Bethesda 'speechless' after watching this Fallout 76 fan-made live action trailer

Amazon Studios' Fallout TV series is in production, but with the release date currently unknown and probably set for the oh-so-distant future of next year, you might be wondering how to get a live action Fallout fix in the meantime. After all, we've only gotten a single official screenshot of the series so far, plus an on-set video showing director Jonathan Nolan being handed a Nuka-Cola by a power armor-clad assistant

That's not nearly enough for eager fans who are looking at a long wait for Fallout 5, which could be as much as a decade. There's always Nuka-Break, the multi-season fan-made Fallout series on YouTube that you should definitely check out if you haven't yet: It's a lot of fun and there's three seasons worth to enjoy. 

But for a quicker hit of live action Fallout, you should watch the Fallout 76 "concept trailer" above (via GameRant), directed by Brian Curtin, aka Infectious Designer on YouTube.

The trailer shows the idyllic world of Fallout before the bombs drop, with American flags waving, a Nuka-Cola delivery man smiling, and a kid playing with a Mr. Handy in the yard. Then, as you'd expect, it all goes kablooie. After the apocalypse, we see survivors donning power armor, exploring Appalachia, customizing gear in a workshop, and eventually coming face-to-face with a flippin' deathclaw in a cave. It's Fallout 76 all right. And it looks great in live action.

Don't take my word for it: Bethesda expressed no small dose of admiration for the trailer. "This fan-created video capturing #Fallout76 in live action left us SPEECHLESS!" the studio said via the official Fallout Twitter account. An emoji with a shocked expression and the top of its head exploding followed.

Curtain is no greenhorn when it comes to impressive-looking videos, having done several other live action trailer adaptations for games like Watch Dogs and Half-Life. It sounds like Curtain really enjoys the game, too:

"Fallout 76 had a rough launch, but it doesn’t discount the memorable experience of stepping out of Vault 76 for the first time and exploring the Appalachian wasteland with friends," says Curtain. "Exploring, building and pausing to take an epic photo amongst the chaos was fun. The world was beautiful and the adventures were abundant if you were willing to look for it. There’s definitely something s.p.e.c.i.a.l about this game. This video is the manifestation of the inspiration I found."

I've been away from Fallout 76 for ages now, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling the urge to jump into some power armor and clomp around Appalachia again. 

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

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