The current social media activity from Bethesda regarding Fallout 4‘s Goodneighbor location is starting to get worrisome among gamers about the company’s priorities and features, while on the other hand, the community is letting out its frustrations regarding the delayed projects and remaster requests. Up in the hills of Boston, the firm was taking back some old photos of the place where Paladin Danse was looking over the downtown ruins, with the official Bethesda Twitter account sharing the same. However, the gamers’ response was far from being nostalgia and yearning.
It felt like Bethesda had chosen to announce Goodneighbor, a place crammed with dubious characters and maybe a quest or two waiting to be picked up, buried somewhere in the midst of the downtown area of Boston. The Church of Steel was sent down to check things out, and that might look like a nice touch, particularly for the hardcore followers of the Brotherhood of Steel. The only downside is, though, that Fallout 4 hit the shelves in 2015; we are talking about almost ten years ago and not it takRs so long for fans.
So, players immediately picked up on the oddness of the timing. The comments section was full of people pleading for Elder Scrolls 6, demanding Fallout remasters, and questioning the company’s rationale of putting a ten-year-old game under the spotlight rather than giving updates on their current projects.
A user who goes by the name canned food did not mince the words and bluntly asked, “What about some updates regarding starfield? I can’t Belive how inefficient you have become.” This indeed is a strong argument! By looking at the original release plan for Fallout 4, it had already had several DLCs released at this point. What we are getting now is…tweets about wastelands we’ve been through a hundred times before?
To tell you the truth, the irritation is very strong. NotoriousIED, another user, was like “What the hell where is Elder Scrolls?? It’s almost a decade now no announcement you bunch of fraud.” And the despair in that comment is really palpable- Elder Scrolls 6 was announced for 2018 and up to now, we have mainly not even seen anything. So far, Bethesda has been talking about the Goodneighbor as if it were a new thing or something.
At first, there was confusion, and then the players requesting particular features started taking advantage of the situation. One user, for instance, asked for more mod space on PlayStation consoles, which is quite a reasonable request. Another person wanted to find out whether Danse could come out of his power armor without mods, which is quite a precise question concerning gameplay.
And then the whole controversy surrounding the company and its employees is another layer of the discussion… to be honest, I don’t even follow that whole thing, but I have seen several comments mentioning something about the staff celebrating someone’s death? And they want these developers fired? That seems to beyond this Fallout 4 discussion a whole separate issue that’s bleeding into this.
One of the most interesting aspects is the speed at which the demand for remasters for the older Fallout series emerged. Numerous comments from people indicated that instead of the Goodneighbor content, they wanted to see a remaster of Fallout 3 and New Vegas. One even directly stated, “Fallout 3 remaster or shut up,” which is quite honest.
Somebody even made a comment in Spanish which was translated to “we want another DLC for Fallout 4,” and honestly, I feel the same? If you are going to be posting about Fallout 4, why not give us new content rather than just reminding us of the old stuff that has been in the game for years?
On the other hand, there were some players who tried to be positive at least to some extent-a person even ranked Goodneighbor one of the top five settlements, which is still a nice gesture I suppose. Another user posed a question considering the anniversary edition for Fallout 4; that it might include the restored cut content, and when he mentioned the Brotherhood quest in which you could become elder and keep Danse as a companion, it really sounded like a good idea.
However, the general atmosphere is that of…confusion. I mean, why is Bethesda doing this? Is it some sort of a grand marketing strategy hidden from us? Are they trying to create hype for some fallout-related thing that they haven’t announced yet? Or is it simply the social media team trying to keep the content calendar full with whatever they can find?
The timing could not be more unusual as it coincides with a scenario where Bethesda has Starfield released but needing updates, Elder Scrolls 6 under development but no information, and players still asking for remasters and new content. And the outcome is…a picture of Paladin Danse strolling through Goodneighbor.
