As much fun as Bethesda’s 2011 fantasy epic Skyrim was, it’s impossible to deny that the game contained more than a few bugs. Fortunately, the developer promises that lessons learned during its development will be used to improve the upcoming Fallout 4.
“I think we’ve gotten way better there,” said Todd Howard in a recent interview with Game Informer. “For us, (the player’s) saved game is the number one thing. If the game crashes that’s bad, but it is nowhere near as bad as someone’s saved game being hosed. That’s our scenario that we will do anything and everything to avoid. We made a lot of progress given how Skyrim went, but we did it during Skyrim. This just builds on that.”
Speaking as someone whose fifty-hour save game was obliterated after a Skyrim patch, that sounds like a good approach to me. Howard admits there will always be problems that go unnoticed until a game’s out in the public eye, but says the team feels far more comfortable hunting them down and squashing serious bugs.
Fallout 4 is out this November, for PC and consoles. It’s looking pretty damned good so far.
