Bethesda’s Todd Howard has called Fallout’s recent renaissance “beyond anything [he’s] ever seen in [his] 30 years of doing this”.
This renewed interest in the series all came about thanks to Amazon’s Fallout adaptation. The show’s success – which saw 65 million viewers tuning in in its first 16 days of release – led to droves of players venturing into one or many of Fallout’s wastelands, to find out what delights were in store.
Fallout 4 actually became the best selling game in Europe at one point in April, despite having been out for almost a decade. Meanwhile, earlier today, it was announced that Fallout 76 has now welcomed 20 million total players, several years after its initial release.
“Depending on the Fallout game, you’re looking at a 4-6x increase in daily players,” Howard said to Variety, reflecting on this latest number. “Having an event that brings that many people into games that you have and who have never played your games before, that’s a big thing. New players who have never played a game or never played one of our games.
“It’s a really, really unique moment.”
Meanwhile, on the newly-minted TV side of the franchise, Amazon’s Fallout was officially announced to be getting a second season soon after series one made its debut. At this time, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy – who executive produce the show via Kilter Films – said they “can’t wait to blow up the world all over again”.
Speaking on this upcoming second season, Howard confirmed the current plan is to follow the same characters we met in season one. “The one thing about TV that Jonah told me from Day One is it’s about finding the characters. And I think it’s really awesome how these characters have resonated with the audience,” Howard said.
“And so I think there’s still stories to tell there. There’s so many great characters – I love Norm and Chet, I love the two of them in every scene. And obviously we have the Ghoul and Lucy and Maximus. But there’s so many great characters that have a lot of stories left to tell.”
If you are still itching to know more, Fallout’s showrunners recently gave us all the briefest of teasers for what’s coming in season two.