Todd Howard

Todd Howard is a video game director and producer at Bethesda Game Studios, closely associated with *The Elder Scrolls*, *Fallout*, and *Starfield*. He joined Bethesda Softworks in 1994 and worked on *The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall*, released in 1996. He later led development of *The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard*, a 1998 action-adventure game set in the same fictional world. Unlike the main Elder Scrolls games, *Redguard* follows a named protagonist, Cyrus, through a fixed story.

Howard served as project leader on *The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind*, released in 2002. Its setting, the island of Vvardenfell, is known for volcanic terrain, giant mushrooms, and rival political houses. He went on to direct *The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion* in 2006 and *The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim* in 2011. *Skyrim* opens with the player facing execution before a dragon attacks; its central story casts the player as the Dragonborn, capable of using dragon shouts. These games helped establish Bethesda's approach to large worlds that let players leave the main quest and pursue other stories.

Howard also directed *Fallout 3*, Bethesda's first mainline entry in the post-apocalyptic series. Released in 2008, it moved the series from its earlier isometric presentation to a first-person or third-person perspective. Its story begins in Vault 101, then takes the player into the Capital Wasteland around Washington, D.C. He subsequently directed *Fallout 4*, released in 2015 and set primarily in the Commonwealth around Boston. That game added an extensive settlement-building system alongside its quests and exploration.

His later projects include *Fallout 76*, released in 2018 as an online multiplayer game set in Appalachia, and *Starfield*, released in 2023. Howard directed *Starfield*, Bethesda Game Studios' first new game universe in decades. Rather than a single fantasy province or postwar region, it takes place across star systems and follows a group of explorers called Constellation. Howard was also an executive producer on the *Fallout* television series, which premiered in 2024. The show tells an original story within the games' setting, including Vault dwellers, the wasteland, and the Brotherhood of Steel. Across these projects, Howard's career traces Bethesda's move from the fantasy role-playing games he helped build to its stewardship of *Fallout* and its creation of a new science-fiction setting.