In the wake of Fallout 76’s recent Infestations update, with its challenging enemies and boss fight content across Appalachia, I got the chance to speak with Creative Director Jon Rush and Production Director Bill LaCoste about their hopes for the update, the process of balancing reward systems this deep into the game’s lifespan, and worldbuilding across the broader Fallout franchise. Thank you to the team at Bethesda Game Studios and Summer Game Fest for this opportunity! Let’s dive into the conversation.
The interview began with a discussion on what the developers were most excited about players experiencing with Infestations. They joked that they’re looking forward to players getting it handed to them by difficult bosses! They shared how the team had adjusted the boss battle difficulty during development to be particularly challenging, with the goal of players having a challenging but equally rewarding experience.
Rush and LaCoste expressed how they’d like players to make new stories with their friends to enrich their time with the game, hoping that by forming teams and tackling the new content in groups they’ll add to their enjoyment of the battle content. This, after all, is the lifeblood of a multiplayer experience.
We then moved on to Fallout 76’s reward systems, and the factors the team considers when implementing rewards with new content. With such a vast array of rewards at this point in the game’s lifespan, balancing a large pool of systems while iterating past content and developing new creative directions can pose a particular challenge.
Through the game’s reward systems, the developers want to incentivize players to engage with new content by, for example, encouraging new loadouts situationally throughout the game. This way, gameplay doesn’t get stale the way it would if players were incentivized to always use the same loadout for everything. They want rewards to keep providing players with interesting ways to play the game as they explore new gameplay.
Our conversation continued into worldbuilding in Fallout 76 with relation to the broader Fallout franchise, particularly with the live-action series and its massive success. The developers shared how having Fallout 76 take place at the earliest point in the franchise has its advantages, with storytelling possibilities arising from being the closest chronologically to when the bomb drops.
They then explained how Fallout 76 and the live-action series, along with the broader Fallout franchise, pay respect to the same pool of lore when crafting their stories. In the case of the live-action series, with the show taking place on the opposite end of the timeline as the latest entry chronologically, it can be difficult to have direct crossovers between this game and the show.
As an example, The Ghoul made a lot of sense to appear and showcase a new bounty hunting feature in the Burning Springs update for Fallout 76. On the other hand, having Lucy show up would not work as she wasn’t born yet at the time the game takes place.
Closing our discussion, I asked if there were any plans to sunset the Xbox One and PS4 versions of Fallout 76 now that current generation versions are available. Rush and LaCoste confirmed that there are no plans to do so and that the team will continue to work on optimizing the game for these platforms.
Fallout 76 and its Infestations update is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, PS4, and PS5. My appreciation to Jon Rush, Bill LaCoste, Bethasda Game Studios, and Summer Game Fest for this interview opportunity, and to our own Noah Leiter for helping me formulate questions for this interview! Speaking of which, for more on Fallout 76, make sure to check out Noah Leiter’s 2025 review. Stay up to date on all things RPG right here at RPGFan!
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.