We Showed Eleven Minutes of Gameplay. It Was the Character Creator. You Stood and Cheered.

Weekly Communication · Issue #014

Todd's Dispatch

Hey everyone. Todd. Still emotional.

At our showcase this week we revealed eleven full minutes of gameplay footage. I watched from the wings as the audience rose to its feet. People wept. A man near the front proposed to the person beside him. It was, without exaggeration, the greatest moment of my career. I do want to note, for the record, that the footage was the character creator. There was no game in it. Nobody noticed. Our legal team is split on whether this is a triumph of design or a crime, and honestly, so am I.

"A journalist asked me afterward, 'But where is the actual game?' I looked her dead in the eye and I said, 'Where indeed.' She wrote a 4,000-word think piece calling it my boldest work. She is not wrong."

Bigger than all of that: Greg — our intern, the voice of eighty-one thousand characters — received a Lifetime Achievement Award. He was too overcome to speak, so his acceptance speech was delivered on his behalf by Sheila, our weather AI, in the form of an extended five-day forecast. There was not a dry eye in the building. Partly the speech. Partly the forecast, which called for rain.

And so I can finally confirm a release date: November 11, 2111. This is now a legally binding commitment. It is enforceable. Specifically, it is enforceable against the descendants of an intern named Marcus, but more on him next week.

As always — it just works.

Todd Howard

Director of Gameplay Reveals (No Gameplay) & Applied Hype, Bethesda Game Studios