Everyone Worried About Fallout 76 Needs to Calm Down

Ever since Bethesda announced Fallout 76 on Tuesday, people have been losing their minds. The lack of information provided by the trailer about the game has led to wild speculation with many people saying things which sound absolutely crazy to me.

Do you really think Bethesda Game Studios would make a battle royale Fallout game? People have been saying that. PUBG was not a massive hit like Fortnite was, but to be giving us a trailer now, Bethesda Game Studios would have had to have been developing this game long before Fortnite became popular. Because of this, it is entirely illogical (from a cultural and a business standpoint) to believe that BGS would come out of left field and bring us a game which is entirely different from every game they’ve made in the past decade.

I’ve seen other people speculating that this will be an MMO in the same vein as Elder Scrolls Online. While admittedly that seems much more likely, I’m still not buying it. If a Fallout MMO is ever made, then I don’t see them having it set in an obscure place like rural Appalachia. Also, with the game being set over a century before Fallout 3 (which is set in nearby Washington, DC), I see Bethesda using this as more of a prequel game to Fallout 3 than anything else.

With a game set so far back in the Fallout timeline, Bethesda can fill in gaps in the lore and let players see how the wasteland developed in the time shortly after the bombs fell. If this turns out to be an MMO, don’t fret. Bethesda Game Studios has never let us down before, and even an MMO would still be filled with the lore and Fallout environments that fans of the series like us adore.

However, I expect this game to take a turn in a different direction. I think this will be a survival-focused game with online co-op. I don’t think Bethesda Game Studios would ever make a non-MMO game with mandatory co-op, so we should expect to see a normal Fallout game with the BGS’ first co-op experience as an option.

I say that the game will be survival-focused because of the trailer talking about building a new future and everything. Vault 76 was a control vault, so its inhabitants’ sole focus would be to resettle the wasteland. Players will likely be building settlements again using Fallout 4’s build mode, but I expect the wasteland to be significantly more desolate in 2102 than it is over a century later in the time of the other games. If there is a major focus placed upon finding food and water that’s not lethally irradiated, the game could become something very different from the previous installments.

Either way, I’m not worried. In a week and a half, we’ll get Bethesda’s E3 showcase. The folks from BGS will come out and show us yet another spectacular Fallout game, the worrying will cease, and the hype train will roll onwards.