“We will not simply proceed making the map larger and greater”: Why Bethesda wish to broaden Fallout 76 inwards, not simply outwards

Mark’s on vacation at the moment, which implies we are able to’t do our regular factor of workplace-bullying him into writing about Fallout 76 whereas we sit round in wingback chairs ingesting Glenfiddich. But when he have been right here, he’d absolutely be thrilled to notice this PCGN interview with Bethesda Sport Studios creative director Jon Rush, who says he hopes the multiplayer RPG can turn out to be “thicker” in 2026. Oh my.

Extra particularly, Rush explains how following the main map-widening expansions of Skyline Valley and Burning Springs – the latter additionally serving as a tie-in with Amazon’s principally respectable Fallout TV adaptation – the hope is now to construct up Fallout 76’s present areas, including depth in addition to breadth.

“For this subsequent 12 months, I actually need our gaze to shift from the outskirts to inwards – make the sport thicker,” he says, conjuring up psychological photographs of a glowing and uncomfortably spicy roux. “New methods or new methods to have interaction with present content material, these are all very a lot on the menu for this 12 months.”

There may be some pragmaticism behind the shift in replace techniques, with “technical issues” precluding an infinite widening of the sport’s explorable world – “we are able to’t simply proceed making the map larger and greater,” as Rush places it. However filling out and including to the wasteland survival pursuits in additional acquainted locales has been tried earlier than, with success. Rush factors to final 12 months’s loosening of the building rules for Fallout 76’s C.A.M.P. development, which enabled extra bold and creative settlement builds throughout a wider vary of terrain, for example of how such, erm, thickening makes for a greater recreation.

The C.A.M.P. modifications have been, he says, designed to “enable individuals to get to have interaction with the world in additional methods than they might earlier than… [the updates] had a big impact on our gamers, and the issues that they wish to do on this planet.”

Whereas it’d due to this fact be a great very long time earlier than Fallout 76’s vault dwellers will probably be exploring any actually untouched patches of irradiated dust, it feels like Bethesda will probably be offering loads extra issues to do on dwelling turf. Within the meantime, why not take a tour of Burning Springs’ lovingly wrecked Ohio with a gen-yoo-ayyyyyn Ohio historian? It’s what Mark would have needed.