In his latest hour-long conversation with Greg Miller from Kinda Funny, Bethesda's Todd Howard touched on various subjects, including The Elder Scrolls VI and Starfield, the usage of AI in game development, and even his feelings toward Fallout 76.
When it launched in late 2018, Fallout 76 quickly became a sort of punching bag for critics (including Wccftech's Chris Wray) and gamers alike. The game had several issues at release, including optimization, a lack of human NPCs (by design, as the game is set before any other in the series and was conceived with players as the first Vault dwellers getting out to explore the wasteland), and much more.
However, slowly but surely, Bethesda Game Studios (with the help of Double Eleven, which was hired to work on the game as a partner studio) introduced more features and content, including the return of human NPCs with the Wastelanders update that dropped in April 2020. They followed the community's feedback, and the community rewarded them for it, getting bigger and bigger until it exploded (like the other Fallout games) with the release of the TV show on Amazon Prime Video.
Now, looking back, Howard can say it's the Bethesda game he's most proud of, particularly because of the challenge of making a multiplayer game for the first time, putting it back on track after launch, and then maintaining it over time. He also teased that the game will "get even better" thanks to the future roadmap.
It was incredibly difficult. It was difficult to get it to launch, and it didn't launch great. And then it was even harder to pull it out of that, and then when it starts getting really popular again, maintain it. We're really fortunate. The community around Fallout 76 is incredible. There were so many people that wanted to play a game like that. Granted, not every Fallout fan, we realized that given the the history of it and the single player nature of it, but so many people wanted to play a game like that they kind of stuck with us. You know, in many respects, it's the game that we've done I'm the most proud of because it's so hard to do and then maintain as a relevant game.
If you look across the industry, the amount of games like it that have come and gone... And here's Fallout 76, still there with big numbers and doing well and being relevant. It's a lot of energy in the studio. Look, people love it. The team on it, led by John Rush, they just do a fantastic job. I get to see the roadmap that's planned for the game, and it gets even better. So, we love it, our community loves it, and obviously as you have these Fallout moments with the TV show, it gives us an avenue to be updating and adding new things. The Ghoul comes in to Burning Springs and etc.
It's just a vibrant community and something where it's great to have that community touchpoint, whereas when you're doing a single player game, you don't have it as much. You're kind of doing it outside the game. Obviously, we have mods and creations, but you know, not quite the same as a game like Fallout 76.
Fallout 76 is getting a new major update titled "Backwoods" on March 3, 2026, adding a new Cryptid monster (the Bigfoot), updates to existing events, and launching Season 24 of the game's live service. More details will be shared soon; look forward to our preview in the near future.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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