Ex-Bethesda dev says his new studio isn’t making a “little Skyrim,” but does channel a key part of the iconic RPG: “Stuff got built because somebody cared about building it”

Joel Burgess was previously a level designer and broader Bethesda contributor on games like Fallout 3, 4, and 76, as well as Skyrim, so now that he’s studio head at new company Soft Rains, there’s some “expectation” that the team, which also has Ubisoft and Capybara Games and other talent, might be cooking up a “little Skyrim.” Burgess says their debut first-person sci-fi game is something very different, but the team is shooting for a similar sense of creative impact as the team behind Bethesda’s legendary RPG.

“The stuff where I was personally most gratified was environments of different scales where – I use this metaphor that we talk about – we want everybody to be able to see their thumbprints on the clay of the game when they step away from it,” Burgess tells GamesRadar+ at a GDC 2025 interview. On Skyrim, which peaked around 95 to 100 people, he says “stuff got built because somebody cared about building it,” and that’s the type of environment Soft Rains is fostering.