Todd Howard says that Fallout 4's cinematic dialogue system 'really did not resonate' with players, even though Bethesda 'spent forever' working on it

Dogmeat and the Sole Survivor from Fallout 4.

(Image credit: Bethesda)

It's been a whole dang decade since Fallout 4 launched, so long that the world has slipped significantly closer to nuclear Armageddon than was the case when Bethesda's post-apocalyptic RPG stepped out from Vault 111. The anniversary has got Bethesda creative chief Todd Howard in a reflective mood, and he's revealed some interesting details about the creation of the game and what the RPG maestros learned from it.

One of the main things Bethesda learned is that cinematic, Mass Effect-style dialogue systems are a bad fit for Bethesda games. In an interview with GQ, Howard was asked what he thought the best game he'd worked on is. Responding diplomatically, Howard pointed to several features of multiple games, while also mentioning that some things "didn't resonate" with players. After a bit of coaxing, Howard revealed that Fallout 4's dialogue system was one of them.

Fallout 4 - Launch Trailer - YouTube

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This was something PCG alumnus Andy Kelly noticed at the time. Shortly after Fallout 4 launched, Kelly noted that Fallout 4 was a good game but a bad RPG, highlighting the limitations of the dialogue system in particular. "The restrictions of the new dialogue wheel and the addition of a voiced protagonist have stripped away any chance to give your character a distinct personality," he wrote back in 2015. "The single voice on offer is so obviously tailored to fit a generic-looking white guy—like the one they used in the E3 demo—that it sounds weird coming out of anyone else."

This is likely why Bethesda swapped back to a more traditional dialogue system for Starfield, though as has been discussed frequently, Bethesda's latest RPG has its own array of issues. Hopefully Bethesda has learned as many lessons from that development as it works on its next game—The Elder Scrolls 6—which Howard mentioned that Bethesda "did a big play test" for only yesterday in the same interview.

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Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

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