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Fallout 4 Development Began By Porting The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim To Xbox One
At the tail end of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim's development, Bethesda Game Studios was already hard at work on Fallout 4, even without knowing the specs of the hardware the game would release on. Microsoft and Sony communicated closely with Bethesda about the plans for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, but Bethesda didn't want to rush ahead and make Fallout 4 a launch title, a break in tradition as The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind and Oblivion were both launch window titles.
Bethesda instead viewed a longer development time frame – one that allowed the team to properly gather data before starting development on the new hardware. When I visited Bethesda Game Studios last month, Todd Howard and other key members from the development team walked me through Fallout 4's creation. Early on in our talks, Howard smiled at me and said, "The first thing we did was port Skyrim to Xbox One." After a brief pause, he quickly blurted out, "Don't get your hopes up yet."
This was strictly an exercise that allowed the team to understand the new hardware faster. Although Howard implied there's a chance of Skyrim coming to Xbox One with his "yet," I was led to believe there wasn't anything brewing at the moment.
Regardless, as we count the days until Fallout 4's release next Tuesday, we can dream about the idea of Skyrim, one of the previous gen's most beloved games, coming to new-gen hardware.
For this month's issue, we got the awesome opportunity to visit Bethesda Game Studios and find out how it tackled making the highly anticipated and secretive Fallout 4. The entire Making of Fallout 4 article is available now for Game Informer Digital subscribers, and will be released on Game Informer's website this Friday.
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