Is Bethesda bringing the series back to Fallout 3’s capitol wasteland?

Often hinted at but never formally announced, the DLC-like feature hopes to one day take the game beyond the Appalachian wilderness for a few nuclear vacationing. But new screenshots from a supposedly hacked server suggest one of these may take us all the way back into Washington, D.C.–the setting for Bethesda’s Fallout debut.

The images were shared through an Imgur hyperlink about the Fallout76 subreddit by cyberRakan, and show some profoundly work-in-progress surroundings that many feel strongly resemble Fallout 3’s urban landscape–in particular, the unmistakeable shake of Dupont Circle.

The majority of the assets are visibly placeholder, especially the large spire at the rear of the picture. While widely thought to be a rough blockout of the Washington Monument, many argue that it might be anything from a church spire into New York’s Chrysler Building.

The shots were supposedly taken by a”buddy” of Rakan’s on a hacked server. Apparently, portions of the FO76 community have bashed together their own servers that, although highly unstable, allow access to portions of the game inaccessible on official servers.

“Its horribly buggy and always [crashes to background ], however you can access stuff you can not access or could be prohibited for going to in the official server,” Rakan told me through DM.

There’s every reason to be biased, thoughts. These hackers might have stumbled upon some old environment tests, or artificial prototypes for present Fallout 76 regions. That is if they are from a hacked server at all–with details mild on the ground, these shots could’ve just come from a mapper fooling about in Fallout 4 modding tools.

Sadly, it may be a while until we figure out. After Covid-related delays, Expeditions will not arrive until 2022 in the oldest.