Fallout as a series, thanks to its very core concept of being set in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, has always had survival elements involved in some capacity or another, but it’s never really gone down the road as fully as, say, something like Rust or DayZ. Fallout 76 has, on the other hand, been called a survival game a lot, from early rumours, to the build up to its full reveal, to even the period after that. Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard, however, wants you to stop calling it a survival game.
While speaking with The Guardian, Howard echoed his statements during the game’s initial reveal at Bethesda’s E3 press conference, where he called the game “softcore survival”, saying that though it will indeed have survival elements similar to previous Fallout game, outright calling it a survival title wouldn’t really be accurate or representative of what the game is actually going to be like.
“We avoid the word ‘survival’, because people’s minds immediately go to DayZ and Rust and certain other games, and those comparisons are not really accurate for what we’re doing,” Howard said. “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.”
As I’ve said, this seems to be echoing similar statements Howard himself has made in the past. What’s interesting, though, is the bit at the end where he says that he mostly plays the game solo himself. We’ve known for some time now, thanks to multiple reassurances by Bethesda, that the game will have quite a bit of focus on single player as well, in spite of being an online focused game, and it’s good to hear these assurances once again. It will, in fact, also be receiving single player servers some time after launch.
Fallout 76 launches on November 14 for the Xbox One, PS4, and PC.