It’s possible pets may be coming to Fallout 76 soon. When it first launched in 2018, Fallout 76 was met with shockingly negative reviews. The online-only take on the traditionally single player franchise was scorned by critics for shamelessly cashing in on the “games as service” craze, while the Fallout fandom was disappointed by the game’s apparent disregard for the elements which made Fallout so special in the first place. Nobody was happy with the sheer quantity of technical issues in Fallout 76, with many players lamenting bugs which could ruin the game even beyond its tepid mission design and barren open world.
Since the game’s initial release Bethesda has made an effort to improve Fallout 76, fixing many of these bugs in an attempt to bring back lapsed players while also inexplicably introducing an overpriced subscription service and adding in pay-to-win microtransactions. Most recently, the free Wastelanders update delivered a much-needed overhaul to many of the game’s locations, adding in scores of NPCs and a substantial new quest line which essentially makes Fallout 76 feel much more like a legitimate Fallout title.
In the wake of Fallout 76‘s successful Wastelanders launch, project lead Jeff Gardiner and lead designer Ferret Baudoin participated in an Ask-Me-Anything session on Reddit. As reported by PC Gamer, when asked about the prospect of having pets in Fallout 76, they expressed an interest in adding them to the game, stating, “Now that we have our companions system in the game, we are looking to add pets as well.”
In addition to its numerous bug fixes and story additions, Wastelanders adds NPC companions to Fallout 76, characters who will aid or harm players as they explore and complete quests in Appalachia, the game’s version of West Virginia. With that blueprint in place, adding animal companions seems like the next logical step, especially since Fallout 3 and 4 both featured Dogmeat, a canine companion who functioned in much the same way as the more humanoid companions in their respective games. Hopefully, players will be able to recruit more exotic animals than dogs, like Fallout mainstays Deathclaws and Mirelurks.
It’s hard to say what the future holds for Fallout 76, but things are looking up for the game, arguably for the first time in its life. While not without its issues, Wastelanders has earned significant praise for bringing Fallout 76 in line with what players were expecting from the game back in 2018. Fallout 76 still has more glitches and bugs than it should, even by Bethesda’s standards, but the game has finally entered into a phase where new patches can actually add substantial content, rather than just run damage control for the numerous broken corners that shipped with the original release. In fact, if future updates are as content-rich as Wastelanders, Fallout 76 could have a genuinely bright future ahead of it.
