Bethesda ends work on Fallout 3 DLC

Bethesda Softworks has concluded its ongoing development of Fallout 3 downloadable content, according to the game’s executive producer Todd Howard.

In an interview with Kotaku, Howard revealed that the recent release of the fifth Fallout 3 expansion is highly likely to be the studio’s last.

"I think we’ve put enough content out there for this game," he said. "I kind of had in my mind that the upper limit was five. Part of that was what I think people are willing to continue to pay for a game.”

Howard revealed that, during development of Fallout 3, he dedicated two development teams on two episodes of DLC.

After the game’s release, with two DLC episodes finalised, Howard then split the entire staff again. This time, half the group – “mostly a lot of artists and designers” – worked on the final three DLC episodes, with the other half working on the studio’s next project.

Howard offered no clue as to what that new project is. Recently, however, there was a brief flutter of speculation that the studio is working on a fourth Fallout title.

As middleware group Emergent announced that the LightSpeed engine had integrated Digital molecular Matter – the ‘material physics’ tool used in LucasArts’ Star Wars The Forced Unleashed – some observers suggested that Bethesda was going to use the tech to make fully-destructible environments in Fallout 4.