The introduction of guns to Bethesda’s traditional first-person style was always going to be contentious, but it was sidestepped beautifully by this system, inspired by a most unlikely source. “I think at the time we had been playing a lot of Burnout 3,” Howard reveals, “so our motto became ‘Crash mode with body parts’, which seemed to always make us laugh. The targeting and decision-making went through several iterations and we’re still messing with it, but the basic idea is that it’s a special aimed shot you can pull off. It’s a nice system, because we can stop the game and really show you how your character stats are affecting things, whereas in real-time, it’s all behind the scenes.”
