The trailer features creative director Jon Rush providing details about The Backwoods. The update will serve as a reason for players to once again explore Appalachia to discover brand new secrets. Public events and regular events are seeing “big changes,” according to Rush, including being renamed to Activities.

“We’re not redoing them,” he explained. “Just ironing out some wrinkles, offering bigger challenges, bigger rewards, and lots of excitement.” The new rewards will include more experience, caps, legendaries, and rare resources. “We want to keep our adventurers adventuring,” he said.

After a public event has been completed, a bigger challenge will become available in the form of Party Crashers. Rush describes them as being “super challenging enemies” that have the chance to show up when a public event has been completed. Among the various creatures that can show up as Party Crashers is Bigfoot, who is mad at players for destroying forests. The creature is a 4-star legendary, with all the appropriate loot rewards you can expect.

There will also be new quality-of-life changes, like a performance update for the Pip Boy, making its UI smoother and easier to navigate. Armor sets are also getting balance changes to make more options viable for different activities.

The release of The Backwoods will also mark the arrival of the newest season of content for Fallout 76. As the presence of Bigfoot might indicate, cryptids are going to be the main focus. The Season itself is titled Rip Daring and the Cryptids from Beyond the Cosmos.

The studio has revealed the full roadmap of content for the season, which will start on March 3rd and will go on until June 1. Shortly after the season’s start, a variety of events are planned for Fallout 76 players, from Caps-A-Plenty and Mutated Public Events, to a Rip Daring mini season and a Scrip Surplus event.

Parts of the roadmap covering June 4th to July 7th refer to Season 25. Unfortunately, however, none of the listed events for the month provide any indication for what this next Season might be.

The Burning Springs update was released back in December, and brought with the eponymous new region for players to explore. It also introduced new types of activities, like bounty hunting. The core story of the update revolves around the Rust King, who rules over all of Burning Springs with an iron fist.

Fallout 76 is available on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. PS5 and Xbox Series X/S will have to make do with backwards compatibility to play the multiplayer title for now. However, Bethesda has confirmed that current-gen versions of the game are in the works, slated for release later this year. While you wait, check out the studio’s celebration of 2025’s major updates, and how it teased its plans for 2026.

“We are looking into it, and we have plans to try to scope out what that work is going to entail for us,” said Rush. “It’s just not in the immediate plans for us. We know players want it.”

LaCoste noted that retrofitting new features like crossplay into the Creation Engine that powers Fallout 76 isn’t quite a simple task. “It’s just huge technical hurdles that are things that you tackle before release, during your actual development of the product,” he explained. “So going back and retrofitting it to do that, when you have different places that players are pointing into, and now you’re having to worry about entitlements and account purchases and currency.”

Ultimately, LaCoste said that Bethesda will continue working on some day bringing crossplay to the multiplayer title. However, players shouldn’t expect it to happen for quite some time. “What we can promise players is that we will continue to investigate, we will continue to try to establish plans to make that a thing in the future, just not in the short term,” he said.

Last time Rush spoke about bringing crossplay to Fallout 76 was in March 2025, celebrating the success of Amazon’s TV adaptation of Fallout, which also brought more players to Bethesda’s RPGs. At the time, Rush spoke about the same technical limitations that LaCoste mentioned. “We’ve had discussions about crossplay in the past,” he said. “There’s a lot of technical limitations with that. I wouldn’t rule it out, but I wouldn’t be waiting around for it, either.”

In the meantime, Bethesda has continued to support Fallout 76 by releasing new content through major updates. The most recent one of these was December’s Burning Springs, which introduced an entirely new zone to the multiplayer game. The developers have previously described Burning Springs as the biggest update made to the Fallout 76 map so far.

The update also introduced a host of new activities, like Bounty Hunting, which allows players to take on contracts to fight powerful enemies for rewards. The activity can be done either solo or as part of a group. Along with this, there are also new public events where players have to take on creatures native to the land like more powerful versions of Deathclaws and Radscorpions.

The team behind Fallout 76 capped off 2025 with a lengthy community post reflecting on all of the updates that had been made to the game over the year. More interesting, however, was the end of this post, where the developers started teasing the next major content drop for the game. While no details were revealed, we were left with a simple message: “The Barndoors in Graninger Farmstead open once twilight has drawn nigh,” said by an unknown person.

Fallout 76 is available on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. While PS5 and Xbox Series X/S owners can play it through backwards compatibility, bespoke versions for the current-gen consoles are in the works and slated for release this year.

“What you have to realize is that if you were to switch engines, and I’ll say this for any game anywhere, is that it is a massive effort. You are talking about dozens of people spent doing nothing but making an engine work,” explained Nesmith in an interview with Press Box PR when asked about misconceptions about the Creation Engine.

“You are talking about putting your developers into a situation where they can’t play the game. They may not even be able to work on making the game for long stretches because the engine is not there or up to snuff yet.”

Nesmith continued, noting that Bethesda has already made several modifications to the Creation Engine since it was first developed, with one key example being the multiplayer component for Fallout 76.

“That’s an enormous thing. We ran into it with Fallout 76. The engine had to be changed dramatically to do multiplayer. It made things extremely difficult for the team,” he said.

“Also, the Creation Engine has been tweaked to serve Bethesda’s purposes for so many years, decades really, that at this point, it’s probably a wiser bet to keep working with it. The benefits that you get from switching to Unreal Engine are probably not going to materialize until two titles down the road.”

Considering all the work that has gone into it, even Nesmith would be wary of switching out of the Creation Engine. Rather than making the jump to Unreal Engine, he suggests adding any specific features that developers might need into the toolkit they are already using.

“I would fall on the side of keeping the Creation Engine, keep working on it. If there’s something you see that is only possible in Unreal, put it into the Creation Engine. That would be a place where, if it’s anything vs everything, you say, let’s do that. Let’s do that anything. If Unreal does it and Creation doesn’t, and we feel we need to do it, do it,” he said.

Interestingly, project lead on Fallout 4 overhaul mod Fallout: London, Dean Carter, has expressed his beliefs that Bethesda should move on from the Creation Engine in favour of something like Unreal Engine 5 for its future projects.

“I’m really worried that they’re gonna keep going with the Creation Engine,” said Carter when asked about what new features could show up in Fallout 5. “I understand that it is proprietary. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of pluses to it. I’m not just someone that’s going to sit there and lie and say it’s a terrible engine. It could be better, yes, but it’s not a bad engine; I do think it started to show its age. It needs to be overhauled somewhat.”

For more of Nesmith’s thoughts, check out what he thinks about Starfield and a potential remake of Morrowind.

The Creation Engine first debuted as the game engine powering the incredibly-popular The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. Later, the same engine was also used to develop Fallout 4 and Fallout 76. The development of Starfield saw updates to the engine, with it being dubbed Creation Engine 2.

“I’m really worried that they’re gonna keep going with the Creation Engine,” said Carter when asked about what new features could show up in Fallout 5. “I understand that it is proprietary. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of pluses to it. I’m not just someone that’s going to sit there and lie and say it’s a terrible engine. It could be better, yes, but it’s not a bad engine but I do think it started to show its age. It needs to be overhauled somewhat.”

The idea fundamentally comes down to the fact that it might be difficult for Bethesda to add in new features to the engine that support new kinds of gameplay. For example, drivable vehicles would be a major addition that would require quite a bit of development on the Creation Engine.

“If they can overhaul it, then there’s no reason why they couldn’t push its limits and start adding things like drivable cars, maybe even metro systems like what we built in Fallout: London,” Carter continued. “I mean, if we found a way, I’m sure they could bring some of this stuff back into Fallout 5.”

Going into further detail about what kinds of technical issues could be fixed if Bethesda were to move over to a more modern game engine, Carter responded by saying “load screens and optimization, without a doubt,” before going into the painstaking work that the Fallout: London team did in its attempts to reduce load screens.

“That was our biggest complaint, rightly so from the public, that our game wasn’t optimized, and that’s because it was far too late in development to be able to change it, and it was because we as gamers did not want load screens,” he explained. “So we built things like the East Minster, which is in the Trafalgar Square area and is notoriously one of the more unstable areas in the mod, and we were just trying to literally slap down walls on anything to optimize it by the end.”

“That’s just because we didn’t want to have load screens. It would have really taken away from the vibe and we paid the price for it because the engine wasn’t suitable for what we wanted to achieve. If they have to upgrade it, that’s what they need to solve: get rid of the load screens and allow better optimization.”

In the same interview, Carter has also expressed his thoughts on the current state of the Fallout franchise, and how it might be better off if Bethesda were to sell the IP to a new developer.

“I had in my mind that TES6 was going to be like The Empire Strikes Back,” he said, going on to explain that the elven supremacists among the Thalmor would eventually be built up as the main antagonists for The Elder Scrolls 7. This build up would largely take place throughout The Elder Scrolls 6, and would involve the group’s ambition to gain control over the entirety of Tamriel.

He acknowledged that this kind of ending wouldn’t really be allowed in a Bethesda game, referring to a cliffhanger ending as being “completely unfeasible.” This is especially true for a studio that has incredibly-long development cycles. “That’s not a good way to end a game and say, yeah, we’ll see you in 10, 15 years,” he said.

Further in the interview, Kuhlmann also spoke about how the culture of game development at Bethesda had changed since the release of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. He noted that, while the senior developers were working on the game directly back then, over time, these senior developers would start taking more managerial roles. Kuhlmann described it as feeling “more bureaucratic,” going on to say that: “The expectation was… your job can’t be also making content if you’re actually managing that scope of the project.”

His eventual departure was a combination of this culture shift, along with the fact that he wouldn’t get to work as the lead designer on The Elder Scrolls 6. Director Todd Howard had previously promised Kuhlmann that after wrapping work on Fallout 4, the studio would then start the development of The Elder Scrolls 6. However, it would instead follow up on Fallout 4 with multiplayer title Fallout 76, which would then be succeeded by Starfield.

“I was obviously one of the old-timers there and had a lot of experience. Bruce [Nesmith] and I had been the co-leads on Skyrim. I think most people would call it a successful project, so I thought that it wasn’t unreasonable for me to think that I could be a successful lead on TES6. It wasn’t just my expectation—I had been told that that was going to happen,” he said. “And they made the decision, no, you’re not going to be the lead.”

While no new details about The Elder Scrolls 6 have been revealed since the game’s original announcement back in 2018, Howard had said back in December that development on the title has been “progressing really well.” Design director Emil Pagliarulo acknowledged the “time pressure” that the studio has been facing from its fans, and has asked these fans to be patient.

Fallout 3 might have seen the smallest rise, going from peaks of up to almost 700 concurrent players to almost a thousand since the second season of the Fallout show. Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4 have been seeing much more drastic upticks in players. Where Fallout 4 would typically see around 22,000 concurrent players before December, it has been hitting almost 33,000 players daily. Fallout: New Vegas, on the other hand, usually saw around 8,000 players, which has now gone all the way up to around 15,000 since the show’s season two premiere.

While the single-player titles have been seeing more players, Fallout 76 isn’t being left behind either. The multiplayer game’s typical average of around 20,000 concurrent players has been rising since December, peaking at almost 30,000 earlier this month. The popularity of the Amazon TV show has likely played a major role in this rise in player figures, but the fact that its season two premiere coincided with Steam’s Winter Sale also likely helped in getting the games into the hands of more players.

Rush had spoken about players hopping on to these classics last year, noting that Bethesda plans to continue supporting players in the live-service Fallout 76. The subject had come up in light of the multiplayer title getting its Glow of the Ghoul update, which allowed players to turn their characters into Ghouls.

Looking ahead, reports have indicated that Bethesda might be working on a remastered release of Fallout 3 in the same vein as The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, which will likely mean improved visuals and more polished gameplay. A recent report noted that, despite its silence, the company still plans to release the game. However, when it will make the announcement is still currently unknown.

As for what we might see in the future, Fallout director Todd Howard has said that Fallout 5 will take the events of the Amazon show into account for its story. “In short, yes. Fallout 5 will exist in a world where the stories and events of the show happened or are happening. We are taking that into account,” he said.

Howard had also noted that Bethesda had been “working on a whole bunch of stuff” for the Fallout universe back in December. In his statement, he acknowledged fans asking for remasters of Fallout 3 or New Vegas, and asked them to wait until Bethesda is ready to make an announcement. While you’re at it, also check out what he thinks about the Fallout: London mod for Fallout 4.

“For us on the game and TV show side, we’re writing Season 3 now,” Howard said in the interview, noting that the writing for the show is largely being handled by its own writers’ room along with Jonathan Nolan. “We’re having those conversations now of, what are we doing in Season 3 for the TV show and what elements can we bring into our games at that time when it comes out that don’t feel forced or fake.”

Bringing in more things from the Fallout show into the games wouldn’t be a far-fetched idea; earlier this month, multiplayer game Fallout 76 saw the release of its Burning Springs update which features a story that revolves around The Ghoul—the character portrayed by actor Walton Goggins in the show. The title also saw an update earlier this year that also allowed players to turn their own characters into Ghouls, complete with their own unique perks and traits that can be used throughout the game’s content.

Howard also spoke about some of the changes that the second season of the Fallout show has since its first season, including the fact that its episodes are being released on a weekly basis. This is a major change, since the first season made its debut with the release of all eight of its episodes on the same day. Howard noted that this weekly release schedule also means that there are a lot more surprises for viewers, especially since it can’t be binged through in a single sitting for now.

“There’s a lot of surprises,” said Howard. “So the main thing is, we’re dropping an episode every week, so I would just say, stick with it. There’s a lot of surprises, and I’m curious to see how it plays for everybody, because it’s gonna be a weekly show now, as opposed to a binge-watch all at once.”

The Burning Springs update for Fallout 76 was a major addition to the game thanks to its introduction of an entirely new zone for players to explore, complete with its own story and characters to interact with. Along with this, the update also brought with it the Bounty Hunting activity, as well as a host of new public events that pit players against more powerful enemies like Deathclaws and Radscorpions.

For more details about the various updates that Fallout 76 has gotten all year, check out how the game’s developers have celebrated the title in a recent community post. Fallout 76 is available on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, with PS5 and Xbox Series X/S being able to play the title through backwards compatibility until a native current-gen version is released in 2026.

Looking back at the year, the post discusses the first major update to have kicked things off—The Ghoul Within. The update brought with it a major new feature: the ability for players to transform their characters into ghouls. The update has been described as “an exciting, end game experience for players”, thanks to the many unique customisation options it offered. On top of that, it also gave players access to new Ghoul-centric traits, like high radiation resistance and a “feral” meter to measure the character’s sanity.

Following up on The Ghoul Within was the Gone Fission update which introduced a brand new activity to Fallout 76: fishing. The activity, accessible once a player finds a fishing rod with bait, allows players to catch different kinds of fish that can then be used to craft food. A variety of recipes could be unlocked, with each one providing different kinds of bonuses. Along with this, the fishing activity was further supported through the introduction of new fishing-oriented daily quests.

This was then followed up by the C.A.M.P. Revamp update, which overhauled how the C.A.M.P. system worked through brand new workshop menus, making building your own home base much easier. Along with this, building rules and restrictions were lifted, which made it even easier for players to let their imaginations run wild. The update was celebrated with several in-game C.A.M.P. building competitions, which saw thousands of submissions.

2025 for Fallout 76 was wrapped up with the release of the Burning Springs update, which acted as more of an expansion rather than a simple content release. Burning Springs took players to the state of Ohio with the addition of a new region in the northwestern part of the Appalachian Wasteland. The new region features a continuation of the story that has been told by Fallout 76 so far, and brings with it a variety of new characters, both friendly and hostile, along with a brand new activity: Bounty Hunting.

Capping off this look at 2025 for Fallout 76, the post then offers a cryptic tease for the next major content update for the game, which will likely come out in the first half of 2026. The tease is: “The Barndoors in Graninger Farmstead open once twilight has drawn nigh,” said by an unknown person.

“This year has been a true celebration of the franchise we all know and love,” reads the post. “This has been an incredible journey – but we’re only just getting started! Tradition dictates that it’s at this point in our annual letter to players that we tease upcoming content.”

“The team wrestled back and forth with this… what if we give too much away? What if we give away too little? Aren’t surprises more fun? Is a casserole just a salty pie? But who really likes being surprised? Where does that pipe lead to anyhow?”

Fallout 76 is currently available on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, with PS5 and Xbox Series X/S being able to run the title thanks to backwards compatibility. A current-gen version has been confirmed, however, and is slated for release in 2026.

Howard also noted that the dialogue system in Fallout 4, which left behind the series’ traditional system that provided a list of options for players to choose from to instead only offer at most four responses, was also difficult for the game’s designers and writers.

“We spent forever on the dialogue system in Fallout 4,” said Howard. “How do we do an interactive conversation in an interesting way? How do we make that gamey? But it really did not resonate. It was also hard on our designers to write that way. Players want to role-play more and we had a voiced protagonist. The actors were phenomenal, but a lot of players were like, ‘That’s not the voice I hear in my head.’”

As for some of the other games that he had worked on, Howard spoke about Fallout 3 having the best opening of any of his titles, while Starfield had the best gunplay. He also gave a shout-out to the varied landscape offered to players in Fallout 76, as well as the freedom offered by The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim.

“I think Fallout 3 has the best opening,” Howard said. “I think Starfield has by far the best gunplay and gameplay in areas. I think the varied landscape of Fallout 76 is really good. Tonally and player agency-wise, I think Skyrim is really good. I also see all the things that either didn’t resonate with fans, or fans may not have noticed.”

Howard also took some time to work on the next major project undertaken by Bethesda – The Elder Scrolls 6. While he didn’t reveal too many details, he did admit that the franchise has been on “too long” of a break. He also noted that the title is “still a long way off”.

“We have hundreds of people on Fallout right now, with 76 and some other things we’re doing, but The Elder Scrolls 6 is the everyday thing,” said Howard about the current projects in development at Bethesda. When asked about the long time between The Elder Scrolls 6 and 2011’s Skyrim, he said: “I do like to have a break between them, where it isn’t like a “plus one” sequel. I think it’s also good for an audience to have a break – The Elder Scrolls has been too long, let’s be clear. But we wanted to do something new with Starfield. We needed a creative reset.”

Howard had previously also spoken about how there was “even more” in the works for the Fallout franchise at Bethesda, where he also apologised for not having anything to show for the time being. He did note that “we are looking forward to the day when we can share [the next Fallout project] with everybody.”

Aside from confirming the release date, the trailer also focuses on the wild west themes of the update, as well as some of its new content. Among other things, Burning Springs will also serve as a way to tie in Fallout 76 with Amazon Prime’s Fallout series thanks to the presence of The Ghoul, with actor Walton Goggins returning to reprise the role.

The biggest feature of the Burning Springs update will be the addition of a new region, which has also been described by the developers as the biggest update that has been made to the Fallout 76 map so far. The main setting of the expansion will be the titular Burning Springs, situated in the state of Ohio. The core story will revolve around the Rust King who rules over Burning Springs with an iron fist.

Along with a set of new story missions, the update will also feature new activities like Bounty Hunting, allowing players to take on contracts to take out powerful enemies for rewards. These bounty hunting missions can be done either solo, or as part of a group. There are also new public events that will pit players against souped up enemies like Deathclaws and Radscorpions.

The Burning Springs update for Fallout 76 was first announced earlier this month with a 19-minutes-long video featuring community manager Richard Stanford, creative director Jon Rush, production director Bill Lacoste, and lead designer Carl McKevitt. In the video, the developers spoke about the new region being added to the game, describing it as being “terrifyingly beautiful”.

“We’ve done a lot over the past year,” said Lacoste, discussing the continued support that Fallout 76 has seen through the release of free updates. “Starting off with, the end of last year was raids, the Gleaming Depths, where a lot of our high-level players and even mid-level players could come in and get new four-star legendaries and embark on a really impactful and fun raid with their friends.”

The addition of The Ghoul as a central character in the Burning Springs update was first hinted at by Rush back in July, when he said that, while the developers have been focused on the game itself, the nature of Fallout 76 also gives them some leeway in how they can tie in events from other Fallout-based media.

Fallout 76 is currently available on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The title has seen several updates since its release, with some of its more recent ones being revamps to its C.A.M.P. system, as well as the addition of fishing with the Gone Fission update.