Bethesda wasn't always synonymous with Fallout. A certain generation of hardcore PC RPG fans resented the studio's increasingly mainstream, console-friendly take on role-playing titles, and turning an isometric classic into something like Fallout 3 – ungenerously referred to ahead of launch as "Oblivion with guns" – was treated as something akin to blasphemy. No one felt the pressure more than the developers at Bethesda.
"There was a section of the Fallout fandom that felt that a team famous for making elves and fantasy games should not be touching this series," as Angela Browder, associate art producer at Bethesda at the time, says in Edge magazine issue 419. "It was surprising to us how much hate we got. They were not very happy that we had bought this license."
