I'm quite curious as to how long Bethesda has been working on Fallout 4. The writing, coding, testing, drawing, recording, and heck even making a new engine (speculation). What do you guys think?

Typically a game develop starts fairly early into the previous game's development, in this case Skyrim's.

When concept artists and the early idea guys finished the early stuff in Skyrim, they would move onto concept art an early ideas for Fallout 4, when certain specialized team members get done with their part of Skyrim they would move onto Fallout 4, when the sound recorders get done recording the sounds for skyrim, they would move onto Fallout 4, etc. etc.

It really all depends on what you classify as "working on it", concept artists and the like could have been working on it like 6-7 years ago.

They usually start story boarding and early engine modifications about a year before the release of the previous game(which means they already started on TES 6 months ago. It also means that total development time is about 5 years and they haven't spent that much time on a title since Morrowind.

It goes in phases. Are you asking when someone first said Fallout 4 at Bethesda or when the started 100% concentration on it?

The reason I am asking is that it is a safe bet that BGS is currently working on two projects: Majority of their effort is going to Fallout 4 but they will have a small team working on the game that will come after Fallout 4.

Morrowinds concept was already penned around the time Daggerfall was being worked on, so they probably had Fallout 4 penned maybe when Fallout 3 was in the oven.

Since rumor is we get the game dropped in October, they probably started work when Skyrim was still in DLC development.

Bethesda has one or twice admitted they always have the basic ideas for the next two games in the TES series in mind. Which is why TES games are always seeded with clues about the next time.

I bet they already have ideas for Fallout 5, and the constant name dropping of The Institute/The Commonwealth in Fallout 3 suggests they had Fo4 in mind even back then.

Good question to ask Todd Howard at the E-3 panels....

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2015/06/05/bethesda-e3-2015-details-including-fallout-4-doom-panels/

I think it depends on what you're asking. BGS makes a lot of games other than TES and Fallout (DOOM and Wolfenstein comes to mind).

It's likely they began the writing and storyboarding around the time Skyrim was released, it was only when the X-Box One was released that they did any serious coding and programming to make it work for next gen.

Bethesda Game Studios made neither of those games

Oh.

I amend my previous statement, then.

My guess is 2009 is when R+D started.

Bethesda Game Studios makes only TES and Fallout.

Bethesda Softowrks, which is a separate company, publishes, but does not develop, all the games made by Bethesda Game Studios, Znimax Online, Id, Machine Games, and Arkane Studios.

Yes, Bethesda published/will publish those game.

Wolfenstein was developed by MachineGames, and Doom is being developed by id Software (as all Doom games have been).

I think total development time is at roughly 6 weeks in an attempt to beat Howard Scott Warshaw's record for E.T.

Sorry have to refute this. Bethesda Game Studios did not develop Doom or Wolfenstein, though they are published by Bethesda Softworks / Zenimax. (ninja'd)

Also BGS was already doing initial program work with next gen platforms in early 2012 , judging by their job requirement solicitations for hiring devs,

Right, BGS doesn't make any other game than Fallout and TES. Got it.

At any rate, I believe FO4 was at least in the writing stages circa late 2011 with a few splinter groups working on the Skyrim DLCs.

don't forget Tango Gameworks and Battlecry Studios

I would say after Skyrim so 3-4 years.

this basically,

They admitted that they were getting copy's of USGS of the 1950s and 60s surveys back during the development of fallout 3 for more locations than they used in the game and DLCs. its posible they were thinking about it way back then and then later included the name droping of the institute in the game.

also they often do things like the power pole plates that Read TES-IV or TES-4, but then we already knew that was comeing.

I cant think of any references to Fallout 3 or 4 in Skyrim however

the references stay in their respective series.

Fo3 wouldn't reference what the next TES game would be, nor would the last TES game reference the next Fallout game.

The bare bones framework was most likely layed down somewhere near the end of Fallout 3 development, vague ideas like where 4 would take place was most likely already being talkt among staff already back then. Once 3 was out work would begin in ernest (hench why they outsources NV to Obsidian) and the Fallout team have been working there butts of since then (most liekly gaining more manpower once skyrim was out).

They announced after PC Patch v1.9 and Dragonborn was finally released for PS3, in about April 2013.
They were done with Skyrim and moving on to the next project.

So full team from then.
When did anyone at BGS start working on Fallout 4?
The day they got the Fallout Franchise. They will have created an entire story arc covering a minimum of three games, maybe more and that's not counting New Vegas, which was a Publisher cash in by Zenimax Media (ZM)/Bethesda Softworks (BS).

BGS and BS are both owned by ZM.
ZM make all the decisions use BS as a protective shield. Using the Bethesda Name to divert critisism and get BGS [censored?-really naive fans-will that do] and those who don't know manning the battlements.
It works well for ZM as the prior posts about what BGS makes shows.
This time it was actually attributed to BGS, but usually it's simply labelled "Bethesda" the mistake is obscured and misunderstanding persists.

So full team is the only meaningful when did F4 start question.

Even that depends on whether you include the engine, for many reasons, requiring a separate topic, I wouldn't include the engine.

In that case my guess is a year at most. After E3 we may have a better idea. If I'm right the release will be fall 2016. That's the standard AAA timeline.

In pre-production (storyline and general setting planning, concept art etc.) even before Skyrim's release, serious development started soon after Skyrim's release. Or that's how it usually goes

And they should consider renaming either Bethesda Game Studios or Bethesda Softworks to avoid confusion on between the two.

Actually, there's official answers to that question. We have a good timeline based on the following:

We know it was in pre-production from at least August 2010, according http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-08-16-todd-howard-working-on-two-new-games. Presumably started sometime earlier that year, or even 2009, which is pretty normal: BGS has been doing one game in PP while the other is in full development for several titles now. And then this http://www.bethblog.com/2013/04/15/moving-to-our-next-adventure/ in April 2013 confirmed they had moved their full team onto the next project, which we now know to be Fallout 4.

So pre-production started about 5 years ago, and full production about two and a bit years ago. Which is similar to most of their development cycles.

My guess is (based upon something Todd said at some point) Is that pre planning including basic artwork and concepts started about one year before Skyrims release so since 2010 is my guess. That would mean by the time it's released it will be near 6 years or at least 5 1/2 years that they have been working on it.

Once the artists and some of the writers are done with one game, they go to work on the next one instead of twiddling their thumbs waiting for release of the one they have finished with.