The most successful part of Fallout is precisely the one that is considered the least popular among players according to Metacritic. The reason for this success primarily comes from the players themselves and their created content.
Which game is it about? According to Eurogamer, Todd Howard, the creative head of Bethesda Game Studios, and his colleagues are sure that Fallout 4 is the most successful game in the Fallout series.
In 2020 it became known that Fallout 4 has sold over 25 million copies (Source: gamingbolt). The concurrent player numbers are also impressive: Fallout 4 peaked at over 470,000 players according to SteamDB, leaving the other entries far behind.
Great success despite major criticism
What is the criticism of Fallout 4? The success of the game seems almost paradoxical when looking at the ratings of Fallout 4. Comparing the user score on Metacritic with the ratings of other Fallout titles quickly reveals: Fallout 4, with a user score of 7.0, is the lowest-rated entry in the series.
The biggest criticism from players revolves around two main points:
- The main story is about the protagonist wanting to find his kidnapped son. However, the structure of many quests, the open world, and the building system massively slow down the urgency of this mission. The need to find one’s child is in direct conflict with the overall pace of the game.
- This leads to the second point of criticism: The building system is not fun for most players and drastically slows down the pace. The focus of Fallout 4 has shifted more towards sandbox rather than staying true to its RPG elements. This and other points were also criticized by the colleagues at GameStar in their review of Fallout 4.
And what do responsible developers look at when considering a concept for the next installment: the user score on Metacritic and player criticism or the sales numbers? You can guess three times. Todd Howard sees Fallout 4 in hindsight as a great success:
You feel incredibly lucky. We are still talking about it 10 years later. I believe it is still the most played Fallout game, and you just feel really blessed that the fans have embraced it and stayed with it.
Todd Howard, via Eurogamer
Why is Fallout 4 so successful? Despite all the criticism, Fallout 4 is so successful because players have so many freedoms: They can build, craft, and constantly expand their gaming experience through mods. This greatly increases replayability. This effect could also be observed over many years with Skyrim.
The player numbers of Fallout 4 are also still quite high, because the Amazon series of the same name is immensely successful. The series certainly inspires some people to install the latest Fallout for the first time or again.
Not only does Fallout 4 benefit from the Fallout series, but the series also benefits from the ongoing popularity of Fallout 4. However, the newly launched second season did not fare as well as the first season. MeinMMO editor Niko Hernes sees clear parallels to the Netflix series Stranger Things: The Fallout series could be so great, but it suffers from the same problem as Stranger Things
