Bethesda boss Todd Howard has revealed he’s “anti” remaking the studio’s old games and that he prefers a more straightforward remaster like Oblivion.
As hardware advances, it’s no surprise that many studios and publishers look to try and re-release their best games for a new generation of fans to enjoy. These often come in two forms: remasters that touch up the original but keep the game as it was intact, and full ground-up remakes like we’ve seen with Resident Evil 2 through 4.
There’s a long list of titles that fans would love to see get a remake, many of which belong to Bethesda. However, Todd Howard has revealed that he’s against the idea, dashing any hopes that we’ll see a full rebuild of Fallout 3 or New Vegas.
Bethesda boss reveals why he’s against full remakes of old games
“I’m sort of anti-remake,” Howard said in an interview with Kinda Funny. “I respect the other ones out there, but I really think the age of a game is part of what it is and its personality and what it represented when it came out.”
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This is one of the reasons that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered from last year was a buffed-up version of the original with a few modern mechanics added, rather than a brand-new game.
“So as we approached Oblivion, it was, ‘I definitely want it to be a remaster, but the best version of that you can imagine,'” he continued. “[It was] important to us that the original game was running, so imagine you had patched the game many, many times for many years, what would you have done?”
“Then, graphically, let’s just make it look modern but still in the style it was. So we’re not going to redesign the armor to be something new in The Elder Scrolls. It’s like that version of it looking the way you remember it, but up-resed.”
There have been plenty of leaks and rumors in recent weeks about overhauled versions of Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, which are both reportedly in development. But based on these comments, it appears these are more likely to be remasters rather than the complete remakes some fans are hoping for.
Although he didn’t explicitly confirm either of these projects in the interview, Howard did reaffirm that he “likes” the shadowdrop tactics they used for Oblivion, which was released with very little prior warning. So, if and when the Fallout remasters do arrive, don’t be surprised if they drop out of the blue.
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