Fallout needs to be taken away from Bethesda

Following the anniversary announcements on Fallout Day, a reader argues that Microsoft should let someone other than Bethesda make Fallout 5.

So Fallout Day wasn’t worth celebrating, again. If you saw Bethesda’s latest Fallout livestream on Thursday, you’ll know that it started off with a trailer for something called Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition, which was cut as if it was remaster – although they never said what it was. And then later, if you went on the shop site, it became clear it was just the same game as ever in a different box.

They also showed Fallout: New Vegas 15th Anniversary Bundle, for about 30 seconds, which was the same thing but with a ton of pointless merch that jacked up the price and will probably fall apart as soon as look at it. In other words, they did nothing for either anniversary. Fallout Shelter got a bigger update, for its 10th anniversary, which is just tragic.

It’s often forgotten by younger gamers that Bethesda did not invent Fallout. They bought it and their first game was Fallout 3. Now, that was a fine game, don’t get me wrong – very innovative in its day – but the idea was not theirs, even though they did reinvent what type of game it is. But now I think it’s time for someone else to give it a go.

Bethesda get a lot of stick from their fans and I’m afraid I’m going to be another of those ungrateful, entitled brats. I loved the Fallout games, and Oblivion and Skyrim, but I don’t feel that they’ve done anything good since then, and that even Fallout 4 was badly flawed. Although to be honest, they’ve hardly done anything since then, just Fallout 76 and Starfield.

I know modern games take longer to make but one of the big problems with Bethesda is that they are s… l… o… w… That’s fine if they hit it out of the park every time but they don’t. They are also very bad at keeping up with new technology. They haven’t been anywhere close to state of the art since at least Oblivion, I would say, and they must know everyone keeps complaining about things like facial animation and loading times, but they never do anything about it, almost like they’re punishing fans for even bringing it up.

I may be an entitled fan, but you do get the impression that Bethesda are a bit too quick to believe their own hype, while blinding themselves to their faults. I don’t want to talk about Starfield, as I believe that subject’s been beaten to death, but I would love to sit in on the debrief for that one. Something tells me they did everything they could to convince themselves it wasn’t that bad.

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