In an interview with KIWI TALKZ, developer Dennis Mejillones talked about working at Bethesda on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Together with another developer, he saved a creature from being removed from the game: the werewolf.
What creatures are we talking about? The werewolves are powerful creatures in Skyrim. Players can become one themselves by completing the Companions questline. Infected with lycanthropy, players can transform into a werewolf at any time and slaughter their opponents with their bare claws.
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The werewolves were “really bad”
Why shouldn’t there be werewolves? The original concept of werewolves was, according to Dennis Mejillones, “really bad.” They were basically just people with dog heads. It was a kind of Kahjiit, only in dog form.
With this concept, Bethesda didn’t want werewolves in their game and initially rejected the idea.
Developers secretly work overtime
That’s what the developers did: The developers Dennis Mejillones and his colleague Jeremy Bryant were not satisfied with that. They secretly worked on another demo of the werewolves outside of working hours.
They came up with a new concept for the creatures. They weren’t supposed to be normal people, but had to be actual monsters. Just as they were portrayed in other media.
Dennis Mejillones says in an interview:
Essentially, I designed a large, animalistic werewolf, and Jeremy and I worked to bring the whole thing into play. We did it really secretly – staying late at night, doing everything we could to get a playable demo. I remember we kept the whole thing very, very quiet.
Finally, they presented their new concept and demo to Todd Howard himself. He was thrilled and welcomed the werewolves as we now know them into Skyrim. Todd Howard even ignored the objections and concerns of other developers who still doubted the werewolves.
You can watch the whole interview on YouTube here:
Finally, Dennis Mejillones says that the idea was probably only taken because he had a playable demo. If it had only been models, the werewolves would not have made it into the role-playing game.
Working at Bethesda doesn’t always seem to have been to the satisfaction of all developers. Like this developer, who left the development studio because there were just too many meetings he had to go to: He left Bethesda because there were too many meetings there – Now he’s making an open world that’s much bigger than Skyrim