The Fallout franchise has been more popular in the last two months due to the release of its live-action series, and Bethesda knows how to make the most out of the surge in players. As a way to maintain the momentum, the studio is releasing a free expansion for its latest game, Fallout 76.
Fallout 76 Expansion
It was only three years before Bethesda released another title within the franchise, with Fallout 4 coming out in 2015 and Fallout 76 in 2018. This November 2024, six years will have passed since the last game, but we are yet to see the continuation of the series.
Fortunately for fans of the franchise, the studio is throwing a bone to players with a new expansion that is set to launch on June 12th. The expansion will be called Skyline Valley, and it will expand the existing map within Fallout 76.
Players will get to explore a new region called Shenandoah, where they will find Vault 63 and investigate what has happened to its dwellers, as reported by Engadget. Players will discover that they will be going up against Ghouls as well, although that won't be until next year.
Arguably one of the best parts about the expansion, the playable character can now be a ghoul, which has been suggested by many players since the game was released. The new option was presented by the end of the trailer, serving as a cherry on top of the announcement.
With this new addition, Fallout 76 is certainly on its way up, which is good news considering that it didn't have the best debut. It had a lot of game-breaking bugs, which Bethesda has since been known for. However, the studio has issued many fixes since the launch.
The number of concurrent players on PC has gone from 5,975 in March to 25,673 after a month. It still doesn't compare to the numbers of Fallout 4, which had 23,500 players in March and 187,468 players by April, according to SteamDB.
Of course, it is still far from being a new game entirely, and fans of the IP will still want a new game to explore more of the wasteland as it focuses on a new story. At least we already know that Fallout 5 is among the plans Bethesda has in store.
Fallout 5
There's very little news about the upcoming game since Bethesda is being tight-lipped about it, and we can only hope that it has the game mechanics of Fallout 4 and the chaotic but engaging storyline of Fallout New Vegas.
The bad news is that it won't be arriving anytime soon. As reported by Games Radar, Bethesda Game Studios Game Designer Todd Howard said that the next Fallout game will come after Elder Scrolls 6, and we already know that it's still far from release.
As we just saw, the studio is also preoccupied with other matters like the expansion for Fallout 76 and the next-gen update for Fallout 4. One can only hope that they are already putting more effort into the next Fallout game so that it will arrive sooner.
