Bethesda released a teaser trailer for their next game in the Fallout series, Fallout 76, and man, I am so ready for it.
Having been around to play Fallout Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics in the late 1990s all I wanted was more Fallout. Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas definitely scratched that itch (New Vegas is one of the best RPGs of all time, and yes, I will fight you over it.) Fallout 4, I loved. It was a departure from the feel of the games that came before it, but it wasn't long until I got into the rhythm of the game. It's hands-down one of my favorite games of all time. Despite my love affair with the series, there's a VERY good chance that Fallout 76 will be an entirely different animal than anything that's come before in the franchise. A big clue to this is smack dab in the middle of the game's title: Vault 76. In Fallout 3, Vault 76 was listed in a Citadel computer terminal as being a "control" vault. It makes sense: with every other vault encountered in the Fallout Universe has been screwed with by Vault-Tec scientists, subjecting the vault's occupants to a wide array of social experiments. Vault-Tec would need a control vault to illustrate what sane, well adjusted vault dwellers who were left alone with everything they'd need to survive a nuclear disaster would look like. There's a good chance that anyone coming out of this vault would be healthy, mentally stable and well supplied.
So of course, things will go terribly wrong.
Even more interesting than seeing the game churn out a story based on exisiting lore, there's whispers from Bethesda's camp that Vault 76 could be a multiplayer experience.
From Kotaku:
When Bethesda announced Fallout 76 with a teaser trailer this morning, promising more information at E3, it was easy to assume that the new game would be a traditional single-player role-playing game. But Fallout 76 is in fact an online survival RPG that’s heavily inspired by games like DayZ and Rust, according to three people familiar with the project.
Those people, speaking anonymously so as not to damage their careers, confirmed that Fallout 76 is an experimental new entry in the longrunning post-apocalyptic series. When Bethesda first teased the game on Tuesday morning, fans and pundits speculated that it might be a Fallout 3 remaster or a New Vegas-style spinoff in a new location, but as Kotaku reported that afternoon, it is in fact something completely new and completely different. The teaser might lead Fallout fans to believe that this is a traditional entry in the series, but according to our sources, that’s not the case.
Given that my internet connectivity often comes from using my smartphone as a hotspot, an entirely online Fallout game could be something of a nightmare for me. But I absolutely adore the idea of an online RPG based in the Fallout world.
Happily, we won't have to wait to hear more information on the game: Bethesda with be sharing what they have in store for fans of the Fallout Franchise (fingers crossed for a Fallout title on Nintendo Switch) at their E3 press conference on June 10th.
