Skyrim to be less confusing as "opposed to making it more accessible," says Howard

Bethesda's Todd Howard has told Gamasutra the team behind Skyrim doesn't have any plans to make the game easier just so it will appeal to a mass audience.

While that may sound like music to the ears of Elder Scrolls fans, what Howard basically said to Gamaustra is that the firm had no plans to dumb Skyrim down from the beginning, as the team can continue to make the "game it wants to make," and make it something everyone will enjoy.

"[Accessibility] honestly, it's not something that we think about a lot, in that we've found that we're getting a pretty big audience making a game that we want to make," he said. "We want to make it for whoever it is -- even if you've played Elder Scrolls before, you haven't played this one, so you don't understand what a skill does yet.

"We want to remove confusion, that's what I'd say. As opposed to making it more accessible, we'd like to remove confusion for anyone who's playing. What we're trying to do now is lead you into it more... In our games or others' games, they give you a character menu and say, 'Who do you want to be, what powers do you want?' [the players think,] 'I don't know, I haven't played yet!'

"What happens in Oblivion is you start the game, play for three hours, and then think 'I want to start over, I chose wrong.' So we'd like to sort of alleviate some of that. I also think the controls work better [too] ... it's more elegant.

"You look at Call of Duty, the most popular game in the world, and that's actually pretty hardcore. At the end of the day, it's a hardcore game, has RPG elements in multiplayer, making classes, picking perks. I think the audiences are there, and we tend to make our game more for ourselves and other people who play a lot of games."

Skyrim is out on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 November 11.

Thanks, D'toid.