Fallout 76 Was Born Out Of Scrapped Multiplayer For Fallout 4

Fallout 76 is going to have some really great online prospects when it drops later this year. But [...]

Fallout 76 is going to have some really great online prospects when it drops later this year. But oddly enough, it wasn't always meant to be that way.

Granted, the game has been in the works for a while, but its multiplayer actually stems from a completely different experience, and that would be Fallout 4.

In a new NoClip documentary (which you can watch above or at this link), Bethesda's own Todd Howard discussed the origin of Fallout 76's inspired multiplayer. "Fallout 76 is the multiplayer design from Fallout 4," he said. But then while developing the game, it spun in its own direction. "Hey, should we do multiplayer? 'Probably not.' What would it be? 'OK, it would be this.' Let's talk it through. 'OK, that's pretty awesome."

It eventually separated, making Fallout 4 more of a definitive single player experience. "Then we put it away, you know, let's do our thing," Howard said. "Then every once in a while we'd keep talking about it. 'We should've done that, we should do it.' And as Fallout 4's going on, it becomes 'no, we should really do it as its own thing.'"

The experimentation with Fallout's multiplayer actually began a while back, in 2013. But at that time, Zenimax and Bethesda didn't have too much of a team assembled to work on the multiplayer portion of games. Obviously that changed once a new studio in Austin, under the name of Battlecry Studios, opened, eventually becoming Bethesda Game Studios Austin and beginning its own work on the direction for its multiplayer. Obviously nothing was confirmed at the time...but look where we are now.

But Howard says that Fallout 76 certainly isn't rushed. In fact, the game studio began work on the game a while ago, as "they started it before we shipped Fallout 4." So we have that going for us.

The documentary above is well worth a view, so check it out! Then head here to check out the first gameplay trailer, which is truly something else and probably one of our highlights from E3.

Fallout 76 ships on November 14 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.

(Hat tip to PC Gamer for the scoop!)

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