TAKE ME HOME
Get ready for Fallout 76’s beta.
Fallout 76 has a release date: you’ll be able to take on the Virginian wasteland with friends from 14 November. Though if you’re eager to leave your bunker early, there’ll be a beta for those who pre-order ahead of that date. Better stock up on Nuka-Cola now.
This multiplayer prequel to all of the other games in the series takes place 25 years after the bombs fall. Either solo or with friends, you’ll emerge into the largest wasteland in series history. As it features a dynamic weather system, plus creatures (new to the series) inspired by the West Virginia setting’s folklore, you’ll also have to deal with some especially chaotic, unpredictable elements.
BUDDY UP
“There are no human NPCs,” Pete Hines, Bethesda vice president, tells us, “[…] Every character – every human character – you see is a real person.” This lack of NPCs doesn’t mean you’ll be hurting for quests, though, nor any of the other Fallout hallmarks. Hines says, “We want you to still have those same choices, those same decisions, those same kinds of experiences,” elaborating that you’ll be able to have multiple characters to build towards specialities that help them fare better in different situations.
Playing solo and with others are presented as equally viable options. We’re told because of the size of the map, and because you’ll be on a server with dozens of others (as opposed to hundreds, as with many other online games), you may go some time between encountering other players.
Hines explains, “It’s a limited number of people. It’s supposed to feel like you and people in that vault are the ones emerging to rebuild this world and to be who you want to be in the world, not ‘here’s this massive world that’s hugely populated’. We don’t want it to feel like an MMO. We don’t want it to feel like, you know, a battle royale where there’s 100 people and you kill everybody, it’s supposed to be an online RPG.”
That said, if you want to kill people, you can gain access to long-
NEAR A NUCLEAR IMPACT, YOU’LL NEED TO MOVE QUICKLY.
forgotten nuclear warheads in this game. The access codes are scattered around the expansive world, and may be dropped by enemies who have been squirrelling them away. If you happen to gather a full access code, you can launch a warhead at anywhere on the map, resulting in a sizeable crater and an impressive mushroom cloud. You can even launch one at another player’s base and pick through the wreckage once the dust has settled and you’ve gathered sufficient provisions to deal with the irradiated zone.
“You’re creating a high-level zone for a period of time where that nuke has gone off, where you’re gonna face like really tough creatures, you’re gonna find rare resources […],” Hines elaborates before cautioning, “It’s not like you could just be popping off nukes every five minutes. They’re not easy to get to, then they’re not easy to get, and then it’s not easy to get to where you go to launch them, and then the area you create is […] more difficult.”
DANGER ZONE
If you find yourself on the receiving end of a nascent nuclear impact, your demise will not be instantaneous. Move quickly enough and it’s possible to pick up your base and move it somewhere else. Hines also tells us the devs are still experimenting with balancing but are hoping to avoid a situation where, say, you’re mobbed by ten high-level guys in power armour as soon as you step out of the vault.
However, he goes on to say, “But you can play Fallout 4 and get jumped by […] Raiders as you’re walking through. We don’t want there to be no danger […] there ought to be an element where you see other human beings and there’s [something] meaningful [about it].”
We’ll see how Bethesda tries to strike that balance when the Break it Early Test Application launches ahead of the November release date. Watch this space for our impressions later this year. What are you most looking forward to in Fallout 76? Tweet us @OPM_UK.