Say what you will about Fallout 4 and how it didn’t conform to many an expectation regarding its looks but according to Bethesda’s Pete Hines, the focus is on creating a massively interactive world, which can deconstructed and reconstructed in real time. While still allowing for a healthy amount of chaos, of course.
Speaking to GamesRadar, Hines said, “We push it visually as much as we can, while realizing that we are not making a game just for the sake of having it be the best looking game out there. It’s not meant to be the most stunning RPG ever. That’s not the stated goal. We want this massive interactive world, where you can talk to people, choose your own path and everything in the world has meaning and is an actual object.
“Everything in the world [is]something tangible – you don’t walk into a room and see lots of stuff and it’s all fake. All the items are actual items. You set off a grenade in a room? It’s going to blow shit around and knock it all over the place. You have to spend cycles and stuff tracking where all of that went, and how it’s going to bounce around.”
Much like The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, this allows players to do just about whatever they want. “It does allow for chaos but it also allows somebody to roll a thousand wheels of cheese down a hill in Skyrim. And you laugh, it’s fun. You have that freedom and you also have a much better sense of place, because everything that you’re touching and picking up is real. These are real books and that’s a real apple. It’s not a picture of an apple that disappears from the world. You can pick it up from here and set it down over here”.
And while comparisons may still happen regarding its looks, Hines does bring up a very good point. “If you’re going to hold us up to any other game and compare us side by side then it had better be a game that does all the same things. If you can deconstruct and reconstruct the world in real time, in the game, and you can pick up every single item and it’s not just a texture then we can talk. Otherwise, well then it’s a bit apples and oranges”.
Fallout 4 will be out on November 10th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC so we’ll find out just massively interactive it can be.