Todd Howard, game director for Fallout 4, says the team is ”pretty close to being done” on the development side for the latest RPG. Why did Bethesda wait so long to announce? ”…felt like we could,” says Howard.
The Fallout name gives big momentum already so they took advantage, and also because it’s ”way more fun” to announce and get to show off the game at the same time.
”If we didn’t feel like that was enough time to generate the excitement that we expected and the interest that we wanted, then we would have announced it earlier. So part of it is because we felt like it was a big enough title that we could get away with it”, Howard told GamesRadar.
It was certainly a pleasant surprise when Howard up on the Bethesda stage at E3 revealed the launch date as November 10th this year.
”…“part of it is because it’s way more fun”, he continued, ”as opposed to: here’s a press release and here’s a trailer and, I don’t know, in a couple of months we’ll show you some stuff”. This also helps avoid the dreaded fanfare of CGI that doesn’t reflect the actual game we get to play.
”We’re pretty close to being done, which you have to be if you’re going to ship in five months”, Howard added. ”It’s really fun to get this far into development and not say anything and then go ‘Boo! Here’s all this stuff. Here’s what we’re up to’. Which isn’t even all the full monty it’s just a big wide picture”. They’ll also be launching an actually useful companion app for it.
The other little surprise from Bethesda, which set some alarm bells off at first, was the announcement for Fallout Shelter. It’s a tablet game that’s currently exclusive to iOS but lets us run our very own Vault. The studio isn’t even interested in monetising it - they prefer it as a ‘recruitment tool’ for the franchise. It will be coming to Android eventually.
Fallout releases on PC and console November 10th, 2015.
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