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Bethesda says ‘Fallout 76’ servers will be online ‘forever’

Fallout 76 – Official In-Game Intro

If you want to return to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind in 2018, that isn’t a problem, as the 16-year-old game is completely offline. The same effectively goes for newer Bethesda titles like Fallout 4, but Fallout 76‘s online-only structure makes it more of a question mark. According to Bethesda, however, the game is never going to go offline.

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Speaking to GameSpot, Bethesda SVP of global marketing and communications Pete Hines pointed to World of Warcraft as an example of the longevity the company is shooting for with Fallout 76.

“How long is [the game] going to be up? Forever,” he said. “I don’t know how to give an answer other than that. It’s not like anybody makes a game and goes, ‘Well this is going to make it for 10 years if we’re lucky.’ Nobody thinks that way. How long has [World of Warcraft] been up now? Is that gaming planning to sunset in a year? I seriously doubt it.”

Hines did concede that if it got to the point where private servers were being used several years down the road, he didn’t know if the game would continue, but this wasn’t really being considered yet.

Fallout 76 – The Power of the Atom! Intro to Nukes Gameplay Video

Much of the long-term success of Fallout 76 will come down to players’ support, however, as the game was designed from the ground-up to be based on multiplayer interactivity. All human characters in the game are controlled by other players, with other species handled by A.I. It is still possible to play through much of the game by yourself, but those looking for that sort of isolated experience will be more at home in Fallout 4 or Skyrim. With the latter game available on basically every console, you never have to be without it, either.

Bethesda isn’t dropping support for traditional role-playing games. The developer is currently working on the science-fiction title Starfield, though details on it are scarce at the moment. After that, it will develop The Elder Scrolls VI, which was teased with a title and short video clip at E3 2018. Both games are expected to come to next-generation consoles, and we wouldn’t expect to see a fifth traditional Fallout game anytime soon.

Gabe Gurwin
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
The best Fallout New Vegas mods
A soldier with a sniper in New Vegas.

The debate around which Fallout game is best typically comes down to either Fallout 3 or New Vegas. Whichever side you land on, there's no denying that New Vegas made the most out of what it had to work with. This game was originally made by Obsidian, not Bethesda, and it had a very short development time that resulted in a game in which the technical performance couldn't quite match its narrative and mechanical ambitions. While the core was still great, it has also been over a decade since the game came out, which makes those blemishes even more evident. Because fans took so well to what this entry was trying to do, mods have kept New Vegas alive and well to this day. From basic visual enhancements to new quests and locations, here are the best mods you can get for New Vegas.
NMCS Texture Pack

Honestly, New Vegas was never a looker. Even upon release, it was a bit behind the times in terms of graphical fidelity, and two generations later, it isn't aging all that well. The NMCS Texture Pack doesn't bring every aspect of the world up to a modern standard, but what it does upgrade is incredibly impressive. This mod completely retextures roads, environments, plants, vehicles, buildings, and more. What it won't change is how the sky, water, clothing, NPCs, weapons, and a handful of other things appear. It also does not work with any DLC. Still, the majority of things you will be seeing get a great visual buff here to help breathe new life into the wasteland.
EVE - Essential Visual Enhancements

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3 things I want in Fallout 5 after watching Amazon’s Fallout series
Lucy enters a house in Fallout.

Fallout has been the watercooler TV show this month, an impressive feat for a video game adaptation. Although Bethesda doesn't have any new Fallout games to release alongside it, the Amazon Prime series has reinvigorated interest in Fallout, with all its titles seeing notable player count increases. For now, we’ll have to be content with a Fallout 4 current-gen upgrade, but I’ll admit that my mind is drifting to thinking about Fallout 5.

Bethesda’s Todd Howard has teased that Fallout 5 will be the next project Bethesda Game Studios works on after Elder Scrolls 6. While that likely means its release is at least a decade away unless Bethesda fast-tracks it, I still find it fun to theorize about where a true single-player Fallout 5 could go next. These three particular things are what I want to see the most.
Set it somewhere new

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All console commands and cheats for Fallout: New Vegas
The courier holding a gun with a welcome sign in the background in Fallout: New Vegas key art.

From the moment you begin your adventure in Fallout: New Vegas, you've already cheated death. Your first playthrough of the game should be done as the developers intended, though maybe with a couple of mods to make the experience a little smoother, but nothing that breaks the game. That said, it's been over a decade since the game came out, so odds are you've already played through the intended way at least once. This is when you can have some fun tinkering with the game and play using console commands and cheats if you're on the PC version of the game. There are a ton of commands you can input to manipulate your character, the world, objects, and more. Here's a full rundown of all the cheats there are and how to activate them.
How to enter console commands
Opening up the command console to type in your cheats is just a single keystroke away. While in the game (not paused), hit the ~ key located below your escape key. This will remove your HUD and bring up the prompt to type in any of the below cheats.
All Fallout: New Vegas console commands and cheats

Because there are so many console commands, we're going to break them down into general categories to make it easier for you to find what you're looking for based on what you want to do.
Faction and reputation cheats
addreputation <form id> <variable> <amount> -- Increases your reputation with a faction.

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