Todd Howard Went 20 Years Without a Break—Then Took Three Months Off After Fallout 4 to Touch Grass

Here is a sentence I never expected to write about Todd Howard: he actually took a vacation. After two decades of nonstop RPG-making, the Bethesda boss finally hit pause following Fallout 4. And yes, he literally said he needed to touch grass.

The break that took 20 years

Talking to GQ, Howard said he took a three-month sabbatical right after Fallout 4 shipped. That was his first real break in roughly 20 years. When your day job is building worlds like Oblivion and Skyrim, you spend years in the trenches with the same crew. That kind of marathon work turns into a family-by-fire situation, which is great for the games and brutal on the humans.

"You get to a point where you spend more time in the fantasy world than with real people. So you’re like, 'Maybe I should go touch some grass.'"

Coming back revved up, not burned out

Howard admits he had that little nagging question before returning: what if stepping away makes it hard to ramp up again? Instead, the opposite happened. He says he was so amped the night before his first day back that he could not sleep. Part of that was knowing the next stretch was going to be different: Fallout 76 would push Bethesda into live online territory, and Starfield would be a brand-new universe, not a sequel safety net.

Fallout 4 was not exactly "routine"

He is quick to note that even the so-called routine of Fallout 4 was a grind. The studio worked at a ferocious clip, the kind that can quietly turn into an obsession. That is how giant RPGs get made, but it also explains why someone who had not taken a proper breather since the early 2000s eventually looked around and said, yeah, time to step outside.

What he quietly confirmed about the future

• The Elder Scrolls 6 is already in playtesting at Bethesda.
• A stealth release for TES6 is not ruled out. That does not mean it will happen, just that they like keeping options open.
• On Starfield, Howard says the team wanted to try something genuinely new rather than sprint straight back to Elder Scrolls.
• He also concedes the obvious: it has been too long since the last Elder Scrolls. Skyrim launched in 2011; we are now 14 years past that.

The read-between-the-lines version

The vibe here is candid: Bethesda ran hot for years, Howard finally stepped back, then came back itching to tackle riskier stuff. Now TES6 is far enough along to be in testing, and they are keeping their cards close on how it rolls out. If you are exhausted just reading that timeline, same. Hopefully the guy gets at least a weekend off before we all lose another hundred hours to the next Elder Scrolls.