Bethesda Softworks’ post-apocalyptic gaming blockbuster, Fallout 4, has won the top prize at this year’s BAFTA Games Awards, much to the surprise of Bethesda executive Sean Brennan.
Awards for the gaming industry still remain quite scarce – at least on a scale similar to that seen with the Oscars for film – but the BAFTA Games Awards is one of the largest in the industry.
At the awards ceremony last night, the biggest news was awarding of the grand prize to Fallout 4, released November last year, which is set in a futuristic Boston devastated by nuclear war as your character tries to battle an onslaught of angry humans and vicious mutants.
Having just released its first in a series of downloadable content (DLC), the game is likely to have a long shelf-life, just like its predecessors, which have established it as a mainstay of gaming, in the same fashion as the likes of Call of Duty or Halo.
Receiving the award on the night for Bethesda Softworks and its executive producer, Todd Howard, was the company’s European managing director, Sean Brennan, who admitted he did not expect to win the top prize on the night.
Success for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
Referencing the games origins as a low-budget game, Brennan said to the BBC: “You don’t have to have the multi-million dollar budgets to make great games – I’ve seen a huge amount of evidence for that tonight.”
These games he was referring to were among some of the other category winners on the night, including Rocksteady Studios, which won the Best British Game award for its production of, Batman: Arkham Knight.
The mystery adventure game developed by The Chinese Room, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture – tipped to potentially win the top prize – walked away with three awards on the night, including Best Music, Game Innovation and Performer.
Set in 1980s rural England, the player is tasked to solve the mystery of what happened the townspeople amid Cold War hysteria, but within a distinctly British setting.
Fallout 4 screenshot image via Videogame Photography/Flickr