Fallout 5 has been a long time coming, and we might only be in the middle of the wait. While developer Bethesda Game Studios once maintained a steady pace of mainline Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, the company has slowed down in the modern era and spent more time on projects like Fallout 76 and Starfield.
A recent PCGamer interview with former Elder Scrolls loremaster Kurt Kuhlmann focuses on The Elder Scrolls, but it also sheds some light on the general pace of development at Bethesda Game Studios. Kuhlmann highlights the years spent on Starfield— an "extremely long project" — and notes that the studio environment has become increasingly bureaucratic.
In theory, having more developers on a game should make the workload more manageable, but Kuhlmann focuses on the challenges of Bethesda's modern scale. Starfield was ultimately accomplished by "four remote studios," meaning that simple decisions had to go through complicated communication processes before someone could sign off on them.
This has concerning implications for the quality of Bethesda's games, and it also highlights the difficulty of getting projects out the door. Not only is more time spent waiting around for decisions, but development could also desynchronize, with teams potentially receiving...
