Fallout 4 recently celebrated its first anniversary. The head of Bethesda Game Studios gave an interview in which he shared some thoughts about the game, as well as memories.
As it turned out, the creator had been working non-stop for 20 years, moving from one project to another. Therefore, after the release of the new part of the franchise, he decided to finally take a vacation:
Going from Oblivion to Fallout 3, from Skyrim to Fallout 4 — surpassing the previous result, receiving the "Game of the Year" award — I never took it for granted. Every time I think about projects, I imagine groups [of developers]. Years and years of living together is a unifying experience. But I worked very hard for a long time. After Fallout 4, I took a vacation for about three months. I hadn't had a break in 20 years.
When the interviewer asked if Todd Howard missed work, he stated:
There's always a small question: "What will I feel when I come back [to work]?" But I was so excited. I couldn't sleep the night before. I knew that new challenges awaited us with Fallout 76 and Starfield.
New projects presented new challenges for the team, but even the "routine work" on Fallout 4 was not an "easy walk":
If routine is constant burnout, then we really did that. It becomes a kind of obsession. At some point in your life, you spend more time in the world of fantasy than with real people. And you think: "Maybe I should go touch some grass? [return to the real world]"