It did not come as a surprise that Bethesda retired the defunct Gamebryo engine in favor of their in-house Creation engine after its use in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. When that will be or how long that will be God only knows, but we acquired it specifically because we wanted to own it and develop it and work on it like we do with The Elder Scrolls'. He also added: 'This is not something we're going to do once and then go away and never do it again. In 2008, Bethesda's Pete Hines said: 'The whole reason we went out and acquired the license and that we now own Fallout is that we clearly intended to make more than one'. However, Bethesda and Interplay finally settled out of court. Had Interplay's counterclaim been successful, the companies would have reverted to their previous contract, whereby Bethesda only had the rights to publish one more Fallout game - Fallout 4. There was a legal dispute in which Interplay claimed that Bethesda breached their contract regarding Fallout Online, and so their later contract was null and void.

However, Bethesda purchased the entire franchise in 2007 and Interplay licensed back from Bethesda the rights to a Fallout MMORPG. Initially, in 2004, Bethesda licensed from Interplay the rights to create and publish three Fallout games ( Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4). Nothing is known about this earlier version of Fallout 4, except that Caesar's Legion was to play a big part in it. Black Isle Studios also planned to make a Fallout 4 after their Fallout 3 (Van Buren) project was finished, but it was cancelled and the rights to the franchise were sold.

Fallout 4 box art