Howard: Skyrim DLC will feel like expansion packs, smaller bits to release in between

Todd Howard has said Bethesda will "take more time" on creating DLC for Skyrim as the extra "meat" it's adding to the content will make it feel more like an expansion pack.

Speaking in an interview with Kotaku, Howard said the gap between DLC for Skyrim will be larger than it was for Fallout 3, as the five add-ons for the game turned out to be a "a real hardcore loop" for the team.

"For Fallout 3 we did five DLCs. That was a very aggressive path for us," he said. "Our plan now is to take more time, to have more meat on them [for Skyrim]. They'll feel closer to an expansion pack. With Fallout 3, it was, 'Ten dollars is the sweet spot for us and we know we want to put out five of them. And we had overlapping teams. We were coming off Fallout 3 and right back in.

"We just think we can do better content if we approach it a different way."

In between the larger releases, players can expect smaller, free chunks of content to help keep them placated until more add-ons are released.

"Because that gap is going to be bigger, we want to put little things out for free in between," Howard explained. "We've already done that for PC with the high-res pack. We're trying to figure out what those things are."

Some of the content might include some of the goodies shown in a video during his speech at DICE - but nothing is concrete at the moment.

"There are definitely things in there that we are planning on exploring," he said. "It looks like a ton of stuff that could ship right now, but it's in a sizzle video. It's, you know, it's not bug-tested, polished, balanced.

"That wasn't all of it. It's probably 60% of it. The other 40% doesn't show as well in a video or we didn't have good footage."

No word just yet on when to expect the first content drop as it's still in the "very early" stages at this point, but Skyrim has plenty to keep you occupied with until then. Unless you rushed through of course - we're on the 60 hour mark at present and haven't even seen half of everything on offer.