Fallout 76 devs on creating Skyline Valley and their "bucket of ideas"

Fallout 76 is synonymous with the now frequent story of the rocky live service game launch, but six years on from its initial release, it's now a story of redemption as the developers at Bethesda Game Studios have put in a lot of work to turn things around.

From rectifying some of the player base's biggest issues to introducing new content and expanding the ongoing narrative at the heart of Appalachia - there's now a lot to love, and the team show no signs of slowing down soon.

I was recently invited down to the Bethesda offices in London for a hands-on session with the newest expansion to the game, Skyline Valley, and a roundtable interview with Creative Director Jon Rush and Lead Producer Bill LaCoste to talk about its future.

Building a theme park

With Skyline Valley being the first-ever expansion of the initial Appalachia map, I wanted to know what challenges that presented for the team.

"There's always technical issues we run into", LaCoste responded, before talking about the processes of building out new navmeshes, geometry, and taking into account sightlines for performance.

"I will say though, I don't think we ran into as many challenges as we thought we were going to run into. A lot of it just worked".

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I asked Jon what it was like from the gameplay and design side of things, and how they approached a new area from this perspective.

"I look at our map… as kind of a big theme park" he said. "Very distinct, organic spaces that all have their own characteristics… so, looking at the broad stroke feedback from players, [they] want more places to experience story".

Rush added, "We needed to figure out what was an aesthetic, what was an experience that feels Fallout", before elaborating that the team decided on "dark and mysterious" as the central theme, which led to the creation of the big storm in the middle of the area.

"The storm was really what drove all the rest of the content… the whole region, the story, the factions, the ghouls - it all centres on that storm. And that's the first thing [players] see when they come in."

The bucket of ideas

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With Fallout becoming such a huge IP in not just the gaming sphere, but media in general thanks to the recent TV show, I wanted to know how they kept the setting fresh and where they took inspiration from.

Rush replied, "It's been a story since day one", and then began briefly running through the events of the game and its expansions so far. 

"So, where we were at when we were ideating the Skyline Valley expansion was, we were looking for what's the next chapter in the story of this main character."

I asked if they had all of the story planned out, thinking back to Rush's comment during the private presentation where he talked about this still being the beginning for Fallout 76.

Rush began, "We have it mapped out a ways, but we have this bucket of [ideas]... we could say hey this actually would fit really cool here if it gelled with this."

He spoke about this with the example of the upcoming ability to play a ghoul. "It's going to have a very heavy relation to other features we haven't even discussed yet, but it's going to be there, and that's what's going to make these features last."

You can learn about the Fallout 76 Skyline Valley expansion from the developer preview and launch trailer.