Fallout 76

Fallout 76 — a new game set in the Fallout universe, serving as a prequel to all previous parts of the series. The events begin at Vault 76, the first built. According to Vault-Tec's plan, it should be the first to open after nuclear bombs fall on America. The setting of Fallout 76 is West Virginia without settlements of survivors or factions; all of this and much more must be built by the player themselves. Fallout 76 is a multiplayer game based on dedicated servers architecture. Most of the wasteland inhabitants are real people.

First-person multiplayer shooter with RPG elements in a large, open world. Fallout 76 is about surviving for the player or a group of players after a nuclear apocalypse. You need to feed your character, provide weapons and armor, gather resources, build a base, defend against dangerous mutants, and go on raids.

At launch, the game had many repetitive quests, made hastily or generated automatically by scripts. The maximum character level is unlimited; some gear requires level 120, and the higher your current level, the longer it takes to reach the next. Up to level 50, playing in a team of four players takes about an hour per level, and twice as long if playing solo.

Fallout 76 uses an improved Creation engine, refined after Fallout 4 in terms of graphics quality and model detailing, with Quake network code. Development took over 7 years, initially planned as multiplayer Fallout 4, and was created by Bethesda staff assembled into a team after the cancellation of the free-to-play shooter Battlecry.

Fallout 76 takes place in West Virginia, and the game world is four times larger than Fallout 4. It features all landscapes — forests and hills, meadows and valleys, rivers, lakes, and swamps, nuclear wasteland, as well as various terrain types — from military bases to cities. Up to 24 players can be in the game world simultaneously, making Fallout 76 a very sparsely populated MMOFPS.

For the project, new monsters were created, mainly mutated bats that turned into various grotesques resembling dragons after the war. They live in huge caves underground, emerge, and destroy everything in their path. To stop their spread, players must launch nuclear missiles.

The affected area after an explosion completely changes; rare materials, dangerous mutants, and plants appear there. A zone is created for farming with a leveled-up character, and the more players, the better.

Among other new creatures are a strong and huge sloth; a wasp carrying a hive on its back; a giant skeleton, and others. Old familiar enemies include various robots, wild ghouls, and super mutants.

At the beginning of the game, you need to create your character using the enhanced editor from Fallout 4. Then the player finds themselves in Vault 76, after which they set out to conquer the world. Upon leaving the Vault, they are given the main quest, which cannot be completed without exploring all 6 zones of the game world.

Playing Fallout 76 is impossible without connecting to a server and cooperating with other players, but after release, a private server feature was added, where you can play alone or with trusted friends.

Although the game is a prequel to all previous series games, it features well-known factions (Brotherhood of Steel as a reference) and enemies (super mutants), and Bethesda has opened up new opportunities for developing the game universe. But Fallout 76 does not have a story mode or any NPCs to interact with. Everything comes down to completing repetitive quests and player communication.

The gameplay mechanics of Fallout 76 combine ideas from Fallout 4, Rust and Destiny — players complete various missions, gather resources, and level up their characters. The combat system is based on shooter mechanics with a large arsenal of weapons, many options for regular and power armor.

The character is still equipped with a Pip-Boy, but the RPG system and S.P.E.C.I.A.L. parameters are presented differently. Instead of traditional leveling, players open card packs. Each card (which is a perk) can only be placed in a specific S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attribute slot. As a particular attribute increases, the number of slots for cards also increases.

These cards can also be upgraded by combining two identical cards into one. Each perk card has three levels of improvement.

As players explore the game world, complete quests, defeat enemies, upgrade equipment, and perform other actions, they earn experience points that increase their level. During travels, players also find components for high-quality armor. The higher the level, the better weapons and armor they can wear, the more confident they feel in the world, and the more dangerous enemies they can encounter.

The workshop mode remains, allowing players to build a cozy base where they can rest, craft equipment, upgrade weapons and armor. It is linked to a specific character, appears when they log in, and disappears after logout, easily restored or moved anywhere on the map.

The main tasks for players in Fallout 76 are related to survival against the environment (PvE) — forming teams, helping each other, trading, destroying mobs, and participating in joint raids. Players can create their own faction, like the Brotherhood of Steel or Minutemen, and accept members, be traders, or live as hermits.

Regarding the "player versus player" (PvP) mode, to participate, you need to accept a challenge or find someone who has illegally killed another player. There are no safe zones in the game world, so you can be attacked anywhere.

The killed player loses nothing in their progress: weapons, ammunition remain at the location of the kill (they need to be taken immediately), and the base is saved on the account. Additionally, you can respawn anywhere on the map.

Developers have created several protective systems that prevent conflicts or shooting on a whim, harming other players, chasing, or constantly killing someone. For example, an illegal killer is immediately marked in red and becomes visible to all honest players on the map — it’s easy to find the poor fellow.