The Escapist has an excellent retrospective on our friends at Bethesda Softworks, which looks back at their entire history as well as what’s in store for their future. You should already know, but Bethesda Softworks is the company behind the Elder Scrolls series, most notably of late the award winning fourth game in the series, Oblivion.

Probably one of the most interesting things from the Escapist article is that it goes into how their game Gridiron (1986) inspired EA to get them to help produce the first Madden game, and everyone pretty much knows how huge that franchise is these days. The article also goes on to detail exactly how the situations leading up to Oblivion played out, as well as the events after its release like the micro-payments and the horse-armor fiasco. Executive Producer Todd Howard’s response to being asked about this topic is very enlightening:

“That’s what happens when you’re the first to try something,” he said. “We certainly took it on the chin for that in the press, but people are still buying that horse armor! I’m talking hundreds of thousands of people. But it was obvious to us that it was too expensive, so I’m happy we adjusted fast and got some better content out at better prices. I think we’ve found a good balance now… we’ve found that people really don’t mind paying the money, because it’s really not a lot of money, they just want something cool, no matter the cost, and well, armoring your horse just ain’t that cool.”

The excitment and interest grows as the article begins to talk about their taking over the Fallout franchise with Fallout 3, a game which many fans’ hopes and dreams are riding on. The Escapist describes the franchise quite well:

Praised by fans for its dry-as-a-bone, dark-as-night humor and the huge scope of the world, Fallout has been on a nigh-Biblical journey. The original game was the only one to have its creators’ names on it, and each progressive version, from Fallout 2 to Brotherhood of Steel, has gotten progressively worse.

And ends with some words of wisdom from Howard about his views and direction for the third game and the company as a whole:

“We’re headed in the right direction. I want us to be seen as the developers that keep that old school game experience at heart, but keeps pushing it forward, that tries new things. If you see ‘Bethesda Game Studios’ on the box, you know there are some crazy ideas in there. We won’t always get it right, but we’ll always keep trying.”

There are a bunch of comments on Kotaku about whether or not it will be first person, third person, and how well the game will play out and look. All I have to say is, don’t worry. I can’t say anything more then that, but really and truly trust me, don’t worry. If you must know more you’ll have to ask me personally, and even then probably with a few drinks in me for good measure.

What you should be worrying about is the fact that the PIPboy wiki article is far too lacking in any kind of picture.

(via Kotaku)