Todd Howard's eventual retirement looms over Bethesda fans as post-Starfield departures begin
As Starfield developers begin to depart Bethesda after the release of the studio's massive RPG, some fans are despondently casting their minds forward to the eventual departure of studio lead Todd Howard.
Earlier this week, Bethesda marketing exec Pete Hines announced that he was retiring from the studio after 24 years. Shortly after came the news of lead quest designer Will Shen departing to join a new open-world project.
This is far from cause for concern - both developers are Bethesda veterans who have been working on Starfield for many years, and it's relatively normal for devs to hold out at a studio just long enough to finish one big project before moving elsewhere to start work on another. But in spite of that, in the eyes of some Bethesda fans, these departures are merely foreshadowing of another: Todd Howard's.
On Reddit, the top comment under one news post for Hines' retirement reads: "I know they're only small pieces of a bigger whole but it's going to be so weird when both he and Todd are retired." That sentiment is echoed throughout the thread. "To many, Todd and Pete are what Bethesda is," observes one fan. "I can't even imagine what a Bethesda game would look like without Todd['s] influence," says another. "Todd is Bethesda and TES is Todd," an Elder Scrolls fan asserts.
That first comment is important, of course - any major video game is the result of years of work, often by hundreds of people, and the auteur-ization of some of the industry's biggest names isn't always helpful. But there's no doubting the presence that Todd Howard maintains at Bethesda, for better or worse. There are a few other names - design director Emil Pagliarulo and the now-departing Will Shen - who were pushed further into the
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