Interview: The Fallout Team Talks 76, Fallout 5 Hopes, And A Lot More

“We’ve seen a massive influx of players, and the cool thing about this is that all the IPs have prospered from this a little bit. You know, they come in, and some people are like, oh, there’s a series of games on this? Like, yea! It’s not only a great show, there are great games that come with it, and so, so they’ve been jumping into all the games, we’ve seen a good influx of players in 76 of course, a lot of them have hung around ever since the season one of the TV show, and yeah, so it’s been great because they’ve been added to the community, they come into Discord, they’re like really engaged with the game now, and getting feedback, and it’s been great to see that.”

He continues: “Because, again, you know, eight years, we wouldn’t be here almost eight years later if we weren’t listening to feedback and trying to get new people into the product and play and get the feedback, and also us being responsive to that feedback. If we just ignored what was coming in, and John and I weren’t present, and doing, you know, things on Discord, or doing AMAs, and reaching out to folks to show them that we are part of this community as well, I don’t think we would be here, you know. So, you know, we have people who come in, they watch the show, and they’re like, ‘Oh, wait, that globe, that toaster, that kitchen set, that the tables, the chairs, the clocks, like all that stuff’s in the game. It’s like, yeah, they took every piece of detail and tried to recreate what that experience was like.”

So does the team foresee using the same process for anything Fallout 5 related? Kinda, according to Rush: “I’m sure if that ever comes up, it’ll probably be a process like this game or the past follow-up games have undergone. Yeah, we don’t get told much. We don’t get told anything [laughs]. We’re all just focused on 76, you know, right, like day-to-day stuff.”

“As fans of the series since [the first Fallout game], we’re all pretty intimately familiar with the lore, and we kind of specialize in different aspects of it, so as new story elements are being added to the world that’s being done through 76, we’ll be conversing with other folks who also have a lot of knowledge about the war, like if we’re making a Brotherhood of Steel update. For instance, ‘so and so knows a lot about Brotherhood of Steel.’ Let’s make sure we’re assuming correctly here and that this isn’t a conflict in any way. So, it’s a very organic process. There’s no library of knowledge or one, or one, you know, super brain sitting atop a throne. It’s very organic, very specific.”

I wanted to get the team’s take on how the game made a complete 180 since launch, and they were pretty upfront:

“I mean, some of it just comes back to establishing, you know, trust in the community and being consistent, and that’s really it. It’s basically saying, okay, what are we tackling first? It’s like, well, we need stability there first. You know, we need to make sure that servers aren’t sitting at 50% stability; they need to be at, like, 0.5% stability, which is what they’re at now. So, as we continue to make things more stable for players, fewer crashes, more client stability, more performance, better performance stuff, and also worked on content at the same time, which allowed us to kind of build up some of that trust, and so, like, especially after Wastelanders. I don’t think we’ve actually missed a single release date at this point, you know, from that was update 18 all the way through 68.”

The Fallout First subscription program is still trucking along, according to Acosta, and isn’t going anywhere: “I won’t give you the actual percentage, but it is a very, very large percentage of our players that are Fallout First members, because of, you know, things like extra stash, access to survival tents, you know, a bunch of really cool free stuff that we give out, plus the atoms every month pays for itself, almost. So it’s really important to us to keep that going, and we have even more improvements coming in the future for that, because, again, we just want to continue to provide value.”

“We’ve got plans for years down the road. There’s no shortage of great ideas, no shortage of cool stuff coming. I can’t wait to be here next year, talking with you all about the content then. But hey, you know, to give you a little taste. So, we’re in June, and relatively soon, players will actually get their first taste of PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro, plus Xbox Series X/S builds native to those platforms, so that’ll be coming, and then also, in the future, console players will be able to play on the PTS [public test server], just like the PC players will be, so they’ll get to see new content that’s coming out in the future.”

It seems like Fallout 76 is in good hands. Rush concludes: “You know what the most beautiful part about it is, in my opinion, Bethesda Game Studios has the best community in gaming, and Fallout 76 is kind of their first opportunity for them to all get together and play together, so that to me makes 76 very special on its own, and we can see that it’s special to our community for that reason.”

Systems

Released

October 10, 1997

ESRB

m

Developer(s)

Interplay

Publisher(s)

Interplay

Engine

Creation Engine