Fallout London’s project lead Dean Carter is behind not just one of the best Fallout 4 mods, but one of the best mods of all time. While the British-based Fallout 4 total conversion mod does have its own technical issues, the project has been universally praised for offering a brand-new, quality experience while we wait an age for Bethesda’s official Fallout 5.
In an interview with Esports, Carter called for Bethesda to “start selling off” the Fallout franchise and The Elder Scrolls, the latter of which currently has its sixth mainline entry in development. In the interview, the Fallout London lead explained that the “writing has just done downhill” as of late which is crippling the quality of their RPGs.
“With the greatest respect to Bethesda, I feel like they’ve probably gone one game too far,” the mod developer said. “I feel like it’s time to go off into the sunset and look at selling off your IP because people like the franchise, I’m just honestly not sure it’s in the right hands, and it really hurts me to say that because I love Bethesda.”
Carter explained that, if Bethesda doesn’t—which they won’t—sell off their IP, they should hire new, talented writers to spearhead their projects. “I reckon if they could inject in the quality of some good writers, then the next Elder Scrolls game will be great and the next Fallout game will be great but they need better writers, honestly.” they said.
The developer explained that they “liked Fallout 4” enough to build a mod on its bones, but was let down by its story. “Ultimately, I would never play that game for its story. I think I always got to the point where, and you know spoiler warning, when you get to Sean in the Institute, I was like cool, in my head it is a justifiable response to go, my kid is safe. Let’s go do something else.”
The Fallout London developer admitted that even his team “definitely fell flat in some of our quests”, but that Bethesda keeps repeating the same mistakes that continue to push more dedicated fans away.
Carter explained that Fallout London focused on the “dark and gritty” aspect of the series while still maintaining its comedy, but says Bethesda is going too far in the “opposite direction”, removing a lot of the bite from the series. This very fact has been admitted by Fallout 4 lead designer and writer Emil Pagliarulo who admitted they are less “reverential” of the original series after the success of the third game.
Of course, Bethesda is never giving up the Fallout or Elder Scrolls IP, and another studio owning the two franchises likely wouldn’t allow projects like Fallout London or the upcoming Skyblivion to exist. However, as a fan of the series who liked Fallout 4 well enough, and put well over a hundred hours into Starfield, it’s clear that something does need to change for The Elder Scrolls 6 and beyond.
However, with The Elder Scrolls being Bethesda’s flagship franchise, and coming after the sizeable failure of Starfield (as far as typical Bethesda games go), it seems quite clear that the studio is aware that this project has to go right.
