Bethesda wants to recreate Fallout 4 in VR

Director Todd Howard believes games like Fallout 4 capitalize on 'the promise of VR, being in a big virtual world.'

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In an interview with Glixel, Bethesda director and executive producer Todd Howard confirmed that the development team wants to make Fallout 4 fully playable in virtual reality.

"We definitely are," Howard answer when Glixel's editor asked if he was "trying to put all of Fallout 4 in VR."

"That's the promise of VR, being in a big virtual world," Howard continued. "The core experience, meaning you put on the headset and you're standing in the world of Fallout and can go where you want, just that little bit is every bit as cool as you hope it would be. Once we did that, we were like, 'OK, we gotta see where this goes.'"

For most publishers, the current VR marketplace would be a concern: most games are bite-sized experiences, such as VR Sports Challenge and Job Simulator. Howard and the devs at Bethesda want to think bigger by making a product more in their wheelhouse.

"We have an opportunity to make something really unique. We'd rather do that than make some other tiny experience. I don't think that's what people want from us," he said.

In the same interview, Howard positively gushed about Nintendo's Switch console, but wouldn't give a firm yea-or-nay on Skyrim Special Edition making the jump to the console/handheld hybrid.

Long Reads Editor

David L. Craddock writes fiction, nonfiction, and grocery lists. He is the author of the Stay Awhile and Listen series, and the Gairden Chronicles series of fantasy novels for young adults. Outside of writing, he enjoys playing Mario, Zelda, and Dark Souls games, and will be happy to discuss at length the myriad reasons why Dark Souls 2 is the best in the series. Follow him online at davidlcraddock.com and @davidlcraddock.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    November 21, 2016 4:00 PM

    David Craddock posted a new article, Bethesda wants to recreate Fallout 4 in VR

    • reply
      November 21, 2016 4:01 PM

      I want them to recreate a Fallout 4 that doesn't suck.

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        November 21, 2016 4:07 PM

        Ouch.

        I do think a game the scope of Fallout 4 is a good move for VR. It's what I want: a long, engrossing experience. A virtual world in which to immerse myself.

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          November 21, 2016 4:19 PM

          Same here. I would actually buy Fallout 4 and a VR headset if this happened.

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          November 21, 2016 4:25 PM

          Yes, a game with the scope of fallout 4 would be fantastic, but fallout 4 itself was a disjointed mess with a bland storyline, and there are few games which i have less desire to replay, even in vr.

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          November 21, 2016 6:58 PM

          I've been very vocal about how lazily I felt Fallout 4 was put together. I'm not saying it isn't a triple-A title, but it seems like Bethesda is just slapping together another one at this point. They need a major overhaul with the engine and an update to their gameplay. The reason we love their games is still in there, but it hasn't changed much.
          But, that's beside the point. The world and scope of it all is absolutely worth a great VR experience! I just feel like they need to fix other things before tacking on something else to distract them from making Fallout Great Again.

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          November 21, 2016 8:28 PM

          Too bad there's not much immersive about FO4 :(

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          November 21, 2016 9:07 PM

          A shame the only thing you can really do in it is shoot stuff.

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          November 22, 2016 5:08 AM

          It seems that for most people, they can only tolerate small bite size VR experiences. I doubt enough people could tolerate living in a VR world for hundreds of hours to make such a project profitable.

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          November 22, 2016 5:50 AM

          That's the exact thing that will get me to buy into VR, for sure.

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        November 22, 2016 4:47 AM

        Fallout 4 was the best game of 2015.

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      November 21, 2016 4:22 PM

      That would require them to recreate a good frame rate.

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        November 21, 2016 4:56 PM

        recreate

      • reply
        November 21, 2016 6:04 PM

        And a good game

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        November 22, 2016 4:18 AM

        although with Oculus' asynchronous space warp they would only need to hit 45FPS.

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        November 22, 2016 5:05 AM

        My PC is 5 years old and I had a good frame rate around 60 most of the time. Were you running it on a potato console?

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          November 22, 2016 5:26 AM

          It's the most of the time, frame rate dips in vr are horrible. Average fps doesn't matter, minimum is what will fuck you over.

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      November 21, 2016 6:01 PM

      why don't they focus on making a good game instead

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        November 21, 2016 7:04 PM

        it Baffles me that they tweaked the engine, spent thousands of hours on characters and textures, but totally forgot that you needed to have purpose in your quests.

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          November 21, 2016 7:21 PM

          For all the time they spent on the "characters and textures", they sure screwed the pooch on not having holstered weapons show anymore.
          The lack of juicy quests was also a huge piss off, it's not quite on rails, but because they spent time on missions defending settlements you're left with a hollow experience. Maybe the DLC has fixed some of this, but I'll only buy it on sale.
          NO SHOWN HOLSTERED WEAPONS? WHAT THE HELL BETHESDA? all the mods so far haven't fixed this to my entitled requirement

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            November 21, 2016 8:39 PM

            I'm less concerned about the holstered weapons and more concerned about the WTF ABOMINATION EARS for all of the characters that game had going on.

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          November 21, 2016 8:30 PM

          *shrug* I didn't. Just walking around seeing new buildings and exploring them was enough for me to have fun.

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            November 21, 2016 9:04 PM

            That was fun, and I put a shitton of time into the game, but at the same time a lot of it had a vaguely unfinished feel. I strongly suspect they had a lot more planned in terms of quests, locations, and factions, and they just weren't able to finish it.

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              November 21, 2016 11:32 PM

              I felt that about downtown. A few skyscrapers to go in but the rest of the countryside was much more developed. There were also places like that cemetery that were cool but nothing really done with it.

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      November 21, 2016 7:59 PM

      Lot of hate but I played through it, which I don't do for many games these days. Flawed and disappointing that they didn't change much but their formula was still engrossing enough

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      November 21, 2016 10:04 PM

      immerse yourself in the suck

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      November 21, 2016 11:40 PM

      [deleted]

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        November 22, 2016 4:40 AM

        Morrowwind was a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.

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      November 22, 2016 12:12 AM

      If they manage to deliver something close to this
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBqw_Fb3lbE
      then this wouldn't be bad at all

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      November 22, 2016 4:13 AM

      Would only work with a full-VATS combat system if they are sticking with teleportation.

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      November 22, 2016 4:27 AM

      They cant even do ultra widescreen properly though!

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      November 22, 2016 5:32 AM

      Did I accidentally time travel or was this announced a couple months back (E3 maybe?)

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        November 22, 2016 5:44 AM

        Fallout 4 VR is suppose to be a small project like the Batman VR game. Not the entire game.

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