Fallout 76 was not the first attempt to splice the retro post-apocalypse with an MMO. Years before, Fallout's original owner, Interplay, had taken a crack at it. This was actually after Bethesda had purchased the rights to the series, but the two companies came to an arrangement: one that would ultimately devolve into a lawsuit, an out-of-court settlement and the cancellation of Fallout Online.
The concept, though, goes much further back. Bethesda acquired Fallout in 2007, but Interplay founder Brian Fargo had been mulling over the idea since the late '90s. He pitched it to Black Isle Studios, but founder Feargus Urquhart, now CEO of Obsidian, rejected the idea. An MMO just didn't seem very Fallout. Tim Cain, Fallout's co-creator, felt the same way.
After the Black Isle rejection, Interplay's online division, Engage, started working on Fallout Online. Cain had left Interplay by this point, but the company still wanted to pick his brain. "I remember several meetings with them," he recalls, "where I basically was like, 'I'm super cautious about this, and for multiple reasons.'" One of those reasons was the fact that that acronym would spell out "fool". But his biggest concern was that a game with lots of players did not fit Fallout's themes.
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"I said, 'We've designed a game where you're going out in the Wasteland by yourself … And you want to convert it to a game where you come out of your Vault and there's 1,000 other blue and yellow vault-suited people running around. You realize that's a very, very different setting and game and kind of player? And you want to switch it from story-driven to mission-driven.'"
While Fallout had a party system, there's a big difference between travelling with some characters and existing in a world populated by other players. We're used to the idea of being one hero among many now, but this was when the MMO was a nascent genre.
Cain wanted to make sure Interplay understood the risks. "They were like, 'You're being very negative.' And I used to repeatedly go, 'I'm not saying don't do this. I'm saying you have your work cut out for you, and you're making decisions that are making your work harder. So don't get mad at me."
Interplay suggested making the instances smaller (an idea Bethesda ended up running with for Fallout 76), but Cain countered that the exact number of players wasn't really the issue. "I'm like, 'I'm just telling you, Fallout wasn't designed to have other players. The Vault Dweller felt special, felt like the weight of the future of the Vault depended on them. You just can't throw in a dozen others, 100 others, 1,000 others, and think it'll be fine.' I think Fallout 76 feels very different [from] Fallout 3 or 4, for no other reason than you're playing with 1,000 other people."
Fallout 76 arguably makes more sense with its focus on rebuilding civilisation, though, because as Cain notes, "they laid the groundwork for that in Fallout 4 with the settlement building". It was already heading that way before the survival MMO was even announced.
"I often tell people that once a couple games come out in a series, you can see the direction it's going," says Cain. "So Fallout 3 came out, and then Fallout 4 came out, and now you have an idea of the line it's following, and Fallout 76 is along that line. With Fallout 1 and 2, that was a different vector. We were going in a different direction. I'm not saying it's bad. People immediately want to go, 'Well, that's bad, right?' No, they're both what they are. And a ton of people like it."
Surprisingly, I'm one of those people. I was not convinced when it was announced, and thought it was dire at launch, but Fallout 76 eventually converted me. I still consider Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas not just the greatest games in the series, but two of the best RPGs ever made, and Bethesda's direction isn't quite as interesting, but I have had a lot of fun rebuilding Appalachia. It might not be one of my favourite Fallout games, but it's absolutely one of my favourite multiplayer survival romps.
What I'd really love, though, is another singleplayer Fallout that's in line with the original vision laid out by Cain and fellow Fallout creators Chris Taylor and Leonard Boyarsky. A man can dream.
