On May 30th, 2018 Bethesda announced their newest game, Fallout 76, through a Twitch livestream. It’s safe to say that they took the gaming community by storm. It seems the reputable game company just couldn’t wait until the E3 conference to announce their newest addition to the Fallout universe. Here’s everything you need to know about Fallout 76.

Fallout 76’s Story

Explore West Virginia with your fellow survivors in the newest action-packed prequel from Bethesda Game Studios

Set in West Virginia twenty-five years after the bombs drop, Fallout 76 is a prequel to the other games in the Fallout series. Get ready to don the signature blue jumpsuit, because in this installment you will play as a Vault Dweller who has just emerged from Vault 76 on a special day known as “Reclamation Day”. But what is Reclamation Day and why is it important?

Well, unlike the other vaults in the Fallout universe, Vault 76 was Vault-Tec’s control vault. This means that it was not a part of the horrific experiments carried out by the infamous vault company. Instead, Vault 76’s only stipulation was that the vault’s doors be opened twenty years after the bombs dropped, on a day to be called Reclamation Day. However, we know from Bethesda that Vault 76 opened its doors five years later than it was supposed to. This begs the question... what went wrong?

It’s up to you and the other survivors of Vault 76 to find out.

Why West Virginia, though? In a documentary about the making of Fallout 76, Bethesda developers stated that West Virginia was an attractive option due to the rural setting and the fact that it would not be the first choice for a nuclear strike. Many prominent landmarks and cities such as Charleston, the state capital, and Morgantown, the home of West Virginia State University, will be featured in the game.

Even landmarks such as the Greenbrier, a famous resort in West Virginia that houses its own real-life nuclear bunker, will appear amidst the war-torn nuclear wasteland. Additionally, we will see the appearance of the New River Gorge Bridge, undoubtedly more scarred by nuclear war and filled with debris than its real-life counterpart.

According to Bethesda, Fallout 76’s map will be twice the size of its predecessor, Fallout 4. It will be a detail-rich environment in which the player has the freedom to do what they want to, whether that means being a do-good survivor or a thieving raider.

For those in the modding community, it is unlikely that Fallout 76 will be able to be modded as it’s an online multiplayer game. However, Bethesda has not announced whether the game will support mods or not as of yet.

Fallout 76’s Release Date

Fallout 76 was announced on May 30th, 2018, just a week before the annual E3 conference, sending the gaming community into a frenzy. The announcement was made through a livestream on the streaming platform called Twitch, and then later was formally announced at the annual E3 conference.

The standard edition of Fallout 76 was released on November 18, 2018, being priced at $59.99. There are also two special editions,the Tricentennial Edition and the Power Armor Edition. For those wondering, Microtransactions are available for players to purchase cosmetic items. However, Bethesda says that players are able to earn these items through gameplay as well.

Similar to Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch, Bethesda has announced that they will constantly be updating Fallout 76 as well as making all DLC free. Their goal is to make updates available “for years to come”.

Fallout 76’s Gameplay

Fallout 76 is Bethesda’s first endeavor into the online multiplayer survival roleplaying game genre. The new installment of the Fallout franchise will reportedly be similar to Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls Online, which is a massively multiplayer roleplaying game, except with survival concepts like hunger and thirst.

Fans of Bethesda games will be happy to learn that the company’s game rendering engine is getting an update. According to Bethesda’s Todd Howard, the game rendering engine is getting a serious overhaul. At E3 2018, he stated, “We always start with the world. This time it starts with new lighting, rendering, and landscape technology.”

This can already be seen with Fallout 4, the previous game in the series. Compared to prior Fallout installments, it has better lighting, graphics, and distance rendering.

Players who enjoy the character creation aspect of Bethesda games will not be disappointed in Fallout 76. According to Bethesda developers, their newest installment will have lots of new character creation options, along with some of the old ones that gamers know and love, including classic hairstyles such as Wendy the Welder.

Once the playable character emerges from Vault 76, they will have a rich environment to explore. According to Bethesda developers, the landscape of Fallout 76 won’t be entirely as irradiated as we have seen in previous games. In fact, there will be areas that are almost untouched from nuclear fallout, except, of course, the Fallout world’s signature collapse of civilized society.

Upon entering the wasteland, the playable character can explore six regions of West Virginia’s wasteland. These regions include: The Forest (where Vault 76 resides), Toxic Valley, Ash Heap, Savage Divide, The Mire, and Cranberry Bog. Each of these regions has their own unique enemies, including brand new monsters and bosses for the player to try their luck against.

There are six all new regions for gamers to explore within Fallout 76, each with their own unique enemies, monsters, and bosses.

On the topic of new enemies, some of West Virginia’s most notable mythical monsters of legend will be making an appearance. One such monster is the Mothman, a creature who was reportedly seen in Point Pleasant around the mid-1960s. The Flatwoods Monster, a strange creature that was spotted in Flatwoods, West Virginia in the 1950s, has also been confirmed to appear in the game.

Local plants and animals will also make an appearance in the game, but will be severely mutated, as is tradition with other flora and fauna in the Fallout universe. Interestingly, a new variation of the feral ghoul called the Scorched has been revealed. These new ghouls will be one of many AI enemies that player characters can encounter throughout the  different regions of the game. According to Bethesda developers, there will be more than 63 different types of animals and monsters.

Once the player character has embarked into the wasteland of West Virginia, it will be up to them to scavenge resources including food, water, and scrap metal. These resources not only help the player stay alive, but it helps them set up their Construction and Assembly Mobile Platform (C.A.M.P.). This is an interesting new feature that is similar to the settlements feature in Fallout 4. It will allow the player character a place to store their supplies and take shelter.

You can also set up shops and trade goods with other players, which is an especially useful feature if you have set up your C.A.M.P. in a place that has a limited amount of a certain resource. When players enter the game, they along with their bases, will load at their last known location. Additionally, players are given a blueprint of their base, in case they want to move it to a different location. However, players must proceed with caution. C.A.M.P.’s can be raided or even destroyed by other characters.

PVP and PVE will be a big part of Fallout 76. However, players can choose to opt out of it if they prefer not to fight other players. Bethesda recently announced that PVP will include a bounty system in which players can put a price on the head of other players.

Two features that will be returning to Fallout 76 are the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S), and the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes. However, it’s been announced that instead of permanent perks, the player character will have perk cards. The player will only be able to equip a certain amount of perk cards at a time, although they can swap out their perk cards at any time or even trade them with other players.

Stealth mode is also returning to Fallout 76. Todd Howard admitted that it was a little bit difficult to configure it for the new multiplayer game, but they seem to have found a way. Dots showing the location of players will appear on the map. However, when a player goes into sneak mode, those dots will disappear, rendering them virtually invisible to other players and AI enemies.

A large part of the gameplay of Fallout 76 is the chance to acquire nuclear launch codes. These codes can be used to program a nuclear strike on either AI enemies or fellow players. However, it’s not easy to find these codes.

Players may even need to work together to find a series of codes. Once found, they will need to enter into a computer system found in a remote location. The computer system is most likely guarded by strong level AI enemies, so watch out! Players in the area that’s being bombed will then receive a warning, telling them that the area is set to be bombed and that they should evacuate.

One thing is for sure, Fallout 76 is going to incorporate the best features of its predecessors while bringing new and interesting content to the table.

Fallout 76’s Trailers

Fallout 76 – Official Trailer

During the Fallout 76 announcement livestream on Twitch, a Bethesda employee dressed as a Vault-Boy put a Vault-Boy figurine to bed. The Twitch livestream ended with a trailer, which began by playing the song Take Me Home, Country Roads on a wireless radio. In the trailer, we saw the insides of Vault 76 on what appeared to be Reclamation Day. The Pip-Boy that was strapped to the player’s wrist showed a clock that read “27 OCT 2012”, which showed us that this game was to be a prequel.

FALLOUT 76 - Nuke Combat E3 2018

A week after this trailer was revealed, Todd Howard, the Creative Director of Fallout 76, appeared at E3 and revealed another official trailer for the game. This time, the trailer featured a traditional animation style showing the Vault-Boy surviving in the wasteland. The trailer went into specifics on how the combat systems and the C.A.M.P. building system will work.

Fallout 76’s Developers

The much-anticipated game is under development at Bethesda Game Studios’ main office in Maryland and at the Austin office, which was once known as BattleCry Studios due to the fact that they were at one time tasked with making the ultimately cancelled hero shooter known as, BattleCry. The Creative Director, Todd Howard, is the executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, where he oversees the development of the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls series.

Interesting enough, another Fallout massively multiplayer online game began development in 2008 courtesy of Interplay and Masthead Studios. However, in 2009, Bethesda filed a lawsuit against Interplay, claiming that they had violated their agreement of development. The lawsuit resulted in the cancellation of the game and the transfer of all game rights to Bethesda. This was said to be the beginning of the idea of Fallout 76, although others have said that Bethesda wanted a game similar to The Elder Scrolls Online, except in the Fallout universe.

Fallout 76 News

Todd Howard made an announcement on how the company would deal with griefers and those who chose to camp outside of Vault 76, saying that “there are several tricks we are implementing to prevent other players from doing exactly the things you describe. For example, at the moment you cannot kill a player until he reaches level 5. Maybe we will change this rule, but we are aware of the risks, because that stuff does not appeal to us either. But it does not scare us to try new things and leave the players the total freedom to fight at their discretion or to not do so if they are not interested.”

Additionally, Howard also mentioned that the game will not include any NPCs, only other player characters. Since there will be no NPCs, quests will be given out by a variety of different elements such as through robots, terminals, holotapes, and even other player characters. He also confirmed that the game will have a basic day and night cycle and server synchronization.

A beta for the game was confirmed, though it is not known yet when the beta itself will launch.

One thing is for sure, Fallout 76 is sure to be a huge hit in the gaming community.

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