Why Skyrim’s Mistakes Will Help Fallout 4

According to game director Todd Howard, Skyrim’s mistakes at launch will help Fallout 4.

To say that gamers can’t wait for the end of the world is an understatement — at least as Fallout 4 is concerned. With the November 10 launch date fast approaching, players will soon be able to revisit the post-apocalyptic Wasteland with guns locked and loaded.

Or will we?

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Skyrim’s Mistakes

As any long time reader of the Skyrim Fansite knows, I truly love the game. I honestly believe that Skyrim is one of the best video games ever made.

That said, I fully acknowledge that things didn’t go well for the Skyrim PlayStation 3 launch. Game crashes, frame rate issues, and a host of nasty bugs plagued the PS3 version at release. To add to the misery of Skyrim’s mistakes, it took awhile for Bethesda to come up with a fix. A number of game patches had to be issued to squash the bugs.

Skyrim's Mistakes
Frost Spiders weren’t the only nasty bugs PS3 players had to deal with.

If there’s a silver lining to any of this, Skyrim’s mistakes will help Fallout 4 (and presumably all future Bethesda games). In a recent interview with Game Informer, game director Todd Howard indicates the devs learned a great deal from the Skyrim experience:

I think we’ve gotten way better there. 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.

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So here’s hoping that team Bethesda gets it right. Releasing an open world game as vast Fallout 4 is daunting, and the possibility of bugs is very real. Skyrim’s mistakes have taught the devs a thing or two though, so hopefully problems will be kept at a minimum.

And if they do arise?

Let’s hope Todd Howard and company snuff out the bugs faster than a a team of NCR Rangers blasting rad roaches with Miniguns. Until next time fellow travelers!

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Shane Scarbrough
Shane Scarbrough

Shane Scarbrough is the founder of the Skyrim Fansite. He's a business owner, video game journalist, and role playing game aficionado. When he's not working he enjoys reading, writing, and playing video games. He's currently on his third playthrough of Skyrim, and is playing as a Templar in The Elder Scrolls Online. You can find Shane on Google+ and FaceBook.

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Niklas Värkne
Niklas Värkne
9 years ago

I sincerely think you’re right. In this case I really hope there is nothing major that prevents Fallout4 from being huge. There will always be some bugs but hopefully as you’ve pointed out they have enough experience with the huge issues to fix them quickly. Niklas.