. You know, take like Fallout 76. I know people look at Steam numbers totally understandable because they're, they do a great job

sharing those. If you look at, say, you know, Xbox. Microsoft top played games, like 76 doesn't really left the top 50. And so we've been proud of those numbers for a long time. It just, you know, with the show and the steam numbers being so public, it kind of hits another level as well. And so, you know, obviously there's a lot of pride there in terms of people coming back and saying, hey, I may have written this game off.

And this is really great. I'm having a really great online experience. And I think what's important is, is we want each game to be different. We get a lot of that chatter or see it. I'm like, this one's my favorite, and you shouldn't like this fallout game and this. And our view has always been,

we want every entry, this is the same with Elder Scrolls, right, to feel like it has its own tone, that it is its own experience. And so that people can kind of, maybe they want to go on mobile, maybe they want a single player thing like this, or a multiplayer thing. And all of those things should feel like,

kind of a unique entry. We're saying people now say, the TV show is my favorite entry in Fallout. I think that's great. Like, we don't, I don't view that as a negative. I view that as, okay,

that's, you enjoyed that one the best. Somebody else enjoys this one the best. And that's, that's what we want. Do you guys feel, and I guess just you, since I won't make you speak

for the entire 76 team though, but do you feel in a way vindicated? I mean, I remember when 76 got announced and obviously launched problems like we already talked about, But more of the fact that people are like, well, what is this? Why would we want this?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And here you are years later, right? And I have the headline pulled up from Kataku, Zach Zawien over there, right? 60% of playtime in 2023 went to six-year-old or older games, right? That was data pulled. Where it's like, I feel like in a lot of ways you were ahead of the curve on that of we're launching this thing. And sure, it isn't where we want it to be.

But like you're saying, you're going to build on it. You're going to do this thing. And then to also have this dovetail with the show being so popular in this explosion. I feel like quietly you were ahead of the game on that one. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think vindication is the right word. I wouldn't use that. Again, look, we have a lot of launch issues.

So everything we got hit for then, we deserved. Sure. And then. Lazy devs, I know all about it. Yeah, right. Like, so I don't know. I don't know what you. I don't want to agree to you right there.

I said lazy devs, but it was clearly a joke. And you said, yeah, right, but I don't know. I won't agree to that. We're not lazy, but we still, you know, we had our obvious issues there. And, you know, look, it's pretty, it takes a lot of discipline to put your head down then and say, look, we're going to work through this over a long period of time. For sure.

And we did that work. So we had a couple benefits really going for us. One is the game was more popular than a lot of people out there new. So we had a pretty large, engaged audience that we wanted to do right by. And the other one obviously is that audience. right, the franchise and the community around that game were so good in saying, look, we love this, we hope you guys keep working on it.

And so that's what fortunately we were able to do. And look, not everybody's in that situation. I can tell every developer out there who's doing these games, particularly online ones or go through the bumps, it's hard. And sometimes you just don't find an audience big enough that's gonna allow you to continue doing that work. And so I think we were really, really fortunate,

to have all of those things kind of align on a game like this. Well, I think, you know, again, to talk about how, and I'm not blowing smoke just because you're here and you watch our podcast and love it, but how special the Bethesda developer-player relationship is. And I dial that back to not understanding that. And I remember when Fallout 3 came and I was working at IGN in the way that was such a moment,

and Charles Aeneett wouldn't shut up about it. And we were all about it. And then I remember going to my first pass. And this sounds quaint now, of course, but going to my first packs in seeing this giant Bethesda booth. And I walked over there like, all right, what games are we going to see?

And it wasn't games. It was you guys selling merch and selling, you know, the Vault 101 sweater and all the stuff and like the line wrapping around because your audience was so into your games and still is to this day, obviously. It's what made Bethesda, Bethesda,

what supports Fallout, what supports Elder Scrolls, et cetera, et cetera, but it's so special and so different for a big developer slash publisher now, right, of course. And then just the fact that you've maintained it, I think, is so special. I don't know. And there's no question there. Just the fact that you're doing something way before anybody else was and you're doing it on a larger scale. Yeah, I think the one thing you're hitting there that I am proud of quite a bit is the longevity

of it. And my 30th year here, and we go back and we feel like a lot of the same people, we've obviously gotten better, but our connection with the community. community, you know, doing modding. We have, you know, creators coming in next week to visit the studio. And those things where we realize, oh, we were doing this, you know, 25 years ago with modding. Or those things where I'm on Reddit all the time.

It's kind of my preferred information platform. And, of course, your show. He's not kidding, ladies' gentlemen. He listens to the games cast. He'll bring stuff about my kid or my dog. I do. I'll mention things. Hey, you guys talk about this.

Tell me more about that. And so I do think that connection has been really, really special with us. And, you know, I believe this. Like people who are fans of things, I always say this externally and internally. And in terms of the time everybody is spending on it, it's important to them. Like, all out in Elder Scrolls and now Starfield, they're very important to people who are spending time in these worlds. It's not just like, they're not just goofing off. Sometimes they are, but you know what I mean.

Yeah, I know, totally. You have a connection of what you're doing. Yeah. And so feedback, when they have criticism or certain types of feedback, like, we want that. We realize how important it is to everybody. It's important to us. Again, we don't always get it right, but I assure you we always do everything we can to try to get better and better. So talk to me about that, because in the lead up to Starfield and then even the reaction afterwards, one of the things I talked a lot about on the games cast was that this is a Bethesda game

and I didn't mean it derogatory right but I was talking about the systems and the way they work and da-da-da-da and obviously so many people and obviously I'll throw it around too both jovial and series to an issue of Bethesda Jank kind of thing and all that like

how do you view what a Bethesda game is well number one for us it is it's about the player and their freedom. You know, what kind of agency do they have to kind of go explore,

make the character they want, and then kind of, you know, do whatever they want. So the more that we can push that agency in terms of, hey, go do whatever you want, we're going to try to pay off on that. I think when you look at open world games or games like that,

you're going to get a certain level of, you know, use your phrase, a certain level of jank or a certain level of, well, that tested an edge, or it's doing something that, you know, we hadn't intended. I do, you know, data-wise, and I believe Starfield, you know, is the most solid release we've had given its complexity, you know, at that moment. But look, there's always going to be some things that we miss or people want us to get better,

and we just keep pushing and make it better and better. So again, some of that comes with the style of game, but we are sometimes, how to say this, in the point of, do we want to construct? strain the player more to get rid of something that might look odd on the screen when we're testing. We'll say, like, well, how odd does that look? And oftentimes it might be like an animation breakdown or something like that. And we often, this is just us, we'll kind of lean on, well, let it go. Is the player having fun there? Sure.

If it's an actual bug, we absolutely try to fix it. But if there's like, you know, kind of a visual hiccup once in a while with something, and the players having fun, they're able to do something. thing like, yeah, let it go. Yeah, again, I think that speaks to who you are as a developer, the company, and then the audience you've curated, where it's that thing where, to your point,

game can launch, it can have this problem, that problem, this isn't working. You guys are committed to fixing it and getting it where it needs to be, and then, of course, it'll be whatever it is at the end, but even when it's not working, that's the experience I'm looking for from your games, right? Like last night, in reference, getting ready for this, like I'm very similar to you, right? Of like this weekend I'm bouncing around.

And I was like, I got it. I jumped in. Last night was Sunday. So Saturday night I jumped back into fallout four next gen, loaded up my 96 hour save. And it was literally like, where was I? What was I doing? All right, you know what? Re-rolled last night and going through.

And it's just that instantaneous of like, damn, this is why I love these games. And it is the minutia that I can sit there and I'm at the terminal and I'm just reading the overseer notes. I'm going through to make sure everyone's deceased. I'm doing it. And it's like, I understand why someone else would play this. It'd be like, this is boring. I don't want to do this. I understand why that wouldn't work. In the same reason, you know, I love Starfield so much. I understand why some people were like, oh, well, this isn't X, Y, or Z for me. Or I wanted more choice, more agency, however it's going to be.

But, you know, for me, it was such a fix in Starfield of, oh, well, in Fallout 4, I really didn't like base building. So the fact that it was in Starfield, but you didn't have to do it. And I know you got knocked in reviews for that because it was like, oh, well, some of this doesn't feel impactful. For me, it was the idea that, well, I had choice an agency and what I wanted to do with my time in the game. Does that make sense? Is that what you were going for?

It does. I think, look, with all of the games, we'd rather give you the option. You know, you talked about, I'm a big believer in, like, the players being self-directed. So if you want to sit in the terminals and read all the notes,

I think some players are, they They like that more than others, but all players at some point or another are in the mood for that. They just need a break from the action. They can kind of self-direct. Like I really love the quiet. I like to stand on the hills and watch the sunset in games. And sometimes like, no, I'm really in the mood for some action.

And so as long as we're showing the players, this is where this type of content is, this is where this type of content is. And so, you know, base building or the, you know, the camp building in Fallout 4, you when we first did it was very much, even in the studio, how is this impacting the game? What is this like? And the players of Fallout 4, kind of the first time we did it,

some people will be like, I don't like that at all, I don't wanna do that. And then other players are like, that's all I do, I love it. It's become a huge part of 76 then. So we definitely felt in Starfield, hey, this has a home in the game, particularly if you're getting into high level crafting,

but do you have to do it? No. Is that a negative in some people's eyes? that they don't have to do it. Maybe so. I can't pass judgment on that, except to say that a lot of people like it in Starfield. So we want to make sure those that like that,

kind of, you know, we're serving them. Shipbuilding became the big one. And then the update that we have coming, I think it's going to get announced in a few days, actually, this week and be up on Steam Beta. It's got some great stuff for shipbuilding in it as well. Is that for the big update, Shattered Space? Or is this just an update update?

This is a separate update. Shattered space is in the fall, but we have a big update that's coming really soon for Starfield. There's a lot of stuff, mostly because you kept mentioning it in particular. We did the map stuff, so we have some city map stuff. You even had to ping me advice on that, I think, but it's fine. We're here for you. Oh, I'm going to talk more about Starfield in a second, so don't worry about that. We have a litany of questions about that.

But before then, I'll remind you, of course, ladies and gentlemen, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every weekday. We are here at 11 a.m. after kind of funny games daily talking to you about the biggest topics, reviews and previews and video games. If you like that, support us with the Kind of Funny membership, either on Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny or YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny games to get the shows ad free, watch us record them live, and of course get the Greg way each and every day. But for now you're not using your membership benefits, so here's a word from our sponsor. Looking for the perfect gift to celebrate the moms in your life.

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that is the new games cast schedule each and every day here Monday through Friday a couple super chats that come in that are just of course patting you on the back Todd so before I get into Starfield stuff we'll give you that Joey Radstone said my wife and I spent all weekend replaying Fallout 4 with the new console update

the game holds up so well it makes time fly by thanks Todd and Bethesda Game Studios are you pumped to see so many people back in to fallout four um it's just surreal i think our numbers across the series hit around five million players a day you know over the last week outrageous um and it hasn't it hasn't kind of gone down so seeing fallout four up there i think is the most played a game on steams i don't i don't know i see some stats it is it is kind of surreal uh to see that uh then bander s n said hey todd loved the show uh as a huge fan but even my name

non-gamer mom told me that she was watching and absolutely loved it. We got to get her. We got to get her an Xbox now. Get her out there. You know what? I've seen that a bunch and it is kind of nice for people who play video games a lot and

they have family or friends who don't that they could say, is that that game you were talking about? I just love the people get to experience it in a different way. All right, so my questions about Starfield, sir. As you know, and we've talked about it and you've seen me on this show about. I love Starfield, right? And you said something I thought interesting when we were

talking about fallouts, where you're like, oh, well, you know, the show is this person's favorite entry, which is great, and I, you know, table by, blah. I said how much I like Starfield. The chat over here is then on fire of people who loved it or hated it or whatever in between, right? My question for you is the reception at launch of Starfield. How does that affect you and the team? Because what I thought was different about the lead up to Starfield. field was that you were all wearing your hearts on your sleeves and saying this is the game we've always wanted to make we are this is like something that so means so much to us and so when you get there and you get a game that is then polarizing to this level what was the takeaway what was the

office like on launch day review day all those well there's a few things um and thanks for asking the number one that we're always concerned with is how is the game holding up right what's our bug level what's the crash rate so first of all we were over the moon with how kind of the actual data we were getting back and how the game was performing on a technical level, that one to us is always sort of most important on the dev side. Number two was the amount of players kind of set a record for how many players that we had in a game. Obviously, Game Pass is a part of that. Of course.

But to see the amount of people playing and like, okay, we've had more players at launch than we've ever had in our careers and the game is holding up really well, it's a really joyous moment for us, particularly after how long the game took. On the review side, and we've been through this, so it's not new to us. And what's new is it's a new IP, so you know that we're going to be doing some things differently

than we've done before. And obviously, we had people who love the game, both on the review side, and people who liked it less. I think the majority of our reviews were in the 90s, which, look, that's great. I don't want ever be in a world where that is not a great place to be in terms of kind of critical reception, particularly in a year where there are so many amazing games out.

Sure. But obviously, look, we see the feedback. We see a lot of players saying, this is what I want out of a Bethesda game, which is to explore a world in a certain way. And Starfield didn't give me that. I prefer the way it's done in Fallout or Elder Scrolls. and perfectly understandable, right, in terms of, hey, this is a different experience. And I do think, you know, for us, particularly me going into a science fiction game, I want to be able to land on all the planets.

I want the game to say yes to us, knowing that that content is going to be different than you've seen from us in the past when you're exploring a landscape. And that's some of the tradeoffs will make to do what we think, makes a science fiction game like this that's kind of based in this kind of fiction and reality to make it what it should be. And, you know, each of the franchises should kind of be its own thing. For sure. And so obviously, look, there are areas that, you know, the maps or some other things, gameplay options that were adding other display modes on console that people have asked for and we want to do all that stuff take some time but we're excited to get stuff out there

well like you said what we got we got more dLC or an update an update getting announced this week said a couple days from now with some stuff yeah should be okay okay good how imminent is that coming up getting announced but you know fairly fairly imminent fairly imminent fairly even exactly it'll be this week well i'm glad at least you're not you know in dating everyone with Oh man, everybody's like, I wish there's more Bethesda games to play. Now you got Fallon 4, you got the patch, you got 76 going, you got all this stuff coming here for Starfield. Great, well, I'll take another two weeks off and just play all these.

I approve. Okay, good, thank you. Barrett, put it on the calendar, I'm going to leave. It's on there. Thank you very much. You talk about the year of you launching Starfield and stuff. What was your reaction to the success, Balders Gate 3 found? Deservant.

Great studio. they've done great work for a long time. For sure. And so I think people, there's some people in the industry who look at there and say, oh, just look at this overnight success. Like, what, you played their previous games. And, you know, I think they did a tremendous job, obviously in what they delivered as a product, but who they are as a studio, how they go about their work, how they talk about it.

I think it's fantastic. Did it, I guess that's something that I think's interesting, especially to talk about Larian and Bethesda, right? Larian Divinity then into Baldur's Gate, right? You sit there and go, that's a Larian game. Bethesda, obviously, fallout, Elder Scrolls, Starfield now. That's a Bethesda game. Did you look at things you saw in Balders Gate 3 and go,

does that inspire you? Does that make you want to add or change things in your future games? You know, I think we look at all games, right? I don't want to pinpoint particularly that one. Or, you know, we're big gamers. We see things in all games where we say, oh, you know, that's actually a better way of doing something that we're

trying to do. So I don't want to like call it specific right now in areas, but I'd say across the gaming spectrum, you know, how people are, how we're engaging with games and things we like, you sort of see that filter into the games we have in development now

and patches are things that we're doing to our own games. Yeah. What are you playing right now? You said all the fallout stuff I get, of course, but if you're, you know, you guys are all big gamers, playing other things and being inspired by everything. What are you finding fun in? I've been bouncing before that between,

these aren't similar at all, but Diablo 4. I really, really enjoy that game, and the new Forza Motorsport. I'm a big Forza fan. Know those folks really well at turn 10, and I love the new game. And the person you see who keeps losing in the multiplayer races who's near the bottom,

that's me, but I love it. I just grind it out. I just, you know, love the experience there and trying to get better at range. Love of the game. You're just there for love of the game. Yeah, that's great. Okay, so we've covered Starfield.

We've covered updates coming. Shattered Space is coming along nicely? It is. It is. We're going to have some stuff to show. I can't say. What do you think of summertime, baby? Right around SGF? What are you doing?

June, June, something there. Got a showcase going on with Xbox? What's happening on? Monday? Sunday? Monday? Okay. Fine. Have it your way.

Have it your way. Okay. Let me get some super chats involved. Of course, ladies and gentlemen, if you ever want to be part of the games cast when we're live, you can super chat and be part of it right there. Rooster 596 has a specific one about 76 for you and says, can you ask, that's me. And yes, I can, of course, ask about crossplay on Fallout 76. Have you looked into crossplay?

What's your, where are you feeling about that? We have. We keep looking into it. It wasn't designed that way from the beginning. So obviously we get into server and database silos. there's cross play and then there's cross progression. Yeah, we do have a cross save up here. It's actually a question from Aaron made you laugh.

That's do you think that cross save will ever be standard? Not locking you in. And especially not for stuff. I don't know about the word standard. Here's what I would say, which is from us, the more important thing is cross progression than cross play. And we do separate them. We'd love to have it all.

It's something we are looking at. But I will say it's quite, you know, the way that was architected from the beginning is quite, a technical lift, not saying we are, aren't doing anything, we are looking at it. Of course. And seeing where that's going to impact people, I think, look, going forward in the world that we want to be in, I think it's very important in something that, you know, in our future games that we're going to be really, really mindful about to make sure, in particular,

the progression that where you pick up a game, you're able, no matter what screen you're on, you're able to just keep going with your character and what you were doing. Well, it's the power of Xbox, right, everything being in the cloud. And look, Starfield does that really, really well from the cloud to the PC to the console. You've kind of architected that way. And so really happy. And I play it in all of those different manners. And so it's also what are we playing when we can't pick it up and do progression?

It does move it up stack internally. Yeah. And when you're annoyed by it, for sure. When the team is like, this sucks, can we fix this? Let's go for it. Yeah. We're seeing some of that, obviously. To pull off to the side and not even.

about, you know, you and Bethesda and Fallout and stuff like that. As someone who's been making games for such a long time, do you ever get the chance to stop and marvel at where we're at? Like, you know what I mean? Like cross play and this, that, and the other. And then just in general, a giant online world. And, you know, we're doing this whole games cast thing. So next week we're doing Greg's worst takes and we wanted to like,

well, we should play Spider-Man web of shadow. Or no, it wasn't even that. It was fallout four. It was actually your game where I was like, oh, I want to do the update. and it didn't even dawn on me that I didn't have a digital version of Fallout 4 that I had a disc and that doesn't feel like that long ago

but it must have been one of like final disc games I ever had and it was like then the jumping through hoops and figure out how to get to the like this goes so quickly and you're talking about these games you've launched and people are like well can we get crossplay and you're like

well it wasn't designed that way and it's really hard to go back right to when it was a baby game and make it make sense that way yeah what you were saying I don't forget the staff that you had earlier about the amount of time spending games and how old those games were last year.

60% of playtime in 2023 went to six year old or older games. Yeah, and we're seeing that as well, right? Obviously, there's Skyrim. It's on everything. We know that. But that's what the audience wants and they're sticking with games. And so I think it's a good thing, right?

Our ability to keep updating games. But that's the main pattern that you're seeing that when you make a game now, if it's a decent size, it's not unreasonable to say. It's more reasonable to say, people will be playing this in a decade. Are we set up for the future?

And that's, you know, more of what we've been doing in our development. Yeah. That's also why you'll see us, you know, maybe make some tech decisions other people, particularly in terms of modding. We want to get those tools out there

and say, this game's going to be extended by us and other people for a decade, maybe more to come. So let's do the harder work now up front to make it extensible than just getting us to a release point. You talk about keeping it around for so long, keep with people engaged.

To have lived through and reviewed fallout four at launch, obviously in the kind of funny spare bedroom, spare bedroom, when it was actually a spare bedroom, on a disc, all these different things, what has been so, not comical. It's been refreshing, I guess, but so interesting. As a tent pole to 2024 is that my TikTok algorithm is now filled with the videos of the young TikTok kids going like, here are the four things you need to know and fall out for. Or did you know

and fall out for it? If you went here and it's like such a different night and day launch, even though it's a patch, but a launch to being like, this is where we're at now with how people consume content. And are you seeing that stuff? Are you marveling at people once again discovering or discovering for the first time all the crazy things that can happen there? I have experienced some of that. You know, the algorithm starts showing me stuff. And it's like this little, it's like looking at a yearbook or something. I'm like, oh, I forgot about that.

I was like, is that, was that true? What? So obviously we see the player numbers and that to us has just been this, you know, to have Fallout be kind of the most popular thing in gaming again. in the way that it is, it's just nothing you can sort of, you expect the show to bring a lot of attention to it, but the way that it has and the level of it has exceeded,

you know, even our wildest expectations. The games were ready for it, right? We had content added to all the games, so they're kind of ready for people to come back, but the level of it has certainly blown, you know,

completely blown us away here. Yeah, I have to imagine, like, you know, you can hope, but you don't want to give yourself too much, right?

You hope this show will be successfully. You hope it, find an audience and then you hope that'll translate to games but I imagine you got to keep your expectations in check and just keep working on your job for sure um I want to get a few more in here of course people have written in tilted crow wrote in with a super chat and said is there an update on the new creation kit this has been popping off in the chat a lot too this for starfield yeah um yes we've uh delivered it to some people uh some are creators for starfield you're going hear some information about that soon.

So don't have a date to announce on when its full release is coming, but really, really important to us, look, our modders out there have been incredible. And a lot of those, you know, I think with before the Creation Club and now our new creators program, I think one of the great things is when we get to see them kind of go pro and move from hobby to professional, we've hired some of them into the studio, but more so the ones out there who were just like, hey, I can make a living now. making stuff that's really, really good content that I think those people deserve the attention

and the praise for what they do in our games. Really, really great content. Of course, again, for me, coming back to Fallout 4 for the first time since the first DLSC, I think, jumping in and seeing mods and seeing everything that's in there. Like, oh, wow, yeah, there's so much more to do here now. A few super-sats, like I was saying.

Cam wrote in and said, you've kind of touched on this from a vague point, but he wants to be specific. with Bethesda and Obsidian now being under the same Microsoft umbrella, has that opened up more opportunities for collaborations like New Vegas. And I'll stop you right there, Todd. We all saw the headlines, you hate New Vegas, you hate Obsidian, you've retconned them out of the timeline, it just doesn't exist.

So you don't even have to answer this question if you don't want to. First of I'll say they did an amazing job with New Vegas. We see some of that, and I'll say everybody, like, that's a game that we published, right? So it's also kind of, it's, yeah. Yeah. And I would say Fergus, who runs Obsidian, is absolutely one of my favorite people in the video game industry. And he's been around for so many decades, has done so many things and has seen it all. So they do a fantastic job. I can't speak to things that we're doing with the franchise in the future, obviously.

But New Vegas is a very, very important game to us and our fans. We think they did an incredible job. And if anything, the show is leaning into, right? events there. Just a bit by that final shot of the show. Yeah, just a bit. It's leading it. Yeah.

And obviously, season two is going to be featuring some of New Vegas. And we're careful about, you know, maintaining the key events of that game and the great content in it. It is obviously difficult to deal with when you're going back to an area where a game had multiple endings. Yep. You know, we have some answers there, but it's hard. I'll just admit everybody realizes it's hard to sort of canonize or say this is exactly how that game ended. And so whenever we can, I like to avoid it. Like don't refute anything that happened.

Be careful when you're specific about what happened. Just like, you know, we want that game and what the players did to be their reality and true. And I feel like that's got to be tough, right? Because again, playing any of your games, but fallout for this example, right, is about that personal experience. the choices you made, who you went with, what you did with Megaton, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so, yeah, I feel like you get to those points and you have to leave it ambiguous enough.

And again, that's the power of being in a new setting, but then the constraints, I guess, of being in the game world, which, again, I give you guys credit for. And I said we do with every series. We ran into with Elder Scrolls as well, which has a ton of lore and things that happened or didn't happen.

Whenever you come to a new game, in a franchise that has existed a long time, this is not unique to us, right? You work at other franchises. Like, where do you draw the line between what's true and what's not true? And what we tend to do is the most truthful thing is what people saw on the screen, right? That's the most truth. And then things that are sort of written officially,

officially along with the games is kind of second truth. And then other things that are written are done outside of that. There are a number of things outside of those, whether they're spinoff things or somebody answering on the internet. those things are kind of third place. And when you go to something new, you kind of look back over that and you say, okay, how much do I want to lean in on this truth down here versus this other one? Or if you have a really, really good idea or you want to move things forward in some way, how do you acknowledge that while still moving things forward?

And it, you know, obviously it can be tricky when some of those things refute. I like this super chat question because it sounds like they're fixing. but they're phrasing it in a way that talk about the past instead of the future. New Mateo says, have you, Todd, ever looked at doing fallouts in places other than the U.S.? Say Canada's annexation, London?

Like, so he said, have you ever looked in the past? Not about what's happening in the future at all. Look, my view is part of the fallout stick is on the Americana naivete and part of that. And so, you know, for us,

right now. It's okay to sort of acknowledge some of those other areas, but our plans is to predominantly keep it in the U.S. I appreciate that. I think, again, like, we had this conversation. Sorry, go ahead. Good question. Good question. It's a good question. I also like in any sort of world, I don't feel the need to answer. Like, it's okay to leave mystery or questions. What is happening in Europe? What is happening here? I think those are good things. And elder strolls, but he wants to kind of go to these other specific lands. And I think I'm known for here saying, like the worst thing you can do to mysterious land

is remove the mysterious. Let me explain everything and answer every question. Mysterious lands mysterious, yeah. Cool. I'm just saying that I agree with you. And I think it's for me personally, it's something I talk about in Gamescast last week, I think, why Fallout 3 resonates so much in my mind of being that Americana,

blind patriotism and being in D.C., I thought it worked so well in terms of all the monuments and all the stuff. That step-out moment is still my favorite in Fallout 3, and then you come out and you see destruction. There's no humanity. And then this I bot rolls by sort of, you know, if at times right, it's playing this Americana. This is President John Henry Eena. That moment is really, I think, really delicious.

Yeah, I love it. 100%. And then your final super chat for this show is Heroic Headgear, who says, Are there still plans for console mod support for Starfield? Absolutely. 100%. Yeah. We've seen that such a huge thing on Fallout and Skyrim that definitely is something that's really,

really important us to bring with Starfield. So the good thing about Starfield was we're able to take all those learnings and kind of build that stuff from the beginning to have some long legs. Love it. Todd, thank you so much for your time today. Is there anything exclusively you want to say, announce? Cancel. Let me know.

Just, hey, appreciate the audience, everything you do and the folks are kind of funny. I do actually listen all the time. Oh, yeah, that was that way. Why do you listen to this show? Because you don't even, it's not like you listen to this show. It's like, you listen to this show and that's it. You don't listen to other. Why choose us?

I just really like the dialogue. It sounds like casting on any other shows, but your show is particularly good for me at weighing different opinions on views on games and how you think about things. it resonates. So it's not always just like sort of a one note. You have a very healthy debate. And you all also have, and I've known you for a while, but history, you know, I think that historical perspective to be able to off the cuff reference an older game and what it does and how it does it or where the industry is gone. For me, you guys coalesce it very well into a show. So I appreciate it. I know the effort that all of you put into it. And, you know, obviously we'll have a lot of our players and fans watch us as well.

So I'd say the same thing to them. You know, the time they spend out of the feedback they give us. It's just been a real blessing to us and keep it coming. And we hope to do more and more. Fantastic. Todd, thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate it. All right, let me give you the rig and roll outro now, ladies and gentlemen.

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