“Fallout 4” rumors were just reignited by the announcement that Josh Hamrick has left Bungie in order to get a position at Bethesda. While we don’t know what exactly he’ll be doing for his new employer, one thing is clear – he’ll be working on a serious project that requires the kind of professional touch only he can deliver.
Josh Hamrick is an experienced industry veteran, and it doesn’t make sense that Bethesda would hire him for any random project – they most likely had something specific in mind when taking him on board. The studio has two major projects that are rumored to be in production right now – “Fallout 4” and “The Elder Scrolls 6”.
Of those two, not only is “Fallout 4” mentioned more prominently in rumors, but the game would also be more appropriate for the experience of Josh Hamrick and his personal style. Sure, he could also contribute to “The Elder Scrolls 6” if he had to – the man could probably contribute to any game and make it work at this point – but his skills would truly shine with “Fallout” in particular.
Before “Destiny”, the designer also worked on “Halo Reach”, another sci-fi themed game that saw a very successful release. On top of that, he’s an avid gamer as well, and he has the reputation of one of the best “Destiny” players around the Bungie offices – something which many fans have attributed to his position developing guns for the game.
There have been rumors that his experience with shooting mechanics is exactly what made him such an attractive choice for Bethesda. “Fallout 3”, as great as it was in general, suffered from a major problem with its combat mechanics, something which “New Vegas” did very little to address. One of the main requests fans have been making towards Bethesda regarding “Fallout 4” is for the studio to take a serious look at the game’s shooting mechanics, and reevaluate them a bit.
It looks entirely possible that we could see this becoming a reality eventually. So far, Bethesda still haven’t said anything about “Fallout 4” and we don’t know if the game is coming this year or not. However, if they really did hire Hamrick to work on it, it might be a while before they’re ready to announce it to the public.
After all, someone in his position would likely be overseeing the game’s design on a higher level, meaning that there will be a lot of work propagated down the line and it’s not very likely that the game is close to a finished state with that in mind. On the other hand, they could also task him with adding a final layer of polish.