Bethesda's ex-marketing VP says Skyrim was its first game to make other studios scared of it: 'You have to be concerned about us if you think you're going to win game of the year'

The fear of Todd, they call it.

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When did Bethesda become, you know, Bethesda ?

That is, when did it become one of those game companies whose every release becomes a ginormous public event?

Morrowind ?

Oblivion ?

Fallout 3 ?

None of those, if you ask former Bethesda marketing VP Pete Hines.

In an interview with Firezide Chat , Hines said the studio's first true "Holy shit" moment was Skyrim .

That's not to say Hines thinks every preceding Bethesda game was a drop in the pond.

"Fallout 3 did a lot for us, but there's also people who love that game and people who never played it, but that wasn't a thing with Skyrim," he says.

My beloved Morrowind?

A crucial game in the studio's legacy, but not a world-striding colossus: "Morrowind allowed us to stay in business… [it] wasn't some runaway success that, you know, everybody talked about".

Only Oblivion, for Hines, almost reaches the lofty heights that Skyrim set, and in some ways set it up to hit it big with TES 5.

"We were the consensus game of the year off of Oblivion," says Hines.

"So Oblivion was like, we're meant to be here.

We are good enough to do this.

It doesn't matter how big we are, how big our competition is.

We can do this.

And we carried that belief into Skyrim."
I'll be honest, I kind of think of Oblivion as the game that took Bethesda from crunchy (and wonderful) RPG house to a studio that console makers wanted on their E3 stage, but I see where Hines is coming from.

"We have broken out role playing games into a whole huge group of people who have never played an RPG before, but played Skyrim because it just looked like fun."
Oblivion console commands : Cheats new and old Oblivion lockpicks : Where and how to use them Oblivion vampirism cure : Rid yourself of the affliction Oblivion thieves guild : How to join the crew Oblivion persuasion : Master the minigame
One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since.

His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times.

He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed.

His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget.

He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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