Cliff Notes – Fallout 3 remaster needs major improvements says former designer
- Bruce Nesmith, a former designer of Fallout 3, emphasises the need for improved gunplay in a potential remaster, aligning it more closely with Fallout 4’s mechanics.
- Nesmith critiques Fallout 3’s combat as outdated, noting it did not meet the standards of contemporary shooters at the time of its release.
- The remaster’s release timeline remains uncertain, with speculation suggesting a possible launch in 2026 to coincide with the second season of the Amazon TV show.
Fallout 3 remaster needs major improvements says former designer
One of Fallout 3’s original designers has explained what the priority should be for the game’s rumoured remaster.
Even if it hadn’t leaked ahead of time, the announcement of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered wouldn’t have been too surprising, considering The Elder Scrolls 6 is still years away and Microsoft needs something to fill the gap.
It’s why the same can be assumed for Bethesda’s other role-playing game series Fallout, since the Amazon TV show attracted a lot of new fans and the next game, Fallout 5, is even further away.
As such, rumours of Microsoft and Bethesda planning a Fallout 3 remaster sound perfectly believable and one of its original designers knows exactly what it needs to please modern players.
Recently, VideoGamer sat down with one Bruce Nesmith, a former Bethesda employee who worked on Fallout 3 and several other Fallout and Elder Scrolls games during his tenure, including The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim as its lead designer – until his departure from the studio in 2021.
When asked what he would like to see from a Fallout 3 remaster, Nesmith’s chief expectation is that Bethesda would update the gunplay and bring it more in line with how it is in its sequel, Fallout 4.
Nesmith candidly describes Fallout 3’s gunplay as ‘not good,’ which he attributes to it being the ‘the first time they ever tried to do a shooter style game.’
As a reminder, the first two Fallout games (which were made long before Bethesda acquired the series) are more traditional computer role-playing games with turn-based combat, rather than the real-time gun combat seen in Fallout 3 and 4.
Gunplay isn’t one of Fallout’s strong suits, but it was notably improved in Fallout 4 (Bethesda/Microsoft)
Nesmith says Fallout 3’s combat ‘didn’t hold up to shooters at the time. … But a lot of work was done on that for Fallout 4. So I anticipate seeing a lot of that work go into it, assuming they’re doing the same thing.’
Fallout 4’s combat was an improvement over its predecessor but it was still pretty awful, compared to an actual first person shooter, and relied heavily on the V.A.T.S. system, which pauses the action to allow you to target individual body parts.
When will the Fallout 3 remaster release?
Although evidence of a Fallout 3 remaster was first discovered in 2023, courtesy of leaked documents from Microsoft, there is no telling when Microsoft aims to have it out.
Last week, reliable insider NateTheHate only claimed that the Fallout 3 remaster is ‘Planned but won’t be for a while.’ This could mean it hasn’t even entered development yet, but it could just as easily mean it may not come out until next year.
2026 would be a smart time to release a Fallout 3 remaster since that’s when the second season of the TV show is scheduled to air.
With the second season taking the show to the city of New Vegas though, a remaster of Fallout: New Vegas would make more sense, especially since it’s lauded as the best entry in the series by many fans.
It’s not as if it’d be difficult to get the idea off the ground either since New Vegas developer Obsidian Entertainment is owned by Microsoft and has expressed interest in giving the game the remaster treatment.
Obsidian is currently busy with The Outer Worlds 2, which is coming out later this year, but it clearly has the capacity to juggle multiple projects considering it launched Avowed, a fantasy role-playing game, just a couple of months ago.
