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Bethesda has teased a new Fallout game, Fallout 76.
Updated with new information based on a new report about Fallout 76's gameplay.
Bethesda has been signalling the announcement since yesterday and, on a stream today, Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard appeared to introduce the game, and explained that there would be more at E3.
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It's not yet clear what kind of game Fallout 76 will be, or which of Bethesda's studios has been involved in developing it. However, Fallout 76 is currently available for pre-order at the standard $59.99, suggesting it will not be a free-to-play game. It is currently only confirmed for PC, Xbox One, and PS4.
The titular Vault 76 has previously been mentioned but never seen in previous Fallout games. A "control vault" containing 500 occupants, living in Vault 76 doesn't appear to involve the cruel experiments most Vaults in the series have been known for.
It's also not clear where Vault 76 is located, but the song used in the teaser, 'Take Me Home Country Roads' does mention "West Virginia", which could be a clue. Prior Fallout lore also gives us a clue about Fallout 76's setting.
Fallout 76 Screenshots 4 IMAGES Fullscreen Image Artboard 3 Copy Artboard 3 ESC 01 4 01 4 Fallout 76 Screenshots Download Image Captions ESC
Fallout 76 Gameplay: Reportedly an "Online Survival RPG"
According to sources speaking anonymously to Kotaku, Fallout 76 reportedly will be an online survival RPG, along the lines of DayZ or Rust. According to Kotaku, Fallout 76 will still have quests and a story, as well as base building and "survival-based and multiplayer mechanics." The gameplay is "rapidly changing," though, according to Kotaku.
As for story details, IGN's own Jordan Oloman spotted what could be a date for the game's setting - October 27, 2102 - which would place it canonically before every other Fallout game released so far. It's also worth noting that October 28 was the release date for Fallout 3, 10 years ago - perhaps just a coincidence, but interesting nonetheless.
Ok, so I've done some trailer snooping. #Fallout76 is set prior to every Fallout game we've seen, occurs a few decades after the Great War. This is the year that Richard Grey (The Master) falls in the vat and mutates. Interesting. #PleaseStandBy pic.twitter.com/ALNaawhU6D — Jordan Oloman (@JordanOloman) May 30, 2018
Kotaku reports that its sources say Fallout 76 will be an online game, and is a co-development between Bethesda's core Maryland studio and its Austin office. Perhaps that makes it the "bleeding-edge AAA freemium game" we saw was in development last year?
We'll likely only learn more at Bethesda's June 10 E3 showcase - here's everything else we expect to see there.
Every IGN Fallout Review 10+ IMAGES Fullscreen Image Artboard 3 Copy Artboard 3 ESC 01 25 With the exception of the very first game, we've reviewed every single Fallout and expansion. Click through to see what we've thought of the Fallout series over the years. 01 25 With the exception of the very first game, we've reviewed every single Fallout and expansion. Click through to see what we've thought of the Fallout series over the years. Every IGN Fallout Review Download Image Captions ESC
Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK News Editor, and he is already being sick at the thought of "can I play it if I haven't played the other 75 games?" jokes. Follow him on Twitter.
Screenshot: Fallout 76 teaser trailer
When Bethesda announced Fallout 76 with a teaser trailer this morning, promising more information at E3, it was easy to assume that the new game would be a traditional single-player role-playing game. But Fallout 76 is in fact an online survival RPG that’s heavily inspired by games like DayZ and Rust, according to three people familiar with the project.
Those people, speaking anonymously so as not to damage their careers, confirmed that Fallout 76 is an experimental new entry in the longrunning post-apocalyptic series. When Bethesda first teased the game on Tuesday morning, fans and pundits speculated that it might be a Fallout 3 remaster or a New Vegas-style spinoff in a new location, but as Kotaku reported that afternoon, it is in fact something completely new and completely different. The teaser might lead Fallout fans to believe that this is a traditional entry in the series, but according to our sources, that’s not the case.
Originally prototyped as a multiplayer version of Fallout 4 with the goal of envisioning what an online Fallout game might look like, Fallout 76 has evolved quite a bit over the past few years, those sources said. It will have quests and a story, like any other game from Bethesda Game Studios, a developer known for meaty RPGs like Skyrim. It will also feature base-building—just like 2015's Fallout 4—and other survival-based and multiplayer mechanics, according to those sources. One source cautioned that the gameplay is rapidly changing, like it does in many online “service” games, but that’s the core outline.
The game is named after the series’ Vault 76, which has been mentioned in both Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. According to Fallout lore, Vault 76 was meant to open just 20 years after the nuclear war, allowing for a far less civilized setting than previous games. Fallouts 3 and 4, which are full of cities and settlements, both take place over 200 years after the war, after much of the population has had time to reconstruct human civilization. Fallout 76 will feel very different. As the narrator of the trailer says: “When the fighting is stopped, and the fallout has settled, you must rebuild.”
Fallout 76 is in development not just at Bethesda Game Studios’ main office, in Maryland, where the likes of Skyrim and Fallout 4 were made, but also at the company’s newest branch, in Austin, according to our sources. That Austin studio, formerly known as BattleCry Studios, had been working on an online hero combat game called BattleCry before that game was canceled. “We have concerns about the BattleCry game and whether it is meeting the objectives we have for it,” Bethesda told press in the fall of 2015. “We are evaluating what improvements the game needs to meet our quality standards. The studio remains busy during this process on multiple projects.” In March, Bethesda announced that BattleCry Studios had become part of Bethesda Game Studios.
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Bethesda did not respond to a request for comment. We’ll see more of Fallout 76 at the publisher’s E3 press conference on June 10.
After a twitter tease yesterday that left tens of thousands of people staring at a livestream of absolutely nothing for hours, Bethesda (eventually) announced Fallout 76, an upcoming game we probably won't hear more about (officially) until E3. In the meantime, we can speculate on what it might be, bolstered by some info anonymously given to Kotaku . Fallout 76, according to Kotaku's report, is an online survival RPG, the online part being the most interesting feature considering the single-player nature of Bethesda's past Fallout games.
The teaser trailer shows the aftermath of a celebration inside Vault 76, after which the inhabitants have apparently gone back outside. According to the Fallout wiki, Vault 76 was a 'control' vault scheduled to open just 20 years after the war, making this a bit of a prequel. That's about all we know, so let's get into some guesswork.
Chris: Settlements, The Game
With so much focus on the settlement system in Fallout 4, building and managing outposts basically felt like its own game within the game. My guess is that this is an expansion of Fallout 4's settlements system, to the point of not just building towns but entire working cities. I'm also hoping it's a major refining of the building tools, because I always thought the interface was seriously awkward to use. The system itself was also much better modded with the excellent and imaginative Sim Settlements mod , which gave you the choice to build things yourself or let your citizens handle it (or a little of both). I'm really hoping that the modder who created it, Kinggath, is now secretly on Bethesda's payroll and helping them design a great settlement building system, because his mod is so good it should really be a part of the game .
If Fallout 76 really is an online survival RPG, presumably you'll be able to team up with other players to build your settlements, establish borders and communities (hopefully with NPCs to populate them, too), tame the local mutated wildlife, and of course compete with, battle with, or raid other players' outposts. Ark: Survival Evolved, in other words, but with Deathclaws and Pip-boys.
Of course, Ark has no human NPCs, but Conan Exiles has both NPC enemies and allies (I mean, once you enslave them), so it would be great to be able to clash with raiders and other NPC factions, recruit homesteaders and citizens, and establish communities that aren't just made up of other players.
Rachel: Fallout Shelter gets an upgrade
According to Fallout lore, Vault 76 has 500 occupants, wasn't used for any kinky experimental shit, and if we go by the date on the Pip Boy in the trailer (October 27, 2102) the game is set 185 years before Fallout 4. I think Chris has nailed it with the settlements system, but I think Fallout 76 will add a Fallout Shelter element.
As well as building a new world, you'll have to manage the people within it, Sims style. Make laws, keep morale high, set up vegetable plots, make tough choices about chem addicts. The trailer doesn't show us any weaponry, instead it's all party aftermath (it's all fun and games until someone has to clean the confetti off the soccer pitch) and the comforts of an underground home, so it makes sense that's what Bethesda is focusing on.
Austin: Vault-Tec Workshop, but hopefully better
Bethesda has made a big, time-wasting tease of announcing it, but Fallout 76 feels kind of obvious. The rumors sound exactly like the game Bethesda has been quietly threatening to make for years. Maybe it'll wow us and defy all expectations at E3 (it won't), but I reckon Chris and Rachel are both right: it's gonna have some building stuff ripped from Fallout 4, and it's gonna have some citizen management stuff a la Fallout Shelter.
Personally I hope to see it double down on the idea of role-playing as a vault overseer (or, if it is multiplayer, a council of overseers), which Fallout 4's Vault-Tec Workshop DLC clumsily introduced. It may well be possible if Fallout 76 can Frankenstein together the best parts of Fallout Shelter and the few redeeming qualities of Fallout 4's settlements. My biggest question is whether the alleged multiplayer will feel like ARK, where there's at least some semblance of cooperation, or Rust, where absolutely everyone is a dick trying to kill you.
James: Fort-building is nigh
I think we've all agreed that we’ll probably see an expansion of the settlement system, but considering the multiplayer rumors, I’m going to bet you’ll be able to build on the fly. Imagine a competitive multiplayer game featuring, I don’t know, 100 or so players on a single irradiated island. Players can harvest trees, rocks, and rusty metal with an specialized Pip-Boy and use a simple, grid-based building system consisting of wall pieces, floor and ceiling pieces, and angled ramp pieces that appear the moment they’re placed. Imagine running up a ramp as you build it, or slamming together four walls and a ramp into a small 1x1 recon encampment on the fly.
Throw in some wacky skins and era-appropriate emotes, and we’ve got a winner. For tonight only, I'll pretend such an epic game can exist.
