'Why is Bethesda so bad at making Fallout games?' – Reader's Feature

A reader discusses his love for the Fallout franchise and his frustration that Bethesda need others to get the best out of it.

Fallout has always been a popular franchise but after the success of the TV show it suddenly became one of the most famous video game franchises in the world, which is certainly not what I had on my bingo card for 2024; especially given we haven’t had a proper new game in nine years and probably won’t get another one for five years or more.

Well, I imagine Microsoft has fast-tracked some kind of spin-off, but it won’t be made by Bethesda because they’re busy with Starfield DLC and The Elder Scrolls 6. But I’m fine with that. Many different sets of people have worked on Fallout over the years, and I have to say I think Bethesda are the worst.

Bethesda did not create Fallout. By the time they bought the franchise, because publisher Interplay had gone bust, there were already four Fallout games: two mainline sequels and two spin-offs. They were all top-down, graphically primitive games, but they already had all the main elements we think of from the series, including the Brotherhood of Steel, Super Mutants, Ghouls, and Deathclaws.

I don’t want to pretend Bethesda added nothing to Fallout. On a technical level there is a world of difference between Fallout 3 and everything that came before. Since Fallout 3 came out before Skyrim most of what we think of in terms of that game’s revolutionary approach to open world games started in Fallout 3.

Never before had we seen such detail and level of interaction in an open world. Fallout 3 set a new standard that is still having an influence today, not least in Bethesda’s own games. They’ve improved on it but never moved past it.

Each new game, from Skyrim to Fallout 76 looks the same and plays the same. Even the sci-fi style Starfield does, although in my opinion that’s considerably less interesting on several levels, keeping the worst parts of earlier games and leaving out the best.

I’m trying to be fair to Bethesda here – I don’t want this to be some angry rant – but while they are very good at building worlds and quests and all the mechanical parts of a role-playing game I really don’t think they’re very good at the rest of it.

That might seem odd coming from someone that calls themselves a fan but part of being a Fallout fan is the huge modding community that changes the games and adds to them in all sorts of unexpected ways – just look at Fallout London for how ambitious some fans can get.

Bethesda created the foundation for the modern games, but I feel that it’s other people that are better at building upon it. Most obviously that means Obsidian, who made New Vegas, which I think most fans would regard as the best of the series.

There’s been some talk about Bethesda been jealous of its reputation and I have no way of knowing if that’s true, although I do think it’s odd they never asked Obsidian, or anyone else, to make another one.

If they had there wouldn’t be this huge gap between sequels. They also could’ve got someone that was more experienced with online games to make Fallout 76, which although better than at launch is still a huge disappointment to me.

I just don’t think Bethesda is very good at making Fallout games beyond the maps themselves. The action certainly isn’t very good (naturally there are mods to make it better) and the writing is not as good as the old 2D games or the standards of other modern games (that’s something that’s more difficult to improve, admittedly).

Whether Bethesda is jealous of Obsidian I don’t know but I do think they are very stubborn and that Starfield shows they are slow to embrace change or even to admit that change is needed. We’ll see how The Elder Scrolls 6 goes first but I’m not sure I have much faith in Fallout 5 being much of an improvement. Although I’m sure that modders will be able to make it a lot better.

By reader Paulie