The Impact Factor

Please Stand By: I Have Already Seen Too Much Fallout 4

Perspectives

I woke up to the internet on fire. News sites, Twitter, YouTube. Everything was ablaze with a teaser countdown posted by Bethesda on their Fallout website. The timer is set to expire Wednesday June 2^nd , 7AM PST. This is it, our first official teaser for Fallout 4. We all saw it coming back in February when Bethesda announced that they would be hosting their own E3 press conference. It has been years since a new Fallout game, so the timing was right for the announcement of the next installment in this hugely popular series. The teaser this morning confirmed what we all suspected: Fallout 4 at E3 (unless Bethesda really likes messing with us). But, unlike essentially every other reaction I saw on the web today, I was more deflated than excited. I feel like the wind has been siphoned from the sails of the Bethesda E3 press conference and it made me a bit sad.

The countdown began early this morning, set to end 7AM PST tomorrow. Fallout 4 is coming.

For a couple years now, developers and publishers have been revealing / showing off new games ahead of E3. As this huge industry event appears to only be getting bigger and bigger, early reveals come as a no brainer. Unless you are 100% confident that your game, your one game, will be the game of the show, you risk a lot by not talking about it until E3 begins. So many games are announced and shown for the first time at E3 that nearly equally as many get lost in the shuffle. I cannot imagine the frustration that it must create for the people behind these new games: all that work creating a trailer and playable vignette, all the money spent to exhibit your game, all for it to get drowned out in the noise of the colossal E3 trade show. This year we’ve been seeing a lot of games, even big ones, trying to get ahead of the crowd and announce early. Back in April SquareEnix revealed the new Deus Ex game. Earlier this week 2K set up a viral teaser and later announced XCOM2. The new MOBA-like shooter from Gearbox, Battleborn, is also having some announcement on June 4^th. And there are many more I can’t recall off the top of my head.

While these make sense to me, even they are a bit sad. It removes some of the already few surprises E3 has to offer. It gives each of these games their own news cycle, sure, but removes that insurmountable excitement you get when the game is first seen at an E3 event. The more that is seen before the event, the less surprises the E3 has to offer. That has been the trend in recent years: we’re mostly getting trailers for games we already know about. Each press conference will have its handful of surprises, but these are growing shorter and shorter in supply. It’s fun to hear about a title and see it for the first time at E3, but it’s even better when a new game comes out of nowhere to take everyone by surprise. That said, I really do understand why all these games are announced early, both from a news cycle and financial perspective. But what Fallout 4 seems to be doing just confuses me.

If you were to ask me yesterday what I thought the biggest game of E32015 would be, I would have told you with absolute certainty that it would be Fallout 4. No game is more anticipated, more speculated upon, and more desired than a new Fallout game. In the years between Fallout 3 (and New Vegas, too) fans have gone wild for a new Fallout game: creating fake teaser sites, info ‘leaks’, and more. The people are rabid for a new Fallout game, so Bethesda already had the hard work done for them. So why in the heck does it look like we will be getting some new Fallout information tomorrow, still two weeks away from E3?

Fallout 4 is certainly not a game that would struggle to break through the noise of all the games shown at E3. Fallout 4 is a game people are already chomping at the bit to see. How cool would it have been to have seen and known nothing specific to Fallout 4 until it was first shown at the Bethesda press conference? Just imagine that. We all know it’s coming. We all have been waiting what feels like an eternity to get our first look at the new wasteland. The stage is set, the music starts, and BAM! We’re brought into the world of Fallout 4 for the first time at the start of their press conference. It would have been unreal. It still could be, I suppose. But any trailer, gameplay, or info we get tomorrow about Fallout 4 erodes that reveal experience in a significant way. The first look, that first foray into Fallout 4, seems now vanished, if the teaser on the Bethesda site is to be taken seriously.

I guess I ‘get it.’ Maybe Bethesda has a lot they want to show us, and given the limited amount of time for their press event they don’t want Fallout 4 to completely overshadow their other anticipated releases (DOOM, Dishonored 2, & more). This reveal tomorrow could cover some basic information, or just be a teaser trailer, reserving the E3 press conference time-slot for gameplay. Or something. Or, like what Bethesda did for DOOM, this could just be a 10 second teaser of a teaser in an attempt to drum up even more excitement. I hope it’s not the latter, as such a short amount of video footage told me little to nothing about what to expect from DOOM, other than it looked like DOOM I guess. Perhaps Bethesda was just afraid the information would leak ahead of time? This could be the case, but if we've gotten to this point and there was still no official information out there, Bethesda is already quite good at keeping Fallout 4 hidden.

Just seeing that there will be a Fallout 4 something tomorrow is a little deflating, though. That teaser image alone is more than what I wanted to see. I had built up expectations to see Fallout 4 for the first time at the E3 press event. I would have been on the edge of my seat, not fully knowing what to expect from this gargantuan franchise. Now, assuming they show anything at all tomorrow, the edge of my seat will be reserved for games I haven’t seen anything from prior to E3. Sure, I’ll be excited to see what more Bethesda wants to show me about Fallout 4, but it just won’t have that same impact. At this point, I’m not sure what I want to see tomorrow. Just a little bit? If so, why show it at all tomorrow? Or a lot? If so, what can they show at E3 to push the excitement to the next level?

Whatever the case may be, whatever factors that led Bethesda to want to give us some Fallout 4 tomorrow, I’m still so so excited for the game. And so excited for E3. How could I not be? Let’s just hope their press conference is great too.

Do you agree with me? Or think I'm totally crazy? Let me know on twitter @alexsamocha