Fallout 4 was announced just six months before it launched last year, which is a rare practice for a AAA publisher. Speaking to GameSpot, Fallout 4 director Todd Howard said future Bethesda games could have an even shorter announcement-to-release window.
Howard said he personally prefers short run-ups to a game’s release but acknowledged that Fallout 4 had a distinct advantage as the sequel to one of the popular game franchises in history, which is something not every game can claim.
Referring to the game’s first launch trailer last June, he said it was a special moment as it excited fans of the series in a way that a protracted launch in which information was drip fed would not. He also noted that it can be problematic to discuss a game too far ahead of launch given the fluid nature of game development. Gameplay systems and mechanics can change during the course of development and games can be delayed.
Due to this shifting development cycle, Bethesda held back on revealing information about the game even when it was announced. Howard said the company did this deliberately, as they wanted players to discover the secrets of the Commonwealth for themselves without pre-conceived notions of what they’d find.
Howard recently teased that Bethesda is working on three long-term projects and said the company will “absolutely” follow Fallout 4’s short release path and even suggested that the period from announcement to release “could be a lot shorter.”
“How long that time is, is to be determined,” he continued. “It could be a lot shorter, believe it or not, or [six months] could be the right amount of time. It differs per project.”
One of the projects, he revealed, is “not as big as the other two.” All three will, “find their own way of being announced and released,” he said. Howard declined to say whether any of the projects will be announced during this year’s E3 press conference.
Speaking about Fallout 4’s recently announced DLC, Howard said, “It’s really important to us that it’s not just like the game comes out–it’s a platform in many respects,” he added. “What the game is a year from now is going to be very different.”
