Ideas for multiplayer in Fallout 4 were tossed around at the Bethesda offices during pre-production, but were ultimately decided against, according to game director Todd Howard in an interview with Mashable.
“Believe it or not, every time we do a game we design a multiplayer mode just to see what we would do,” Howard told Mashable at E3 2015.
During pre-production on any Bethesda game, before any coding or content has been made, concepts are created for the game and that includes multiplayer. So far, though, multiplayer has always landed on the cutting room floor.
“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,’” Howard said. “I could see ways it would work, but development-wise, they're very different experiences.”
Fallout 4 was announced just prior to Bethesda’s E3 2015 press conference, a first for the company, and was subsequently demoed at the conference. In addition to Fallout 4, Bethesda announced it was developing Dishonored 2 and showed a gameplay demo of the new Doom. Fallout 4 will be available November 10, 2015 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.