Very unlikely. The last game developed by internally by Bethesda themselves that had a demo was Redguard back in 1998.

Demos in general are pretty rare these days too, although Bethesda as a publisher did release a demo last year of The Evil Within, but that's a linear corridior game and not a sandbox game.

It's extremely rare that single player games have public betas though, instead they are just beta tested internally by the game companies themselves. Public betas are usually to test the online capabilites of a game when a lot of people are playing it, something they can't test by themselves alone.

That said, Bethesda had a few public closed betas for expansions and DLCs, but never for the main games. So don't expect it to happen to Fallout 4 either. This happened for the Bloodmoon expansion for Morrowind, Fallout: New Vegas DLCs (Steam) and the DLCs for Skyrim (360) for a very limited amount of people. The vast majority of people who applied to those betas were not accepted into it.

Agreed. Just being able to play a small crippled piece doesn't really give a good impression of what the game has to offer.

Not to mention the resources it would take to cut the game into a smaller piece and make sure that the quests in it works and so on, so they can release it for the public. They would much rather spend resources on the actual game, than a crippled piece.

Demos for games like these can be tricky to carve out of the full game. I don't recall them making demos at all, [as has been mentioned above].

And it as also a new IP, trying to get people to notice it. Not Fallout 4, which has been having people all over forums & the gaming press saying "OMG, MAKE FO4!" for years now. I don't think they really need to drum up interest.

And it was that Demo that convinced me to buy the game, and now I have Just Cause 3 preordered.

Demos can be done well, it's just that most companies probably don't have enough confidence in their own product to release a Demo. EA used to do loads of Demos, and now they do virtually none. That's what you get if your game is crap.

As for Bethesda, simply put, they don't need to a Demo and they would have a hard time creating a decent demo of a game. Limiting play time will not help at all as there will undoubtedly be people on PC who will find a way of disabling/removing the time limit and basically getting the game early.

So yeah, more games should do Demos, but I can totally understand and appreciate why Bethesda don't do it.

nintendo does demo's on 3DS

Fallout 4 on 3ds?

Bethesda does not do demos to my knowledge.

For the betas I've taken place in, I don't count indie devs, or open to the public betas. All my experience was with brand name game devs. Its split 50/50 between single player games and mmo's.

I think we would have a higher chance of a Video being released of Todd Howard running around the Bethesda Game Studio Offices yelling Tunnel Snakes Rule then this happening. Beth usually doesn't release Demos and I don't see that changing for Fallout 4.

Probably not, it's not 2004 anymore.

And considering how close we are to release, if they have beta testers, they're already chosen and working.

Extra Credits on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QM6LoaqEnY and why they are few and far between.

tl;dw: Demos cost resources that could be spent better and they don't do much for the sales of games.

So... nothing important then

You realize that's impoasible right? For one your demo would have to literally be the entire game packed into a disk/file for demo use, and then just have a timer slapped on it.

That's never been how timed demos have worked.

THe last Demo I think I ever actually played was the First Level of Duke Nukem 3D. So thats how long ago that was.

Did you ever play the Just Cause 2 Demo? Or Mercenaries 2? I've downloaded 5+ GB Demos before, and they are essentially the entire game, locked behind a timer.

I'm sure I've played way more too, but I'd have to sift through the last 10 years of my life to recall every Demo I've ever played.

Also, impossible.

More than the speedrun world record for Fallout 3.....

Reasons this is unlikely:

• Demos only boost sales of new franchises or games from lesser known developers.
• Demos can only harm pre-order sales of an established franchise (what publishers care about before the game releases).
• Leaked Demos are often a PR nightmare and can be avoided by NOT doing a demo.

Sorry, but the Just Cause 2 demo although essentily giving you the feeling of playing the full game, was not the full game with just a timer.

So, why put the timer on it at all then?

To restrict how much you can do? But if it's confined to the Lautan Lama Desert, and you can play it multiple times, then you can do everything in the area with "multiple playthroughs". So, even if it's not the full game, it's enough content (a very large amount) to justify restrictions.

The principle is the same, with any open world game you would have to restrict the player, and giving them a large area to explore with a timer as their only restriction (a timer which people could find a way to remove), is essentially giving that entire chunk of the game away for free.

I don't see how Bethesda could release a good and convincing Demo without either opening up too much or railroading the player through some set piece, which isn't their style (usually). We may get the "before the war" prologue bit as a Demo, but they really don't need to and I'm sure most people would rather just wait for 10th November.

Why a demo? The game is practically about to be out. Plus, just wait for someone you trust to review it ya know?

The last time I saw a 'demo' was for Dragon Age Inquisition under its EA Access programme,

which opened a week ahead of official launch date.

To my recollection, it was the whole game downloaded to console (XB1)

Not only was it locked to 6 hours, it was also locked to the starting location, something you can't do open world.

Ultimately it was more frustrating than enjoyable as I tried to pack in what I could do in 6 hours.

I abandoned that play through and started again properly once the game launched officially.

I think the chances of a Fallout 4 demo are pretty close to zero.

I can see how it could have been done in Fallout 3 you could have all the content until you get out the valult the camrer could pan out and up showing of a littel of the world and then a message thank you for playing the Fallout demo but in FO3 the game dose not really start until you get out of the vault. FO4's opening seems much more open and free form I really can't see how it would work.