“The Destiny effect.”
When designing Fallout 4’s new shooting mechanics, developers at Bethesda Game Studios used Bungie’s shooter Destiny–considered by some to have some of the best gunplay in games–as a reference point. That’s according to Game Informer’s story on the game, published in the magazine’s latest issue.
Bethesda developers saw Destiny as a touchstone for Fallout 4’s shooter mechanics also because Bungie’s game runs at 30fps, just like Fallout 4.
“The main difference in the way we develop [and other studios] is that we will develop with as many knobs as possible,” Fallout 4 director Todd Howard said. “We’re always thinking of scale. We’re not a team that is just going to make eight guns and spend forever on one gun. We knew we were going to have thousands, so we needed to develop a gun system that had all of the dials.”
Helping develop Fallout 4’s gunplay is Josh Hamrick, who left Bungie after six years to join Bethesda. He works at Bethesda as a senior systems designer and in his new role has been “focused intently on tuning [Fallout 4’s] firearms.” Hamrick was also part of the team that designed Fallout 4’s PlayStation Vita controls.
Speaking about Fallout 4’s shooter mechanics in June, Howard said they will improve upon what was seen in Fallout 3. The shooting system in that game was very “meh,” Howard said at the time.
“We started out with Fallout 4 knowing that, look, we can’t apologize for being a role-playing game,” he said. “We have to build a first-person shooter, and it needs to be a really, really good one. We spent a lot of time on that.”
In Fallout 4, players can use VATS, the game’s strategic combat mechanic where action slows down, allowing them to target specific body parts.
“We want players to have the edge if they use the VATS system,” Howard said. “If you’re building your character for VATS, it’s really powerful.”
Bethesda also enlisted the help of Doom and Rage developer id Software for Fallout 4’s shooter mechanics.
The Fallout 4 release date is set for November 10 across PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. In other news about the game, Microsoft and Bethesda have teamed up for some Fallout 4-themed Forza 6 cars.