After suffering through the multiple hoaxes for the announcement of Fallout 4, the light at the end of the tunnel (snake) was always this: surely Bethesda was working on Fallout 4 and surely an announcement would be made soon. Apparently not.
Speaking to Rock Paper Shotgun, Todd Howard said specifically, with regards to some sort of announcement about Fallout 4, “I think it’s gonna be a while.”
That sound you hear? That’s the sound of a balloon deflating.
“Right now,” he continued, “we’re just trying to figure out which of our ideas are going to stick and finding an appropriate time to talk about it.”
Bethesda, as a publisher has a lot on its plate at the moment. There’s Wolfenstein: The Order, The Evil Within, and Elder Scrolls Online to deal with. I’d imagine Bethesda doesn’t want to subvert any of these major releases with the proverbial 500 pound gorilla that is Fallout 4.
My guess? You won’t hear anything this year about Fallout 4.
Apparently We Won’t Hear About Fallout 4 For ‘A While’ [RPS]
Comments
38 responses to “We Won’t Be Hearing About Fallout 4 For A While”
Why do developers/publishers consistently ignore what gamers clearly want? If say a million people were to yell at me that they will pay good money for a hotdog, then I would move mountains to make that happen because I will make lots of money and I will also make a million people happy.
I think you’re just assuming they’re ignoring what people want. There of course is the idea that perhaps they’re taking their time to put out a quality product instead? Bethesda dont HAVE to do anything in the case of Fallout 4 and announcements, they have a gigantic market already for it, 3 and NV sold craploads.
It’s just a bit of an entitled attitude that a lot of people have that gets them thinking they *deserve* to hear about it right now rather than when the company is ready to present something worth showing. I’d personally rather wait and see something impressive rather than something half arsed.
Nailed it.
They ARE working on it, even if it’s still in the early planning stage.
Releasing information at this stage:
Takes focus away from their other games that are about to launch
Risks of the product changing significantly before release if gameplay elements need to change (eg. Fable)
Risks major product delays making you look like an idiot if you then go right back to the drawing board (eg Doom 4, Duke Nukem Forever)
Risks people being underwhelmed by an early draft product (eg. Elder Scrolls Online)
Risks committing to a release date and then releasing a shit product in order to meet it.
When I look back at the best product reveals I’ve ever seen I remember games that were first shown in near complete builds.
Who else remembers the first time Half-Life 2 was shown and it was a near-complete playable game and was only a few months away (until some prick stole the code)?
That reveal was mind-boggling!
Happy to see it Bethesda thinks they’ve got something amazing to show me.
I don’t think he’s saying that we *deserve* information. This business isn’t generally based on what customers deserve. It’s just a matter of the consumer’s view of the company and their level of approval vs what the company is working on. He’s just questioning the logic behind it, it seems to me. If Bethesda were to release a 20-second teaser trailer with practically no information whatsoever, even that would sent the internet insane.
People tend to get very aggravated, understandably, when companies just refuse to confirm or deny anything. At this point it’s so obvious that they’re doing SOMETHING to do with Fallout, everyone knows it, yet they’re completely ignoring what the consumers want. If they were just a bit more open about what they were doing they might gain some approval. If they keep completely silent about it people will get pissed off at them, and lose trust in the company. Compare Bethesda with CDPR. CDPR are incredibly open about what they’re doing and have great communication with their fans, they can talk to them with no problem. Bethesda doesn’t want to talk to you about anything related to their future plans unless you’re with the press and can give them good publicity. Bethesda have always been just bloody hopeless with communication. Look back to the Skyrim DLC staggered releases, it was absolutely impossible for them to confirm or deny whether they were even coming out on other platforms because they refused to acknowledge it. They pissed a lot of people off with that one.
Sorry but I don’t agree in the slightest. It’s not like there’s any bad will from any reasonable person towards Bethesda in regards to what they’ve done with the Fallout franchise. They’re hardly ‘ignoring’ what the consumer wants. All you’re saying is ‘the consumer wants some news’. Of course the consumer wants news they want confirmation. That confirmation will come in time, but it’s not critical for them to release said information *right this moment*. The debacle from Skyrim in the sense of the PS3, has probably taught them quite the opposite from what you’ve said, they were quite open about the situation and they got crucified crucified crucified repeatedly over it (and rightly so). So mayhaps now they’ve taken the attitude that it’s better to close the hatches, work their asses off and get the product ready for announcement rather than rushing out an announcement prematurely? CDPR are usually very open about what they’re developing, but they needed to be at first. They were a fledgling company starting up a new IP, The Witcher. Different companies take different approaches. We see NOTHING from Rockstar confirming the existance of a new game until six months to one year from release of a GTA game for instance, then *nothing* until approximately four mothers from release. Then a very slow trickle. A VERY slow trickle.
I mean there’s strong hints at a new Red Dead game which are nothing short of confirmed at the moment from Rockstar, we’re just awaiting the confirmation, but I don’t see people angrily picketing Rockstar?
Well people are annoyed at Rockstar as well, I don’t know if they’re as annoyed as you implied there but they are definitely annoyed at the lack of information over a PC release. There’s also a much larger amount of demand for Fallout 4 than there is for Red Dead 3, as well as a larger span of time since the last game (no I haven’t forgotten New Vegas, but a lot of Bethesda fans didn’t like that game. I don’t agree but that’s just an explanation for the demand)
I’m not saying they need to make an official announcement, I’m just saying they don’t need to keep dodging the question and essentially saying “well who knows what we’re working on, I guess you’ll have to wait and see”. It’s probably too much to ask for for such a huge company with Zenimax looming over them making them watch what they say etc, but I just don’t see the harm in them being more open.
You actually don’t get to disagree– he said that Bethesda’s attitude to speaking about fallout is pissing off consumers/their fan base. Since it is, indisputably angering Fallout fans, then what Toasty said is correct.
lolwut? I don’t think you even read through the conversation… the point wasn’t that there definitely are or definitely are not people irritated, the point was the ATTITUDE of people towards the companies. Dear god.
I dunno, I have to think this would be much higher demand than a Wolfenstein game.. I didn’t even bother to play any of the recent ones, I simply don’t care at all. Elderscrolls online doesn’t look terrible though.
Definitely, it’s interesting to see what they’ll do with Wolfenstein though and if it’ll be any good. I can see the value in an open world style game like Fallout with a Wolfenstein style setting, I genuinely can, however I get the feeling that’s entirely what we are not going to get.
What if they are waiting so they can release a game that wont make PC players crap themselves from toiling over code for hours just to be able to play for at least 5 minutes before it crashes.
@weresmurf already said it pretty well.
Personally I would rather wait another 12 months and get an awesome new Fallout game, then have developers listen to the people demanding a new game and putting up some half-baked, remasked fallout 3. Good games take a huge amount of man hours to develop.
It has been 3 years since Skyrim and 6 years since Bethesda has made a Fallout game. I don’t see why it would be half-baked, considering if they were to announce it today there would still likely be another year till it came out, giving them 4 years.
Not to mention, ““Right now,” he continued, “we’re just trying to figure out which of our ideas are going to stick and finding an appropriate time to talk about it.””, indicates to me that they have probably barely started.
Because the studio has been on holidays since Skyrim was released?
No wonder they keep going broke!
There’s that barely heard of tiny little indie game coming out, what’s it called…
Elder Scrolls Online or something???
Which is just an assumption. Not insulting you, but many people assume many things about games. They barely ever turn out true. Again, it doesn’t matter how far into production it is, what matters is that it turns out to be a quality production rather than a rushed one. Given the time period between Fallout 2 and Fallout 3, which was 10 years for us diehard FO fans like myself (not saying chronology is different for others lol but people like myself who awaited stuff like Van Buren etc, it was excruciating at times!), I’m sure a little while longer won’t kill us.
Keep in mind though that Bethesda have nothing to do with TES:O other than their name on the box and Todd Howard overseeing some things. They haven’t been sitting on their hands for the three years since Skyrim came out, at this point they would definitely have some sort of playable build of something (not saying it’s Fallout, could be absolutely anything).
I was joking. I know they aren’t on holidays.
How many studios are there right now who don’t have an announced project?
Plenty! It doesn’t mean they’re all at the pub. It’s just how the games industry works.
That honestly wasn’t meant as a reply to you lol it was a reply to phlaiman! Sorry dude lol. I hit the wrong reply button *ashamed face*
All good!
Remember that Bethesda take far longer than most devs to make games, just because of the sheer amount of content in their games.
**cries**
Can Bethesda give 4 to Obsidian again please? I mean, the leads at Obsidian were the ones who originally gave us Fallout, and New Vegas was pretty awesome with respect to delivering decent narrative.
Yeah but NV was also severely broken compared to FO3 to be fair. The game mechanics in NV were superior though. I personally loved the characters in NV more, the actual setting itself less. The weapons more, the combat more but the immersion was lost when it was just desert desert desert desert. I get it’s set IN the Nevada desert but it was a tad boring in that sense. That being said though, it definitely at the end of the day was a superior game to FO3.
I also kind of missed the Enclave in NV 🙁
dont forget that NV was made in under 15months and bug testing and QA was done intirely by Bethseda not Obisidan.
and I gotta say i definately prefered NV much more over Fallout 3 which in its self was a great game but it did suffer from the fact that bethesda create sandboxes not games ie awesome world building but character, story and balance are usually nowhere to be seen.
Another thing though is that some people prefer fallout 3 because its a post-apoc survival game, where the rest of the fallout games have been about rebuilding society.
After spending countless hours in Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim, the next Bethesda game is the thing I’m most excited about for next gen. The wait is killing me.
Well; Bethesda has gone from being my favourite dev, to being entirely irrelevant to me as a consumer these days…
There’s Wolfenstein: —NOT INTERESTED
The Evil Within— NOT INTERESTED IN THE LEAST
and Elder Scrolls Online — 2/10 INTERESTED.
Why can’t they keep making games we all want?; it’s basically a licence to print money… Give us the next iteration of ELDERS SCROLLS; not some watered-down TES-skinned wow wannabe. Give us Fallout 4, not some random FPS that no one really cares about…
I’m P-O’d with ESO for taking the limelight away from TES sequel; now they won’t do it for AT LEAST 24 months due to not wanting to cannibalize their ESO subs….
FML
Bethesda Game Studios are making none of those games. Bethesda Softworks are publishing them all. As it is though, I’m keen as hell for Wolfenstein and am curious about The Evil Within. Maybe they want to make sure the next Fallout & TES are top quality and have none of the bugs and criticisms of previous games rather than chucking out clone games each year in a bid to ‘print money’. Both series have an incredible lore attached to them and that’s something that takes a lot of time to build up
Good for you though for thinking your life is now useless just because there’s two games that you need not being made at this very minute
I realize the publisher is a separate entities, what I’m getting at is that we’ve basically had confirmation of no Fallout 4 anytime soon, and we know that TES will be on the back-burner whilst ESO has it’s run so yeah, it does suck….
No need for sarcasm man..
Oh Bethesda, please…
http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/give_it_to_me_stephen_colbert.gif
Was indifferent to Skyrim. Spent over 300 hours on FO3. I can wait a bit longer. It’s not like they even have to make a fourth entry, nor owe us anything of the sort.
They bought the licence to make more than one game (not counting licencing it out to Obsidian for NV). It will come, they’re obviously not at a stage to announce anything as they don’t have anything that they feel would represent the finished product. Some developers are open about the whole development process, others won’t say anything until a game is into a beta stage.
I was as disappointed as anyone when the ARG turned out to be a hoax, but from this it’s still safe to say they’re working on Fallout 4 but they don’t know what it’ll be yet. It’s also cool that they saw how well Skyrim did on PC and how much the modding community has done to it and also noting how similar the PS4 & Xbone are to PCs. Next gen Fallout seems like something I can happily wait for.
I reckon there’ll be no announcement now until at least the end of the year until after Wolfenstein & The Evil Within have been released
Just reading this makes me want to replay FO3 and NV.
Booooo!
It’s like waiting another 6 months for Sin City 2, because of a shitty Machete sequel no one asked for.
Thank god, someone else gets what I’m talking about!
They are probably mulling over whether they can squeeze more money out of the series if they made a Fallout MMO instead of a single player sequal 😛
Bloody Bethesda strikes again. Its like the worse kept secret and they’re still pretending like no one knows about the surprise party they’ve got planed.
I suspect he’s barred from saying anything before those other games come out – God forbid he should tarnish the popularity of Wolfenstein – the least anticipated game to appear since Rage!
I’d personally be happy to wait a while for the next Fallout and Elder Scrolls game if it means we’re gonna be looking at a new engine. The engine used for Skyrim, FNV, F3 et. al is so old and clunky now. Each time they do a new game with the engine, they slap a new coat of paint on it and make it look shiny. Don’t get me wrong, I love both series of games, but there are so many advances in engine tech since then, that making new games with the same engine would be a bad move.
Currently the engine craps out when it uses more than 3Gb RAM, which, when you think about it, is not a particularly high amount by today’s standards. The majority of people who play games are going to be running at LEAST 8Gb RAM. Using mods like ENBoost definitely helps with these sort of limitations, by shifting memory usage to the graphics RAM instead of system RAM, but that’s really just a bandaid that shouldn’t be needed.
I’d be happy to wait even longer if they released said new games with a co-op multiplayer option to play through the campaign.