The CREATOR of THE ELDER SCROLLS Talks About His New Game & Time at Bethesda (Full Interview)!

if you're going to watch this three hour long interview please do watch the start because it explains why it's so interesting we are interviewing one of the original creators of the elder scrolls series ted peterson i'll be asking him questions not only about the elder scrolls 6 and the elder scrolls series in general but also about a new elder scrolls successor game he's currently working on i've time stamped all my questions down below in the description for you to navigate this enormous video but i'd highly suggest subscribing with the bell icon so you can find this video again easily for those of you that don't know the elder scrolls series was created by three key people ted peterson the writer and designer julian lafaye the programmer and designer and vijay lakshman the producer and designer this trio has created and worked on many of the elder scrolls games from arena daggerful morrowind and oblivion and even some of the spin-off titles but they have since split off from bethesda however the same team of creators has since founded a new studio called once lost games spearheaded by ted peterson the latter part of this interview will contain questions on their new game its mechanics systems law and aims you can also bet they'll be reading the comments section for your critique and thoughts and now is honestly the best time to give them i'd also suggest checking out their discord and social media linked below in the description not just to follow but also to comment on their project because my god do they listen to fans this interview though is with ted peterson the man who wrote much of the elder scrolls series law i'll be getting his opinion on what he thinks about more recent games as well though like skyrim modding and the elder scrolls 6 dragon breaks akavir and what happened to the dwemer and so on so leave a like if you're excited because i spent over a week putting this all together and let's begin so every superhero has a good origin story what's yours how did you start work at bethesda oh okay um yeah i i so your younger viewers may not believe this but there was a time before the internet um and uh the way you got a job was you uh picked up a newspaper and you went to the classified section and there would be a little uh part where it said you know in my case it was the washington post because uh i graduated from uh um university of north carolina and washington dc was the closest big city where you went to have a job yeah and uh i picked up the washington post went to the classified section and i was an english major uh so i didn't know what what to do with that and so i was filling out a bunch of uh applications for different jobs for writers and of course in washington dc most of those are the society for aquatic preservation wants somebody to write their newsletter oh goodness yeah and you know okay that sounds like a proper job not gonna make a lot of money doing that but you know i can i you know that's that's a fine starting off thing so i did like 50 of those uh um things i i think you mentioned uh before we started recording that you had a background in architecture and my real hope was that i was going to get an internship at the uh national foundation for historic preservation um that i've always not surprisingly since i started doing fantasy role-playing games but i've always had an interest in old stuff so uh that that was really appealing to me um i didn't end up getting that that internship but there was a uh a it was i remember it was literally two two lines so like the cheapest possible classified ad you could put in the washington post uh that didn't even give the name of the company just said uh looking for a published writer of science fiction or fantasy p.o box rockville maryland uh and if you guys aren't familiar with the geography uh rockville maryland uh you know maryland and virginia are kind of border washington dc so that's kind of the the you know the washington post is a local paper um so i wasn't going to fill it out because i just said you know uh some kid who's doing comic books you know like put this in the paper is working in his parents basement and uh you know i like i i didn't even know the name of the company so i couldn't you know i couldn't you could dig such yeah right so i i feel you know at the end of doing 50 really dry professional you know cover letters and uh and uh and resumes and putting them in envelopes and putting a stamp on them and putting them aside and i mean this is before email this is wow yeah yeah this is how life was kids um that i just for fun said uh okay i'm gonna i'm gonna go ahead and apply for this one and i wrote dear pio because i didn't know the name of the company um i do not i i am a publisher of science fiction and fantasy but i do not think that that is the way to fame and fortune um but against my you know wiser judgment i'm gonna go ahead and send you my resume and a sample of my writing um and then i ended up saying the only other thing you should know about me is i'm a recent college graduate perfectly normal in every way except that when the full moon comes out i grew up third eye and butterfly wings and they called me two days later which again was fast for the days of mail and may i say perhaps the most important words you ever wrote so the lesson there is uh weird is good yes um so uh and then you know that was bethesda softworks and so i went in and interviewed with uh with uh vijay lachman and julian lafaye and i wow and uh they had done terminator uh 2029 at the time and it you know had been a moderate success for them and they had a really strong uh edit editing system to like create levels within uh within the game and they said you know basically any monkey can do this but we're looking for a writer because the way it worked was and again the tool the tool was fantastic that you know you it was you know laying out the level it was you know two and a half d so everything was you know 90 degree turns so you're just kind of laying up blocks and then and uh you know that's how you create a level okay and uh but in between these levels they had a system where uh you would you could write dialogue between the different characters who were sending you off on these missions so they thought that basically any monkey could lay down a level but they needed writer to write the reason why you make it meaningful yeah yeah make make some sense out of you know we need you to go into the field and kill 20 terminators yeah or whatever for this reason um so they had me do a test uh at the time they'd been discussing they had never done a role-playing game before um but they were you know fans and they said we let's do a role-playing game but we don't have a design or anything it's just kind of all you know uh you know wait like way way way pre-production but they haven't yet a design test where they're asking a lot of role-playing questions ah so is this before they hired you still they they do oh yeah well first of all i went in in a suit and julian's first thing was like never wear a suit in this house oh god and then they had me do this test and then they had me do a writing a writing test like i had already sent them a writing sample but then they said uh because at the time in their head we're gonna do this game called arena which is all gladiatorial combat um so write us a short story where a team of of uh people are going through um an arena and they're fighting creatures and there's some resolution on it um and so i wrote them a story which they they like the writing on i remember they they hated the boss that i came up with uh for uh for that fight no but they haven't yeah can you can you elaborate on what the boss and why they didn't like it it was a it was a giant walrus oh god okay i i think walruses are really scary so uh yeah i i mean to me they're hilarious i don't find them scary right no no no no you're not alone that apparently is an idiosyncratic i wouldn't call it a phobia because you know i don't run into walruses very often but i think they're designers they're sluggish and they've got big teeth so that's scary in some way did that somewhat inspire the hawkers enemies in the elder scrolls later on i don't think so i think that would be a fantastic connection if you remember me telling this story before they you know but obviously we never they weren't inspired enough we we didn't use them in any of the games when i was at bethesda i see fair enough fair enough so i mean for those people that don't know what was your role in your own words on the elder scrolls series um well i started off like i said i was hired on bethesda as a writer um you know there were were and there weren't any other writers uh and i my title was a designer but i designed because that was sort of secondary to being a writer um and while i was working on the add-on pack for terminator 2029 and also a second terminator game i mean we i i don't know if this is the case actually this has never been the case in any other company uh that i've worked for where it was such a mom-and-pop like grind them out type of shop that uh you were working on multiple games at the same time yeah so i i'd be doing that in the same time we'd be working on uh the designs for uh elder scrolls arena and vijay who all i mean really at the time i was there there wasn't a designer for the games vj was hired on as a producer because they recognized that their games were behind schedule and they needed someone to keep track of the schedule and straight schedules and do all of that julian obviously is a programmer and both of them have strong opinions on games so we just kind of had people with strong opinions uh that were you know okay well this is the way we should do it uh but there weren't design documents or anything like that and you can tell on arena at least the history of arena was that it began as being sort of an rpg light uh game and then adding the you know the prefix the elder scrolls wasn't until late in development that that was done it was just gonna be called arena um so when i uh i'd be working on on design documents for arena at the same time and uh so i i was really i don't know what my what my credits are on arena i think it probably it says like i think it probably was like lead vijay lochman lead designer or something like that and then i was like designed by or or something basically there were two of us designers and uh and vijay uh was the lead and i was just lackey um but because of the nature of the game because we thought it was gonna be primarily an arena combat action game yeah that was not the focus uh the focus was not the role playing aspects no we always you added loads of role play aspects to it like what was the inspiration for that well we always said that that the way that the the game flow of the game is going to work is that you were mostly running around these arenas fighting yeah but you needed to have some gold to outfit your guys and improve your characters so on the side you would do quests for kings and queens of tamriel yeah and those when it turns out the gameplay of running around these arenas fighting was not that great then we said but people actually seem to like the role-playing aspects of it and doing these quests then we just changed the focus and said okay it's not a role-playing light game it's kind of role-playing heavy and all these arena fights turned into these dungeons that you needed to uh quest through to find the however eight eight pieces of the staff of chaos um yes and then jagertharn at the end so i mean it was it obviously turned out well but uh but it's it's really is the the worst uh you know production well i mean that that's the thing though isn't it because if you look at the writing for arena it was like very cookie cookie-cutter in terms of a traditional sort of storyline whereas in comparison considering you wrote the arena and then daggerfall daggerfall was insanely complex you had different factions kings queens politics it was i mean no offense it was almost like it was written by another person like you really like it changed considerably what was the reasoning for that that massive change i mean i know you said you liked the role play aspects from arena and then you guys just went and completely ran with it it seemed like yeah no no i mean but that that was a reaction and and you know you're right the first elder scrolls game could not have been more generic uh in in almost every way uh and i and i say this without you know dismissing it um but i mean the the from the uh the way you advance your character was the old first edition dungeons and dragons kill a monster get experience point level up uh you know type of type of system and then we switched that system to uh skills base because we said okay well that that was based on the idea that this is really a combat game yeah that arena was that so it made sense to say we we're going to reward you for killing things yeah and then said okay now that we've released it and realized that's the wrong philosophy for role playing that you know if you're uh a thief you don't level up by killing things or if you're a mage you don't level up by killing things and it's using those skills which makes sense for that character so we revamped that system and then at the same time uh when you're talking about the rating aspect of it um i mean it was so jerry-rigged the uh uh the way of flip-flopping what game was that we're creating that it really was the the most let's just squeeze this together where you're you know at the end you're you're fighting an evil wizard uh uh you know and that's and that's the whole story um when the reviews came out people were you know pretty positive about arena but they did say you know this writer is and uh and and i just went oh you know that that matters to me so i'm just going to show you that i can write something really complicated and nuanced and and non-linear i mean i think that that was that was a big part of what i was going forward and in a way you can't blame yourself for that because you were sort of corkscrewed into this is the game we're making you have to write a story for it and then it just turned into an rpg and you didn't have the opportunity to elaborate on everything you could have done which you then later did in daggerfall which i mean daggerfall has what like six different endings um is it six sorry i should look that up is that i think i think it was i believe i'll take your word for it but i mean what what i found interesting was how because at that point the company uh bethesda was in financial sort of issues and stuff and you guys released daggerfall and it overperformed then you ended up working on the sequel morrowind but obviously because the game had so many endings you came up with i think it was explained in a book in morrowind called the warp in the west and essentially it was like all these endings happened at the same time and kind of like a dragon break so just to further explain this to the viewers at home the elder scrolls 2 daggerfall had six endings but to continue to the next game the development team needed to choose a definitive canon ending to daggerfall so the solution was that all the endings happened at once now if you didn't play daggerfall during the main story you enter aetherius which is akatosh's realm and akatosh is the god of time so when you enter his realm you break the fabric of time and you cause a dragon break or as it was explained in the law the warp in the west this means that even though daggerfall had six different endings it was explained in the law that they all happened at the same time and i was just i was wondering who kind of came up with the concepts because i thought it was really interesting yeah um i i i don't know who came up with the concept to to to answer the simplest part of the the question uh i think it was probably a combination well at the time ken rolsten was uh was the he was a designer on morrowind um so if he didn't come up with it he approved of it um there were a lot of different ways we could go with it and and and yeah i put them in a bit of a corner by by thinking that alternate endings on a game were a good idea i think they were though you know that's such an important sort of quality about the role-play game the fact that you really felt like your decisions impacted the game and the world around you so no no i stand i stand by that as as a you know a thing that i like and i think that it it always points to the strength of the medium that unlike right you know watching tv show or reading a book where it's a passive you know well we're just going to take you on this this voyage yeah and an interactive game your decisions should matter and that's that's the whole point of of the medium so i i stand by that philosophy but i recognize it's a it's a problem for sequels yes yes but it's been it's been solved in other ways i mean at the time that i uh that we were doing those first couple of elder scrolls uh games surtek was doing the wizardry series and they had uh a couple ones in that where you could port over your saved game from one game to the next game or even say yo know basically if there are multiple endings on one game there could be multiple beginnings on the next game yeah yes which i think could have could have been a solution to the daggerfall multiple endings problem um so we we we talked a lot uh about different ways of solving it and uh dragon break is is where it landed on which i think is probably a fine solution solution but i do have a little bit of an issue with it in the sense that it does kind of undermine the idea of the game saying you have um multiple ways of resolving it but in the sequel there's only one way that it was resolved and it was this dragon break and you know i guess so i guess it's like you say it's one of those things where you get the best of both worlds in the sense that if you can port over your save file on the decisions you made the only other resolution was having all the endings actually happened no matter which ending you picked and therefore you could carry on i guess it it was a way that made sense at the time but i also heard from zarik um that um the elder scrolls c uh free sorry was going to be called tribunal at some point and it was going to take place in somerset and follow the i think the princess of way rest storyline so in that sense did you have like an idea of how you would have liked the game to end and like carry on a certain narrative in your head when you were sort of making daggerfall you mean look like again the the multiple endings and how yeah like what what was the ending that you would have gone with that would have taken you to somerset i i uh honestly the my my pitch would not have been the dragon break if i'd stay down at bethesda i would have tried to do something like they did in the wizardry games of having multiple starts um yeah which is which is actually makes it even more challenging to write a narrative around around that definitely especially with how how much everything impacted the world with with those endings as well well it's true but it but in a way it impacted it whether whether the game you know the sequel was was set in the in this uh somerset aisle or uh in morrowind it's on the opposite end of the world so you can still say uh okay i want to say that numidium you know uh you know was on daggerfall's side and conquered the elect bay and the empire has less power in that region um but you're not there when uh you know at the time of the game so it's it i i think that the influence while it should be noted it was not would not be so immediate that um that it's immediately taking off the story at the same location as you're on the other side of the continent right so so it it wouldn't be it shouldn't drastically change what happens i mean i guess i guess i'm talking from the perspective of that the elder scrolls became this huge series and in the future games you would have heard what happened so you'd have to think about those narratives i guess but i mean for each elder scrolls game created you expanded on the writing each time in the universe do you have a favorite book that you've written in the law and why is it your favorite um i i mean i probably like different books for different reasons the the hardest series to to work on was the 2920 uh series um partly because i was no longer well in a lot of those books cases i was no longer physically at bethesda um so i was trying to make sense of different messages from ken rolston or michael kirkbride or cause that would have to fit in right so i kind of got the story as of with vivec and i'm alexia and sotha sil and uh i was trying to work out the logistics of what their history was and and how they influenced things and uh so that that was that's probably the book series that took the most pre-planning um okay well this is these are all all the different narratives that need to tie together and at the end you know finish up like that so uh i like that series because you know if you if you do a lot of planning and it comes together okay then you go like okay well you know i'm pleased with that um the the book series that i wrote that uh there's one author called uh wagendrath uh jarth uh which are the stories of decimal scottish where it's the ardonian account was the second one and the first one was um series isn't there of that uh something a flyer um yes yeah dancing fire yes yes that's right so so those those are the most fun ones to write uh where i i i didn't really plan it out in advance i just kind of wrote what am used to me and uh and that's a fun way to write too i i actually i really appreciate that because um i'm actually very dyslexic and one of the first books uh i read cover to cover and actually got me into reading more books was the locked room uh which i also wrote um and my fiance actually illustrated it and i did like a little reading series on it um and that was kind of those little sort of stories and tidbits kind of i was like oh where are these people in the game like they're not there but you know you kind of start to then imagine like oh well where would this person be and what was this narrative going on over here you can't get there in an elder scrolls game yeah so it just it really brought the world to life for me so yeah thanks for that i'd love to hear that so i mean i think the other thing people are really excited about hearing more about is um the other continents um not just tamriel itself but what did you ever like plan when you were developing the game to develop the other continents even visit them like uh akavir or yokuda yeah there's even some like islands off the coast of tamriel as well that we've never visited in any elder scrolls game since but i mean when you were developing things and drawing the map was there any sort of thoughts in your head of like oh yeah maybe we'll go there sometime or that'll be related to this sure no no i mean when you're when you're doing that world building um you can't really do it without thinking all right well we're not doing this for this game but in a future game we're definitely going to go uh go over here and do that and it's going to be cool for x y and z reasons uh so you you do play around with what the setting is and uh what the differences are we've always done in the eldest roles and this is on purpose um have unreliable narration um yes so in a way like i will utterly defend it because i think that in real life we have unreliable narration especially in history like you said you're really fascinated about architectural history there's so much of that in there yeah yeah so i i think it makes things more interesting if you pick up a book and you should take everything with a grain of salt um and think about what what the person's uh uh you know motivation is uh it's not necessarily my favorite books that i've written but i recall in daggerfall we had two books called the war of betany and one is written from the point of view of daggerfall and one is written from the point of view of sentinel and there completely different but they're good things that overlap yeah do i love that i think the best law that you've written for the game is is the law that is unwritten intentionally because that's what makes fans so excited about the series and what makes them want to i mean you know i i wrote like a few academic essays when i was doing architecture and i it almost reminded me of why i fell in love with the elder scrolls series because i was reading sort of reliable documents and different sources and some of them conflicted especially like on the roman empire and um and i love coming out with my own theory on like why why this was the way it was and it's an amazing thing that i think you've definitely like transferred into a video game franchise which is incredible well we're definitely in while working on the the games uh julian and i particularly were reading a lot of history and uh i remember we we i read a book about lucretia borgia who uh is sort of famous in history is this kind of evil conniving renaissance woman who poisoned her husbands and had all these affairs and stuff and the book was basically saying uh the winners write history and uh she was kind of dragged to the mud by his uh you know historical chronicles uh because her side lost um and that she actually did a bunch of these great things and she you know was not given credit for it so yeah and that's that's part of the you know the fun part world building is to say as a writer you probably need to know what the real story was but when you're doing the actual writing you need to have a perspective of who's writing and who the audience is yeah and uh you know going from that i think we might have strayed from your question though um potentially but the the straying was very interesting so i'm not complaining in that sense um let's have a look i mean so yeah back to the other consonants i guess yokuda um it was written that it sunk into the ocean but then there's actually a npc in oblivion who lives at the lighthouse in anvil on the golden coast um in cyrodiil and he he said that he actually quotes uh ship sail from anvil harbor to ports in hammerfell somerset isle yokuda and the western isles does that mean that yukuda is not actually completely submerged and it still exists because that's like one of the few references of the modern day um that i've ever found about its existence um well i'll i'll say this i don't work at bethesda uh so i'm not gonna i i i can't say you could uh exists or is a place you're going to be no no yeah i understand your answer wouldn't be definitive in that sense but i mean looking at what you've written and yeah i mean i obviously we were probably uh at the time we were writing that inspired by atlantis or uh uh whatever is and you know different ways of thinking of a homeland of of saying okay well this is you know the once great you know or you know it's like krypton exploding or whatever you use okay well it's you know we we can never we can never return to uh uh to that place and we must you know make our home here um which you know is is is a fine narrative i i think it's always interesting if uh you know if someone has been to yakuda recently and going like guys it didn't sink that was just a story we were told yeah i think that's a really interesting narrative worth exploit exploring i agree yeah i hope they do it oh for sure for sure i i know that um there is a lot of people asking for the elder scrolls six akaviri and uh exploring that continent too uh so so i think people are like very excited to see something completely different and new in that sense um and especially like their gossip that they might do that um no i that's that's definitely the fans talking um in terms of like speculation i think i mean i can give you my opinion on it uh later on in the video for sure um because i've done like some crazy speculation videos about the elder scrolls sex location um so i mean the the other thing i wanted to ask about is one of the gods uh trinimac um who's considered to be a god um an album and it's written in many books that he was eaten by boethiah and reborn as malacath the orc father um because obviously with his transformation all his devoted followers turned into orcs and since trinimac was like obviously an elf um to begin with does that mean that all orcs are like technically elves or or not i i think that's the implication of it and and orcs are sometimes called orsimir which you know would imply that with the with the other ones that they are you know uh elf ken um so yeah i think that's that's the implication of of that myth because there was another book uh called variety of faith which i thought was really cool because it said that um trinimac had done that intentionally to absorb some of boethiah's powers um and actually then made the people who turn into orcs um almost like improved elves considering they're so ugly and everyone treats them as outcasts i thought that was like quite an interesting perspective on it yeah no i it it goes back to our unreliable narrate uh narrator thing and i think anything that's happened you know a long time ago any description of oh this is what really happened should again be taken with a grain of salt but but there should be also people who strongly believe that this is the truth i mean there's no reason to to write somebody i wrote a again it's a point of view thing there's a another book in daggerfall called the pig children yes which is just you know super antiork you know uh you know narration which is appropriate for the time that you're going around through the iliac bay and orcinium is is kind of being built up but is considered a threat you go like there you seem to be absolute propaganda yeah definitely i mean actually uh speaking speaking about that problem gandhi you reminded me of another book uh the nature of orcs which is in the elder scrolls online it's considered at that time it later isn't banned but at that time obviously they had the dagwood covenant and it was like banned propaganda and literally like written underneath it like you know this book's banned blah blah blah because they're like allied with the orcs and whatnot um but it kind of it alludes to the fact that uh malacath isn't actually a daedric prince um and also like if you when you're playing oblivion i think a lot of the other princes referred to him as a pariah um like you know like an outcast of princes um and in that sense i mean i what what do you think about that like why do they why do they treat him like that because he he i don't know i'm kind of on the fence whether he's a daedric prince because he has his own plane of oblivion but it's also referred to as the backbone which kind of like was that plane created when boethiah like destroyed him um and therefore he's not a real daedric prince i'm just kind of interested on your narrative and that sort of storyline um yeah i it obviously depends on what your definition of daedric prince is um and and even even going beyond that i mean there's parts where there there are different narratives having to do with what uh uh aedra and daedra are and whether whether they um were kind of cosmically created or they are these uh you know if you look at the old ways they talk about the you know because they're ancestor worshipers that they believe that they were what's mortal and that they you know were sort of transformed and elevated um so in in that sense if you if you have a i think i could go on about this i think that i think that if you have a daedra prince who was once a previous daedra and was transformed and changed certain aspects of them um that they still should be considered a prince uh yes that you know it you know if you've yeah if you've uh if you're prince charles and you change your haircut you're still prince charles yes no that makes sense very simple description but yeah makes a lot of sense okay so i mean i heard i heard as well like i guess a rumor on the web that um you'd also done some dungeons and dragon series like run some d d sessions uh with the team before you actually came up with like uh daggerfall and you did these d sessions in the elder scrolls universe and i was just wondering like how much of that stuff you guys took and then put in the game how much those sessions inspired i mean there's definitely some stuff that that made it into the game uh at uh at the time uh what what's interesting was that uh we did do that but we also at the time um vampire the masquerade had just come out uh and yes we did some dnd and then that came out and even though it was kind of useless for what we were doing in our you know our working life we really got into that um and i think probably played more of that than d um so the the big thing that i think because we did have some uh you know quite a long a couple months worth of sessions where it would be set in the iliac bay and a lot of um i mean i they they did not end up being super they did not they really did a lot of background stuff i guess it's a way of putting it yeah um they i remember my character uh was the baron of dwinnen uh which is a little region on the iliac bay um and there was the threat of the khmer in usurper uh which we wrote about and at various times has had more or less you know lore written about it but that but it was all really back story too like there was there wasn't in the part where we were like let's play the game of daggerfall as a player by playing yeah i see totally that makes sense as well uh you also used to do some role play with some people on the forum where you would role play cheryl goreth so i mean did many stories did you like develop his character through those sessions and like were there any stories that came out of that i uh i guess the short answer is not much um it was really fun to do and i'm still in contact with some of the people that uh that i did that with um i think the only thing for sure that came out of it is a brief reference i i i was hired to do the second pocket guide to the empire and i wrote in some stuff that came out about what happened on somerset isle with uh because it was never resolved uh with uh you know you mentioned earlier uh the tribunal uh original original concept because it's it's kind of hovered at the end of fandom you have to have played deep diver into daggerfall yeah to remember or care about uh what uh what is your name uh the princess or what no i don't think that's the right person berensia's daughter hell seth is her brother morgiah okay yes yeah that you had a quest in daggerfall where the king of worms and morgaya were basically debating you know him offering her assistance in her getting married off to the king of first hold on somerset and in return she was promising the king of worms her first and they're again oh yeah it's it's another thing you could sort of explore in the narrative which is really cool it's a super specific yeah very narrow but really interested god if someone did that now it would just blow my mind if they just like continued that storyline somewhat how you know that would be so cool man yeah so we i i did make a reference because we explore that in the role play yeah um i played her first also in addition to shia goreth uh and i referred to him as being the current king of somerset um so it was it was a character who who came out in there i don't go into a lot of detail in the pocket guide it's a very shag or a thing to do yes yep i mean i mean who who is shayog to you as a character how would you describe him like from from the games you wrote not how he is now well i you know yeah that that's a good question um i i think i'm really i mean this is this this is just the honest uh response on that i wrote him to be kind of like the joker in batman so he so he's flexible that uh he can be depending on what writer takes him he can be a homicidal maniac and super scary or he could be really silly um so i i just found that and i i've uh never written comic books before but i always thought that like that would be a fun character too oh god yeah uh to just have that that that thing work and it's perfectly fine either way you want to go with him um so and obviously i named him after myself so i uh he does that's cool so do you like because obviously sharon growth as a character has changed quite a lot in the modern games do you like how he's changed or do you think like you would have written something she's doing differently oh i'm sure i would have but but that like i said that flexibility was written into the character to begin with so um at one point when they were doing uh talking about uh oblivion i remember having a conversation with todd howard that he that he was saying well why don't we have you come on and do the voice of shiogora and what did you say to that sure wow uh and and i don't remember exactly why i didn't why no no which is fine because i like i'm not a voice yeah i i wet to be fair to wes johnson i mean he did an incredible performance of shaggy giraffe but i also would have loved to have heard your version now you said that no no i i i i appreciate the sentiment but i i i agree that uh it's a little bit like an overall conversation where you know saying like would you have done something different in you know the elder scrolls games that you were not the lead designer on uh and the answer is yes i would have done something but i can't fault you know yeah the direction that it went not only can i can i not fault it because i wasn't there and you know i can't blame people for you know doing something differently when i'm not there uh but they've obviously had a lot of success so you know even if it's even if decisions were made that wouldn't be the decision i made um i can't you know uh objectively say that they did anything wrong well yeah i mean in general like a lot of people other than yourself since have shaped the law is there like um like excluding the games you've worked on is that like a piece of law that's been written for like one of the characters you've made or something that you've just been like oh that's really cool do you have like a favorite thing like that i mean it's almost too much uh okay i i i i like i say like i i i can i'm happy to be a critic of some things that i would have done differently um but i think that they they made a a a lot of uh of interesting choices um and and i also uh appreciate that they they do shout backs like two things that were previously established like i was really excited when um they have you revisit the tomb of patema the wolf queen uh which was a character that i uh you wrote a book about it as well i did i wrote a book series like it was i've written actually i've written a lot about her yeah like i think she's referenced in the purposefully dry brief history of the empire um because she loved led a civil war and then going back i think i wrote it from whirlwind that i said well this is an interesting character and this is an interesting historical time period that's worth doing more of a deep dive into and then you know however when did skyrim take place like but i got what was that like the fourth era i've done in addition to the elder scrolls i've done a lot of games that are based on someone else's intellectual property so the fun thing about doing arena and niagara fall and those those early elder scrolls is that we're making up the world lore as we go along we've also for example worked on a james bond game uh actually a couple and that's something where somebody else has already created this world and you're going okay well how are we going to treat this and how are we going to respond to this and how are we going to you know do that which is also fun um especially if you respect what was done before yeah you're not like uh how are we gonna fix this you know the the this was dumb uh but we have we have to deal with how do you build and how do you make something creative out of it for sure it's it's like uh like limits but things that kind of increase your creativity from those limits almost i i i always think that every uh any writer or artist that i know limits sound like a bad thing but they're really a good thing because if you say paint a painting and you go any like any painting any colors any subject any style like you could you can't even get started because like there's too many possibilities but as soon as i start saying only using blue only you know uh like like as soon as you start narrowing it down then your mind starts working on uh what what you what you can uh you create on that so there's a part where you know what so it's elder scrolls six is the next one at that point they're building on you know some version and obviously they don't have a huge problem with retconning stuff um so uh yeah i can't argue with that yeah um so you know you you'll wiggle your way out of something if you want to tell a different story but but at this point you've built on enough that you are not starting from scratch and you are in that regard though is there anything that retconned that you've just been like oh no sort of thing um no i mean we talked about the dragon break it's not really a red con but it's it's a solution that uh that would probably not be my my first choice but you know um no no i i mean i think that there's i don't know i don't know where this came from but it was uh they republished one of the books and i didn't write this one but it was in daggerfall uh the real berensia where uh we had a sex scene in there that in the morrowind or oblivion or some version of it they publish the book then they have like redacted by order of the empire uh that sex scene that's hilarious but but yet we have the nasty made in there sorry but yeah we have the lusty argonian made one and two yes yes so you know there's a part where to me that's just funny yeah it's hilarious yeah we also illustrated those too which uh my fiance did some incredible illustrations which have like the most sexy when you went i'll send them to you after it's hilarious yeah no um where are we let's have a look so completely lost track i could talk to you for hours about the elder scrolls so yeah this was the other one i was really interested in mike the liar um he was added in morrowind i believe but do you know anything about him and his creation no no i honestly uh that that was not me okay fair enough i i read the most bizarre fan theory that he could be akatosh and it actually genuinely makes sense uh okay yeah i just thought it was fantastic i feel like uh sometimes i have had conversations with uh designers and writers who still work at bethesda um and being like oh for this quest like you know there was this this thing you did with the decisions that was very clever then i've asked them like what was the actual outcome you wrote and then the answers actually disappointed me and i kind of wish that they hadn't even told me you know yeah and and i think there's an element of that where sometimes i read fan theories and read it and they're crazy but they kind of make sense like there's there's a gray area there you know where it's actually plausible and there's nothing that denounces the theory as being false and then i think like that's why i like going back to what you said about um the best law is that that that's left out unsaid that's left up to debate um because that's when the really interesting theories come in um and by the way there's a lot of people who don't give a about laura so yeah i know i know i know so to a certain degree like you you you know that if you're already doing a deep dive then you're somebody who doesn't want a simple answer so uh if if you're gonna do put laura in a game if you're not just gonna make it you know super straightforward these are the good guys these are the bad guys go go kill the bad guys then you should make it something that uh there's some rewards to explore and offer different theories on that by the way on akatosh you know the the story on that name right um i i heard about some gods being named after people on the forum that you had i i don't know the full i mean if you explain the full story for everyone that would probably be best i'm happy to in part because it's sort of in respect for someone who's passed song okay but uh when we were testing arena and developing daggerfall we uh had a kind of a bbs group because this was again pre-real internet um that we call the council of wisdom uh who would test our games but also go back and forth on on bringing the lore and there was a guy named uh i'm gonna butcher this because he's uh has a polish last name is like lawrence sadowsky yeah that sounds right to be fair yeah i don't know maybe he's a polish surname so yeah right um but he uh uh was like he would always sign off on his emails uh lauren zadowski also known as the old smog himself um so we would call him smog online and uh and obviously this token of course this is also 20 years before you know uh peter uh jackson chris oh the whole thing goes yeah right so uh i mean not the tolkien was obscure at the time anyhow but when i was talking to various characters and we had someone named marilyn but her nickname was mara and so we created the goddess mara and we wanted to you know honor him because he was such a contributor uh but lawrence or larry sadowsky like these these these are not good god names and we couldn't go with smog because copyright yeah that's well it's also a super well-known character even in the 90s before peter jackson uh like you couldn't just have okay one of the gods we worship is smog but because the sign off was also known as the old smog himself which is aka t-o-s-h yes we said oh that spells akatosh which that's deep thinking i like that fantastic thanks for that so um and he died so uh that that's why i'm giving a special shout out for him no i'm glad you did so i mean the elder scrolls series has had raging success but it stands on your shoulders as one of the creators one of the three founding creators of the series and i know you didn't actually work on skyrim but lots of your work is still you know in that game like in terms of your writing and whatnot and also inspired quests like we just spoke about but how did you personally find skyrim to play as a game in general is it how did you find it i mean it's beautiful um i i don't i mean i unfortunately my mind immediately goes to criticisms which uh i i don't think is fair to the i mean there's a lot of really talented people i mean i think i think everyone knows skyrims are fantastic games it's a game that i've spent hundreds of thousands of hours it feels like uh uncovering but i think people are definitely interested um i mean it's very successful for sure but uh people are definitely interested in like the differences between uh the older elder scrolls games and your opinions on the newer ones so i think that's probably what people are like interested in but i mean there's no doubt it was a fantastic game yeah okay okay well let's let's take that as written all the really nice things that have been been said about it i agree with um so i i found the scope of it something i wouldn't have done um it was it was far too small of a a play area um and and actually this would be my criticism of oblivion as well um that uh both of those you you take what i really like a big playground yes yes so that's uh that would be a criticism i didn't like that it was super far flung in the future that that the things that you done in the previous you know four games were in the distant past um i i never like a chosen one storyline um that's just kind of a a preference of mine um so yeah maybe maybe you could you could ask me about a specific uh you know aspect of the game whether i liked it or didn't like it taking into aspect i guess the uh what you said about the chosen one i oblivion was the first game i played and i kind of liked the idea that i was just this prisoner who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and i got uh carried along with this storyline where it's like trying to find the right person who was like the only one who could save the world basically yeah i mean that wasn't me which i appreciated fantastic yeah uh could have put it better myself um and then in skyrim i felt almost a little bit of like it's a little bit too obvious when i was like the only one who could kill the dragons and i was like oh okay but you know i i really enjoyed using the godly powers like the voice um and and i actually got a lot more excited when i found in one of the dlc's that um there was another dragonborn and he also could use the voice and i was like oh that i i become like i guess less more uh uh like i've been thrown away you know i'm less important and i thought that was a bit more interesting um that was two beings of power i couldn't agree more and and i'll say this also um like the dlc's and i can talk about the dlcs for daggerfall as well even though there's not really a dlc but there are there's niagara fall unity and people have changed things and and whatnot that is so inspiring like if if you are one of those creators you should know that uh we you know professional designers uh look at those and go you know they're they're i mean obviously they're bad ones but they're also these super inspirational ones so you go like that just made what we made so much more interesting and no it's made by someone who really thought about it and decided this is what they want to create and they're not getting a salary for it um so that's that's fantastic and and i agree that that adds adds a depth to the chosen one storyline that uh wasn't in the original release definitely agree um i think i think there's quite a few narratives like that within skyrim um what do you think about the sheogorath um daedric prince storyline in skyrim that's with pelagius i mean you wrote the book about pelagius as well right um yes yes uh i don't know i was actually yeah speaking of mods um were there any mods for skyrim that you played or even oblivious um back in the day uh but i'm trying to remember what they were i mean i think i've played around with a bunch of them i always think that the um maybe because it goes against my design philosophy i always liked playing the survival ones where uh uh it made gameplay harder um but uh i i think as a uh as a i'm not paige right now but when i was a page designer you do want to open the experience up for as many players as possible and not worry about um well i remember back when i was working on niagara fall uh i had a conversation with scorpio who was the uh rpg uh reviewer for computer gaming world one of her bits of advice and even though she was a hardcore role player herself she told me uh in creating it like don't force the player to eat and don't you know basically assume that the character is capable of doing those type of things on their own and focus on sort of the heroic aspects what you need to do um and i took that that to heart um but i think that there's and again you what's great about mods is that you don't have decision right so you you say i'm the type of person who wants to play a game where this type of micro management is is fun for me um so i i think that that aspect of the community is uh has been fantastic um that uh people can take you know whatever uh uh you know this this product and tinker with it maybe all right yeah and yeah and there's and there's an audience for that so i that's that's certainly become a huge part in in you know future games that i'm working on of saying that needs to be implicit in the creation that we are we are creating i wouldn't say like a white box like there's there are you know parts of it that this is these are the challenges of the games these are the rewards and uh and this is how it's uh the world is supposed to work but leaving it uh available to players to make those changes and it and make uh an experience that they want i think that's i mean just to say i think it's quite magical to hear um the creator of the elder scrolls say that you know they are totally impressed by mod creators work uh work that people do for free i don't think i hear it enough from bethesda it's like a corporate company themself i'm sure and i've spoken to some people internally i'm sure like they love it and inspired by it but i like these days i play skyrim mods uh a mod recently for full like new vegas even and some of the writing um sometimes and some of the voice acting it's not a professional standard like it's it's ridiculous um and and like how they how they take the law and the narrative that you guys have created and just run with it and create a whole other storyline from it is just uh something i commend so i'm glad i'm really glad to hear that you are a fan of of mod creators because it's i mean i think it's one of the reasons why the series has also survived this long yeah i couldn't couldn't agree more um i i don't have anything else to add [Laughter] so i mean um another one is the elder scrolls online which is the first game you can experience the entirety of tamriel the continent at one point in history have you done any writing on that i know some of your books are already in the game anyway but have you done any further writing for it specifically um i have not that is that some have you like played the game or like delved into it at all i've not i've not uh actually played the game i have uh watched some youtube videos where people are going because there are there are certain places like uh and i don't know how how they pronounce it in the game uh but the uh uh artem the uh yes uh added in somerset they did that yeah absolutely and you wrote the book on sam's disappearance as well so i thought it would be like an interesting topic for discussion absolutely um i as as we discussed i wanted that to be the sequel to daggerfall um so uh i spent a lot of time thinking about somerset in general uh the uh you know it was we had kind of a plot hook into uh into somerset uh in diagram fall um so i was uh very curious as to uh how they taken it and again i can i i could offer i would have done these things differently um but i i love the idea that they uh they did a a deep lure dive and uh and you know respected what had been done before and uh interpreted it their own way and you always have to uh recognize that um whatever whatever somebody who isn't creating that world does as a hook for the next uh the next game um is going to have some either technical limitations or creative differences or whatever and uh they're going to change things around so you can say yeah i i pictured it a different way or i think this other thing should have been emphasized but um i i i without having played it i'm a fan of well i mean um the sloads were there which was i think you wrote you wrote about the slots didn't you as a as an enemy i can't remember if i did uh i know once there was a slowed in red guard right yes um it was also i i don't actually know the books preceding red guard where they were written about as an an enemy but it was i think um in yokuda it was it was said that there were some slows that lived nearby there um and i didn't know if if that was something you had written about in in your narrative of the games i don't recall having written anything though again as we've discussed i i found sluggish creatures uh uh scary so uh yeah and so i don't know maybe maybe maybe i i i have a somewhat since five so um what's your favorite elder scrolls game that you didn't work on uh obviously excluding the writing that you've done for games well the only oh oh oh it would be like what oblivion skyrim morrowind and i guess the elder scrolls online and it's content as well um i mean the the the funny thing is because it's the the game that um you know i i i it'd probably have to be skyrim um even though like i said there are some things i would might have done differently very ironic yeah i mean but we always wanted to have dragons in oh god and they did a good job with that for sure yeah like the the that first thing that comes to mind on that is the dragon so um so well i mean you had them in the elder scrolls adventures red guard i know you didn't work on that game that was todd howard but um the boss fight was laughable at the end it was like you just sort of stood by its legs and like poked it and it was like i'm so glad they did dragons properly for skyrim but clearly technology wasn't ready back then to to do that um i mean at least in daggerfall we had what we call dragon lings and said okay we're not gonna but we tried we there was there was a dragon in the artwork there wasn't there like data mined yeah yeah yeah we we we always uh we always wanted to do dragon so i think that maybe that's the reason why why uh and and to say we're gonna wait until we can do it right uh i i have future respect for that yeah i'm glad that you you did wait in that sense um because yeah you wanna you wanna do those things properly obviously but actually like uh thinking back to daggerfall there was a lot of things in that game like vampirism um fact you could buy a house um sea travel a lot of things you never actually mentioned when it came to like promoting the game and selling it i know times were very different back then but um like why didn't you mention any of those things you kind of like left them as hidden details in the game for players to discover it's a good question because um it's funny when when i've talked to people about uh these games before and they say art you know tell us about easter eggs like the whole game is an easter egg like yeah just jump in and see what yeah um and i would say like oh vampirism and they're like well that's not really an easter egg and going it is back then as well yeah we didn't tell you you could become a vampire and this is how you deal with it that there's some percentage chance when you're fighting a vampire that you could become one and then you deal with it and you you know so and some people played the game and never got it so it's an easter egg that's the beauty of it yeah so it yeah it's uh there there's no you're right it's a different time as far as you know promoting uh you know products and talking about it um but it's also part of the development so we had a very different development in arena like i told you how was developed and in daggerfall uh we we kept very close to the overall big picture design thing but we were constantly adding stuff so we would say oh it'd be you know like i said we started playing vampire the masquerade while we were um uh you know playing daggerfall and or or creating daggerfall and we we said oh you know we should have vampires in the game and you should be able to become a vampire and they should be different you know clans like there are in vampire the masquerade and each version gives you a different power and uh all of that but it was never a uh a big promotional thing it's just like this is just something that could happen no i think it's interesting because these days um you have like so many video game companies and obviously making your own game now which we'll talk about in a second but like these companies like they stand on the stage and they're like this our game has this this and this and they more often than not it's that absolutely every single detail is mentioned and nothing is left just for the player to discover so you kind of everyone goes in there and especially unfortunately the case was cyberpunk as well like everyone goes in there expecting all this content and sometimes just for the nature of development something that you wanted to do didn't necessarily make it into the game just because it didn't make sense anymore i remember at the first reveal for cyberpunk we saw um at gamescom like in a very hidden booth and only certain people were allowed in and we saw them with the mantis blades climbing on the wall and then you realize as a game designer later that actually it just wouldn't have made sense to have that in the game but some people ridicule it because it was a feature that was removed and i was just wondering like uh if it was like that kind of same narrative that you guys were like oh we just want to leave things for people to discover as well and not just tell you everything that's inside the game well philosophically you want to always uh under promise a no for deliverer are you excited for the elder scrolls six to revisit high rock and hammerfell from daggerfall is that is that for sure what what the news is well i can i can send you my video speculating about it but um there's been some some big and well i mean in general i guess are you excited for the elder scrolls six uh in general i'm excited for the elder scrolls six if uh if they're like i'm not sure whether i love the idea of exploring or re-exploring places that have already been in the game um i mean you'd be exploring them many years later right so they would be completely different to how you guys made it well yeah which which which is valid um but valenwood and elsewhere and um black marsh uh have not been exploited in like a single-player game i mean they've been touched on in uh you know elder scrolls online obviously um and i guess maybe that's also can be a challenge for a single-player game when you've got the online one and saying okay well we've kind of now you've dictated where those locations are what they kind of look like and like maybe some design decisions behind them right um so that's so yeah i i can get maybe their challenges is to say okay well now we're going to go into the future and uh and re-explore these things but i um well i'm for sure interested yeah i mean um we've got we've got other continents to visit see on on the map that you guys made too uh so also that i mean i think that if if if you're really just going to you know take some of the concepts and and move forward then yeah maybe get out of tamriel yeah i mean if you were still working on the elder scrolls six based on i guess the games that have come so far like oblivion skyrim and so on where would you like to go uh if you were still working on it uh i think the obvious thing is akavir um that's the fan favorite i think many people would be happy to hear you say that yeah no i mean but we we we've written a ton about it yeah yeah yeah um i mean tamriel has invaded it as well like there's so much history there between the two back and forth right so it's it's it's almost like the elephant in the room where you go like get there you know show it yeah well i mean so that that's interesting uh i i guess like we know the next elder scrolls game like all the others will be based timeline wise after the current games uh the elder scrolls online being based i think like second era before everything so i mean in that sense i guess a really interesting creative choice by the way yeah i can see why they did it for future games um but at the same time i guess it limits you in some things like that you had to sort of begin the narrative you you kind of get the freedom in some narrative choices but you also have to make sure things make sense for events that happen later on as well which is really difficult but again i'm glad that we started about your work yeah in that sense it's what you talked to we talked about before where where limitations are helpful for creativity so so um here's a question for you or based on like what you didn't like about skyrim and uh the other elder scrolls games what would you want to see in the elder scrolls six that you think the franchise is lacking um um well i'm working on a game myself so i think that there's a there's there's a part where like my prejudice yeah probably it's already in your game sort of thing i mean i i i do think that um breath of of gameplay i i'm not a fan of uh limiting but i i would like more role-playing opportunities instead of once so uh i would like to really and again i'm touching on what i'm doing in my game right now yes i would like to say if you're not going to play a warrior a thief or a wizard what are some of the other options and really dive deep into those um and to think about other ways of playing a game according to and you know i go back to like role playing to me you begin with the character and yeah because i i agree i mean the first like my first sort of video game where i could afford a console when i brought like oblivion um i i really did miss from oblivion to skyrim that i remember like opening up the guidebook for oblivion and being like planning out my character and that was because i'd never played d so uh that was my first experience of like oh what am i gonna do what do i want to be and i was reading all through like the different characters and what they were like and stuff and they had like some suggestions in the guidebook um and i i remember like even to this day like that kind of idea when you kind of already started to forge your character's backstory and narrative before you even left that prison was such a big moment that i felt like i lost in yes it's nice to be able to do everything and just run around and more action game orientated but i did miss that sort of i felt like i already made something of a character that was different each time when i played oblivion that i lost in skyrim yeah yep 100 degree um but i can there there are uh game systems where for me 90 of the fun is creating that character before jumping into uh jumping into the action and uh when we're talking about mods uh there's a uh youtube series uh who's creator i don't remember off the top of my head where he he's playing daggerfall unity and he's playing with various mods including one mod where they fix what we didn't implement very well in daggerfall which is uh monster languages yes and in with this this modded version of daggerfall unity uh if you speak for example dragonling or herpe then when you run into those and and this is just their their their way of implementing i'm not saying this is what what we would do in the future but they can basically friend you and become an ally to you so all of a sudden this character that this guy was playing uh who had no great magical skills no great combat skills was able to become like doctor do little and talk to these going around and all sudden like he had you know flocks of herpes that were you know fighting his enemies for him and and something he's like that is so brilliant that like that and and i'm accepting no credit for it because yeah i designed the original in some ways not perfectly but people have improved on that and all of a sudden this role-playing experience is created and uh you know going back to our early conversation of being inspired by modders uh that's that's nice yeah i i agree one of my favorite things in oblivion uh like sort of later on was to try and see if i could finish the game without killing everyone just running around invisible and paralyzing people and just trying to avoid any sort of conflict at all and just seeing how far you could get yeah no i love i love seeing like if you can push the game like that i mean uh i think it's a fun way to play that encourages you to make decisions you never usually would have made just running around killing people right or or if you're yeah if your character is just going to be and defeat aristocrat and just being involved in you know uh politics in ballrooms and uh you know social gatherings yeah is that is that a viable uh gameplay uh thing sure now we have to now we have to outline that out or if your your character is just gonna you know what what whatever niche thing and and on the game that i'm working on right now we're not going to hit it all but we're thinking about it but i hope that bethesda they're thinking about that for for for six i hope so too i've got one more elder scrolls related question and then i'm very excited to start my 40 question list about your game which is rather extensive but uh i'm pretty hyped for it so my last question which i get kicked if i didn't ask you uh is do you know like now you don't work for bethesda anymore what's your thoughts on the dwemer's disappearance oh um um so we originally just dropped that in i think we dropped that in an arena i think that we originally said uh like some dungeon was created and i'm sure we call them dwarves uh yes yes yes the dwarves before they vanished or disappeared and um it was certainly a uh you know what we call yeah if you haven't picked up this this theme before we drop in hopes to say we'll exploit that later and uh we'll we'll come back to that but isn't that intriguing don't you want to play more of our games because you'll learn more about this we don't know what we're doing but hopefully maybe this intrigues you um so i the question was what are my thoughts about the dreamer disappearing yeah um i mean that was the plan all along that uh that they were gonna disappear in whatever reason they disappeared uh you know would be explored later on like i guess i'm not sure that makes sense that makes a lot of sense from a writing perspective like then you'd have like a big reveal when they returned and it would be explained there were a few questions i got like that actually uh that people wanted me to ask you uh in regard to certain things where i kind of knew the response was like you guys had clearly just written that up to a point where it wasn't explained yet but you could add it later on and then have a whole narrative surrounding it but you left it open to allow yourself to do that sort of thing is that fair to say yeah no and and obviously there are explanations that you go like okay that's the lamest explanation and you know the work the worst way of doing things but you know since i'm no longer there yeah fair enough the next part of this interview will cover ted's new studio once lost games what's so special about once lost games is it's made up of julian le fay ted peterson and vijay lakshman the three original developers behind the elder scrolls series and they're developing a new game called the wayward realms which has been described as a spiritual successor to daggerfall okay so now i would love to know more about the studio you founded once lost games and what you guys are working on and who who as well as a part of the project yep uh i guess i can start at the beginning that this was you know 30 years in the making um that uh specifically julian and i have uh continued to be friends you know since i left as uh then later he left bethesda and we we both did uh games on our own um but uh it was a series of youtube videos where it began with him saying if he had done daggerfall you know nowadays but he would do differently and he was really talking about some kind of we've been playing around with not calling procedural generation anymore but let's be honest it's procedural generation uh of how a landscape and a world can be created using that that he could have done better back in the day you know basically recognizing like that there's the sameness of of the world but you know okay well i would think about it differently and because of today's technology it would look different and you know these are the the ways that would come together and uh but in the meantime i've been thinking as a designer and writer about uh procedural generation from you know that point of view and saying like storylines dialogue uh creating npcs in you know that that aspect of the world uh and that we just started talking and said you know hey you know let's do it let's let's let's create that um so we're kind of calling it the spiritual successor to daggerfall what we're working on is not in any way an elder scrolls game um but we're we began by saying and i think there are like five pillars of what we think made daggerfall special and in each one of those you know saying like what we what we could bring to it either based on new technology our experience and what we failed on before and uh and and said oh okay well we we know that this is what we were aiming for we missed the mark on that um but we know better now and uh oh we can go forward because i i feel like that level of or or or that philosophy is not something that you see in in current games like if if you look up yeah for example what the biggest game is of all time like in terms of square footage uh daggerfall is either like first or second you know depending on how things are counted so that was a long time ago yeah and it still stands the test of time in the sense of how big it is but no but no one's even tried i mean i guess that's that that to me is weird that i feel like i think one thing to to sort of set straight because i think a lot of people when you say it's going to be a spiritual success it's a daggerfall immediately think back to how old daggerful was and they think i mean i know you guys are making it in the unreal four engine but like graphically speaking like you guys are gonna not have like 2d sprites and stuff like that you know uh technologies and they'll be super pixelated like you know like huge huge blocks of this is a joke graphically we want to use what's available today and um there's always a discussion and we've we've uh gone back and forth on this as far as um what the artistic style is of it um that at the time i mean if you look back on daggerfall we were making shortcuts or figuring out enemies based on the technology we had at the time where we would say um you know we we finally got uh you know these machines that would allow us to add particle effects to uh certain enemies that we had already created and all of a sudden this was a fire daedra that you know had flames leaping off of it even though it's the exact same model as a warrior who's you know walking around and you know so there's there's a part where you know all none of those tricks are new um but nowadays you can do a whole lot of stuff with uh you know that type of type of technology which we just couldn't do you know 30 years ago no and as well like uh people at home uh have the processing power and like computers and whatnot to do a lot more and play like games that are a lot bigger um i mean what i'd like to do i think is is go over the the setting of your world and then at the end sort of ask questions about like uh the technical technological aspects of procedural generation and uh what's going to be in your game and things like that but i really like to start with asking you about um the world of the wayward realms and could you just sort of give summarize like the setting like what is this place um so the the overall setting of the the world is what we call the archipelago and the archipelago is divided up into two kingdoms um but there's a ton of regions within those kingdoms so up to the north is a region called shi which is ruled by the orcs to the south there's a region called splendor which is ruled by humans um but there's region even further south which is a uh a you know sub-region under under splinter uh uh called iran which is uh ruled by elves but there are a sub region to uh the splendor um and there's a ton of history that's already been written about these so i i i don't want to do too much of a deep dive into that but uh it's um yeah it's it's a unique setting uh but we're calling the wayward realms because uh there's also a history of magic there was the high age of magic and the magic went away when the game begins you're basically there for the new dawn of magic returning which and magic includes monsters and you know got my humans and elves and orcs and and all that kind of returning to the world yeah so i i um i saw the concept art that you guys released of the great library of logos it looks it looks massive i mean there's like a big channel running down the middle and i was just like wow what would happen if i just sort of ran and jumped all the way down there like it's probably the first thing i'd love to do but uh sorry you would die and what i expected but i'd still do it it almost just to see what happens it almost looks like you could i mean make an entire game based in the library but from what you said it's where you start out the game quite early yeah no i mean i think part of it again it's part of learning your lessons from previous games um i've talked to so many people who play daggerfall and died in the opening dungeon so i so you don't want to start people in the dungeon but you want to like visit it early on or something well i i think an opening dungeon is an important thing that i like i don't want to run away from that um and i want to to make it uh tough but interesting so our opening dungeon which is the library of logos um is not just a dungeon like it's basically an underground society um so you are learning not just like it was always the opening dungeon in a traditional role-playing game was just where you learned okay this is how you stab something with it with the dagger and this is how you fire up the tutorial right it's training um but there are other things to be trained on in uh a game that we want to create where it has to do with uh social interactions and accepting quests and uh moving around so it's it's an underground dungeon but it's an underground engine that is a huge be wacky weird like the history of it is is something where it in some ways transcends time and space you know parts of it um and see it's also under attack so oh wow there's there's a lot going on yeah opening opening dungeon there's a lot to explain to the player i guess yeah yeah and because we we stupidly decided on this uh this uh world in which magic is returning um we have to explain the past and the present and yeah there's no opening but it's it's a library so it's about information so true true no that makes sense i mean i read that you guys had two npcs that you said you'd meet within the library um that represent two different factions uh sorter the dodgy law master and hypatia can you tell me more about these two people i've i've looked at the concept art and from that alone you can see they're two very different characters yeah uh well if if you looked into hypatia is is a real world person um she was uh in some versions the last librarian of alexandria and um in real life uh she was uh skinned alive by uh people who were burning down the the library of alexandria so yes yeah so you know i like to i like to revisit happy history like that um so so i think this is the overall philosophy is that we do we begin with factions and then we like to look into some factions within that and people having different philosophies uh within that so if you are uh you know a member of the thieves guild that doesn't mean the same thing to every player um and same thing with with with uh uh the loremasters uh i'm actually working on a book right now which is uh about the laura masters 200 years ago and sort of when they started assembling all of the artifacts and collecting all the books and hiding them away in this island which is um i don't know if i've ever actually made this comparison before but i but i feel like to me it's like tatooine in in uh star wars where the island where you begin the game is so far from the action of the world like it's just such a backwards place but it actually that's the reason why the laura masters chose this location to hide all the most important things in the world um because it so far from where people are actually fighting so yes so how long will you spend inside the library before you explore outside because it sounds like you've got a lot to take in and experience in there and understanding of the world i mean i guess like as a new player starting the game you wouldn't understand anything going on outside of this confined space so you would only have be limited by like these two factions and their sort of micro ecosystem within this library well you don't begin the game in the library okay like that's not like that that's not like you start the game and you're there i said there's stuff that happens before then yeah um so you basically uh i always hate i i'm trying to always figure out not to spoil stuff but um you escape to the library yeah and you didn't know the library was the library you don't know that it's this important thing you're basically thinking you're escaping to a cave um for some reason uh so uh so yeah so uh yeah it's it's not it's not this is but i don't i don't i don't want you to uh accidentally spoil anything in that regard but i know if you i just feel like i'm gathering and i'm just trying to figure out what i've really i mean you know i'll pre test this section anyway with um you know obviously this game still in development you guys are still figuring things out and not everything is going to be like an exact like oh well you said this so this will be in the game sort of thing well we're figuring it out and also trying to figure out whether we like this is a spoiler or not okay that makes sense i mean i think i fell in love with your game when i noticed one of your concept art pieces you had two lore masters looking over a scroll and it had some kind of strange i think it was like bengali sort of characters on it and you it could actually be translated to something it wasn't just random gibberish oh right um i thought i thought that was really cool that you'd actually like created a language in it and it seemed to say was that actually ever translated i i from what i researched because it was uh someone posted it on a language thing on reddit like a trans like there's a whole reddit thread about like languages um like a subreddit and someone posted it there and someone translated parts of it but there was something some words that didn't make sense um so i kind of like i i kind of figured out that it was something to do with how the the world was created and also there was a part about like a king running to the mountain to hide um and that's what i recall apart and there was also like they did some worshiping some gods woke up um and then there was like something that was fractured and then the world was sort of made out of these stones that would fractured that's all i got from it very very small bits i mean i don't know if you want to elaborate on that at all or if it's a spoiler no the only thing i'll elaborate on is that that is been the process that um we are we are in the stage of pre-production where we're doing a ton of concept art and any india anytime someone has an idea and we want to explore it we uh you know i i it is just up at the top of my head because this is something that's been discussed recently uh we've talked about the sky and the moons and notice i say plural moons um but what everything means and what the player experiences um so we there there's a whole lot of back and forth with with our group which is uh amazing and very different than what i've experienced before because usually well going back to to my first job at bethesda um you could go in uh a clock in and go to desk and these are the things you need to work on and this artist comes to you and asks you these questions and you go back and forth this programmer comes to you and goes back and forth yeah i got that impression from speaking to some ex bethesda employees um and it i mean i i don't work there but it sounds like kind of ecosystem where it's a bit like office work whereas i've worked in other ecosystems and architecture offices where the ecosystem has been very much like free and there's big discussions happening uh conversations about like work and people are questioning like mechanics and how things should work and it's just much more of a like uh you can throw your idea out there and you're gonna have a conversation about it and it's not gonna be like judged or thrown away but it sounds like you guys are having uh sort of debates about how things should be still which is cool well for for for the current games for wayward realms yeah uh that is for better or for worse the way things are that uh there's a part i mean if you're not gonna pay someone then you you're gonna have to listen to their opinion that like maybe if maybe if like someone's a lowly artist and you're paying them you know eighteen thousand dollars a year and uh they're just supposed to do strawberry for your game then why are why why are you coming to my office and and bothering me with your your ideas but if you are not paying them and you're online with them then you're gonna listen to them and maybe they have amazing ideas and uh you know that democracy can actually work in in making for a better game um i mean at some point you gotta end the debate and you know oh do something and come up with something conclusive for sure i mean sorry end of conversation but i mean in in the art work you guys sent me um of uh the concept art for the world you're kind of looking over this river and you've got um the moons in the background is there is there like what's because obviously like back to the elder scrolls the kajuti had such a cultural influence with the moons is there like a similar sort of thing going on here where there's a whole significance behind them there is a huge amount uh so i guess two two things about about the sky um i feel like you had a different question before but we'll circle that yeah totally um i i think that it's weird in games that um 50 of the screen real estate is the sky but it doesn't really matter for game play so i feel like a the sky should be interesting and b it should have some gameplay relevance um so iso i we we have been talking to uh lots of people including one of the great things about we've had a long pre-production process which is the luxury um and i've been able to talk to uh academics and people that you know you know scientists people who can uh discuss these things with us and um we uh said like ice i said what what my like i said the two things that matter to me like i think it should look interesting and have an influence on gameplay and then we started talking about everything from like nebula in the sky and uh shattered moons and just anything that just would be weird and different we're calling it the wayward realms because everything should be a little twisted so uh without getting into too much of what those moons do to you and what they do to the world um it's it's not just makeup i mean so in terms of the moons will affect the world and gameplay from and not to go back to the elder scrolls and my criticisms of it um but i felt beauty and morrowind with the idea of the star signs that that simplified um player character concepts of say okay well i'm part of the you know the tower and because i was born in under this constellation so we're that's not where we're going with this okay yeah that makes sense no i didn't i didn't even expect that sort of comparison anyway because it sounds like something very much different integrated in the gameplay not just like the face value this is your star sign and it's attached to this perk and that's the only effect it has on on the game um it sounds more like these are dynamic things that affect the gameplay as you're playing the game and not just at the start of the game i really really want to know uh i mean um another thing about the concept arts about me was you have a giant wall that's separating what seems to be maybe the north and the south which is like a farmed area with loads of villages behind it um and then there's a river running between the walls what's the significance of the wall basically we're we're at the border between uh the orchestra and the human kingdoms so uh that is not the only wall uh because that border has shifted through a couple hundred years um it was just the most dramatic shock for that particular uh angle so um actually i'm not even sure if you look at it and see whether or not that uh where that set whether that's the latest or the oldest yeah all out for debate where exactly that wall is and and so on right okay that makes sense part where the wall is a little weird that it goes up the mountain that way like yeah well to be to be fair i went to the great wall of china a few years back and uh there are steps that are like literally like you're climbing up a ladder almost uh it's ridiculous like yeah and we we climbed up there to like a certain height and then we got to the top of this like one segment um and there was this lady who had like walked all the way up there with like a whole stack of bottles of water and we brought one of those from her and gave her like a big tip but we were like we were just sweating and absolutely exhausted like okay we'll go back down now but um she clearly does that like every day and i don't know how she carried that what was is the wall going that high because it's going over a mountain uh yes yes exactly it's it's built on a mountain um it's it's ridiculous like i i mean i've got some pictures i could share with you of it um from where we went but it was it was literally like you would take a picture like this and you would be looking down almost like a vertical drop it was genuinely scary like you know you're holding on to the side and health and safety wise you know it's just not really a thing [Laughter] yeah that's amazing no it's it's very cool and like that wall especially going up the mountain there just reminded me of of exactly that um but i mean some other concept art that stood out to me uh regarding languages was you had some like it looked like there was like a rubbing from a dwarven language and then you had um someone had started to transcribe like the english lettering for what each looking letter meant because i know you had skills in morrowind that revolved around languages and i was wondering how if you're gonna like implement stuff like that into the game like i know one cool way they did it in kingdom come deliverance for example was um me being a dyslexic actually appreciated this but you had to learn to read and if you picked up a book and you couldn't read you could still see the letters and words but they were completely mixed up and you could kind of get the gist of something but you really can understand what the book was actually about and i was just wondering if you were you know thinking about those mechanics of the languages you have in the game and how that was going to work in terms of if your character would understand a language or or not sure no no uh i i guess there's two different ways to address this one is production and one is gameplay one of the things when uh creating a game like this where there's going to be a huge amount of text in the game um is thinking about um what we call localization which is basically uh translation but i guess in a certain way they call localization a little different than just like straight translation of you know okay well this game is going to be released in germany and we need to you know change uh change these this language um that it's you know can be a little more nuanced where you go like okay well we can't have you know i always give the example of in arena we had an incredibly sexist uh concept art as a front cover yeah oh yeah i actually i posted that i was going to have a conversation with you uh and i posted was the arena image um and it got a little bit of flack of like oh why this and that but i mean i i did watch it's so bad yeah yeah i mean times have changed massively in that sense i'm sure but that's an example of localization where you say uh that it's not just changing the language but it's like we have to change these images and one of the things and actually uh curiously enough i'm just saying this off the top of my head i don't know if this has changed but in germany in the early 90s you couldn't uh kill a person in a video game uh yeah that's correct some video games were actually banned in germany specifically because they had violence in uh my fiance is actually german as well so i could ask her okay information but uh so like their way their work around for example in arena was all blood was green because uh i'm i'm i'm hacking this creature oh look uh or hacking a guard and his blood is green obviously it's not human it's fine yeah um and on the arena uh you know uh cover uh for some reason and it's funny because i think why so the concept art between germany and uh other countries was different but i think that they added bicycle shorts but the point is is that when it comes to languages which was the original question uh we uh recognized that you just can't immediately change a english thing into a german thing or a japanese thing or a french thing that makes sense you know what whatever uh whatever group so that's always been would not always recently been a thing where we uh have taken that into consideration um in the sense not only what we're writing for just like a regular book that you would find we are going to have books like you would find in the elder scrolls where you just like find this book and read it and that gets you know uh transcribed but also how we we think about in terms of dialogue and um you know uh how sentences are put together yes that makes that makes sense added challenge for this generation of games for sure yep i'm i'm just thinking back to morrowind uh no it was on i think daggerfall might have had it but in morrowind i know that when you had a conversation with someone you basically had like uh highlighted words like a wikipedia where you could click on it and it would give you additional dialogue about like this particular god or someone a character that you were discussing i i think especially like people getting into the law and stuff that is a super helpful mechanic that existed in the game is that something you guys have considered doing in your new game oh sure i mean dialogue is a huge percentage of our conversations nowadays um and beginning with what the characterity knows to a certain degree in morrowind and other games you begin the game as a character who um is weirdly enough like a new player where like you enter into a world that you don't know but as that character you should know and you should have some basis of like you're not newly born into this world you know it's like a newly born 30 year old man sort of thing where you just suddenly forgot everything it's true i've never really considered it it's weird yeah and when i am uh you know dm'ing or doing a uh a role-playing game there's a part where i begin in the process of character creation of uh creating previous relationships where you go all right the the these are characters that you you know already know and you you've uh you know had these adventures with them and uh you're you're you know like you said you're not absolutely newborn so you're uh they can they can help you through these things so if there's a part where just in the average conversation where you know you're a shopkeeper and i click on you and uh you know i can sell things or buy things or just talk to you about life that some of these you know like what we call keywords exist because you're not you know you're not new to this world that makes sense so far you guys have a bit revealed some playable races um and we've got like two concept art pieces from the cambium mage and the cambian warrior and they have two different skin colors red and blue and one also appears to have human feet the warrior character and the other ones like a half beast what can you like explain those that race and what's going on there uh so uh we have another races like the campion but we haven't revealed it yet um but the cambian are interesting in that they are uh as opposed to orcs and humans and elves and i don't know if we've said anything about dwarfs um but they um are you're born a cambian you not necessarily have cambium parents so oh okay right so you so like two humans could have a champion child ah is that is that to do with when you like what the phase the moons are in or things like that or unclear okay okay so so why why did one of the cambians have hooves and like talonfeet and the other one didn't so kambians very specifically um were created to be devil-like or demon-like or whatever so uh like some of them have red skin some of them have horns some of them have uh um what do they call them the the the the the feet that uh cloned cloven hoves yes yes so uh some of the wings wow kind of all across the classical the the the you know group of like how they're presented but in our at least our western idea of what is you know demonic they'll have these demonic influences that make sense are they naturally demonic or evil in that sense uh i mean you can play one so you can choose to be good bad um okay i was just wondering like culturally are they generally considered to be evil yes yeah okay short answer yes but long answer is complicated victor sent me a picture of the orc what's the difference between orcs in your game versus other fantasy games well yeah i know it's funny because um i'm sure you're familiar with this uh website where just exploring different tropes of uh different worlds and you know like artworks are different than your arcs uh yeah so there's a part where like if you're going to play an orc you have certain expectations and we don't we don't want to you know let you not play that work um so a lot of it has to do in my way of thinking about um factions that there are different org factions that have different uh philosophies and uh and uh some works uh the big thing about orcs to me is always about their toughness uh yes so when we are thinking about their architecture their armor uh everything we we we do lean into that but there are works that uh resists that and there are works that are uh even though she is their current homeland um i'm not sure if i'm giving this stuff away uh that's fine uh so orcs originally orcs are the original inhabitants of the archipelago where this game takes place so they have a really rich distant history in this world um and they've been through a lot and they've adjusted uh over time and and have uh very varied philosophies about what it is to be an orc and and uh what their background is and where they should be um so they're they're i think that how horror works is different than uh than other uh other ones in some ways they're not there you would expect to be if you say i want to be in a work warrior you're gonna be the super buff tough fighter and uh your armor is gonna be intimidating and spiked and you know designed for that um but there's a whole lot more that you can explore within that yeah no that make that makes a lot of sense and it leads on to my other question about the races having their own identity not just in terms of like combat but gameplay and other other races and and people that you meet in society treating certain races differently like australia with the tie flings and them being evil by nature like how how in the game are other people going to react to what race you're playing i mean obviously you begin with the race and say i'm gonna be an orc or a dwarf or a human or whatever um that that's like the the barest drop into all all of the other things you can be um so for example if you're gonna be a goblin um there are cultural um you know there's a cultural relevance to being a goblin and people are going to react to you because you're a goblin and what their expectations of what a goblin is um and there's you know parts of it that are um that are appropriate that you know you know goblins tend to be i'm focusing on goblins just you know whatever whatever race you want into this that you think uh well goblins uh have some contradictory attributes but they're very quick they um tend to be a little on the chaotic side you know and basically to a certain degree in the world that we're creating goblins have a lot of uh underworld control so they're very involved in uh you know anything that's going on below the radar um and there are you know huge thief skills and uh and different groups that uh the goblins are either controlling or so heavily involved in that they might as well be controlling but on the other hand you can you know there there are goblins that are much more on the kind of robin hood you know angle of things where they they still don't like authority and they want to battle against it but their uh overall strategy is more of like well we're not just doing this for us we're doing this to you know help is it i mean i'd help the poor could you could you go the complete opposite direction and play goblin that um in high society uh who cares about etiquette or will that be like a struggle to do based on people's preconception of you well no well it would be a struggle i mean any of these kind of what i want to hear about it would be a struggle to be honest because it makes sense in the world right and but and it should be a struggle i mean again not to get political or whatever but like yeah real life you know if you look a certain way you know if we're just talking about races in real life society there are expectations if someone who looks different than you comes into the room and you're pre prejudging them so there's uh there's a part but but of that but i but i love that aspect of role-playing of you know let's twist it let's let's make you know the orc scholar let's make the you know the the the you know the goblin aristocrat you know the the elf barbarian you know like all those things i would want to encourage rather than discouraged so but you you also have to come to it with the understanding that you're you're going against tradition we're gonna whatever we can to make this really fun and we want to encourage you to do this but do you know going into this that you are trying to break the machine definitely yeah that that's what makes it interesting like uh like we spoke about earlier pushing games to their limits and seeing what's uh possible within it um especially in regard of just you know society's going to judge you have preconceptions of you but you're kind of just going into it with that sort of character and gameplay for that reason because you kind of want to challenge those preconceptions and just sort of laugh at some of the situations you find yourself in because of them right absolutely and like i've said that that's been a big inspiration from odds where uh all you know people people are really kind of stretching their role-playing limb you know you know minds and yeah yeah different so which is it's cool to see you react to that i think like uh going back to the the law masters there was a concept art you guys released for one of them had like tentacles coming out of their arms is that like a race you haven't announced or is it like a disease or something like that ah no karma okay i love it i knew that that concept art would come up and yeah and uh that's uh not something we're ready to talk about yeah totally totally i i think mystery is a good thing um i was also sent a picture of the inquisition faction that also look very mysterious because they're all masked and they carry a tattered banner can you tell us something about their role in the story uh it's major um it's uh their role is basically and i don't always have to think about like what we've we've talked about and we haven't um they are anti-magic anti-dummy humans and a monster and to some degree at the beginning they're antagonists they're more complicated than that you might play a character who would want to join the inquisition at some point because they're not all bad uh but there's a huge amount of hypocrisy uh within their order um that's what makes it believable though i think when you have you know different hierarchies and people with different opinions and it's like oh could i side with that person within that faction and change what that faction's doing is always like an interesting narrative yeah and in in any faction like i said even even um uh we're talking about the goblins with uh you know kind of their their you know it's already a arguably a sub-faction within goblins if you just think of one equals thief going like okay well goblin thief could equal robin hood but then we can even take it one step further that there is uh a group of goblin robin hoods who are stealing from specific rich to give it to the poor because other rich have paid them off to not steal from me steal from you my competitor and yeah yeah so uh like the the shades of gray are all over the place that's good uh if it's just as simple as uh they hate magic they hate monsters they hate demi humans that's that's the fight of who they are but they're much more complex which is yeah that's interesting i mean for one thing they're carrying these like it's almost like a short axe but with a polax spike attached to the top of it and i was told those were like their unique sort of sidearms that the faction is notorious for using can you like elaborate on on what that weapon why that weapon's like special to them um i guess a couple things i can say about that weapon um uh one is uh i don't know if you're uh you probably know the the youtube channel or uh chat adversity uh is that the guy who looks at medieval weapons or yeah yeah i think i i've seen a couple of channels like that they're all really interesting actually yeah right so he's uh consulting with us uh part part of the discussion on that has been the practicalities of yeah kind of a new weapon that you like i want i i want every weapon to have multiple uses and even if you've sort of outgrown uh that weapon that like okay well i've got this more badass weapon that that weapon can be useful again later on um so that's been one of my uh design requirement on weapons uh one of the things on that particular weapon shape was that the inquisition um intimidates as much as battles and i wanted to have a shape that they would basically paint on the side of buildings uh after they've destroyed them to say the inquisition was here yeah this is what happens if you're our enemy sort of thing yeah yeah so they uh so we actually began with the shape on that where we said like okay well this is interesting and this has this meaning and and we can play around with this then we tweaked it uh for for uh the weapon needs um and then maybe thirdly we don't have a name for it yet uh and at some point we're probably gonna put out a poll where we i i like off the top of my head i there are three different names that internally we've been playing with i'm kind of fine with any of them so like well let's just put this out to the community and and uh and let people you know vote on it yeah yeah i mean in that regard and since you've been consulting with um someone who works with medieval weapons um how how like historically accurate are those weapons that you guys are putting in the game it seems like so far from what i've seen it's like very medieval european medieval sort of inspired obviously that particular acts with the sort of spike to it is is more unique um and i'm also interested like are you actually going to use that the spike on that weapon and the axe head in gameplay or is it just there for show um okay first of all it's not there for sure i guess that that that's the the first one uh dancer um that particular weapon i can name off the top of my head five different uses for it um so everything from you know slashing to throwing to hammering to you know uh well you know that's three uh but yeah i mean you can frost with it it makes sense yeah right um so as far as historical accuracy um we i think we begin with historical accuracy just as far as the jumping off point more important is uh internal logic so it this is not we're not doing a real world simulator of the middle ages no uh we're doing a world which magic while rare and and this has always been a push on mine is that i hate and and this is my own fault indulgence roles that we had majors yield on every street corner that that kind of robbed some of the magic for magic um that it be it becomes too common um yes so i think i feel like magic should be rare and hard powerful but you know if you're going to you know if you decide to become a wizard this is not the easiest path you could take in life on that subject actually i played a game recently called outwards and their magic concept was very interesting because they you basically had to go to this top of the mountain and you had to give up a portion of your health for mana so it was up to you like how weak you became in in like contrast like getting the power of using magic um right i thought that was like a very interesting sort of spin on yeah like you know if you come across a mage they're weaker like you know because of how the magic system works um but i kind of like that idea that not everyone it doesn't make sense for everyone just to be able to use magic for the sake of it you know and some people it then becomes like a rarity um and and special like if if you come across a mage then it's a lot more like oh my god you know i didn't expect that i need to change my tactics in the situation it's quite an interesting thing no no magic is a is probably a disproportionate amount of the conversations we're having right now uh with with the you know the other guys of the project um because obviously that's what's different about a fantasy world and uh and again trying to capture that um we need to understand where magic comes from and what its rules are and what not but uh like a lot of things and it goes back to the philosophy in the elder scrolls is that uh we don't think that people should be 100 uh you know in-world understanding of magic and where it comes from and what its upper limits are and uh why this herb cures you know this uh this condition um but we need to understand that and we need to throw out you know a dozen narratives about why different ideas about what people in the world think about that that makes sense i mean one one of the other questions i know people will be definitely keen to hear is if you can craft your own spells i know like like the system you can yeah okay that's that's really cool to hear because i think it's is there going to be like uh how much scope is there and like the creativity that people have with that system um well i don't i i'm not sure how to answer that i mean it should be at least as much scope as there was you know it when you created the the spell maker in dagger yeah so uh you know combining uh okay well this is a a fire effect with uh with it damages this and it transfers this health and you know uh all those have all you know formula uh is definitely part of the part of the plan that sounds really cool uh i know i remember like uh in oblivion again like i made a fire spell that was i specifically used to kill trolls at a certain level because i knew it did this much damage and they had like a 50 weakness or something so if i use that spell on them they would like die in one hit so it was just like the troll you could name your spells as well and i thought that was really cool right so so i love those sort of features i guess the other question i've got is uh regarding like you said you can use the axe in different ways um how's the combat going to be um uh probably a little bit of uh no okay i was gonna say no comment but that's probably not fair um combat is is of all the things that we are you know sort of recreating from the golden days yes and stuff like that uh the one that's come the most far in uh in terms of game play in modern day um it's uh it's still going to be primarily a first person uh point of view game uh we um we're always uh thinking of combat from from from that point of view there's just been so many uh more recent games that have uh have done combat better that uh i'd say we we don't have quite figured out right now but we're recognizing that uh that's that's an area where um the spiritual successor to niagara fall does not you know carry the weight yeah it doesn't doesn't make you excited in that sense i guess but like uh yeah i think i think like my two cents on combat is is it doesn't necessarily need to be like i think kingdom come deliverance had a very good system in terms of realism and like the swords clashing and really feeling like you had use of that weapon and the different weapons you used and they actually like brought in medieval instructors to show the combinations that they then captured in their mocap room and everything but um in my in my opinion on combat and rpgs it's kind of i i think it's like an important aspect and something you obviously do a lot of um but it doesn't need to be like an a ridiculously high level complex system where the whole game just becomes about the combat but it's more about like can you use the weapons that you've made for the game to their full potential um right like uh i think mountain blade i was it yeah like like somewhat like the system in that is quite simple but there's so much scope and skill required with each one of the weapons um and some games even like for example uh bald escape free um you could even just throw your fighting weapon at the enemy which i thought was hilarious or throw a boot at them even in skyrim telekinesis can be used to do a lot of things to do damage that you didn't really thought you could with with other weapons kind of like you would in in a dnd game i guess right no no i mean and all the things you're mentioning in in the specific games you mentioned or things that we're we're looking at um yeah no i mean that that that's certainly uh a challenge uh in trying to make a game that that uh you know like i said with with uh the inquisitor's weapon is um i don't want you to pick up a weapon and immediately go like there's no use for this that it's whatever an iron dagger and uh i you know uh this is never gonna be helpful and going like okay well actually fairies uh are uh you know iron is there is their weakness so yeah maybe keep it around um so even on that kind of rock paper scissors you know easy part of design stuff i'm going like nothing nothing should be completely useless every weapon should have more than one use yeah yes and then some of the the the modern things i mean we didn't have like knockback or or whatever in daggerfall like you know you know you you could have a shield all that did was add your armor class but there was no gameplay you know in raising a shield at a specific time so um yeah we that that's an area where we recognize uh we we can adapt a lot from modern games totally i mean obviously it's fair to say that um time has moved on since then and a lot of what you were doing in that game and what was possible was really pushing everything to its limit and combat was as good as it could be at the time and now you guys you know making something completely new you've got a lot more scope with that so it makes perfect sense i i know julian actually spoke about using machine learning for creating an ai that reacts and like makes tactics up uh to sort of deal with certain situations just like running it repeatedly um until it like figures out the best way of dealing with certain things is that is that some can you like elaborate on on how you how you're going to do that because it sounds really interesting but it's not something i know a lot about right well uh part of it is um i think that the tricky thing with ai is that it's actually really easy to make super smart ai um that just like will always kick your ass uh and yeah you say that but i see so much bad ai when i play video games sure but but but part of that is that they are trying to make it so like i mean we we're trying to make a fun game yeah not just we but everybody is trying to make yeah so there uh there's a part where yeah there's there's some part where the air is bad because it's not good at path finding or you know it it doesn't know the way to get from a to b you know in a straight line or around this obstacle or whatever but that's that's that's one aspect of it um but the other aspect is like okay well if it's an archer trying to shoot you um it's pretty easy for it to just always hit you but to say okay well this guy is uh you know has this type of bow and we also want to give some random chance of of him missing you and and also with a you know diving deep into that like you know you start getting closer and he goes like oh he's got a sword i've just got a bow and arrow i need to retreat and find another location yeah so none of that like all those things have to be happening by design and uh for you to you know as a designer outline those and then as a programmer to implement them um so i i'm not sure we were this uh i think i might have gone off on a tangent maybe a little bit but um i guess i just found it very interesting and exciting that um the the enemies could be reacting to you and thinking about how they could tactically deal with you based on the fact if you're a warrior or an archer or something maybe try and surround you like because with machine learning you don't know what's going to sort of come out of it and sometimes it can like you say the ai can be too good and just absolutely destroy you every time also some some enemies are going to run away and some enemies that's good yeah because i i think in rpgs as well like every enemy seems to have like a real willingness just to kill themselves right no i mean certainly you know we're going way back we like enemies were things we placed in a dungeon who would sit there waiting for someone to come around the corridor and then attack and you know any creature or enemy or you know whatever you want to call it that we've created um needs to have well let's just say a creature because like if it's if it's a human or demon human then it's much more complicated so that's a huge rabbit hole to go into but if it's a creature that is hanging around a dungeon it's got a life it's got a uh this is how it reproduces this is you know it it's hungry it's looking to mate it's you know what whatever whatever is on on its mind yes makes sense for that creature's ecology and if there are creatures that if you walk past them they're tremendously fierce and they've got big teeth and they're scary looking but they don't care and they are munching away on on some bones because that's what they like to eat and leave them alone and you'll be fine but if you hack them you're you're going to be in a bad place if you corner them if their children are nearby then you're going to be in a bad place so it just makes the world more more real real unlikely you just think of like a what what is the creature really trying to do like why why would it fight you um i mean other than to obviously defend itself or because it's because it's hungry so i mean you mentioned previously when we spoke about uh the elder scrolls series how you didn't like the main character being the hero and the only one that can save the world because it's very cliche and does get a little bit predictable sometimes with the storyline as well um obviously i assume your game you're playing a character can you elaborate on your role in the universe at all let's just let's just say no comment on that okay okay i think that there's i mean i i understand like from the script that was translated that um there will be gods in the game um can you can you access their powers or get their blessing or like do they gift you with unique artifacts and things like that so you're not a god yourself but you have access to some kind of thing that makes you more than just a human well and yeah and um in your relationship and in our game just because uh in my mind um the female energy is about creating stuff so all basically all the deities in our world are goddesses um and uh and they really vary a lot is in terms of what they do and what their philosophy is and the default way of becoming a better mage is to follow a certain path of a goddess uh so there are goddesses who i mean just in the simplest uh aspect if you want to learn fireball there's a goddess path that takes you to learning that particular spell so like religion and magic are are very intertwined in the world that makes sense and i i suppose in that case since you have different factions with different cultures that like some factions maybe have a certain affinity for certain gods and therefore use certain types of magic yeah no that that definitely i mean we created these goddesses and we created this map and these political groups and uh and then we said all right well this this this is a group that uh is definitely more aligned with this particular goddess so like i guess as as a player who wants to be a mage you can't just be like okay well i'm going to be the most powerful mage i'm going to learn all of these abilities and spells because you'd attempt you you probably have to befriend one goddess and get their affinity but you might piss off another one is that how it would work um no i mean i i think that well first of all if you if you begin the game as i'm gonna be the most powerful mage you should recognize that that's going to be difficult yeah so yeah it's not impossible um and again if you think of like i don't know like greek mythology that um it doesn't mean that if you are uh you know from athens and your patron saint is athena that that's the only god that you believe in you recognize like a whole spectrum yeah yeah and maybe that's the one you're closest to but you're going to say oh you know what um poseidon is useful right now yeah that makes sense so yeah so i i i think that there's a part where i i like specialists maybe my prejudice might be in favor of someone who uh recognizes that they're going to be you know uh an awesome mage of you know filling the blanks here that they're gonna be an awesome healer age or uh you know uh you know whatever and um and really you know dive deep in that but you know generalist mages uh should be should be a thing um yeah i mean i think it's interesting in that regard though like saying someone who wants to be the most powerful mage like um forcing them to make decisions on like okay well this southern god will give you access to this and then that will give you access to this so it's like you there may be a way to get both but um like maybe that's really difficult to do i mean that's that's when it gets quite interesting well anything anything should be difficult to do i mean if you're special uh that that that would be a difficult path as well you know once you get to a certain echelon i always think like you just think about a realistic world where just common things if you if you just want to be if you're going to be a thief and you're going to be a someone who's good at pickpocketing you'll you're going to find someone you know locally who will teach you the basics of pickpocketing yeah same as you're going to be a mage someone's going to be able to teach you a few little spells like there's going to be a wise woman uh in a shed somewhere who knows a couple of spells but as the game progresses and you want to get better it's good everything is going to be a quest to seek out power the next none of those people are going to be on every street corner who can sort of push that skill to the next level now mechanics wise i'd like to ask you about like the faction system within the wayward realms because daggerfield daggerful obviously had a lot of systems that allowed factions people in towns to dynamically change relationships with one another is this something that we can expect in the wayward realms uh yes i can expand on that please see one one of the things um i think that that's a that's a a funny example of something that was better implemented but less well communicated in daggerfall that um you didn't know i'm trying to even think of some of the names of the factions in in diagraphal but if you didn't know if you joined this nightly order and you did quests for them that another nightly order didn't like that and they had a problem with that faction and that um if you went to visit let's say you joined a uh nate liver during daggerfall and you did some quests for them and uh then you went to sentinel that uh that this nightly order is doesn't like you because of that reason yeah um we we had that like all of all of those tendrils were in the design and the code for that but the player didn't know it and so you just went to sentinel and people didn't like you and you didn't know why um i i guess i guess in your new game then the issue is like how do you communicate that to the player right right so so yeah so i mean that's been a big conversation yeah um is uh we we we we don't want to spoon feed anything to the player but we recognized that uh we didn't even give a hint in in daggerfall why these things were going on so um we're we're trying to ride that line it's interesting because i think obviously i guess people might some people might not like uh the whole uh you know you've got like a screen where it's like this fraction is like plus 10. this one's plus 100 and they love you but then that one's minus 100 and that's why they don't want to speak to you i guess i guess if it like is given off in in-game dialogue and that's one way of doing it but also you kind of have the issue of like if you're a new player experience in the game for the first time then the worry or my concern would be like oh if i joined that faction i didn't i wasn't even aware of this other faction i thought was cooler but now they don't like me and i wasn't aware of the implications of my choices do you know what i mean sure i guess that would be my concern um those are legitimate concerns so um i think to a certain degree whether it's joining a faction versus working for a faction so yes um so there's a little difference if you are well known as being you know a member of arthur's knights of the round table and you know oh i wanted to you know join mordred's army but i'm known as being this well it's not to be you know you you can work around that um but in order to join a faction and really be linked with them um then that needs to be some a super conscious choice that you accidentally made okay okay that's good to i think um like one of the things i really liked about skyrim going back to modding was there was a mod that added patrols of different factions into the game world and obviously in a way that made sense these factions would fight each other like you know the stormcloaks didn't like the thalma so you'd see them battling like if two patrols happen to cross paths is that something that would you would have in your world like a dynamic sort of world where these factions have changing relationships and it got i got to a point maybe you just have i don't know one faction caravan going to trade with this town and another faction comes across them and just attacks each other but it's not like a scripted event it happens like just as the game world progresses absolutely no no that that aspect of um those faction dynamics and who's opposing uh so and so and and by the way these are these are also not written in stone that you know faction a hates faction b and that's the end of it that okay yeah those those relationships can change because um i'm trying to think of a of a great example of this i think like mountain blade one and two is probably a good example because in that game you could you could like well i found as someone who really enjoys like a narrative experience i started playing that game and i i was completely addicted because i was almost writing my own story and each time i'd play a new game it would be completely different and another faction be at war with another faction because of something that happened and then they'd be fighting each other and then that faction would be really weak and i remember because i worked with the guys on mountain blade 2 helping them out with some content and stuff and one of the issues they had earlier on development and is that they um one particular faction just had access to more resources and whatnot where it was in the map so the whole map was just taken over by it was either i think cal radio or like the northern empire depending on who won this first sort of thing and then it completely sort of threw the map into imbalance which was super interesting because it's like even the developers didn't know that was going to happen but it made each play through completely different yeah i don't know that's a great example so when you're talking about you know like your game and like these changing factions that that to me is super exciting yeah no no i mean that what you're describing is is what we want to happen fantastic don't like other factions at the start of the game because they're like after you or they don't like magic so i guess there's going to be a natural affinity for those factions to dislike factions practicing magic is that correct i mean every faction needs to be completely defined like what their what their role in the game is um it should always be more complicated than that simple thing but i mean i think there's a part where you define things in black and white and then you get into the gray so uh you you know you do say like you know like you said like the inquisition hate magic hate monsters hate demi humans um they they burn books they uh hate want to erase any part of history that uh that has to do with you know a world in which magic was even possible just basically they they they want people to believe these were all folklore and uh you know uh in this backstory that's a pretty pretty stark plan yes but it's a lot there's a lot more stuff going on within them on that and and they can change they can uh they can ally with one group and say we're gonna put some of these things on the side if if if there's a group of orcs that uh have enough in common with them then they'll go like we're going to set aside this anti-demi-human thing and you know not not all of us some of us can't set that aside and they're going to split off but there's oh wow okay some some big chunk of them that they say we haven't we we have enough things in common with this action we're we'll all lie with them would they actually make a sub faction in that sense or yeah wow no every gosh a faction that is so 100 whatever that sub-factions are impossible yeah i know that that starts to really sound like you know like the real world we live in like a very believable sort of breathing role play game that you're creating in that sense yeah which is amazing cool all right i think yeah another another thing i've a question i've got about procedural generation i think some players get worried because um quests like go to location x and kill y amounts of goblins or something uh which i think there are a lot of quests like that in daggerfall which is understandable at the time because it was like procedural generation um and what it was capable of um is that something that you guys are like trying to look into with your new game yeah um so in the same way that when julian looks at what he did in daggerfall as far as uh um procedural generation on the landscape or city creation says all right well these are these are some things that we did okay uh these are the criticisms of it of you know uh a sameness of the world and uh of just buildings and you know that that that whole setup and this is my plan to address that um i feel as passionately about storylines and uh you know the the npcs and those type of relationships uh to say um those need to evolve and feel less samey and um have you know multiple resolutions that you know if you go go to go to dungeon x and kill 10 goblins and come back and i'll give you 100 gold that was procedurally generated at the time that we we would say you know fill in and yeah number exactly oh it was like blank and then quest and then blank and then you just uh percent uh [Music] percent dm something like that like uh or dn probably for dungeon go to you know and then the the code would figure out okay well this is the location within this region and and then we'll just fill on this word uh and kill you know percentage number percentage enemy and i'll give you percentage g gold and all those things we we you know we were calculated at the time which were like okay well this is endlessly you know yeah that you're always you're always we'll change goblins to uh orcs when you're this level and we'll change orcs to liches or or whatever whatever lots of liches would be a bit scary go kill a thousand liches yeah yeah i mean that fulfilled the the basic uh the basic role on that but it didn't do much for the story um so a whole lot of my work on the game has been um to make the stories meaningful uh evolve over time um yeah i mean it's it's like name day like what we're planning on for that um yeah no no it ain't gonna be like that at all good good to hear i mean i guess in essence you know every movie and uh series or game can be boiled down to those like core sort of uh you know sort of narrative of like this is the hero this is this person and you know there's like a sort of defining genre in that sense i guess um i think like even though mountain blade 2 with those procedurally generated quests and that have been like predefined and scripted suffers in that sense from you've done the five quests available you've done them all and you're just repeating them but the game is still like very exciting and interesting because you've got the whole world going on around you um and and that's changing constantly um so like you might be trying to go like to travel from here to here to do a trade deal but then this faction's at war with this faction this time so that could be a lot less profitable for you so i think even though those procedural quests don't work sometimes in a world that's ever changing the journey that you have to do to get there is what makes it interesting and exciting and it sounds like your world is going to be like constantly evolving in that sense well and that's the way to think about it is it's less about like just going back to arena uh you know our most you know uh archaic version of it in arena you just march up to the king he'd say you know i need to tell go to this place tell us we're off and i'll give you 100 gold and there was no context there was no like oh a werewolf has been terrorizing this kingdom for a while when i walked into this kingdom i found the you know people mourning in the streets and uh grave keepers digging up uh digging up graveyards where they were uh you know filling in all of these dead bodies because you know this this has been an issue i've i'm using this as an example obviously is to say like you don't begin any narrative like i don't know a shakespearean play begins with the first act which sets up the scenario so it's part of the artificiality of just like a standalone quest is that you know like i said there's no context there's no you know sense of where where is this coming from why why does this king need me to kill a werewolf or rescue a princess or whatever and and where does this fit in with the the whole rest of the world it's not to say that every single thing you're gonna do in the world is unique and you've never seen this in another game before but it has meaning it has that's the poem there's context within the world and it sounds like it'll be impactful as well yeah i think um looking back to daggerfall uh obviously with procedure generation like the game was huge like you had cities that were as big as cities in rural life in case some cases and also like the npcs that filled them were numerous and they were all generated so each playthrough they had like different names and stuff uh is that is that gonna be something that you do in this game as well like in terms of like how big a city is actually going to be in towns um and will you see more people than you meet sort of thing uh yeah no a huge when we're talking about kind of the pillars of of when we're making wayward realms and and saying like what we need to make and you know there are features that will be dropped you know in the course of development and we'll say like okay well that would have been cool but we don't have time to implement or with our issues or whatever but uh game size is uh is has has always been a big part of you know creating this world and that does fall into category of uh how to handle large amount of npcs and to say um if you you know there are obviously parts where you just like going down through a dungeon and and the npc ai is you know like we talked about with monsters so you know it's like okay well this is an individual creature that is mostly concentrated on protecting its young and if you leave it alone it'll be fine yeah but if you walk to a marketplace there's a group ai that's going on or if you go to the siege of a castle there are conflicting group ais that are uh you have castle sieges well you want to do castle sieges as well yeah have i not mentioned that no no that sounds amazing yeah no no other games have done it yeah true true but um to varying degrees of success it's like it's a huge undertaking to have like armies moving across the map and the mechanics of for castle siege as i know from the mountain blade 2 development team um it's just it can get very complicated so like yeah it's not i know so i mean obviously it goes without saying that you have so many years of experiencing in the gaming industry specifically making role-play games as well um so you know i know you know the undertakings that you know you're not claiming these things out of thin air but if you're but if but if you're creating a world that's in conflict then i mean there's a part where i've had discussions with people who and really more more more fans than uh than the people i'm developing the game with uh who uh have kind of kingly fantasies where they go okay well i want to take over this whole world and lead armies against another one and i go like to be honest it's boring you want to play a different game i mean yeah that's a strategy game to me like like if i'm um you know setting this army against that army and there's going to be hundreds of thousands of people and fighting this is a personal this is a role-playing game and you're a role and you you will see battles you'll see sieges and stuff like that but um you're in the midst of it you're not like looking at it from uh uh yeah that that sounds epic yeah i know i know you like your scale and we we spoke about uh skyrim and uh obviously they had sieges in that but they were like very underwhelming in comparison to i guess technology and then being on console extremely limited um but like the siege of whiterun i felt like i attacked uh you know white run with a smattering of stormcloak soldiers um and it was really just me doing all the work um yeah i assume these sieges uh are gonna be a lot bigger in scale especially because the cities i assume are bigger as well yeah no yes [Laughter] it's it's yeah no it's it's i know there'll be a lot of people uh uh fans of the channel like comparing it to the elder scrolls and i i think maybe their conception when you say a siege it's like no it'll be bigger than that sort of thing so i just wanted to mention it for that reason no that's fair um will you guys have any voice acting um yes it's not gonna be well this is a recurring conversation let me put it this way um we are not going to be such a big budget game that we can say we're going to create a world the size of you know the united kingdom and have every character in the world have their own voice and be acted expertly by a real life actor who and i've directed you know a number of voice actors so i know that like oh no that line was meant to be read sarcastically or this line was meant to you know uh delivered so-and-so um there's a lot of technology and people will show this to me almost daily where it's like okay well you know there's there's this new system where you put this in and they'll you know created you know uh dynamically oh okay i my philosophy has always been i'd much rather force people to read than have bad vr yeah i i agree i think i think especially when i mean it's literally there's a channel on youtube i think his name is bacon and it literally has loads of funny oblivion conversations and it's absolutely hilarious like there'll just be this guy like i don't know you and i don't care to know you and then he'll just leave with like no context and you start to get into situations obviously where um repeated lines of dialogue in any game even cyberpunk um just become monotonous and boring very quickly because you've heard it so many times whereas like how many different ways can you say hello sometimes it doesn't feel like enough you know you still heard that same line of dialogue in that same tone um and you immediately get drawn out of the role play so i understand the decision to to be like if we can't do voice acting properly we just won't do it i think that's a good well and that's where i am uh what's today's date that is 20 20 uh on on january 22nd 2021 uh i there will be some vo in the game um there's gonna be some uh i you can't have a silent game you can't have if you walk into a tavern uh you at least it's going to be a rumble grumble grumble yeah yeah um i think the the morrowind uh style of like you know hey stranger well-met you know uh is is fine as just we're about ready to get into a menu where we're going to do uh the real dialogue but you know you know uh yeah enough to put you into there who knows by the time we release this game uh technology or budget or whatever will have reached a stage where you know i can you believe i was going to do it all text i mean yeah i mean thankfully uh voice acting is like one of the last things you can implement so in that sense you know you guys have some time away before you can have to make that decision right but but but i like the human voice so it's uh we're going to use it uh and we're going to use it in in teasers and trailers and uh in music and you know uh like you're you're not gonna walk in a silent world but uh there's also gonna be i think probably oh some reading you have to do yeah no that makes sense i think there's actually a mod uh where it's like uh one of the google ai or something will read the books and skyrim to you um if you open them which i've never installed but i thought maybe i haven't even that's interesting i kind of want to test out now but um i don't know like especially like for different characters when you start to use ai i mean i don't know the technology that you're talking about and it's how good it is but i guess if the voice isn't remarkably different then your brain picks up on that very consciously i think yeah yeah no there's the what do they call it in visually the uh the something valid the uncanny valley uh when it comes to the look of of characters in the world and i think that there is that that same uncanny valley when it comes to uh voice where you know all just like that one word is said weird and you go like who am i talking to what is you know you're you're you're not real yeah it throws you off yeah definitely you said you can have like relationships with many people throughout the game it's a really important aspect can you also have uh companions or groups following you around yes oh wow okay that's cool so i guess could you like if you were not a combat person and you wanted to go into a dungeon where you'd be threatened by animals that you might not be able to deal with you could hire some mercenaries to protect you or something like that absolutely and and you could you could even uh have them do aspects of of a quest like you don't have to have them just follow you because you send them to be like bothered to go and do that you do it and you make a yeah like we need some healing potions yeah go you know go after the the you know go to the store and get some healing potions and it's it's so simple but no game does that with a companion no you know it's it's something like you know like i guess you'd be role playing in dnd and be like oh well i i need to go to the store and get some potions to the party um and each person has their own thing of what they're doing in that town and it it makes so much sense for your life because it's just like time efficient um yeah instead of you having to do everything yourself like if you probably and i'm not promising much more complicated than that like you know go to the capitol former relationship with the queen convince her to join our side and like yeah there's there's a part where i'm i'm not letting you just like no no no go and go and finish this elaborate quest line for me while i sit here in this bed or something come back and come back i'll i'll be here see that would be another funny one wouldn't it like see how how far you could play through the game without doing anything yourself just telling other people to do it for you yeah wait a minute i could be reading a book like you just spend your whole play time like reading books while your companions do the quest for you you're like oh oh i killed that dragon fantastic all right that was that hard yeah it was pretty hard but no i like the idea of those just like little role play choices it's things that um even some mods have added where it's like oh what kind of combat mode do you want do you want like me to be far away from you closer groups of followers and parties like i think dragons dogma did that really well when you had like a group of people following you and you'd have like an engagement with an enemy um and everyone would have like a different role like in d and obviously i assume you can also just do everything on your own a lot of role players are loners so they they like to you know like that to be their aspect but yeah like you said some of the simpler ones of like okay we're going to this engine you hang back and you know back me up or you you go forward and you know you know be the vanguard you know like this again i'm not i'm not making a strategy game so it's not you know that level of you know managing you know yeah no no um but the the things you'd expect to be able to say to a reasonably intelligent person who's helping you out that's very cool let's talk about relationships again will you be able to have like uh relationships with other npcs or i know people will ask me um why didn't you ask him about romancing or having children because it seems to be a huge request from a lot of role play game players that you can do that sometimes it is sorry sometimes to me it doesn't make sense but everyone has their like passions in these kind of games um and i trying to think of how to phrase this i find however you want to call it sex romance you know filming a family uh all of those aspects of life very important in real life yeah that i wouldn't want to do a cheap version of it in the game oh no totally so i think that that's where i'm kind of coming from it's like like if you if you said wouldn't it be cool if fill in the blank yeah um i would be on board with you and say yeah that sounds great you know so why don't we do that because it's hard it's uh if it's not properly it would be lackluster so you would yeah you know unless i think we're going to do a good job at it i don't want to like maybe maybe my very short answer so it might end up being like we talked about with daggerfall with easter eggs that yeah maybe we'll just figure out a way to do it and implement it and hey guess what you can do these things and that would be cool um it almost makes me icky to uh design from the point of view of a gameplay game designer uh how to seduce and romance and marry an npc thank you it's it's like it just i don't know it just makes life like like you just kind of want to say like there's different types of relationships and they're okay well these two are opposites who attracted and these two are people who are long-time friends who felt a you know an attraction at some point like that's almost a whole nother game like maybe oh god yeah definitely i mean a whole lot of games have been made about the subject um some very successful and and i agree it's like it's it's one of those things where i think you almost turned romance and what it really is into a commodity and there's a danger of doing that and i'm glad that's your perspective on it actually um but i know people would kick me if i didn't ask you that question no no but but it's i've been repeatedly asked it so uh i'm glad to glad to address it and and and again i'm addressing it from somewhat ambivalence of going i'm not not implementing it because i don't think that it's important but almost because i do think it's important um yeah that matter of respect uh yeah no and you know if if we can especially if either brilliant design or technology or something comes along that says uh we could put it in the game then hell yeah yeah cool so um another question because i know you guys had a concept art piece um of a wereball which was really interesting can you become a wereball yes wow okay and can you can you tell us anything about what that's like because i think a lot of people probably think it's a werewolf but a web ball or although like a lot of differences uh well differences between different types of and i have to i have to work on my pronunciation of this i keep on using lycanthropy to be across all weird beasts but that's not technically correct and that's not what they would say in game and i think uh i don't have my computer to be able to check this out it's called their uh theanthropy which is uh we're we're we're beasts in general it could be just transforming into a beast basically yeah a man to a quasi this other animal yeah so all of them have different traditions and uh the process of becoming one um i mean the the easiest way of doing it gameplay-wise is to say uh it's like vampirism that uh you you fight one of these creatures and every you know time they slash you you have a one percent chance of contracting this disease and and this is uh where it goes the interesting thing about both vampirism and uh uh we're beasts i'm just going to say that instead of okay or whatever that term is um is that in folklore it's a lot more interesting and there's a whole lot more stuff to to delve into which uh you know i don't really want to give spoilers on but uh it's not a it's it a i guess um thinking back on daggerfall we yes uh uh we we actually had weird boys in dagger fall too uh we had werewolves and weird wars actually we chose to release the weird war as kind of a nod to yeah successor um but in both cases i think you had the exact same clause maybe there was a difference in some of your stats uh when you when you became one of those but we the only thing we did was say when the full moon comes out um all of a sudden you have this weapon these claws which are powerful um you can't access any of your other weapons or magic or whatever and every npc you see hates you and i think you have to you might have had to kill once to keep your health or or something like that um i don't remember off the top of my head but that was a again i'll justify it because it was an easter egg that it was something that uh we spent a huge amount of it daggerfall wasn't the werewolf game like we're going on it was just a fun mechanic implemented but obviously not fully developed right right so uh we're we're taking that as kind of our minimum but uh there are factions that worship you know these creatures and you know cults that that are dedicated to them and ways of becoming one that don't involve being attacked by one um and and and differences between uh different types of wearables so uh it's a it's it's a big topic and i i feel like i probably should end it there okay no that makes sense totally respect yeah yeah i don't want to yeah go go too deep into spoilers and things like that and things that haven't been fully uh developed in that sense so i actually had a question here which she already kind of answered in our previous discussion discussion um which was your perspective on modding which i know you're a big fan of so i guess my question is now how are mods how are you going to make um wayward realms moddable um for fans so they have access to it and they can do what modders do like i said uh we we that that's a big part of uh what we're trying to figure out uh but one of the big discussions about um what engine to use uh we were originally thinking we were gonna go with unity because it's sort of more famously mod friendly um and it wasn't until kind of diving into it a little bit more that we said uh unreal has that capability and that that push as well so um that loosened it up but but that was our initial uh way of approaching it and said we we would rather you know push the we would rather push the game to a engine that supports modding than maybe go with our idl engine um so uh i don't know if that really answers kind of your question i mean i guess uh another question to do that is like well yeah like the elder scrolls series has i think survived for so long with um its modding support and with a lot of the fans creating uh almost you well literally a whole a whole another game in itself um that you can carry on playing all these years later there's still huge projects that aim to bring the whole of tamriel um into and other places we've never explored in any elder scrolls game into uh skyrim's game engine um right a lot of huge projects like that what what's your kind of like ambitions for what you'd kind of want modders to do when they get their hands on the game is it is it just i guess what we talked about earlier was a little bit was like customize it to what you want like you have to eat food to survive sort of thing but you know what yeah i think the it should only be um defined by your uh your ambition and what you want to create in this this world i mean obviously if it gets to the part where like i'm going to take this whole thing and create a whole new landscape and villages and storylines and stuff like that like okay if you got the time and skills some people do but yeah but but little tweaks you know i skinning you know or you know like okay well i i want to add a new armor type or you know whatever yeah like i i think that a lot of the magic of modding maybe maybe that the big idea things are you know sexier or whatever but a whole lot of these the the quality of life or or uh you know visual uh changes or are what uh what makes a huge difference in the game so uh you know we we there should should not be any real limits i mean there's a part where obviously if you're going in into a direction that you go like all right well at some point this is no longer wayward realms or this is known as yeah awesome i think the player always makes a pretty obvious decision that they want to keep their game lore friendly uh in that sense or not um and and that's the beauty of modding like you said i i do i still still got great respect for for your perspective on modding though because like i said i feel like bethesda um i mean what was your view on their paid modern monetizing mods um they've they're still going with the creation club and still making content for that is that something like you would ever look to do in the future no no no i mean well at least not the way that they did it you know i i would certainly want to keep it keep it open to a more creative creativity is good uh if someone comes along who is really passionate and uh and wants to be involved in kind of you know an official creation uh then that would be interesting i mean i think one of the nice things about modding is also it's it's become a way for someone to get their their foot in to the door for you know game development and oh definitely um you know look i could i can lay out a dungeon level look i can you know uh i i can take these gameplay elements and uh tweak them in a way that you know respects balance while giving this different effect it's a portfolio of of what you can do in that regard didn't you hire some of the guys who made the daggerfall unity project uh no but we're in communication with them oh okay is is that something that you've been looking at in terms of like people who have done work on daggerfall and certain people i mean you've already i guess consulting with many people who were fans of the franchise anyway yeah which is it's really cool to see it's really cool to see uh uh the creator of something really passionately talk about their game and it sounds simple but honestly i feel like it doesn't happen much sometimes uh with other franchises just passionately talk about the game and also respect uh how much fans care about it um and you know i mean we've been having a conversation for many hours now and i'm almost on the last question but that in itself is uh i think a testament to how much you care about the community um and and the games that you've made well i i appreciate that but it but it has been a thing that's gone back to the beginning and um and again without without uh casting aspersions on bethesda and what they've done and obviously they've done a good job in a lot of ways i agree that there's been kind of this pullback from the community um in terms of feedback and uh an interaction which is something i guess to a certain degree they're a victim of their own success that uh that you know once you become this thing that you you don't necessarily you know uh need you know to listen to everybody out there and we were also lucky enough at the early stages with iranian niagara fall to be pre we were pre-internet but we were pretty you know internet as we know it today today and uh we could self-select a group um i mean i mean i'm not i'm not telling any any anything surprising to say like uh nowadays uh the internet can be very nasty and very true very sure and you don't want the loudest voice to be the one you're listening to um yeah i agree i think so uh yeah yeah no i mean i i totally relate to that statement like just in comparison when i had 1 000 subscribers and used to reply to every single comment i could um things were very different compared to how they are now and if i do something wrong or someone sees something differently to me i get a lot of lash back and uh you're here yeah literally that kind of thing um and so part of me has become immune to it but uh a lot there's still like a lot of things that you kind of like hit you really deep and it's like oh yeah i was worried about that thing and someone just commented that and now i feel terrible sort of thing and i'm sure you've experienced similar things so i mean i think the last question i have is kind of like a suggestion um and it was something that i think would be a big undertaking but uh given that you did dnd inspired sessions in the past with the elder scrolls i was wondering if you'd be running any dnd sessions for the wayward realm universe and if you'd even consider streaming them with people from internally in the team or even other people that you bring on just to kind of develop the law and sort of get people excited about the game is that something you'd consider doing uh yes and and it's been discussed uh and the some of the people that we did uh the um the games will be back on uh the older scrolls forums are involved in a way for drums so uh mistake we we we i mean we've had discussions within the last 24 hours about it oh my goodness so yeah so it's an ongoing uh discussion uh it'll it long it'll it'll happen yeah i guess i guess it's a super difficult thing because yeah exactly how i was gonna say it probably quite difficult especially if you like live streamed it because there's probably things that happen in role play where it's like well actually maybe that doesn't go into the game or that faction might react differently or something like that um i guess you'd have to like pretense it would like this isn't everything here isn't like a hundred percent well i'll say this the most recent discussion has been uh because this is what we did for for daggerfall is that we did we were we were doing lore's set up prequel stuff so if magic worked differently in our game then you know and also we were doing it just based on the potential as a dragon's model so already the gameplay is going to be different uh then it would be not but uh you know there's we we we went into it saying like we're we're building so um if there are some parts of it that uh that don't make the final cut then that's fine but um you know i guess that sort of answers the question no that makes sense thank you so much for your time ted uh you've gone above and beyond answering all my questions about the eldest girls and your own game and i i'm yeah i was hyped just writing this interview and getting the chance to speak to you and thank you so much for just giving your time up for a hardcore fan of the elder scrolls series now i appreciate that this has been fun if you actually reached the end of this interview please do comment wabba jack or jeez in the comments below and i really do hope you enjoyed the video i hope i did the interview justice i will say it was a pleasure to speak to ted peterson and see how much he knows his own law even almost 30 years onwards from when he initially wrote it this is the kind of passion that makes great games and i think it's really important to show that you care to the community like ted is as well you can follow the original elder scrolls creators on their socials and specifically on their discord at once lost games all the links for that are below in the description and do drop a like before you go since that helps you to push the video out to everyone thank you so much for watching guys and i will see you in the next video

Channel: ESO

Views: 345,841

Rating: 4.9473886 out of 5

Keywords: the elder scrolls 6, the elder scrolls, bethesda, bethesda interview, elder scrolls vi, elder scrolls 6, todd howard interview, bethesda game studios, skyrim, hammerfell, eso, the elder scrolls online, gameplay, once lost games, interview, The Wayward Realms, lore, todd howard, elder scrolls skyrim, elder scrolls daggerfall, elder scrolls arena, arena, tes, elder scrolls, elder scrolls morrowind, morrowind, dlc, news, new game, rpg, elder scrolls 6 news, daggerfall, oblivion, mods, podcast

Id: AegrlefXuwE

Length: 204min 32sec (12272 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021

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Once Lost Games is developing Wayward Realms, "an open world RPG in an ever-changing setting." It promises to be a sort of spiritual-successor to Daggerfall.

Check out their Twitter. Discord, and website.