Not a fan of Starfield’s quests? Great news, as Will Shen, lead quest designer for the game, has announced that he has left Bethesda Game Studios for another developer. Shen, who’s been with Bethesda for close to 15 years now, shared the news in a Linkedin post this week, confirming that he’s joined Something Wicked Games—the AAA studio behind Wyrdsong, an upcoming “preternatural” RPG that’s set in a fictionalized version of Portugal. Fallout 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76 are some of the other games that Shen contributed to during his time at Bethesda.
Shen brings more than 16 years of games industry experience to the ever-growing team of veteran developers on Wyrdsong. His latest adventure before joining the development of Wyrdsong was at Bethesda Game Studios, where he operated in a senior position as a design director. Prior to working on the astonishing recent release Starfield, Shen accrued numerous credits on Bethesda games, including as a quest designer and writer for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Fallout: 76, as well as a credit as the lead designer for the critically acclaimed Fallout 4 DLC Far Harbor. As part of Something Wicked Games, Shen brings a talent for crafting engaging, exciting storylines that hook into and stay with players.
Shen’s onboarding at Something Wicked Games follows the studio’s other recent additions of high-profile talent Robert Land, Jessica Sliwinski and Akil Hooper. In these additions, Something Wicked Games has further bolstered its staff of talented, accomplished creatives, which includes team members with credited roles at Obsidian, Respawn, BioWare and other award-winning AAA studios. Rapidly growing to 38 staff since its reveal in 2022 at Gamescom’s Opening Night Live, Something Wicked Games currently plans to expand to more than 100 staff by the time development is fully ramped in order to deliver a high-quality, new AAA RPG experience with Wyrdsong.
Wyrdsong is a preternatural RPG that brings players to a fictionalized version of Portugal. Set in the middle ages and doused in occult imagery, a quest awaits players that will have them questioning their sense of reality and the choices they make. An ambitious undertaking from the team at Something Wicked Games, Wyrdsong will redefine aspects of the RPG genre as a whole.