Fallout 76 finally stands triumphant — and there’s more to come

polygon.com:

It’s been a long, hard road for Fallout 76 — but one that has finally led to a triumphant peak. The game’s disastrous launch has been covered a thousand times from every angle; it was an intricate mess of overlapping problems that made the game difficult to play and extremely clippable for memes. But in 2024, the beleaguered game is stepping into the spotlight and enjoying a wave of positive attention. Bethesda has spent years patching up the ship, adding NPCs, companions, quests, Expeditions, factions, a battle royale mode, and more cryptids than you can shake a stick at.

The Fallout show on Amazon Prime kickstarted a wave of interest in everything Fallout; Steam charts have shown that every game in the franchise has found a new player base. The games published under Bethesda’s umbrella are Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas,and Fallout 4. Each of these RPGs is a meaty campaign with enough content — and player-made mods — to sustain its own fandom of players. But Fallout 5 is a ways out, and Fallout 4 is nearly a decade old. The game best suited to draw in new fans who were hoping for just general Fallout vibes is Fallout 76.

“It’s no secret that Fallout 76 had some bumps at release,” said creative director Jonathan Rush in an email interview with Polygon. But even in its earliest days, Fallout 76 was defined by its enthusiastic community. These were players who loved the game, warts and all, and stuck around. It was largely because of these fans that I was able to eke out enjoyment of Fallout 76, and I’ve returned to the game on and off over the years, sampling from these delights. Early on, the high points came from other players, and uncovering the stories of the dead who came before.

“The characters that initially launched with 76 were nuclear shadows, whose purpose was to tell the story of what all had happened between [when] the bombs drop and the point where you emerge from Vault 76,” said Rush. “Since Appalachia was initially devoid of human life, we relied on