With anticipation for Fallout Season 2, followers are questioning if Bethesda will capitalize on the smash hit Amazon present in a extra vital manner this time round.
Fallout Season 1 hit Prime Video in April 2024 and was an instantaneous breakout hit. Whereas the present’s recognition sparked a flood of latest gamers throughout all Fallout video games, Bethesda — and by extension mum or dad firm Microsoft — didn’t make the most of it with, for instance, the launch of a brand new Fallout recreation.
Xbox boss Phil Spencer ended up insisting that everybody concerned benefited from the present’s success, and that not having a brand new recreation lined up for the launch “gave us some artistic liberty that [we] would not have had if we tried to coordinate manufacturing of two very completely different artistic processes to land at the identical time.”
That point out of “artistic liberty” is a reference to the Fallout TV present’s canon standing inside the Fallout timeline, and the reality it takes place in any case the present Fallout video games. Whereas this has meant Fallout lore followers have analyzed the TV present to inside an inch of its life, its creators had been capable of transfer on from what’s gone earlier than and inform a model new story. If a brand new post-Fallout 4 online game had come out at the identical time, Bethesda and the TV showrunners would have confronted a tough job guaranteeing all their Fallout timeline geese had been in a row.
However will Microsoft and Bethesda fail to capitalize on Season 2 of the Fallout present? In terms of Fallout 76, at the very least, it seems like tie-in content material is certainly deliberate.
Talking to Variety, Bethesda Sport Studios’ Fallout 76 artistic director Jon Rush mentioned the growth group is “at all times targeted on the recreation,” however confirmed the two groups (TV present and video video games) do discuss to one another about “lining issues up with the seasonal releases of the present.”
“I believe a definite trait of the Fallout 76 recreation is that we’re the furthest again in time,” he mentioned. “And it’s type of humorous, as a result of the present’s the furthest into the future. So there’s a number of room the place we don’t essentially must overlap. There are some issues that we may overlap the tales, that would exist, however we largely attempt to hold these fairly easy.
“So the present could be very efficient storytelling, nice storytelling, very Fallout, being made by people which might be huge followers of the recreation and the sequence, and so are we. The 2 go collectively rather well. So people see the present and wish extra of that very same type of story, and so they’re going to come back into 76, they’re going to come back into Fallout 4, or come into Fallout 3.
“Lining issues up with the seasonal releases of the present, it’s stuff that we speak about all the time, and we do have plans for issues right here and there. I’m not going to enter element on any of these now, however the two groups do discuss to 1 one other.”
So, we don’t know what precisely Bethesda is planning for the launch of Fallout Season 2, however we do know one thing is in the works for Fallout 76. There are nonetheless a number of unanswered questions. For one, we don’t have a Fallout Season 2 launch date but. Might Bethesda have a brand new Fallout online game in the works to go alongside the present? There’s about as a lot anticipation for a brand new Fallout recreation as there’s for Fallout Season 2 — and the hypothesis to associate with it as remaster and remake rumors swirl.
However maybe we shouldn’t maintain our breath. In June final yr, Bethesda growth chief Todd Howard mentioned he wasn’t in speeding the subsequent Fallout recreation out the door.
“For different Fallout video games in the future, you recognize, clearly I can’t speak about these proper now, however I’d say, type of speeding via them, or we type of must get stuff out that’s completely different than the work we’re doing in 76… we don’t really feel like we have to rush any of that,” he mentioned. “The Fallout TV present fills a sure area of interest in phrases of the franchise and storytelling.”
After all, a model new Fallout recreation is coming down the pipe, with Howard confirming Fallout 5 is in the long-term plan, probably after The Elder Scrolls 6 comes out. As for Fallout Season 2, it is off to New Vegas, the setting of Obsidian’s much-loved Fallout: New Vegas.
Wesley is Director, Information at IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You may attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.