When Fallout 76 launched back in November 2018, the game came in for a lot of criticism from fans. Since then, Bethesda has worked to improve the game for players, and while Fallout 76 is still not where they want it to be, it is, according to Bethesda, on the right path.
In a recent interview with IGN, Bethesda Game Studios Director Todd Howard spoke for the first time in depth about the launch of Fallout 76 and the criticisms directed at Bethesda for the title, revealing that they were expecting to receive criticism, and that a lot of it was ‘very well-deserved’.
“We knew we were going to have a lot of bumps. We were ready for…we knew this is not the type of game that people are used to from us, and we’re going to get some criticism on it, and lot of that [is] very well-deserved criticism.”
Howard also added that it would be naive to think that the release of Fallout 76 hasn’t had a negative impact on Bethesda’s reputation, although he thinks that players would like what they see if they gave the game another shot.
“I’m sure it’s had some. It would be naive to say it’s had zero,” he said. “But I think if people come to the game now…they’d be surprised.”
He also revealed that if they could do things differently, they would have gotten Fallout 76 into the hands of players a lot sooner for extensive testing to enable them to release the game in a much better state than when it launched.
“The main takeaway we had [with Fallout 76’s release] was you’ve got to let it bake with a large live audience for longer than we did.
“There are just certain things you can never see until it’s running 24/7 for a number of months. We felt strongly this is a game we want to play, this is something we really want to do, and all of the games like this…there’s a [difficult] period when you launch. It’s not how you launch, it’s what it becomes, and I couldn’t be prouder of the team that’s worked on it.”