Fallout 76 – Pete Hines, the vice president of marketing and communication, said in an interview that the game wasn’t hugely successful, but it doesn’t mean it was a bad idea to try to do something different.

Fallout 76 was Bethesda Game Studios‘ first multiplayer game (The Elder Scrolls Online was not done by them but Zenimax Online!), and the Creation engine (which will be used in the two next BGS games, namely Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI as well) didn’t suit this idea. Hines talked about this game in detail in an interview with We Have Cool Friends.

„It was a reminder that anytime you try and do something pretty different…Like, we knew that there was a risk, we weren’t just doing the safe and narrow ‘Let’s just churn out single-player Fallout or Elder Scrolls games every year or every other year’. We tried something that was a pretty big change of direction for that studio. And just because it didn’t go well doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do that, it just means you need to learn the lessons from what didn’t work well so the next time you try something different, hopefully, you avoid some of those problems and issues.

The main reason for Fallout 76 was that the studio felt like the multiplayer and shared experience was something that was brought up the most by folks who play Elder Scrolls games and Fallout games that they made. And they wanted to expand a little bit and try something different, not to the exclusion of ever making the kind of games that they’re known for. Which was why they announced Starfield because we wanted folks to understand, look, we’re going to make another single-player epic role-playing game. We’re not done with that. We just wanted to try something that was more shared and online to see what that was like. So that we have that experience so that if down the road, we ever want to try it again, like, well, we have some experience with this kind of thing.

Otherwise, you do get pigeonholed into, like, I’m only ever making this kind of game. I mean, I think I’ve mentioned this to you before, but you don’t get Horizon Zero Dawn if that team sticks to what they were known for and had always made, they pivoted and tried something that I think is substantially different than what they had made before. And it’s one of my favourite games of the last five years. So what I mean, you’re hoping that when you try something risky and different that you end up with Horizon Zero Dawn, and not with a lot of bumps and issues, but that doesn’t mean you’re doing it for the wrong reason,” Hines said.

In 2016, he had a similar argument, where he said Bethesda Game Studios is not a vending machine obliged to do single-player Fallout and The Elder Scrolls games forever. He also acknowledged some issues with Fallout 76, such as the short, and limited beta phase. However, the next, free update, Wastelanders (which will bring back human NPCs and dialogue per request of the fans…), was tested by „tons” of Fallout 76 players on PC for a smooth launch (scheduled on April 7).

Source: WCCFTech

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