10 Lies Video Games Could Never Recover From
6. Fallout 76 - It Does Not 'Just Work'
The Fallout series has survived a complete shift in play style before. Fallout started life as an isometric top-down strategy RPG, much like the Jagged Alliance series and Fallout’s spiritual predecessor Wasteland. After Bethesda took control of the franchise in 2004, it shifted the design into a first-person shooter with RPG elements.
When they first acquired licensing rights for Fallout, Bethesda tried to work with the original publisher, Interplay Entertainment, to make an MMORPG. The Fallout MMO made it as far as the beta stage, before Bethesda pulled the plug and engaged in a lengthy court battle with Interplay over it, finally ending in 2012.
Apparently they never got over that desire, because in 2018 they announced Fallout 76, a prequel that would be an MMO. Already people were cautious of it, but many were hopeful that Bethesda could do it again.
They couldn’t.
Totally absent of narrative NPCs, a staple of the series regardless of genre, and beset by horrible bugs and crashes, the few people who put in the effort to play 76 wound up being trolls who delighted in messing with other players. It became popular to reference Bethesda frontman Todd Howard when talking about features of Fallout 4 at an E3 presentation, and because Fallout 76 saw those issues continue, it certainly did not "work".