Fallout 4 Lead Designer, Writer Says it Was Originally Going to be Set in New York

While Fallout 4 ultimately ended up making use of a post-apocalyptic Boston as its main setting, the developers had at one-point thought about setting it in New York instead. In an interview with PCGamer magazine (via GamesRadar), lead designer and writer on the open-world RPG, Emil Pagliarulo, spoke about wanting to hone in on the “American” aspect of the Fallout franchise, and how New York would have been a great fit for this.

“We wanted to do something grand and American: that’s New York for you,” he said. However, the team ultimately decided to go with another city because of how well-represented New York had already been in other games. “At that time, other games were being set in New York, one of the Crysis games just came out, and that was set in New York, then there was another game,” he explained. He recounted the team essentially deciding that, “You know what? Maybe New York’s not the right call.”

As for how Boston became the main setting of Fallout 4, Pagliarulo said that while he didn’t push for it, he was approached by lead artist Istvan Pely and director Todd Howard about using it for the game. “I didn’t want to push for Boston, even though I thought it would be a great location,” he said. Pely, however, recalled that Boston was in fact a suggestion by Pagliarulo, since it also happened to be his hometown.

“I remember when it came time to do Fallout 4, Emil’s like ‘can we do it in Boston? Can we do my hometown,’” he said. “I don’t know, maybe he got a kick out of that, blowing up his hometown.”

Fallout 4 has been seeing a resurgence in recent times thanks to Bethesda having released the game’s Anniversary Edition on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S back in November. However, immediate reception to it  was quite negative, thanks to several bugs that caused Creations DLC breaking. This would eventually lead to its Steam reviews falling down to “Mostly Negative”.

At the time of publishing, however, opinion on Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition seems to be turning around, with its Steam reviews aggregate having climbed up to “Mostly Positive”. This was likely helped by Bethesda’s continuous support of the release, including a patch that hoped to address “DLC installation issues, occasional crashing, and general user experience”.

Among the improvements brought along with the update, which came out in December, were improved UI/UX visibility for smaller displays like those on the Steam Deck and ROG Ally handhelds, and fixes for crashes related to the Creations menu.

For more details about Fallout 4, check out our review from back when it first came out. Also check out our more recent review of its PS5 release, as well as that of its major overhaul mod, Fallout: London. In the meantime, Bethesda is noted to be “working on a whole bunch of stuff” for the Fallout franchise. Details, however, haven’t yet been revealed. The title also got a boost in player numbers thanks to the success of the second season of Prime Video’s Fallout series.