Now, of course in recent years the whole 'roadmap to success' model of detailing the future of a live service has come under supreme scrutiny. Years ago when this was used for smaller indie titles like Starbound, these served as a great grounding tool for the development team as well as to provide sufficient reasons for the audience to support these projects. (In return for rewards like extended features) In the modern day, however, they usually just serve as a way to make wild, even vague, promises about what you will receive from a game in order to keep you interested even if there's no way in hell that it'll ever deliver. Just look at Anthem and the way that their Roadmap fell apart because they promised too much without making sure the base game was working. It's basically the equivalent of drafting a business plan exclusively for your audience. (Only ours has to have bright colours and pictures because we're all twelve.) Yet Bethesda have proved that they can execute on their roadmaps, at least mostly (those Raids still offline, Bethesda?) so maybe you can give them a little credit. If nothing else, it shows how they see Wastelanders as a beginning over an endpoint.
This block of content that we're currently in is easily the one that has received the most buzz and that's likely because of how it's the one with the most details. (Although one such detail was blown a little out of proportion) Yes, that's right; Fallout 76 will finally be implementing a Battle Pass system in their 'Seasons'. Now I'm not going to do you the disservice of explaining what a Battle Pass is again, but I will detail the general response because I think it's interesting. In their post detailing how 'Seasons' will provide actual items and skins as a reward, Bethesda commented on how the first season will be free, which set off so many people it's not even funny. Take a look at the Internet and you'll see oodles of people slamming Bethesda for adding another monetary system to Fallout 76, all because they specified that 'the first one' is free, without any evidence that the later ones wouldn't be. I personally demonstrated uncharacteristic restraint (or probably just very characteristic laziness) in waiting for an official response from Bethesda and guess what; the other Seasons will be free too. Yeah, it was just unfortunate poor wording on their part. (Obviously. Have you seen literally the entire rest of this game's life cycle?)
As for the other items in this block, it seems that Bethesda are committed to finally solving the longest awaited player QOL features, which is a great bedrock for this next year of content. Public team finding is a big one for me, Fasnacht festival is a nostalgic look at the first time that Fallout 76 really started to nail bringing the community together (Also, if the spawn rate of this event is anything like it was last year, we're all gonna be Gold Bullion rich by the end of this event) and Meat Week is... I didn't really like Meat week, but we're getting it again so... yay... For me, the big new feature are the legendary perk cards which hope to solve the issue of redundant levelling for many people once they fix their build. As a crit sniper myself, (No, that build is not very effective; thank you for pointing it out) I could really use a few bigger perks to add to my character and become a bigger presence in some of the harder events. I just want to successfully build my glass cannon, and I think legendary perk cards might be the first step to that weird dream coming true.
The 'One Wasteland For All' block is probably the most eyerolling from where I'm sitting, because this is literally the arc that all of these games seem to take. They start out as traditional RPG's with online skeletons thrown on top; meaning level-lists and damage scaling, only to realise that community is better encouraged without that barrier to play and so they remove that. (whilst calling it a feature.) Zenimax pulled the same stunt for ESO with 'One Tamriel' and now Fallout 76 is following suit with practically the exact same labelling. (Just another example of how Bethesda simply refused to learn from Zenimax's mistakes when originally putting 76 together.) All that being said, I won't pretend like this isn't the right move for the game and I do encourage it, although for me the much more interesting footnote is the one about the teaser questline that will be introduced here in order to build hype for the next big step of the game.
That's because in the Winter the Brotherhood of Steel finally return to Appalachia with Fractured Steel, the second big event for the Fallout 76 landscape. (I couldn't be more excited!) It's crazy to start seeing the actual things that make Fallout unique come to the game, and it's heartening to think that a solid journey is being planned out for this title. Even when Wastelanders hit and the bones of a Fallout world were built, it still felt hollow without those timeless factions like the Brotherhood, Enclave or the Followers of the Apocalypse. Bethesda tried to create their own factions with Foundation and, the imaginatively named, Raiders; but let's just say there's a reason why this franchise keeps coming back to it's routes. (Yeah, the new factions are about as well thought out and deep as a puddle.)
As a bit of a lore hound I will admit that I am slightly ruffled by the mere existence of this branch of the Brotherhood (they were founded on the West Coast) but I've had a year to get over that fact now and all I want is more content. Additionally, this block will come with some new allies to get to know and by then I might actually have enough content to make a 'the best companion in' blog, so you could say I'm personally invested. It appears as though Bethesda have framed this to be the next big step forward for the game, and in that case it's actually quite interesting that it's coming as soon as this Winter. They're not waiting until next year to hit the fans with another shock to the system; it's quite the momentum their building and I'm curious whether or not it's something they can keep up.
In conclusion, I approach this roadmap with the same muted optimism that I did with the last roadmap, only this time with the vague hope of something more. The endgoal of the last roadmap was to perform a successful course correct and get this game to a state it should have launched in, and to that end I feel they've performed adequately, however the next roadmap will really show if the game they've made has the potential to ever be something more. A lot of the shortcomings of Wastelanders has been forgivable given the size of the shift in direction, but I don't think the same can't be said if Fractured Steel isn't to the quality they promise. However that turns out, folk like me will be along for the whole ride, so I'll have my fingers crossed that Bethesda know which route to take this time.
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