How innocent we were in 2006.
When horse armor first debuted in Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, it was priced at $2.50, and it effectively went on to define bad DLC in an age when battle passes didn’t exist yet. To this day, it’s a frequently repeated joke when some other company debuts some lackluster content. However, Bethesda director Todd Howard guested on this month’s episode of IGN Unfiltered, and he says he doesn’t regret horse armor one bit.
“Horse armor is not bad,” Howard told IGN. “I think horse armor is fine. The price point at the time was the issue. Xbox, they were doing themes. Ringtones were big at the time. Ringtones were just crushing it for Nokia or whoever….We felt, ‘Well it’s probably worth this [amount.’] I won’t say who at Microsoft, but they said, ‘Well that’s less than we sell a theme for. A wallpaper is more than that. You should charge this [amount]. You can always lower it.’ We’re like…OK.”
You can hear more about how Howard and Bethesda handled the advent of DLC with horse armor in the clip at the top of the page or the full episode. Sitting down with Unfiltered host Ryan McCaffrey, Howard shared stories from his earliest days as a developer, what it was like weathering the storm of Fallout 76’s reception, and his thoughts on industry issues like crunch and next-gen hardware.
Check out IGN Unfiltered every month to hear Ryan McCaffrey chat with some of the games industry’s biggest names to learn what made them the creative stars and leaders they are now. Previous guests include former president of Silicon Knights Denis Dyack, Ubisoft co-founder Yves Guillemot, Uncharted writer Amy Hennig, and plenty more. You can check out every episode here.
Joseph Knoop is a writer/web producer for IGN, and he’ll cry if he wants to. Get like Andrew W.K. and party hard with him on Twitter @JosephKnoop.
