Bethesda Needed a Decade to ‘Feel Comfortable’ with Creating ‘New Stuff’ in Fallout

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.

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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