Fallout 76

Fallout 76 is a new game in the Fallout universe, serving as a prequel to all parts of the series without exception. The events begin in Vault 76, the first of those built. It is also intended by Vault-Tec specialists to be the first to open after nuclear bombs fall on America. The setting of Fallout 76 is West Virginia, without settlements of survivors and factions; all of this and much more will have to be created by the players themselves. Fallout 76 is a multiplayer game built on dedicated server architecture. Most of the wasteland's inhabitants are real people.

A multiplayer first-person shooter with RPG elements in the large, open world of Fallout 76 focuses on the survival of the player or a group of players after a nuclear apocalypse. Players need to feed their character, provide them with weapons and armor, gather resources, build a base, fend off dangerous mutants, and go on raids.

At the time of release, the game had many repetitive quests that were hastily made or even automatically generated by scripts. The maximum character level is not capped; some equipment requires level 120, and the higher the current level, the longer it takes to reach the next one. Up to level 50, playing in a team of four players requires about an hour of time for each level, and twice as much if playing without friends.

Fallout 76 uses an improved Creation engine, refined after Fallout 4 in terms of graphics quality and model detail, with Quake's network code. Development took more than 7 years, initially planned as a multiplayer Fallout 4, and was created by Bethesda staff who formed 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 types of landscapes—forests and hills, meadows and valleys, rivers, lakes, and swamps, nuclear wasteland, as well as various types of terrain—from military bases to cities. Up to 24 players can be in the game world at the same time, making Fallout 76 an extremely sparsely populated MMOFPS.

New monsters were created for the project, primarily consisting of mutated bats that have turned into various dragon-like freaks after the war. They inhabit huge caves underground, emerging to wreak havoc. To stop their spread, players must launch nuclear missiles.

The area affected by the explosion completely changes, with rare materials, dangerous mutants, and plants appearing. A farming zone is created for leveled characters, and the more players there are, the better.

Among other new beasts are a strong and huge sloth; a wasp carrying a hive on its back; an oversized skeleton; and others. Familiar old foes include various types of robots, feral ghouls, and super mutants.

At the beginning of the game, you need to create your character using the improved editor from Fallout 4. Then the player finds themselves in Vault 76, after which they set out to conquer the world. Upon exiting the Vault, the main quest is given, 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 the release, a private server feature was added, where you can play alone or with trusted friends.

Despite the fact that the game is a prequel to all previous games in the series, it features well-known factions (the Brotherhood of Steel as a reference) and enemies (super mutants), and Bethesda has opened up new possibilities for developing the game universe. However, Fallout 76 lacks a story mode and any NPCs to interact with. Everything boils 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 character. The combat system is based on shooter mechanics with a large arsenal of weapons and 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 in a different way. Instead of the usual leveling up, the player unlocks 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.

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

As players explore the game world, they earn experience for completing quests, killing enemies, leveling up ammunition, and other actions, which accumulates into levels. Also, during their travels, players find components for quality ammunition. The higher the level, the better quality weapons and armor can be worn, the more confident the player feels in the world, and the more dangerous enemies can be encountered.

The workshop mode has been preserved, allowing players to create a cozy base, where they can rest and create ammunition, upgrade weapons and armor. It is tied to a specific character, appears when that character enters the game, and disappears upon exit, easily restored or moved anywhere on the map.

The main tasks for players in Fallout 76 are related to survival against the environment (PvE) — players need to team up, help each other, trade, defeat mobs, and go on joint raids. A player can create their own faction, like the Brotherhood of Steel or the Minutemen, and recruit members, be a trader, or live as a hermit.

As for the "player versus player" (PvP) mode, to participate, you need to accept a thrown challenge or find someone who has illegally killed another player. In this game world, there are no safe zones; you can be attacked anywhere.

The killed player does not lose anything in their progress: weapons and ammunition remain at the place of death (they need to be picked up immediately), and the base is saved on the account. Additionally, you can respawn anywhere on the map.

The developers have come up with several protective systems that prevent creating conflict or shootouts out of nowhere, harming other players, chasing, or constantly killing someone. Thus, an illegal killer is immediately marked in red and becomes visible to all honest players on the map — it won’t be hard to track down the poor soul.