Where in a new interview with IGN, the head of Bethesda Game Studios opens up about the troubled game. "We knew this is not the type of game that people are used to from us," Todd Howard says of Fallout 76. "We're going to get some criticism on it, and a lot of that is very well-deserved criticism."

Hindsight is everything and Howard expresses that the team wished they were able to get the game into players hands earlier for an extensive Beta or Early Access period. Stating, "You've got to let it bake with a large live audience for longer than we did. There are just certain things you can never see until it's running 24/7 for a number of months."

Which is in direct reference to the protracted Closed Beta period for Fallout 76 that lasted for only a few hours a few weeks before the final release - leaving not much time to respond or update the game. And with the launch being plagued by bugs and performance issues across all platforms - the backlash was swift.

In terms of Fallout 76's current state, with months of regular updates including new content drops this past month - Bethesda and Todd Howard are far happier with the current state of the game. With Howard saying that it has "really turned around" and "it's not how you launch, it's what it becomes." Interestingly Todd Howard admits that the reaction to Fallout 76 might have caused irreparable damage to the Bethesda and Fallout brand.

As per our own review, we felt that the core loop had potential but the sheer amount of bugs and issues and design faults (no human NPCs for example) were huge problems. We'll be following up on Fallout 76 later this year after more content is added to see the difference for ourselves.