What might be the most candid but also unexpected way of doing PR for your newest game, Bethesda has released an open letter to the studios fans. The statement explains how big a task the studio has taken on by creating a multiplayer-focused game with Fallout 76 and that despite their best efforts, it’s impossible to release the game in a perfectly polished state. Indeed, the developer basically warns players of encountering bugs and other technical issues.
A Note to Our Fans https://t.co/STRzjzv7gt pic.twitter.com/3wlGpnLKKp
— Bethesda Game Studios (@BethesdaStudios) October 22, 2018
It’s ironic how close the mantra of the post-apocalyptic wastelands in the Fallout universe are to the developers behind it. War, war never changes and it looks like development pains at Bethesda are also not changing. Seemingly forever, the talented folks at the studio have been using the Gamebryo game engine and later on the Creation Engine which is based on the former. Dating back more than 20 years, the technical foundation behind the utility has been cause for Fallout and The Elder Scrolls games looking rather dated, even at launch.
Maybe it’s the studio being comfortable with their tools, or the years of improvement done by them makes it very difficult to jump ship on a modern engine, possibly redoing all that work, but in the end, fans have come to expect all kinds of technical issues and bugs from Bethesda. Legendary glitches like Skyrim’s giants hurling enemies into the stratosphere are charming but for every “harmless” bug, there’s an immersion-breaking or even mission-breaking one.
We all know with the scale of our games, and the systems we let you use, that unforeseen bugs and issues always come up. Given what we’re doing with 76, we know we’re opening everyone up to all new spectacular issues none of us have encountered. – Bethesda
With Fallout 76, Bethesda has set themselves an even bigger goal of enabling up to 32 players to explore a massive game world together. Naturally, this marks a paradigm shift for the developer and today they want to make clear what to expect of Fallout 76. Especially during the beta launching today on Xbox One and a week later on PS4 and PC. With early impressions of the game ending up not that great, we’re looking forward to how Fallout 76 will evolve.
It’s a nice change to hear a developer be so open and as such we are hoping for the beta of Fallout 76 to be a success and the final release of the game on November 14 to be as polished as possible.
