The post-apocalypse feels ”more appropriate” when decisions are agonising, like we just got knifed. Sawyer points to Mad Max; even though he wins he ‘just keeps wandering’.
Bethesda is yet to make an announcement for the next Fallout, which is a terribly kept secret by now.
”Fallout games are best when the choices are - and this applies to role-playing games in general, but Fallout is a more desperate world - more agonising. They feel more appropriate to the post-apocalyptic genre. So I hope that whatever twists and turns the story takes, it’s more nuanced than a black-and-white choice,” Josh Sawyer told Eurogamer.
The original Fallout let you save the Vault, but you couldn’t stay. ”That’s a very bitter-sweet type of victory,” he said. ”Granted, that’s not really a choice that you had to make, but that’s the course that the story takes.”
”Also, you see that in the Road Warrior films; Max, even when he wins, just goes on being a wanderer. There’s that kind of bitter-sweet victory in the difficult choices that people make. Regardless of what the setting is, I would hope that that is a big part of the storytelling of it.”
Sawyer acknowledges some prefer being a sort of wandering tourist, and that’s okay, but he believes some many also want to be challenged when they’re out exploring this wasteland.
”A lot of stuff I did in New Vegas was to try and make choices feel more impactful and meaningful and to challenge the player,” he said. ”Some people want to go through the wasteland like a tourist, which is fine - they don’t really want it to be super-difficult. They want it to be interesting and engaging, and they want to see a lot of neat stuff and go through a cool story. And that’s cool. Personally I like things to be a little more challenging,” he added.
One things for sure: mod support, which is ”one of the greatest things” about Bethesda’s tech behind the games. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is fully integrated with mod support, with the Steam Workshop crammed full.
”I hope Bethesda continues to make everything very mod friendly,” he said. ”How they’ve worked with the community is… the mod community for Bethesda’s games is amazing. I hope they continue to support them because it’s really cool.”
Fallout: New Vegas released back in late 2010. Hopefully Bethesda is backing some very new technology for the next Fallout, and someday we might be rid of those loading screens between towns and houses.