First Elder Scrolls Skyrim Developer Diary Available

Todd Howard, Game Director at Bethesda Game Studios, has written up both a bit of history and a look to the future in his article "Welcome back Elder Scrolls." Some of you may remember that Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was my very first game review back in 2006. It was chaotic and unpolished and written in more of a blog style (it actually was at  a blog that then became Generation: Gamerz which was then purchased by GDN, whew).

Anyway, Todd Howard’s Skyrim developer diary:

Like you, we’re fans as well. We simply make the game we’d love to play. The game we’d book vacation time to play. And like you, we’ve waited a long time to see the Elder Scrolls return. Fallout 3 was an amazing experience for us and we learned a lot. In some ways, Skyrim is both our follow up to Oblivion, and our follow up to Fallout 3. Each time we strive to improve on the style of game we enjoy; one where you can be who you want, and do whatever you want.

To do that this time, we knew, like before, we had to start over. We needed to reinvent large parts of the game and its technology. We started with the graphics renderer, and how we would bring the scale of snow covered mountains, dynamic weather systems, and massive dragons to life along with the small details of how people lived; from the forks they used, to the fish they caught, and the meat they cooked. We then rewrote all the major graphics and gameplay systems including lighting, shadows, level of detail, animation, interface, scripting, dialogue, quest systems, melee, magic, and more. All of those changes made it into our internal editor as well. So much had changed that we decided to call the engine and editor by a new name, the Creation Engine and the Creation Kit. We can’t wait to see what all the brilliant mod makers do with these tools.

All of this is done to bring epic fantasy to life in a game unlike we’ve done before. We try to improve each game we do, but we also try to make each stand on its own. For whatever the year, be it 1994 with Arena or 2011 with Skyrim, we try to create something that feels like you’re experiencing The Elder Scrolls for the first time, a game that brings to life a new world on your screen, fueling your own imagination with possibility.

Read more at the Elder Scrolls website(which is age-gated FYI).