If there's one thing that Bethesda understands, it's how to create a world that is epic in scale and deep with adventure, and Fallout 4 looks to be no exception. Perhaps it's the game's dedicated and relatively small development team, which ensures that every team member is all-in on the project and feels like they've contributed something of substance to Fallout 4, or maybe it's the studio's reputation for delivering top tier games every few years. Regardless of how Bethesda works its magic, the developer consistently delivers on narrative, crafting experiences that gamers can spend years enthralled by and never reach their fill.
In all the buildup to the release of the next installment in Bethesda's post-apocalyptic RPG series, the hype machine hasn't forgotten to include just how nuanced and well-tuned Fallout 4's character creation will be. Now, a video interview with several members of the Fallout 4 development team has shed some light on how Bethesda's newest game takes the player's emotional involvement in those created protagonists to the next level.
The interview, conducted at E3 2015 but released only recently, features the team discussing how they planned on having fully-voiced protagonists all along. For a game that will have more lines of dialogue than Skyrim and Fallout 3 combined, that was no simple task, and the team admitted that the entire process took years of constant recording to get everything just right. Apparently, that kind of approach is uncommon in the industry, as most studios will leave the dialogue until the last few months before the end of development.
It's no surprise that Bethesda's development team takes a different approach to game development, however. The Fallout 4 team discussed how they made it a priority to create a protagonist that players can truly connect to, and they felt that fully voice dialogue would create some emotional moments the game couldn't contain otherwise. It's that kind of organic and human approach that makes Bethesda's game worlds feel so organic, doing things like basing Dogmeat on a developer's German Shepherd to make every character seem as real as possible.
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Of course, Fallout 4 isn't just about narrative, and Bethesda has been hard at work improving every aspect of their franchise's next entry. The development team has taken cues from other successful and unique franchises like Borderlands in improving the way loot functions in Fallout 4, and the gameplay itself features upwards of several hundreds of hours of questing and exploration. Every aspect of Fallout 4 continues to impress, and all that's left for the title is to let gamers get their eager hands on it in just over a month.
Which game's protagonist have you felt connected to the strongest? Do you think fully voiced protagonists make games more relatable? Let us know in the comments.
Fallout 4 releases on November 10, 2015 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.