With the next Fallout game taking so long, most likely seven to eight years, you would think that Todd's superiors would put another team on a project. Either a new mainline title or another spin off.
Todd can claim that is in Bethesda's DNA or something to handle the Fallout franchise themselves, but they don't have the time for it and since Bethesda has taken over the franchise FNV is still the title that has been best received by the majority of fans.
In this case I think Microsoft should get involved as this is an IP now (unfortunately) that helps sell Xbox consoles.
Of course I am not looking forwards to another Fallout game with 'Bethesda's DNA' as we have already seen what that has led to. Even FNV had to include some of it.
I am still struggling with letting Fallout go but I also have that problem with Star Trek. Both have been big sources of influence in my life. Through Star Trek (and Star Wars to a lesser degree) I discovered my love for science fiction, and with Fallout my interest in post-apocalypse and Western RPGs.
I really became invested in these IP's and their setting & lore, wanting to make stories set in these universe and come up with ideas I feel are as good as these two as I want to be a creator of worlds and stories myself.
Having to watch both go into decline because new people got to work with these IPs but want to reimagine it in their own vision, in both cases believing that these IPs rely on recurring parts and elements as well as tropes, was very difficult.
Then also finding out that a lot of people like these changes and think it makes these IPs better is even more frustrating as this audience previously did not care about these IP's at all.
I know companies are only about making profit but I feel that by mangling a creative IP with bad sequels or reboots that they are killing it's spirit.
I am definitelly a proponent that there should be a limit on how long something can be trademarked. F'you Disney for wanting to extend copyrights indefinitely.
I am not going to judge you on that, nor am I going to say that you finally 'saw the light' when you started to experience that the Bethesda games were not as good as you initially thought them to be.
My main frustration with Bethesda fans has been that some of them can be incredible a-holes to people who do not share their opinion, like it is some kind of religion.
I also feel that they are part of a group that thinks that all change in franchises are good, yet they could never bother with playing the original games because they found these boring looking and slow. So how is change in this case good. Because it finally appeals to 'your taste'?
We old Fallout fans are considered arrogant for wanting Fallout to be the way we like it. Well, the new audience is not any better.
I noticed the changes that happened to both games and series/movies around the mid 2000s. There was this weird period in which I went from in general being enthusiastic for new entries in favorite IPs to becoming very cautious and skeptical when a new entry was announced, especially when it was handled by a new producer or director. Addition; even producers and directors who did work on these IPs for years could screw up because they felt that big changes were needed.
Because at some point I realized these newcomers were not all fans of these IPs, or felt that these IPs needed to be 'fixed', or that they depended on several recurring elements and ideas that need to return in every new entry, there being little room for new ideas and concept that could take away from this well established/fan favorite parts.
And often like with Bethesda and Fallout the people working on these IPs did not understand the lore or really reduced parts such as people, groups to a set stereotype. (BOS are heroric defenders of the wasteland, Super Mutants are human eating orcs, Ghouls are zombies)
And this was before we reached the current period we are in that popular IPs are platforms for 'the message', being handled by people who often dislike everything the IP was about or think that they should 'fix' it so it fits their ideology.
Bethesda makes games for a certain audience and they will not stray from the design philosophy they are handling until it becomes unprofitable.
That they still can get away with game breaking bugs that could be a financial disaster for any other publisher and studio shows the contradictic mindset of the audience.
Or expecting fans to fix the flaws Bethesda could not be bothered with because these people now claim that these bugs are 'features'.
Bethesda has basically taught these people to eat shit and smile about it, and defend Bethesda from anyone who calls the company on the half finished products it publishes.
I think winning a lottery, doing well at stocks all of a sudden, or Bethesda making a Fallout game I think is good both gameplay and content wise are now all impossibilities.
