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Do you trust Bethesda after Fallout 76? Bethesda thinks you do now

Maybe Starfield will help with that at the very least.

Some players in Fallout 76.
Image credit: VG247/Bethesda.

Starfield design director Emil Pagliarulo thinks that Bethesda has managed to get players' trust back after a rough Fallout 76 launch.

It's no secret that at launch, Fallout 76 was a bit of a disaster. Review scores across the board were incredibly poor, and it took a while for the game to get into ship shape (in part because Bethesda wanted to keep making new content for it too). So it would be a bit understandable if there were those who weren't exactly confident in Bethesda following its release, even if it was something new for the developer as a multiplayer title. According to Pagliarulo, though, the work the team did was enough to restore players' faith in Bethesda, even if the game still isn't perfect.

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Talking about Starfield, Pagliarulo wrote on his personal Twitter account, "Our goal from the very beginning was to create a brand new universe for our players (old and new!) to get lost in. To push ourselves to provide you with as much content, and hopefully joy, as we were humanly capable of. Did we pull it off? Well, we sure as hell tried.

"When 76 launched rough, we asked for your patience. We had some lessons to learn. And you supported us as we supported that game, and made it the experience you wanted and deserved. That trust clearly carried over into Starfield, and made us want to work ever harder."

For the most part, it seems like Starfield has gone down pretty well with fans, so it's possible that Pagliarulo is right in what he said. Whether or not that many Bethesda fans even played the game, though, is another question. As of 2021, three years after the game launched, the game had around 11 million players, whereas Fallout 4 sold 12 million copies in its first day. So it's possible Bethesda didn't have any trust to acquire again anyway.

Still, it's looking like Starfield is doing pretty well for it so far, with our review of the game giving it 4/5, and other reviews scoring pretty high too.


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