While creating The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim , it was revealed that the game’s entire development tea was given a full week to freely add whatever content to to the title that they could within the allotted time. The exercise, which Bethesda called Game Jam, as intended to help promote creativity as individual developers were allowed to work on their own personal project for Skyrim .
Game Jam turned out to be a huge success for Bethesda considering many of the aspects that the team came up with that week ended up becoming part of Skyrim ‘s official DLC. Fans might not have otherwise seen some of the add-on features had the team not been provided with time to try out new things.
Now that Fallout 4is out, the developer is hoping to ignite the same creative spark for the upcoming DLC for the release of the latest installment of their popular post-apocalyptic franchise. While speaking to Game Informer , Fallout 4director Todd Howard confirmed that the studio once again held another Game Jam week to explore new ideas for possible future Fallout 4add-on content. It was even revealed that some of the features currently found inside the game came about because of these sessions.
“Survival mode came out of that. We had talked about doing robot stuff, and there was a bunch of that in there. We do that every game. We do that in the middle of development. So we did that in the middle of Fallout 4. When we finished what we call our vertical slice preproduction build – when you can actually play the game – we do one for a week then. That fuels features for the main game like jetpacks and a number of other things. And we do another at the end, which is focused on mining ideas for DLC. We kind of talk about stuff, but when we start to see it on screen, we say ‘That’s really good. Here are the things we can do. What’s going to be in an update? Hey these fit in a package.’”
Considering how many projects from from the Game Jam for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim were actually included in later add-ons for the game, it’s save to assume that the upcoming DLC packs for Fallout 4 will also contain plenty of ideas that originated from Bethesda’s Game Jam. In fact, it’s likely that the week-long exercise is at least partly responsible for the recently announced expansion of the games season pass after Bethesda revealed that the price of the DLC bundle will increase next month now that they plan to release more DLC for Fallout 4 than was originally planned.
Howard also confirmed that out of all the copies that Fallout 4 sold at launch, the majority of game sales came from digital downloads. This was a first for Bethesda and a strong indication of the current trend in gaming.
“Fallout 4 sold more day one digitally than at retail. That’s a big change.”
The first of Fallout 4 ‘s several planned add-ons will be “Automatron,” which will give players the ability to piece together their own robotic companions using parts found throughout the game world. The DLC will be available on PC and console versions of Fallout 4 alike. For the first time in the series, Bethesda is also bringing user-crafted mods to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. As The Inquisitr reported late last year , Bethesda intends to allow console gamers to also download and install mods with a single click within the game’s interface.
Are you looking forward to trying out new Fallout 4 content when DLC and official mod support launches later this year?
[Images via Bethesda.net ]