Todd Howard: Fallout 76 Doesn’t Mean Bethesda Abandoning Single-Player
Since the announcement that Fallout 76 would feature multiplayer, Bethesda has offered numerous reassurances to understandably skeptical fans. Speaking in a recent interview, Todd Howard echoed previous sentiments expressed by Pete Hines; Fallout 76 doesn’t represent a major shift. The studio has no plans whatsoever to abandon its iconic Bethesda single-player titles.
Todd Howard on the Future of Bethesda
Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz in a recent interview, Todd Howard addressed fan concerns about Fallout 76; “It doesn’t mark the future. Corporately we’ve done a mix; people forget sometimes. Elder Scrolls Online is one of the biggest online games in the world, we have Fallout Shelter which we keep updating and Elder Scrolls: Legends.” It’s true. Bethesda Game Studios, the in-house development studio for Bethesda, has traditionally focused on the core single-player RPGs. However, the studio has also published numerous online games via other developers.
“Anyone who has ever said ‘this is the future and this part of gaming is dead’ has been proven wrong every single time.” continued Howard. He has a point. The video game industry is often dominated by trends; MMOs, MOBAs, battle royale games more recently. However, those trends fluctuate a great deal. Single-player games had been declining in recent years, for example, but the unprecedented success of God of War is likely to turn that around.
“We like to try it all.” said Howard; “For a long time we wanted to try a multiplayer game and we had this idea. We shouldn’t be afraid. We should try it”. Fallout 76 will be Bethesda’s first core RPG title to feature multiplayer. However, Pete Hines has clarified that both Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI will be single-player titles. Given their track record of success, it’s certainly fair for Bethesda to experiment from time to time. Indeed, producing repetitive games with the same style of content every time rarely works out well for studios.