Bethesda talks Fallout 76 beta and launch

[Nergal]

 

Fallout 76 has a lot to prove as it leaves Steam behind—and Bethesda's head of marketing Pete Hines reckons its launch is unlikely to be straightforward.

Speaking to IGN at Gamescom, Hines suggests the developer is "on the right course" so far as pre-release prep is concerned, but admits some things will come down to trial and error and listening to player feedback.

"It's interesting and exciting, but I'm also going into this having done this enough to know this is definitely not going to go perfectly," Hines tells IGN. "There's just no universe… nobody's ever done it and [has been] like: 'Oh, zero problems. There's not a single thing that went wrong.'

"We just have to be ready for that. That's in part what the beta is. Break it Early, Test the Application. It's a joke, but you need to break it early. We have to find what problems we can find, and then fix it and figure out if the processes that we put in place to fix it hold it. If not, we have to change those and do it again. We need you to break something else."

Hines says at present, Bethesda is as prepared as it can possibly be, but that "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy".

He adds: "Ours certainly isn't going to either, but we are fully aware of what we signed up for, are committed to we're going to be quick to respond, quick to adapt, and do all the things we think we need to make it a great game."

Elsewhere, Hines says he jokingly banned the word 'replayable' in the Bethesda office and is more concerned about giving players a game that's good value for money.

"Every game is replayable," says Hines. "Tetris is replayable. Every game can be replayed from the beginning. That’s not unique. That's not a feature."