Not everyone liked Bethesda's vision.
Recently, Todd Howard spoke with Game Informer and discussed Fallout. The creator shared his memories of the gamers' reaction to the third numbered part of the franchise.
When working on Fallout 3, the developers tried to stay true to the original first parts, while introducing something new (for example, they switched from isometric to first / third person view).
Back then at Bethesda, they thought that "like in other Fallout games, the game should end": the player reaches the final point — gets a cutscene. However, the developers themselves received a negative reaction from gamers in response.
Todd Howard recalls:
People didn't like it! They were puzzled: "Why should the game end at all?!" Well, you know: "Other games don't end!" And we were like: "Well, we were [just being true to this idea]."
Subsequently, additions began to be released for Fallout 3 — Bethesda took the criticism into account and the developers' approach eventually appealed to the players:
When we moved on to discussing additions, we sat down and started asking ourselves: "What if [the game] doesn't end? How can we implement this?". And we tried to figure out how to make the story continue as carefully as possible. I would give us an average rating for how we allowed the plot to continue.
