Fallout 76 is free this week to celebrate a big series birthday

Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Role Playing Game (opens in new tab) was released on October 10, 1997—25 years ago, minus a week. That’s the silver anniversary, which is a big one as these milestones go, and to mark the moment Bethesda is—among other things—making Fallout 76 free for the week.

Fallout 76 is very different from the original Fallout, an isometric RPG with turn-based combat set in a grim post-war world. I won’t get into which one is “better”—I like old Fallout, I like new Fallout—but the current iteration of the series, a multiplayer-first-person game that focuses on action over roleplaying in a somewhat more lighthearted setting, is definitely a different sort of experience. It was very okay at launch, earning a 60% in our 2018 review (opens in new tab) as “a beautifully crafted but ultimately repetitive world,” but it’s come a long way since, racking up a reported 13 million players so far, and earlier this year Bethesda announced  a “five-year roadmap (opens in new tab)” for the future.