14 DAY TRIAL // Bethesda confirms that, for its upcoming Fallout 4 role-playing game, it did design a multiplayer mode when work on the project began. However, it ultimately got scrapped as it distracted from the main single-player mode.
Fallout 4 was revealed at the beginning of the month as a single-player story-based post-apocalyptic role-playing experience. The game's presentation videos, screenshots, and details all paint a great picture for the RPG, one that doesn't seem to include any sort of multiplayer mode.
Fallout 4's multiplayer was designed at the beginning of development
However, according to Fallout 4 Game Director Todd Howard, who talked to Mashable, an actual multiplayer mode for Fallout 4 did get designed once the team actually started pre-production work on the RPG.
Howard and his team started prototyping ideas, and the results were pretty good, but ultimately, Bethesda decided to scrap the whole endeavor as it distracted from the actual single-player experience, where the studio wanted to focus all of its attention.
"Believe it or not, every time we do a game we design a multiplayer mode just to see what we would do. Then we go, 'Yup, we shouldn't do that. That's an awesome idea that is way too distracting from the main thing we want to do, which is single player.' I could see ways it would work, but development-wise, they're very different experiences," he says.
Fallout MMO might be possible
However, as we saw after the debut of Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, an Elder Scrolls Online experience did appear, delivering a multiplayer-only take on the rich medieval fantasy role-playing experience.
Howard declined to say anything about a Fallout MMO, so it's unclear if Bethesda might invest in such a thing, especially since The Elder Scrolls Online isn't exactly the most profitable experience for the large company.
Fallout 4 launches as a single-player RPG on November 10, for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One platforms.