Former Bethesda artist praises Todd Howard, provides more context for Starfield’s development, and its surprising lack of gore

Starfield is a whole lot of things, but perfect it most definitely ain’t. While the game’s got merit, Bethesda is yet to pivot it into one of its trademark success stories. Now, we’re getting insight into its development thanks to a former Bethesda artist, and he’s spilling some serious beans.

Specifically, this latest interview comes about thanks to YouTube talk host Kiwi Talkz (Reece Reilly). On their show, Kiwi Talkz has hosted Bethesda’s former game designer Will Shen, and then followed up that particular interview with an all-new one featuring former character artist Dennis Mejillones. Mejillones had a whole host of interesting stuff to share, including a whole bunch of praise for Todd Howard and his approach to game development. As far as Starfield goes, specifically, Mejillones said that the BSG team generally agrees with the players’ critique of the game, but that the community has some things very, very wrong still.

Todd Howard is great to work with, actually, and people don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to game engines

First things first, if you’ve got an hour to spare, I cannot recommend Kiwi Talkz interviews enough. Informative, loaded with valuable content and insights, and just a joy to listen to, the people hosted on this show are who gamers should be listening too. If they want game development context, that is.

Need a prime example? Look no further than Mejillones’ thoughts on whether Bethesda should ditch Creation Engine in lieu of Unreal 5: “[People making these claims] don’t know what the hell they’re talking about,” he said. “Creation Engine has been re-written from the ground-up, like, I mean completely from scratch, it just [kept] the name. But the entire systems have been ripped out of it and replaced [over the years.]” Sure, Skyrim ported over to UE5 as a fan project looks great, but a game engine is most definitely not the be-all-end-all of how a game plays.

“There’s a lot of things that the players don’t really [get]. And they can’t, I mean, I understand. They’re not gonna know, it’s a technical thing that you don’t really know until you start having experience with [game development],” said Mejillones. “At times it wouldn’t be a bad idea to maybe be more thoughtful about the way that’s communicated versus saying ‘oh, the devs are lazy.’.”

On the topic of Todd Howard, specifically, Mejillones had little else than praise to share: “One of the things I loved about working with Todd […] he’d come over by everybody’s desk, he’d walk around the whole studio to see what you’re doing, come talk to you for a little bit – to all the developers – and I had a really strong relationship with him.” Mejillones said Howard was “very reasonable” when it comes to listening to his staff and understanding them. He never pulled rank, Mejillones claims, and the only real problem as time went on was that Howard could no longer manage Bethesda the way he used to due to the company growing tremendously. “His attention was very scattered,” said Mejillones, the implication being that this is one of the reasons Starfield might not have delivered on all fronts. “Some of the people that took Todd’s place, they’re not Todd. It takes a lot to be Todd.”

Of course, I cannot hope to summarize all the phenomenal insight Mejillones gives in this interview. There’s lots of stuff he references, going so far as to discuss why Elder Scrolls 6 is under heavy scrutiny by Microsoft, and how Bethesda was sure Skyrim would fail mere months ahead of its release. For that (and lots more), absolutely do watch the interview featured above.

One last bit I do wish to reference here is somewhat random, and it’s got to do with Starfield‘s confusingly neutered blood and gore systems: “That has a lot of implications with all the different suits,” Mejillones explained. “From a technical perspective, there’s a lot that has to go with it.” According to him, the original plan was for Starfield to feel a tad more Fallout in that respect, but the technical challenges were simply too great. In fact, Mejillones says that systems were already in place for limb dissection and in-depth visual body damage systems, but it quickly turned into a “rat’s nest” of mesh and model problems.

So, there you have it. Once again, I cannot recommend watching Kiwi Talkz’ interviews enough, and if you’re even remotely interested in what’s up at Bethesda and with Todd Howard specifically, this is the place to be.