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With the launch of Starfield almost upon us, Todd Howard has sent an internal memo to the staff of Microsoft, Bethesda and Xbox paying tribute to one of his former bosses.
As spotted by Klobrille on Twitter, the memo has Howard tell the story of pitching Starfield to Robert Altman, former Chief Executive Officer at Zenimax Media (parent company of Bethesda). “It was early 2013, we were developing Fallout 4 and Skyrim was still enjoying enormous success. I was there to pitch him on our next game. It would not be a sequel to our current games (he looked concerned), but a grand space RPG and our first new IP in over 25 years (looks curious). It would delve into creation and the search for our place in the universe (slight twinkle). You would explore the galaxy in ways only video games can do. And it would be called – Starfield. (Smile).”
“Sounds fantastic,” would be the response. And while Altman wouldn’t get to see the results of Starfield – he sadly passed in 2021 after a battle with a rare type of leukemia at the age of 73 – Howard says that Altman “would be the very first to believe in us, no matter the situation.” Situations that included, as Howard notes, a global pandemic and Zenimax being acquired by Xbox.
On the eve of Starfield’s early access launch, Howard also went on to thank a number of other figures he’s said to have played a big part in Starfield’s development – including Xbox boss Phil Spencer who he had nothing but praise for. “I cannot imagine a better place to create games, where the diversity of studios, creators and games are allowed to flourish. This support came from the entire Xbox leadership team and all areas of publishing and dev support. Special thanks to the magicians at ATG whose spells and incantations helped make this our best performing game.”
And of course, Howard took the time to also thank the publishing teams at Zenimax, the development team of Bethesda Game Studios and all of the fans. “It’s an incredible blessing to be surrounded by so many talented and inspirational people every day. Moments like this make you reflect back. Some of us have been together for decades, some joined more recently, but everyone has the same passion. I could not be prouder of their continued dedication to create something truly special.”
The Starfield release time is just a few hours away before we get to play the space RPG for ourselves at the time of writing. For more on the game, check out our picks for the best laptop for Starfield from 4K to budget or our Starfield planets guide – every planet we know about so far.
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