Fallout 76 Is Completely Online, Releasing November 14, 2018

Fallout 76 got a second big-stage appearance at E3 2018 thanks to its developer Bethesda Softworks’ E3 event. The game was first shown off at Microsoft’s Xbox briefing at E3 earlier today. Fallout 76 is the biggest game in the Fallout universe so far. As far as setting is concerned, Fallout 76 is set before all previous Fallout games released so far. Bethesda’s Todd Howard took to stage to talk about the game, but the company beseiged its own press event with a hilarious video about Skyrim, which made fun of the number of platforms this game has released on.

Back to Fallout 76 — the game world is four times the size of Fallout 4, and the game is set in West Virginia as you are one of the first to emerge in the game on to an untamed wasteland. Bethesda initially showed the same Fallout 76 trailer we’d already seen at the Microsoft briefing. The trailer is set to the song Country Roads by John Denver (for the West Virginia reference in the song, we presume).

Then there was more information about Fallout 76. Todd Howard said the vault was to celebrate America’s Tercentenary or the 300-year anniversary in 2076. We got to see more information about the game in the latter half of the Bethesda event, including some gameplay footage which shows the player waking up and wearing the Pip Boy console. A narrative shows the vault to be empty and highlights the fact that the player is among the last to wake up in Vault 76 as most of the others have already left.

This time Fallout 76 has 16 times the detail and you can even view distant weather systems across the map. The game also explores the entire landscape of West Virginia with six different regions for you to play through during the campaign. There are a wide variety of mutant monsters for you to tackle and the game also uses folklore from Virginia during the game. Each of the characters from Fallout 76 is a real person. Fallout 76 is entirely online, a piece of news that may displease some people in areas with limited Internet bandwidth. Let's hope the game's optimised for unreliable or slow Internet connections as we often find in India.

Todd Howard said the game can be played entirely solo and do all the quests and adventures on their own. He claimed that the company wanted to blend its style of games with a big multiplayer experience too, which influenced the decision to make the game completely online. You will be in the world with dozens of players and you can join your friends whenever you want in-game and carry your progression with you, Howard said on stage.

We also got to see actual gameplay footage from Fallout 76 where you see other players attacking you, and missions where you travel with your group of squadmates. In the game players are seen attacking humans and monsters alike, depending on who the enemy of the chapter is. The focus appears to be on playing the game together, as Howard said the easiest way to survive in the wasteland is to team up and build wherever you want in the game. He added that you can move your buildings to any other area in the game whenever you want. This hints at a base building component where you get to build defensive structures in the wasteland and encounter crises such as dangerous mutant monsters. There’s also a photo mode in the game for you to document your adventures.

There are also multiple nuclear sites on the map and the players can “do whatever you want with them”, according to Todd Howard. In Fallout 76, there are nuclear weapons and you can find out more about them by attacking enemies to find launch codes for nuclear weapons. You can collaborate with other squads to find the full launch code and launch a nuclear strike. Once you launch a nuclear fallout, you can raid the area for rare and valuable resources in Fallout 76. This game will have “100 percent dedicated servers” to support this game for the years to come. Todd Howard announced that Fallout 76 will have a beta too.

Fallout 76 will have a collector’s edition with a map of the in-game world that glows in the dark. It also comes with figures you can put on the map. It also comes with a Fallout collectible too — the TS-1 Power Helmet. This edition will be called Fallout 76: Power Armor Edition. Fallout 76 also got a release date — November 14, 2018.

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