Skyrim DLC rarer but "more substantial"

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will have fewer DLC add-ons than Fallout 3 had, but they will be "more substantial", Bethesda has revealed.

Game director Todd Howard wants them "to be closer to an expansion pack feel".

He also said Bethesda made "a mistake" by ending Fallout 3 when the main quest concluded. Playing DLC therefore meant reverting to an early game save (until add-on Broken Steel re-opened the world and upped the level cap).

"That was a mistake, yeah. We were really confident about that, then the game came out and we heard pretty loud and clear that was not what [fans] wanted," Howard told AusGamers.

"So we're not gonna do that again. No, you'll definitely be able to... When you finish the main quest you can just keep playing."

"The Fallout 3 pace that we did was very chaotic."

Todd Howard, game director

"And you mentioned DLC," he added. "We would like to do DLC; we don't have any specific plans yet, but they've been really successful and we like making them.

"Right now I can say that we'd like to do less DLC but bigger ones - you know, more substantial. The Fallout 3 pace that we did was very chaotic. We did a lot of them - we had two overlapping groups. We don't know what we're going to make yet, but we'd like them to be closer to an expansion pack feel."

An expansion-style approach is a long way from what Bethesda offered post-Oblivion, in 2006, when we were infamously asked to pay £1.70 for Horse Armour. Still, Bethesda announced in March this year - five years after Oblivion's release - that people were still buying the equestrian protection.

Howard went on to mull the possibility of PC mods for Skyrim appearing on console. Oblivion was improved considerably by the tinkering PC audience.

Bethesda is looking into mods on consoles, excitingly, but the freedom to download a fan creation that could corrupt your Skyrim game is a liberty that doesn't yet exist on console.

It's an issue that is "not going to be solved for the game's release", said Howard - "But it's something that we're going to continue to look at because we think that it's an awesome part of the game that the majority of our audience isn't seeing."

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was awarded E3 2011 Game of the Show by Eurogamer.