Fallout 76's Creative Director Talks Ghouls, Map Expansions, And Players Being Too Nice (2024)

The success of Fallout’s Amazon Prime TV show has the Fallout series in the best place it's been in for years. Players both old and new are flocking back to the games, with Fallout 4 and New Vegas the most popular choices.

However, the series has also found itself in an odd place. Unlike other IPs, which might have strategically lined up a new game to make the most of the TV show boost, Fallout doesn’t have anything recent to offer or even much hope of it appearing soon with Elder Scrolls next in line at Bethesda. Worse yet, its most recent game is also the most controversial of the Bethesda era: Fallout 76.

Yet as Bethesda came to Gamescom this year, now six years after 76’s infamous launch, the conversation has finally moved on from performance issues and dodgy pre-order bonuses. Now, we’re talking map expansions, playable ghouls, and new stories to be told. The show’s success has been a huge boon to Fallout 76, boosting its player base and rehabilitating its reputation, so Bethesda is eager to make the most of it.

“I think the show did a fantastic job of maintaining that tone and feel of Fallout, telling the true Fallout story,” says Jon Rush, creative director on Fallout 76, speaking to me at the Xbox booth at Gamescom this year.

“Seeing that big resurgence was great. We've been supporting [Fallout 76] for six years now, and being able to see people come in and take it all in is very rewarding.”

I ask what kind of players Bethesda has seen log in to Fallout 76 since the show premiered - whether that’s first-time Fallout fans or diehards who skipped the MMO at launch. “All of the above”, Rush tells me. “People that like to play on their own, people that like to play in teams. People who just like to build. People who like to go out and shoot stuff.”

How Has Fallout 76 Changed Since Launch?

When the story of Fallout 76 is told, even after its larger revelation in the fanbase, many often characterise its ongoing development as a change of direction. Put simply, it was bad, and now it’s good. And largely, fans point to the updates that added NPCs as the turning point.

There were originally no NPCs to be found in the wasteland of Appalachia, and now, there are. However, Rush argues that this was less of a change of heart and more of a natural development.

“When the game first came out, there was a lot of story to tell,” says Rush. “There were no physical humans in the game to tell it personally, but you could find out about their stories in the holotapes they left behind, or notes, things they left in their house, or even their remains. So when people first came to Appalachia, they were meeting a lot of new characters, whether they realised it or not, while also becoming familiar with the main character of the game, which has always been Appalachia itself.”

He doesn’t sound like he regrets the state of the open world when Fallout 76 launched either. “As the game progressed on and NPCs came in from surrounding areas, [that] made that initial experience even that much more rich, because players that were there can say, ‘I was here before settlers came in, before the Brotherhood of Steel came in, before there were Raiders’. And now I've gotten to see how Appalachia as a character has changed over the years.”

With that in mind, the team doesn’t want to leave Appalachia in future updates - and they don’t think the players want to either.

“Looking at Skyline Valley, I think a big reason that resonated so well with players was because it stayed in Appalachia. Our players love playing on that map, so mutating the map, so to speak, gave them the opportunity to experience more things on that map, to build in more places, to explore more places. [It] gave us a chance to tell a story.

“Any updates that can offer that, any ideas for updates that can give that to players are certainly welcome. So region expansions, like Skyline Valley. Yeah, absolutely, they've been discussed. Specific details I can't go into, but they've definitely been discussed.”

Bringing Playable Ghouls To Fallout 76

One thing Rush can go into more detail about is a new addition coming in 2025: playable ghouls. But before we get into any of the specifics, my first question had to be why it’s taken so long to get this in the MMO, when fans have wanted this in a Fallout game since the classics.

“Playing as a ghoul is something that's been talked about for a while, off and on. It kind of fades away, and then the discussion will come back,” Rush explains. “There never really seemed to be a really compelling reason to do it, other than just ‘because’.

“As [Fallout 76] has matured, as our players have matured, they want to experience in-game content in a different way. Bringing the option to transform into a ghoul made a lot of sense, because of how much more opportunity that could offer players.”

Rush goes over how this will work in practice, stressing that the devs wanted it to be a simple process. Anyone over level 50 will be able to access a quest, during which, they are presented with the option to become a ghoul.

“You have 100 percent radiation resistance, which may not sound like a huge deal, but if you think about it, a lot of people wear power armour to stave off radiation,” explains Rush. “So if I'm a ghoul and I don't need to do that because radiation doesn't hurt me, it actually helps me, then I don't want to wear power armour. And so with the existing suite of perks cards alone, that frees up like nine perk points. It's a whole different playstyle on its own.”

There will also be new perk cards that are unique to ghoul characters only. Rush is hopeful that this will add “dozens” of new ways to play the game, including from a roleplaying perspective.

“For future story updates or new content going in, where you're interacting with NPCs and making decisions, being a ghoul is going to be taken into account. That will absolutely be a factor. Things will be different if you're a ghoul.”

Rush admits that the team is still balancing ghouls, since they can both replenish their health and become more powerful the more irradiated they become. However, the primary focus from the start of the ghouls’ development was making them “fun” to play, even if they’re now having to make it so ghouls aren’t completely overpowered.

Rush also says that the decision to implement playable ghouls predated the show, so this wasn’t in a bid to chase its popularity.

“It was really great to see people latch on to that character [Cooper Howard, the Ghoul], because it really highlighted how good of a decision that we had made. People really want this. People want to try it. They want to see what it's like to be a ghoul.”

Of course, I have to ask Rush if this means we’ll get to play as ghouls in future games like Fallout 5, and he’s surprisingly forthcoming.

“Possibly,” he says. “I mean, if it's something that players love to do, then, yeah, absolutely. We make these games for the players so they have fun. [...] If the ghoul really supports that, then that would absolutely be taken into consideration.”

As for whether we can expect new races in future updates, Rush isn’t committing to anything just yet.

“Let's try ghouls first. Let's see how that looks. Let's see how that plays out,” he says. “Some things in the game would be really fun to play as, but what it comes down to is what it would offer the gameplay experience. How different would it be from humans? How different would it be from ghouls?

“There’s a lot of possibilities. It just needs to fit tonally and it needs to fulfil a niche that the players really want to experience.”

From the start, it does seem that the player base has guided Fallout 76’s development. Not only have we seen that with the NPCs being added, and as of next year, ghouls being playable, but also in how player behaviours are accommodated for.

“Before we launched, I was in the mindset of, ‘oh, it's a post-apocalyptic game. It's in the Fallout universe’. When this goes live, people are gonna be killing one another,” laughs Rush. “It was the exact complete opposite. People don't want to do that. They want to coexist on the server with other players. They want to help them out. They want to build together. They want to give them things. I would have never expected the most coveted item in the game to be the clean toilet.”

I ask if Bethesda was ever tempted to try and steer the player base into a more violent direction, but if anything, it was the exact opposite. Due to a lack of sustained interest, the team got rid of the PvP mode Nuclear Winter. As Rush puts it, “They don't want to kill one another.“

All these years later, it certainly seems that Fallout 76 has won over a fair share of naysayers. For anyone who hasn’t had their Fallout itch scratched by the MMO though, Rush is adamant that its existence is not to blame for Fallout 5 being so far away.

“Absolutely not,” he answers. “I can understand that perspective, watching from the outside in, but no, absolutely not. If anything, when Fallout 5 does come out, It'll make it even more impactful. But it's not holding anything back.”

Right now, we have no idea when Fallout 5’s first trailer will be with us, let alone a release date. But in the meantime, Fallout 76 isn’t slowing down at all. Rush says that his team is still full of ideas. So when I ask what Appalachia will look like next year, his answer is clear: “It's only going to get bigger.”

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Fallout 76

Taking the Fallout series into the MMO space, Fallout 76 is a prequel to the mainline games. You'll have to traverse the massive open world of Appalachia in order to build bases, survive, and grow stronger.