Bethesda Director Todd Howard Hints at 2 Unannounced Fallout Projects

As one of the classic franchises of the RPG genre, has built up an extensive timeline across its many games — one that can be confusing to keep track of with each new addition. Developed first by the now-defunct Black Isle Studios and then by Bethesda (and Obsidian, for ), as a series has gone through a number of distinct changes, with each game putting a post-apocalyptic spin on a new region of the United States.

This news post leaves me in a quandary, readers, because I will need to write a swear word for the sake of full journalistic transparency, but Google’s algorithms tend to frown on sweary articles. On the other hand, Google’s algorithms don’t like it when you spend whole intros handwringing about Google’s algorithms, either, so let’s stop, er, faffing around and speak of Doom. Id Software parent company Zenimax recently trademarked “IDKFA”, a string of letters that will be of deep significance to original Doom players, and which may therefore be evidence of an impending announcement.

Bethesda has shared a new developer preview of Fallout 76: Skyline Valley. With a runtime of nearly three and a half minutes, the new video has plenty of time to go over the biggest highlights of the upcoming Fallout 76 update.

Xbox has reportedly shut down Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog Studios, and Roundhouse Games, with members of the latter team being folded into ZeniMax Online Studios. Layoffs have been a harsh reality of the video game industry these past couple of years, with companies of all sizes laying off significant portions of their staff or shutting down studios entirely. Xbox itself has engaged in multiple waves of layoffs this past year.

One detail in Sanctuary Hills may point to a dark theory surrounding Vault-Tec while taking inspiration from a real-life location. Sanctuary Hills is the location players are first introduced to in a sequence set in the year that the bombs fell in 2077, being the home of the Sole Survivor and their families.

Johan Pilestedt has responded to review bombing of Helldivers 2. Helldivers 2 is one of the most popular releases of 2024. Fans have enjoyed the way the game iterates on the online multiplayer format with interesting objectives and challenging team-based gameplay. In the opinion of many gamers, Helldivers 2 excels in part because of developer Arrowhead Game Studios' attentiveness to player feedback.

Helldivers 2 has enjoyed nothing but roaring success since its launch in February, though the last 24 hours have seen it on the receiving end of strong backlash. Sony recently announced that Helldivers 2 players on PC would have to link their Steam and PlayStation Network accounts to be able to play the game going forward, provoking strong criticism from the community. The game’s “Recent” user reviews rating on Steam – which takes into accounts user ratings for a game over the last 30 days – has fallen to “Mixed”, having received over 24,000 negative ratings on the platform just today.

Whether exploring the irradiated monuments of Washington D.C. in Fallout 3 or gambling away your last couple of Caps on The Strip in Fallout: New Vegas, the series' North American setting is an essential piece of the puzzle. And while players have previously been given tantalising glimpses of how the rest of Bethesda's bleak world might be faring, studio head Todd Howard says the plan is to keep the series set in the US.

Players who are just picking up are luck because the game's best event is about to return to help all those newcomers become more accustomed the zany world of the Appalachian Wasteland. Over the course of 's many seasons of content drops, one event in particular has returned on several occasions due to the overwhelmingly positive reception its garnered from the game's community. Now that Bethesda's open-world survival MMO is more popular than ever thanks to the Prim Video adaptation, it's time to introduced those fresh-faced fans to the Zeta aliens.

In a recent interview, Fallout director Todd Howard said that Bethesda plans to «predominately keep» the franchise in the United States and explained his reasoning. Although Howard left the door open for non-US Fallout settings in the future, it seems unlikely given the franchise's established theme.

Bethesda is now hoping to release new video games at a faster rate than it has in the past, especially with Fallout’s increased popularity. Bethesda is known for its massive RPG franchises like Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and last year’s mega-hit Starfield. However, these titles can take an incredibly long time to develop, with Starfield suffering from several delays and being in production for nearly eight years before finally hitting stores in September.

For all long as the Fallout franchise has been around, it has never been set outside of the United States. Of course, its over-the-top, retro-futuristic Americana satirization is a core aspect of what makes Fallout, Fallout, but on new few occasions, large chunks of the series’ fanbase have wondered how locations outside of the US are faring in Fallout’s post-apocalyptic setting, and whether they could fare as suitable settings for a future Fallout game.