This year gamers have already seen a couple impressive open-world RPG games that have been lauded for their stories, gameplay, and visuals. But developers aren’t done yet; here's still plenty to come before year's end. Along with the recently released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, gamers are looking forward to Rise of the Tomb Raider (Xbox One) and Fallout 4.
Concerning Fallout 4, some gamers are already contending it will be awarded Game of the Year. Naturally, opinions may change once the game releases next month, but for the time being, fans of the series have high expectations for Fallout 4, due to the success of previous Fallout games, and the focus developer Bethesda puts on producing high-quality titles.
In fact, Bethesda’s lead producer on Fallout 4, Jeff Gardiner, recently shared some of his thoughts about why Fallout 4 is already so loved, and why it will meet player expectations. According to Gardiner, it’s because the team behind Fallout 4 is a small, but passionate and dedicated team of developers who want to create something special.
“We’re still a scrappy team. We’re just over 100 people – not nearly as big as some of the other studios.
“We’re able to have great, individual rapport with all our developers. We empower people to do what they love when they come to our work.
“It’s ‘what can you contribute today?’ It’s not like we hand them a task sheet. We find surprises all the time in the game and those are for us some of the best things.”
It’s pretty impressive to think a team of barely 100 developers have created an expansive, open world for Fallout 4 with over 400 hours of content ready for launch. Comparatively, the folks at Rockstar created Grand Theft Auto 5 and its open world with more then 1,000 developers. Even CD Projekt Red, the studio behind Witcher 3 that was praised for accomplishing so much with a small team, has three times as many developers as the Fallout 4 team.
While it’s a remarkable feat for Bethesda’s crew to create Fallout 4 with a little more than 100 developers, it may raise a red flag for some about the game’s final quality. A small team means each person is doing more, and also means there are more opportunities for bugs and issues to go unnoticed. Sure, a game this large is bound to have some problems, but hopefully the Fallout 4 team will be able to flush out any major issues before they launch the game next month. It would be very disappointing for gamers if Bethesda dropped the ball on Fallout 4 because they didn’t have enough people on the team to ensure the highest quality.
What do you think about the size of Bethesda’s Fallout 4 team? Do you think the small crew will hurt the game when it launches? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Fallout 4 is due to release on November 10, 2015 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Source: Bethesda