The State of Fallout in 2022
With Fallout 76 leaving fans in the dark regarding its future and the cautious optimism brought in by the Amazon series, Fallout finds itself in a frustrating space with some hope on the horizon.
Picture the scene. It’s June 2018 and a new Fallout has been unexpectedly announced under the name Fallout 76. Given that Fallout 4 had only been released three years prior in 2015 after a long period of silence in the franchise, it made sense to assume it was gonna be the last we heard from the franchise for a long while. However, here we were with a brand new game in the setting of West Virginia. In all the hype that a new Fallout title generated, there was a strange feeling that came with Fallout 76’s announcement. Pretty quickly after its reveal, we were told by industry insiders that this was a game closer to online games like Rust than a new mainline Fallout title and that only brought nerves and outrage amongst some fans concerned the series was going the way of GTA Online rather than sticking to its expansive single-player roots. When Fallout 76 was officially revealed to be a multiplayer game after weeks of speculation, it only caused more anger to release across the fanbase. When it was finally released in October 2018, it damn near killed the franchise. Four years later, we’re at a point of uncertainty for the franchise that isn’t quite dead but isn’t entirely living either.
Fallout 76’s initial release was one for the ages. Glitches from the start shattered any hopes of those willing to give the game a chance and PR disasters from the developer and publisher side cemented the game as a failure. The journey the game took to finally be in working shape took around 18 months to accomplish. Fallout 76: Wastelanders served as the game’s saviour as it introduced NPCs to the game’s desolate world and a little more meaning to the world you were choosing to explore. Although the original vanilla game had to Frankenstein itself with these new enhancements, the game was finally in a state that was playable and honestly pretty fun as someone who’s a pretty die-hard fan of the franchise. Fallout 76 did have a genuine chance to be a solid spin-off as the series absolutely has potential in the idea of cooperative play but the sheer chaotic launch led to the game nearly destroying the series’ reputation. However, Fallout 76 wasn’t entirely to blame. Despite its awful reception, for the fanbase, it was only the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Fallout as a series was slowly reaching this point of harsh discourse regarding the direction it began to take as far back as Fallout 3 in 2008. Moving away from the isometric graphics and turn-based combat to a 3D engine and real-time gameplay similar to Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls was met with its detractors but was still a monumental success that helped bring the series back into the spotlight and created many new fans. Fallout New Vegas helped alleviate some of the concerns from old school fans as the game acted as a perfect marriage of Bethesda’s gameplay with the dense storytelling that came from Interplay in Fallout 1 and 2. However, 2015's Fallout 4 then proceeded to focus almost entirely on the gameplay while stripping away many of the game’s RPG elements which naturally stemmed into controversy despite its impressive sales.
After the release of the Wastelanders update for Fallout 76, some fans were more open to the game and it managed to work as a success story of sorts. While not quite on the same level of a turnaround as No Man’s Sky, it still served as a promising beginning for the game’s rebirth as well as a way for the franchise to stay active. Around six months later in November of 2020, Steel Dawn was released which served as the first part of a two-part story that introduced the iconic faction of the Brotherhood of Steel into the game. Steel Reign arrived in the summer of 2021 and since then, story content for Fallout 76 has remained at a standstill with the game turning to updates that have focused on gameplay centric missions and tasks that serve to add more game time to the whole affair but with much less of a commitment to provide anything all that deeper.
Of course, Fallout 76 is a multiplayer game and the focus on endgame content when most of the players complete the main quests is important. However, the game now remains stagnant when it comes to offering anything particularly worthy to explore other than getting every reward on the dull season scoreboards that aren’t really worth the hours it asks you to sink into it. When Bethesda dove headfirst into the game with the story content they provided, it presented a strong future for the game to create tales in the world that while they would never reach the levels as something like New Vegas or 3, it would provide a constant source and a beating heart for the Fallout franchise to live and breathe much like The Elder Scrolls Online which has received updates regularly to fairly positive reception.
In 2022, Fallout is somewhat in a place of uncertainty with some lights at the end of its troubled tunnel. Amazon is currently in the works on a television series that is being produced by the showrunners of HBO’s Westworld and has actors like Walton Goggins on board. On the game side, rumours from remasters to a possible sequel to New Vegas are sprouting up leading many to believe that the franchise is beginning to slowly move around a little more. For Fallout 76, the new DLC which will take players to The Pitt (a famous DLC location for Fallout 3) is expected to drop in autumn of this year and within recent months, developer Double Eleven (who ironically worked on Rust) announced a partnership with Bethesda to provide more content for the game. With Xbox’s acquisition of Bethesda, it seems obvious that Fallout is a key target for success as despite its hits in reputation through Fallout 76’s reception, the franchise has still managed to stay in people’s minds thanks to the modding community on PC and its availability on subscription services such as Xbox Game Pass.
From a personal point of view, I believe that Fallout deserves the chance to be a series that doesn’t just confine itself to strong RPGs but also other genres of games and even multimedia. The news that The Pitt DLC for 76 is essentially another repeatable “Daily Operation” with a little extra legwork to get to it is especially disappointing as someone who was excited to see a new story in that particular setting but I at least remain optimistic that with more hands on the game, a better balance can be struck to give different players what they want.
Much of the discourse surrounding Fallout essentially all comes down to one issue and that’s balance. Some players miss the days of the isometric stylings of the original PC games, others miss the balance of gameplay and RPG elements seen in 3 and there are some who just desperately want another experience like New Vegas. One game will never be able to tackle all of these things but luckily, Fallout is such a massive universe with tons of exciting avenues to explore where there really can be something for everyone. The world of this series is one to admire as it packs in years upon years of lore that is endlessly fascinating to research (I can spend literal hours browsing Nukepedia) yet it seems like the only people who actually realise this are the fans. Books, comics, television (thankfully we’re getting one of those) and games of different genres could seriously help this series become one to remember. A classic Interplay style game from InXile Entertainment, an FPS from ID Software or even a whole new game from a partnership outside of the Xbox ecosystem in which the series is now in.
Fallout will of course get another game at some point but it’s a massive shame that the series has to go through so many dry spells when it has the potential to be even bigger than it already is. We’re slowly reaching a promising direction as Fallout 76 gathers more crew and the television series begins filming as soon as next month at the time of writing this which also means there’s a lot up in the air on whether or not this direction for the franchise will work out as anticipated. When all is said and done, I hope we get some terrific content from these two different avenues currently as a world where Fallout is left dormant is one that will never quite feel right to me.