Fallout 4s bug testers have to work even harder, thanks to the crafting system

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Bethesda has a somewhat shaky track record when it comes to bug-free games; the worlds of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls are undoubtedly big and beautiful, but they can also be rather… broken. Dragons flying backwards, NPCs phasing through the environment, what have you. And while the ability to build up or tear down structures to create your very own settlements in Fallout 4 (opens in new tab) is definitely exciting, it presents daunting new challenges for those poor QA testers.

“Any time we let the players do whatever they want, your chance of breaking the game goes up,” says game director Todd Howard. “So right now, we’re having to tighten the screws and fill some holes on ‘Oh, I built some big thing, and now I broke all these quests.’ We’ve always had to kind of deal with that, but this takes it to a factor of… googleplex. It’s a lot.”

Howard cites popular sandbox building games like Minecraft and Terraria as inspirations for Fallout 4’s systems, which expand on the custom construction first seen in the Hearthfire expansion for The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. Hopefully, any bugs brought on by manipulating the environment in post-apocalyptic Boston can be ironed out before Fallout 4’s release on November 10, 2015.