Bethesda Softworks Interview

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Written by Brother None on January 26th, 2011

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Why has the number of skill classes in Skyrim dropped to 18 from Oblivion's 21 and Morrowind's 27?

Stuff changes from game to game. Look at Fallout; we changed a mix of skills and stuff from the previous Fallout games in Fallout 3. That list changed again and the way it worked changed again in Fallout: New Vegas.

We don't stand still or keep things the same just for the sake of keeping them the same. We make the choices that we think will make for the best game possible.

Whether it's the number of skills, or how things work, or whatever it may be, we're not afraid to make changes. We don't believe in just keeping things the same because that's the way they were in the last game.

I think that's how you run a franchise into the ground, by just iterating on the last one. We believe in sort of blowing things up and starting over and starting fresh each time.

The modding kit for Skyrim you guys recently announced; how does that differ from the one in Oblivion?

The specifics are still TBD, but, essentially, it's the same approach as Oblivion, the same approach as Morrowind: the ability to mod and custom create content on the PC to your heart's content and all the ways that we've done in our previous games.

It's called it the Creation Kit because we call the engine the Creation Engine. We call the tools the Creation Kit. It's all part of one suite, if you will, but the intent and the function of it is really not any different.

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I realise they are independent, but do you see Obsidian very much part of the future of Fallout now in any way?

Our involvement with them right now is Fallout: New Vegas and downloadable content. We're going to continue to work with them and what relationship we have with them on any possible products down the road is to be determined.

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