Todd Howard says Bethesda was surprised by hate for original Fallout 3 ending

Bethesda’s Todd Howard has revisited the backlash to Fallout 3’s original ending, admitting the studio was caught off guard by how strongly players reacted when the game locked them out after the final mission.

In a wide-ranging feature from Game Informer about the history of Fallout, Howard reflected on the decision to have Fallout 3 end definitively once players completed the main story.

In the original game, finishing the final quest triggered an ending sequence and credits, preventing players from continuing in the open world.

Todd Howard says Bethesda didn’t expect the reaction

“The one thing that we did, we ended up changing in Fallout 3, we were like, ‘Well, like the other Fallouts, it has to end,’” Howard explained to Game Informer. He said the team believed they were following the structure of earlier entries in the series, where completing the story concluded the game.

“And we thought, ‘This is Fallout! It’s great!’” he continued, subsequently acknowledging how unpopular the decision ultimately was. “People hated it! They expected, like, ‘Why would the game end?!’ You know, ‘The other games don’t end!’”

Howard said the response prompted internal discussions as Bethesda began planning downloadable content. The team ultimately revisited the decision and found a way to allow players to continue exploring the Capital Wasteland after the main story concluded.

Until DLC Broken Steel’s release in 2009, almost a full year after Fallout 3’s release, completing or reaching a certain point in the final story quest, Take it Back!, would lock out the rest of the game’s world on that save. Loading a previous save before the final mission or starting a fresh playthrough were otherwise the only options.

“We kind of went back to the drawing board and figured out a way, as gracefully as we could,” Howard said, referencing the later change that removed the hard ending. “I’ll give us an average grade on that to make the story continue.”

The lesson was clearly learned, as 2015’s Fallout 4 allowed the player to continue their post-apocalyptic adventures after the credits rolled by default.