Todd Howard Reiterates That Fallout 76 Is NOT The Future Of Bethesda Titles

There’s a bit of a big debate going on in the world of video games. Mainly, people are asking if the singleplayer experience of gaming is dying. Many games nowadays are made to be multiplayer-focused, or multiplayer only. However, to counter this, there have been many singleplayer only titles that have dominated awards ceremonies and sales charts. But as if to counter that, developers like Bethesda are making multiplayer titles like Fallout 76, which is much different than previous Fallout titles.

So, is the future of Bethesda multiplayer titles? Not according to one of their head guys, Todd Howard:

“It doesn’t mark the future,” Howard told gi.biz in a recent interview. “Corporately we’ve done a mix—people forget sometimes. Elder Scrolls Online is one of the biggest online games in the world, we have Fallout Shelter which we keep updating, and Elder Scrolls: Legends.”

“Anyone who has ever said ‘this is the future and this part of gaming is dead’ has been proven wrong every single time. We like to try it all. For a long time we wanted to try a multiplayer game and we had this idea. We shouldn’t be afraid. We should try it.”

And indeed, Bethesda does try a lot of things, and they are willing to learn. Making Fallout Shelter was a big learning experience for them:

“It’s definitely a lighter touch, which surprisingly worked very well for us in Fallout Shelter,” says Howard. “I was forced to meet with a lot of ‘monetisation experts’ during Fallout Shelter that didn’t work for us. I said ‘that’s nice’ and then it came out and the first week it was above Candy Crush with a very light touch… We did learn a lot though.”

So no, Fallout 76 isn’t the beginning of a new change for Bethesda, it just marks a new path they’ve wanted to try out for some time.