Fallout 76 has had an interesting life. On paper, the game seemed like a slam dunk, but had something of an infamous botched launch. Between the lack of initial content and the various technical issues, it almost seemed like a cosmic parody or something. Since then, Bethesda has done a lot of work to improve the problems of the release, with the upcoming Wastelanders being one of the biggest yet. It will bring in many Fallout elements from the single player titles, such as NPCs, reputation systems, and more. To give you an idea of how big the developers went with this, Bethesda’s SVP of marketing and PR Pete Hines says its development actually went over budget.
While talking with USGamer, Hines spoke about the upcoming expansion. There he revealed that the designers “went much beyond what they were budgeted to do because designers can’t help themselves.” The main culprit was the fact that the larger narrative meant not only having to write more characters and more dialog for those characters, but also having to invest in a large voice cast for them.
The Wastelanders expansion is scheduled to release for Fallout 76 on April 7th. It’s designed to be closer to a single player Fallout title, and you can check out pretty decent chunk of footage from it through here.