There’s no shortage of examples of live service games that have been quickly abandoned by publishers and developers following disastrous launches, but Fallout 76 has become an exception to that rule. Bethesda has been plugging away at the online RPG since its not-so-stellar November 2018 launch and slowly and steadily made meaningful improvements to it, with plenty of content (including aliens) planned for the game throughout 2022 as well. And it seems like there’s more to come beyond that.
Speaking in an interview with AusGamers, Fallout 76 design director Mark Tucker revealed that Bethesda currently has a five-year roadmap in place for the game. Ideas for what’s next in the next three years are a lot more solidified than the longer-term plan, but the gist seems to be that Fallout 76 players are going to have quite a lot to look forward to in the years to come.
“The funny thing is if I could share what’s on this other monitor right here, you would love to see it because it’s a five-year roadmap that I’m working on,” Tucker said when asked about Bethesda’s plans for the game beyond 2022. “We have long term plans, and things get a little fuzzier the further we go out because we adjust and adapt as things show up and we see what players want and what they’re doing. But, a lot of my time right now is spent on planning that three and five-year roadmap. The three-year roadmap is a lot more understood and known, at five-years it gets a little more fuzzy, but we’re dedicated to updating [Fallout 76].”
“The message to our players is, there should be no reason to think that we’re not going to continue updating this game,” he continued. “We have things that we’re doing to ensure that we can continue producing updates for the game for a long period of time. We’ve got a lot of fun, cool stuff that I can’t wait to tell people about. Stuff that’s beyond this year.”
Fallout 76 has received a number of meaty expansions since its launch, on top of a consistent stream of fixes, seasonal events, updates, and more, and has, as such, been reaping the benefits of a thriving and dedicated community that is more than happy to keep coming back for more. Considering the state the game launched in, such a turnaround is quite heartening to witness.
Given the fact that Fallout 5 is probably not going to be made for at least several more years, fans of the series should be glad to have other avenues of keeping themselves immersed in its offerings. Recent reports, however, have suggested that Microsoft and Obsidian Entertainment might be in the very early stages of discussing a direct sequel to Fallout: New Vegas– read more on that through here.
