About This Series Some video games take place in military bases, or even whole cities. But few immerse players in entire, fully realized fantasy worlds. The world of Skyrim represents new levels of immersion and realism, on a vast scale. The Elder Scrolls series of roleplaying games started in 1994 and with each iteration the fantasy settings got larger and more detailed. With the latest title, Skyrim , Bethesda Game Studios has created a more lush, natural world and a more intricate society for players to explore. The game's director, Todd Howard, tells Fast Company about the team's vision for the game's world, and some of the tiny details that players can discover while exploring it. Fast Company: When making the fifth game in a series, how do you keep it fresh? Todd Howard: We start over each time. We don't look at the previous game and say, "What can we add or change?" This series has been going on for a very long time and we give a lot of space between each entry. So we do benefit from the fact that the technology and the hardware we do each game on is very different. We start with what we want the player experience to be. We don't want to define our games by a list of specific features, but more on how the game should feel. And when we design worlds, the world to us is the main character. It's a game of exploration. So we start with,