During E3 2015, Bethesda announced its free-to-play mobile game Fallout Shelter. The game was later released on additional platforms. Almost five years later, Bethesda has released the game’s sequel Fallout Shelter Online in specific countries: South Korea, Japan, and SEA countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore. Players in those regions can pick up the game now on iOS or Android.
Fallout Shelter’s basic premise is to act as an Overseer of a growing underground vault. The Great War happened long ago, but people are still suffering the effects of radiation and need a place for shelter.
As Overseer, players can choose who to let in, encourage vault dwellers to populate the vault, and manage basic utilities. Some power dwellers can leave the vault and explore other parts of the Wasteland for additional supplies.
Bethesda has added events and missions to keep players engaged. After vaults have grown to max capacity and dwellers are powerful to take on the lands alone, many players have lost interest.
Fallout Shelter Online hopes to bring the original joy of the first game but bring it online. This will be another attempt to bring the series online after Fallout 76, which had a rough launch but is now gaining favor with some players after the addition of NPCs and more story quests.
Fallout Shelter Online will add additional content, not in the first game. More characters and locations from the Fallout series will be added over time. Another benefit is a PvP multiplayer mode to fight against other Overseers.
However, it does seem as though the game is starting off by focusing on Fallout 4 characters first. Some of the artwork and social media pages show Nick Valentines plus the Minutemen’s Sturges, who can be added to players’ parties. Other locations from FO4 will also appear, like Sanctuary Hills. Synths will appear in all forms, either as humans or companions. Anyone in the game could be a Synth, “including the player” teases the official website.
Bethesda began promoting Fallout Shelter Online on social media. In Japan alone, the number of pre-registered players exceeded 400,000, and everyone was given a free Robert MacCready (who appeared in Fallout 3 and 4) outfit.
Fallout Shelter Online is currently only available in select Asian countries for now. This may be to test the online servers and resolve any major issues before releasing the game to the rest of the world.