Fallout 76 Multiplayer Is Meant to Enhance What Fans Love the Most

Fallout 76 has already been met with mixed reception. While some people are enamored with the the idea, upon being officially confirmed as an online multiplayer game at E3 2018, many  people were turned off at worst or cautiously optimistic at best. We could all agree, however, that the collector’s edition helmet was awesome.

While some people feel this is merely the Fallout team trying to capitalize on an increasingly popular genre, Howard discusses how this shift has been a long time coming in a recent interview with The Guardian: “We never actually got to prototyping it [during development of Fallout 4]. It was just the design: if we do multiplayer, what would it look like?” he said. “That was in maybe 2014. It was really just on paper. We started putting people on it in 2015, before we finished Fallout 4.”

While there are survival elements Howard assures fans that this game is still a Fallout title: “If you think about the survival modes we’ve made in Fallout 4, it has that vibe … Fallout 76, although it’s an online game, when I play it, I mostly still play it solo. We like those experiences as much as our fans do.”

While Fallout 76 deviates from the single-player formula, it’s designed to highlight what people love most about Bethesda games: the in-game wackiness and personal anecdotes rather than the scripted moments. The multiplayer element of Fallout 76 is meant to enhance that: “I usually find in our games, the best moments aren’t the ones that we designed,” states Howard. Still, he knows it’s a risk but it’s better to roll the dice than to become stagnant. “We are sometimes afraid of doing it, as much as our fans are afraid of us doing it. But we’ve got to try new things,” he emphasized.

Hopefully, the risk is worth it. Bu no matter what, single-player Fallout games aren’t going anywhere; that much Howard assures. This is just something different within the franchise.

[Source: The Guardian]