Always blame the bugs.

Bethesda RPGs are usually filled with tiny details most gamers don’t notice, enhancing the immersive experience. “It’s not just that I kill someone with a sword and there’s a reaction to the crime,” says former Bethesda producer Jeff Gardiner. “It’s the sense that there’s this living world around you and things happen.”

Having left Bethesda in 2021 to create Wyrdsong at developer Something Wicked Games, Gardiner reminisces about his fifteen years at Bethesda, highlighting the freedom the teams enjoyed. They could pursue interesting projects after completing their tasks.

However, this freedom sometimes led to unforeseen issues during game launches. For instance, Skyrim featured butterflies that tracked flowers in players’ inventories, putting considerable strain on processing power. “Why is the game running slow?” they wondered.

Gardiner recalls, “We had to spend hours figuring out, ‘Oh, it’s because so-and-so put the script in the game that makes it so, if you’re carrying flowers, butterflies are attracted to you.’”

Similarly, ants in the game proved problematic due to an accidental feature added by artist Mark Teare, who enabled tiny ants to cast shadows, which was expensive in rendering terms. “Thousands of ants that you can barely see, casting little tiny shadows.”

Despite these challenges, Gardiner cherishes these memories, stating, “The beauty of Bethesda was, because of the success of our games, our parent company, Zenimax, left us to our own devices.”

Skyrim Development

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)