Quotes from Todd Howard

Epic science fiction game, that's always been on my mind. Post-apocalyptic, 'Fallout,' was our first choice. Sci-fi was our second at the time, when we got the 'Fallout' license. We were going to do our own post-apocalyptic universe if we didn't get 'Fallout.'

I liked that line in the movie 'Shakespeare in Love': 'How is this going to work out? I don't know, but it always does.'

With 'Fallout 4,' we've done over 20 million downloads, and most of that is mods. That's a staggering number. It has always done well on the PC - but the console audience has such a hunger for it because they've waited so long. We think there's a really good future there, with both 'Skyrim' and 'Fallout 4,' that we hope to continue to add to.

I'd been playing everything and decided that this was something I maybe wanted to make a career out of. I knew where some companies were, but I saw the name 'Bethesda, Maryland' on 'Wayne Gretzky Hockey 3.'

We didn't start at 'Fallout 3' and think about how to add to that. We take a step back and think, 'Okay, if we look at all the 'Fallout' games, what would a new one feel like?' So the focus is not ''Fallout 3' plus this'. Then we start really digging into the world.

There are more players on 'Fallout Shelter' than all of my games combined. That's a little sobering at times. It's not a good or bad thing.

I'm happy that you can play 'Morrowind' now on an Xbox One, as it's backwards compatible.

Since I first got my iPhone and 'Super Monkey Ball' came out, I was like, 'Oh my gosh, this is great.' I'm always searching for the nirvana of mobile gaming, whether that's from a Game Boy or a Vita or a PSP or now the Switch.

Ashley Cheng, who I've worked with for 20 years, he's the studio head in Rockville now. He manages more of the day-to-day stuff. I can focus creatively on what we're doing now and what we should be doing in the future.

Time makes a bigger difference: just making a game, shipping it, looking at what you did, how you did it, what you did well, what you didn't do well, and doing better.

If you look at previous generations, even where they didn't open up power, you look at an early Xbox 360 or early PlayStation 3 games and compare those to the ones that came at the end. The developers are just getting better. So time is far more important than opening up a little bit here or there, though it does all help.

Your plan is not as important as your culture. That means you will run into problems that will disrupt your plan and schedule, and how you deal with that depends on the culture you have created within your team.

I played everything, but the games that kept me up and night and tickled my fancy were the larger role-playing games like 'Ultima.'

Don't define the game by the list of the features. Define it by the experience you want to have.

When you start over and jump into new tech, you don't know what the negatives are going to be until you go through a few cycles. We're always changing our tech, but we don't wholly destroy it with each game. We're taking parts out.

People tend to look at processing power as how to gauge a piece of hardware is powerful for us.

With 'The Elder Scrolls', you're looking at a 25-year-running franchise. It has stood the test of the 'Lord of the Rings' movies becoming popular.

A lot of times, when someone's going to pick up a game, it can be a bit daunting, like if they haven't played a roleplaying game, or they haven't played things in the series. We spent a lot of time on flow. How it feels to move through the world. How the game rewards you depending on which way you turn.

I loved playing 'Ultima.' Getting my computer in college and playing 'Wing Commander.' I hear a lot from our fans, and they are the same way. Games are where I want to be.

Great games are played, not made.

We all have bad things that happen in our lives, and a lot of us wonder how we can go back to before the event, whatever it is. 'Fallout 4' is about realising that your life has a new normal. We want to put you in the shoes of someone who knows what life was like before this.

'Minecraft' is like that, where you might say to one of your friends who doesn't play games, 'Hey, just sit down and try this with me.' There are other games you might put in front of somebody and say, 'I know you don't traditionally play games, but you've got to check this out.'

Eventually, there will come a day where I'm not making games at Bethesda. Hopefully that's a long time away. But I want to make sure that who we are, what the worlds are, what the company is, that's sustainable far beyond me.

The way we built 'Future Shock,' you have a height map and instanced 3-D objects rendering on top - that, believe it or not, is still how we build today. It's our basic paradigm for how to build a space.