It’s no secret that Fallout 76 has built up a massive fan base throughout the years. This is especially interesting to think about when you consider that the game first launched in a less-than-ideal state in 2018. But since then, Bethesda has addressed many of the issues fans initially had with it, such as adding NPCs, more content, and compelling stories to play through.
Over the past eight years, we’ve seen the game get countless updates and expansions. The latest one to join Fallout 76 is its Infestation update. In short, this update is heavily tied to a lot of the mutated NPCs you may come across while exploring Appalachian Wasteland. On top of that, it also brings a long-awaited next-gen update for those who have been playing on both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. As someone who dabbles on and off with Fallout 76, the ladder has given me yet another reason to boot the game back up and see what it has to offer.
During Summer Game Fest 2026, MonsterVine sat down with production director Bill LaCoste and creative director Jon Rush of Fallout 76. Throughout our interview, we chatted about various topics related to the game. Some included: whether another battle royale would make a comeback, whether we’ll ever travel to the stars, cross-play, and much more.
MonsterVine: Now, for someone who doesn’t know anything about the latest expansion for 76. What’s the elevator pitch you would give him?
Rush: The game came out a number of years ago, and ever since that first day, we’ve been rebuilding Appalachia. We’ve had different groups move in, like the Raiders, like the settlers, like Blue Ridge Caribbean company set up shop in Appalachia.
Players have been rebuilding Appalachia, but there’s a group that we’ve kind of Forgotten about, and they’re kind of getting tired of people taking over their turf. Nefarious denizens, such as Super Mutants and ghouls, and scorched and mole miners. And they’re reclaiming what used to be theirs. So it was about 40 spots on the map, kind of abandoned by people are starting to be taken over by these groups.
Players need to band together and seek these out and take out these infestations, which should be challenging and also give them a chance at getting some four-star, legendary loot.
MonsterVine: Can you share more details on how this will affect the overall narrative for Fallout 76?
Rush: So this update in particular is probably a bit more story-light than other updates. However, what I just kind of said is sort of the high-level story for this. It’s these. These groups of super mutants and ghouls, and whatnot, want to reclaim what was theirs, and they’re trying to take over these strategic positions. So our Appalachian Adventurers need to. Band together, stave them off, and get rid of them.
MonsterVine: What would you say to try and get those who maybe put down the game, or perhaps have not yet tried it out?
Rush: I say this all the time. There’s never a better time to adventure with friends in Fallout 76. The game continues to get better with each update, not just the new content we release, not just the existing features that we’re expanding upon and fixing for players, and not just for the bug fixes and stability improvements.
But Bethesda Game Studios has the best community in gaming, and Fallout 76 shows that off. You’re going to make great friends and have fun along the way.
MonsterVine: What kind of teasers can you share when it comes to seeing different types of mutations for this update?
Rush: So, the way that Infestations is engineered under the hood makes for future iterations of this feature relatively easy. I’m not going to say easy, nothing’s easy when making video games, but it makes it relatively easy to add new groups, new encounters for players to face off against, and also expand into new locations.
While we do have a pretty healthy host of groups for players to take out. We can expand in any direction, I mean, right now. We’ve got like mole miners, robots, ghouls. We’ve got Communists. We’ve got scorched.
MonsterVine: Can you give us any updates on when and if cross-play will be coming to Fallout 76?
LaCoste: They’ve been asking for that for a very long time. Unfortunately, for us right now, it’s just such a super technical hurdle for us to tackle right now. Those are usually decisions you make at the very beginning of the game.
When you’re building up everything and now that all of the different platforms are kind of siloed out, it’s really hard to bring them back in account for all of the entitlements, account for all the achievements and trophies and social menus and stuff like that, and so it is still on our list of things to try to do.
We don’t have anything on the roadmap just right now. But those are things we still continue to investigate because players ask about them and they want them. And I mean, honestly, I play across the Xbox app; you don’t want my PC. I also play on Xbox.
I also play on other platforms, and it’s like, yeah, I kind of wish I could take the progression across, depending on if I’m traveling or not. And so, it’s definitely important for players, and we’ll keep it on our list of things to investigate. But right now, nothing we can. We can share.
MonsterVine: Speaking of roadmaps, can you talk about some of the challenges of making Fallout 76 and how far ahead you all plan out story beats?
Rush: We got updates for years down the road. On the creative side is how we come up with those, right? A big part is. Paying attention to the community feedback you sent to me. Recognizing the kinds of things that players want in the game. So, from that kind of broad stroke feedback that again, we try to flesh out these features that sort of satisfy those things that they’re looking for.
It’s a very organic process. There’s no, like, real formula for it. It’s a very emotional process. You know, as fans of the game and players ourselves, what do we want? What do we do? Love, what do we need, and referencing our community to help drive those decisions, too?
It’s a hard answer to give; it’s super organic. But it’s largely based on community feedback.
MonsterVine: It seems like Fallout 76 always gets a new wave of players around the time the Amazon Prime show begins and ends. Can you talk about how you treat onboarding new players who want to experience the game for the first time?
Rush: We call that new player experience. We’re always looking for ways to adjust that because the goal for that would be for new players to come in and not be bombarded with a ton of information that might confuse them or push them away, and also not to dictate how they’re supposed to play the game. The ideal is that they leave the Vault, and they see a wide open Wasteland, and they can choose how they want to play. That’s what we strive for.
We have big plans. We have smaller plans and smaller adjustments. Finally, you know, get to that point? But you know, a new player right now comes, leaves the Vault, they can leave as a more experienced, higher-level Vault dweller if they’d like to make the game a bit easier.
Or they can come out. Is that a base-level Vault dweller if they want more challenge. There are lots of factions right around the fault for them to meet that, introduce them to factions around the game that they meet later on, too. And a lot of kinds of earlier Quest content that teaches them a lot of the underlying core systems
MonsterVine: One of my favorite things you all did a little while back was the Battle Royale mode. Are there any plans to try to bring it back, or even introduce another PvP mode?
Rush: So Nuclear Winter was fun. A lot of people enjoyed participating in that thing. But a couple of things that did one thing is that it is a whole separate game mode. It fractured the player base right, and so you had players that were either playing that, or you had players that were playing in Appalachia, and usually players doing a bit of both.
But something, as developers, that we would like is to encourage players to play together, within the same play space, so that’s one thing. The second thing is that being its whole, essentially separate game, requires a whole team to maintain that service. Not just maintain it, but improve it.
Expand upon it, make new rewards, fix bugs, catch exploiters. It’s a big, big expense. So rather than putting resources towards supporting that. We chose that those resources would be more valuable if they were put towards expanding our Appalachia, where most of the players were already playing. I recognize that a lot of people liked Nuclear Winter and would love to have that brought back in the form that it was in.
That’s simply not possible, however, taking away from that. What players are looking for, maybe that PVP experience, right, that they’re trying to get. We have a lot of conversations going on about different ways on the Appalachia map to bring that back in. So hopefully we’ll be able to solidify some of those plans and get some features together that would sort of scratch that itch for players. The PvP itch, as far as a separate game mode, is just PVP. I don’t think I don’t think that that’s in the cart.
MonsterVine: The latest update finally introduces a next-gen update. Can you share some insight on how this was done, when you consider that it’s on just about every platform?
LaCoste: Our engine is still based on Fallout 4. A lot of changes that going in there, so it just really, the age of the engine, you know, and that’s it. Trying to take this and expand it from over into the next generation of consoles or the current generation of consoles.
There’s just a lot of underlying, under-the-hood things that had to be addressed. So you know, part of the first element that we take on is just getting it running. So we get everything onto the platforms we’re building specifically for those platforms.
We have those files ready. We start running the game, and then it’s like, oh, the opening movie doesn’t play. Okay, now let’s get the movie moving in place, and we’ll work and get all that stuff running. Then, the next thing is getting into the login system, and then it’s like changes with the login system and then changes with, the opening movie after that, and so really the best way to describe it, I think, is there’s so many unknown elements that have to go into getting that from the start all the way to the finish that we basically take the approach of, like just knocking out everything we run across.
So, whether it’s animation issues or lighting issues or shadows, and things like that, we have to run through them. We have to go across them, and we have just continue progressing our way through the game until we get to a point where, like, hey, okay, we’ve got the core element here. Let’s get this into QA’s hands. Let’s start doing performance testing. Let’s start looking at all the other elements of it. So, you know, unfortunately, it’s just one of those systems that takes us a good bit of time to do.
It’s hard to road map. It’s hard to say exactly where this is gonna gonna land because of the unknowns that creep up during the development.
MonsterVine: In a lot of ways, it feels like Fallout 76 gets a lot of creative freedom when it comes to making story beats. What are some ideas that you all are proud of that made it into canon?
Rush: You know we have the luxury of this game and taking place the furthest back in time, you know? Separated by hundreds of years. Between the other titles. So, there is a lot of room, a lot of creative freedom to play with. There are also a lot of elements to be mindful of to not conflict with the lore and the other stories.
Players know every inch of that lore, so we have to be very, very careful. However, I would say. The thing I’m most proud of that we’ve added to through 76 that contributes to Fallout lore. Would be our new factions that have come in there.
Factions that are unique to Fallout 76, like the Blue Ridge Caravan Company, are one. Free States are another. I think they’re very cool additions to the overall lore.
MonsterVine: You all have taken all across the United States. Are there plans to maybe go beyond that or even to Space?
Rush: What’s in Space?
MonsterVine: I hear there are aliens up there.
Rush: Well, you know, a pillar of Fallout is that, Americana, right? You have that those darker stories balanced by the levity right under the wrapper of retro futuristic Americana. It’s good to stay within the Americas.
Within the United States, so that we can do that. Going into space again, I could see it as maybe not, like being an entire update on its own, because I think tonally it would be a little. It would pull away a little bit, right? But, you know, being an accent piece to a larger beat, I could see that, maybe being something that’s fun.
MonsterVine: Do you have any plans to do something like Operation Anchorage, where you relive past experiences?
Rush: Sure, we’ve talked about that, you know, actually. Something kind of funny is. Speaking on a player’s first experience years ago, when we were looking at, like, the first experience in a vault. There were plans for, hey, let’s, let’s do one of those, Memory Lounge things, and let them sit in there, and they’ll train virtually in a neighborhood or something, but we decided not to, just felt a little forced.
I’d say if there’s room in a story that helps the story, and that’s a part of it. We can certainly talk about bringing that back in, but none of the stories or directions that we’ve taken thus far. Have really provoked that kind of thought.
MonsterVine: Is there anything you’d like to highlight that I didn’t ask about?
Rush: Okay, between you and me, we’ve got something really exciting this December. So, imagine a world where your Camp pet becomes your companion. You’re able to take it out of your camp to travel with you. Adventure with you, fight with you. You can level it up. You can tell to sit, tell, or attack. Tell it to defend. In December of this year, Camp pets are just pets. They just become pets.
We’re talking dogs, cats, hogs, deathclaws, and who knows what’s coming down the road? But you didn’t hear that from me.
LaCoste: We’ve got some stuff coming this summer. Hopefully, here in June. People will be able to check it out on flight, so we’ll release it on PlayStation and on Xbox so that players of current-gen hardware can download those. Give us feedback. Let us know how things are working, and we’ll take a look and make sure stability is working for them as well. But yeah, we’re hoping this summer, we’ll have that all fixed up for everybody. They’ll be able to play on their current-gen hardware.
