Summary
Bethesda Softworks has discussed the possibility of bringing cross-play and cross-progression toFallout 76.Todd Howard,the senior game director behind theElder ScrollsandFalloutfranchises, has laid out the developer’s plans for these features in not onlyFallout 76but all future Bethesda games.
Bethesda Softworks' most recent foray into America’s post-apocalyptic wasteland has enjoyed a surge in popularity in the last month, as Amazon Prime’s well-reviewedFalloutTV series propelled the franchise into the spotlight. After its abundance of performance issues and online-only nature divided many fans at launch,Fallout 76is now more popular than ever before, having recently achieved more thanone million consecutive players in a single day. Since its release in 2018, continuous support and regular updates have fleshed out the originally sparse world, andFallout 76now enjoys a comfortable “mostly positive” rating on Steam.
While players can choose totraverseFallout 76’s Appalachianwilderness alone, the franchise’s only multiplayer installment encourages cooperation, and competition, between players as they scavenge for supplies and construct camps to survive in the wasteland. However, Bethesda has just addressed the potential implementation of cross-play toFallout 76, a feature that many fans have been calling for since launch to allow them to join friends on other platforms. Speaking to Kinda Funny Games, Todd Howard has revealed that cross-play is something the developers “would love to have” and “keep looking into”. However, it’s unlikely that cross-play will be implemented in the near future, asFallout 76“wasn’t designed that way from the beginning,” meaning the feature would require a complete overhaul of the game’s servers and databases. Similarly toFallout 76, Bethesda’s other multiplayer behemoth,The Elder Scrolls Online, does not allow cross-play, but due to backwards compatibility, both games do feature cross-generational play within each family of consoles.
Bethesda to Focus on Cross-Progression Over Cross-Play
While Howard doesn’t rule out the possibility of cross-play forFallout 76, he does affirm that for Bethesda “the more important thing is cross-progression.” The practical feature has become common in modern games, allowing players to transfer data between platforms and continue from where they left off no matter what device they are playing on. Currently,Fallout 76only allows for saves to be shared between Steam and Game Pass on PC, but it seems likely that this could soon be expanded to include other consoles. Bethesda’s latest release,Starfield, featured cross-progression from launch, and Howard emphasized that “going forward […] it’s something in our future games we are going to be really, really mindful about.” Howard also discussedStarfield’s upcoming Shattered Space story DLC, set to release in Fall 2024.
It seems hopeful that fans of the franchise’s multiplayer outing can expect some well-deserved quality-of-life improvements, even if the addition of cross-play remains uncertain. Although the recent spike in popularity is unlikely to last,Fallout 76is certainly the healthiest it has ever been, even if some gamers may stillpreferFallout 4’s single-player RPG experience.
Fallout 76
WHERE TO PLAY
Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of Skyrim and Fallout 4, welcome you to Fallout 76. Twenty-five years after the bombs fell, you and your fellow Vault Dwellers—chosen from the nation’s best and brightest – emerge into post-nuclear America on Reclamation Day, 2102. Play solo or join together as you explore, quest, build, and triumph against the wasteland’s greatest threats. Explore a vast wasteland, devastated by nuclear war, in this open-world multiplayer addition to the Fallout story. Experience the largest, most dynamic world ever created in the legendary Fallout universe. Expand southward to Skyline Valley – a brand-new region of Appalachia. Investigate the cause of the electric storm circling overhead and unveil the mystery around Vault 63 and its dwellers, including a shocking new Ghoul type – The Lost.
