Fallout is one of the most recognizable post-apocalyptic franchises in modern gaming. It has become a multimedia gem in recent years with the emergence of the live-series television show, and it boasts a lengthy lineup of titles that span almost a thirty-year history.
In 2004, Bethesda Game Studios acquired a license to develop Fallout 3, before purchasing the franchise outright in 2007. In the words of one of the most notable developers in the Fallout space, it wouldn’t be until Fallout 4 was developed and released almost a decade later that the team felt ‘comfortable’ with the series.
Getting Comfortable with Creation in Fallout
In a recent interview with GamesRadar, Emil Pagliarulo, one of the Bethesda veterans who has driven the production of Fallout forward over the years, dropped a tasty titbit. He suggested that it took a long time for Bethesda to get comfortable with this legendary series, especially following the pivot that saw Fallout 3 become a transformative first-person RPG.
He suggested that buying the brand wasn’t enough for the company to feel as flexible and inventive as they might have wanted. In Fallout 3, it was all about paying tribute to what had come before, and it wasn’t until 2015’s Fallout 4 that the team felt more creative.
The big thing about Fallout 3 was it’s this transitional game. It was the first Fallout we had done. So we wanted to make sure we were really honoring the legacy of the franchise and those earlier games.
We owned it, but owning a franchise and an IP is different than feeling like you own it creatively.
I think by the time Fallout 4 came around we felt more comfortable with like okay, ‘we don’t have to be so reverential now, it’s not all nostalgia, we can create some new stuff.’
Thanks to GamesRadar for the interview quote.
Perhaps Emil is forgetting the creation of Fallout Shelter, which was released just before Fallout 4 and was a pretty innovative and transformative game in itself.
Fallout 3 is seen as being one of the greatest games ever made. It’s a treasure trove of a title that was expanded with stellar drops for months after the game launched, and even today, it remains a fan favorite title. Fallout 4, which is by numbers a better seller than Fallout 3, wasn’t received quite as well.
And in the middle of that, you have Fallout: New Vegas, seen by many as the best Fallout game ever made, which Bethesda published rather than developed outright. That accolade goes to Obsidian.
The wider community has mixed feelings about Bethesda’s ‘treatment’ of Fallout over the years. It’s expected that the next major release in the series, Fallout 5, won’t surface for many years, and for now, Fallout 76 and Fallout Shelter are the only games in the series receiving substantial updates.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
More from Grant Taylor-Hill
Maybe if they weren’t wasting time updating/fixing Fallout 76 since 2018 we could’ve had a new single player entry by now.
I wish they hadn’t gotten comfortable then because fallout 4 is cheeks in comparison. They forgot the main thing which was player agency and choice and decided to lean into fallouts “combat” which is honestly the worst part of the game instead of giving people actual options to solve problems. That and unnecessary base building crap. Why do they think people are hankering for a reboot of the older games where your choices actually mattered?
So now we know why Fallout 4 sucked so much. The team respected the IP with 3, and treated it like their own personal sandbox thereafter. Thanks for clearing that up
Are people getting it?
Buying your FO themed popcorn bucket, TV series, merchandise, and your MMO are shifting FO to trash.
The less you buy of the game, the worse the game can be, it will make money but selling you a FO themed toe scraper, it will become to hard making a decent game, it will need to have PG 13 themes because we have to sell it to everyone.
Tbh..I doubt they CAN make even a decent FO game nowadays.. .the old guard is gone or gotten lazy/stupid.. and nothing they’ve done for over a decade has been much good.. . Maybe its best not dissapointing fans? Lol
So they stopped respecting it after 3, and that’s coincidentally when they started selling Fallout themed toenail clippers and Brotherhood of Steel popcorn buckets.
Emil P. is a hack, period, and shouldn’t be a lead writer for anything ever. Fallout: New Vegas runs circles around Fallout 4. And if Starfail any indication, Falling 5 will continue the tend or Bethesda mediocrity.
I hope when Fallout 5 bombs, Microsoft gives the IP to a company that actually understands what Fallour fans actually want.
I’ve been playing Bethsoft games since Arena and their games have always been shallow – a mile wide and an inch deep – not even mentioning the release the buggiest games in existence every single time. I really wish Interplay hadn’t folded or they had hired Tim Cain on as lead designer. Fallout was a revelation when it launched. FO2 was pretty goddamned sweet itself. FO3 & FO4? Um, no. Pete Hines and Todd Howard were/are never anything more than mediocre dilettantes at best. Bethsoft could have done way better without them and some actual competent producers that could get projects out the door on time and on budget. I would fired both of them ages ago. With TES and FO properties alone I would have made Bethsoft the most successful development house on the planet, and 10 times as much money to boot.
Their story is almost as bad as the way Hasbro has wasted D&D.