Bethesda Softworks surprised everyone with a preview and promotional trailer for the new Fallout 76. Set to John Denver's Take Me Home, Country Roads, the video immediately offers an idea of where the game will be set through excerpts mentioning West Virginia, one of the 50 U.S. states.
If you noticed that but overlooked 13 other details based on the trailer, this article adopts a Sherlock Holmes approach to satisfy your curiosity about them.
The funny thing is that Fallout 76 had already been speculated about because of leaks by users on the websites 4chan and Reddit, combining indications that the release would be very similar to Rust, an online survival game available on Steam that focuses on base building. After the trailer was released, Jason Schreier of Kotaku poured cold water on expectations by warning people not to be disappointed while waiting for a single-player RPG.
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1001832458164285442
The 4chan user responsible for claiming Fallout 76 also confirmed the release of Fallout 3 Anniversary, perhaps as a measure by Bethesda to satisfy fans who wanted a "non-online" Fallout.
Employees Who Cannot Keep Quiet
Showing no fear for their jobs, three sources familiar with the project anonymously passed information to journalists at Kotaku and Polygon. Focusing on what is relevant, they say it was a multiplayer version of Fallout 4 that later became Fallout 76. The game is heavily based on DayZ and Rust, already famous on Steam for their shared online-survival genre.
The focus of development was imagining what an online Fallout should be. It would still have quests and a story like "any other game" from Bethesda Game Studios, also known for the famous The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. However, it would emphasize base building—as presented in Fallout 4—along with other survival mechanics and multiplayer. They also warned that the gameplay was changing rapidly during development, but this was the main outline.
The game is being developed at Bethesda's main office in Maryland and its new studio in Austin, Texas, formerly known as BattleCry Studios. The Austin team was known for working on an online game called BattleCry that Bethesda cancelled. The company told the press in 2015 that it was "evaluating what improvements the game needed" to meet its "quality standards," according to a report. The studio was fully acquired by the company behind Skyrim some time later, perhaps resulting in Fallout 76.
The Story of Fallout 76
The game appears to focus on Vault 76, a shelter already referenced extensively earlier in the franchise. It was to contain 500 occupants in a system programmed to release them 20 years after the great nuclear war that destroyed part of the world in 2077 on the Fallout timeline.
According to the references, Vault 76 is different from the other shelters. Its residents were not subjected to bizarre experiments, and the Citadel terminal in Fallout 3 lists it as a "control" vault among 17 known examples. In other words, these shelters were used for comparison with those subjected to all kinds of experiments.
In Fallout 4, the news board in the prologue mentions that Vault 76 was being inaugurated in 2076 in honor of the United States' tricentennial, while also discussing expansion plans for Vault-Tec, the company responsible for the shelters. In Mothership Zeta, an expansion for Fallout 3, the Vault is even mentioned in one of the records from alien captivity by a Vault-Tec official, Giles Wolstencroft, who was abducted while inspecting the shelter's construction site.
Regarding the experiments to which shelter residents were subjected, out of the 122 Vaults built and distributed across the United States, people in 105 of them were exposed to social experiments, viruses, scientific tests, and more. Only the other 17 already mentioned genuinely aimed to protect their residents, without tricks or schemes by Vault-Tec.
And an extremely important detail that some overlooked in the Fallout 76 promotional trailer is found in this image of the Pip-Boy:
The marked date is October 21, 2102.
That is 25 years after the nuclear war. It is essentially the earliest Fallout up to that point, unless you count the opening moments of Fallout 4, which took place before the bombings, in the prewar period.
The Speculation
In addition to what is "certain," many people overlooked some details in the released Fallout 76 promotional trailer. So I collected the most important ones I found:
- The "reclamation day" shown must refer to the day the shelter's residents leave it and reclaim America;
- We will essentially see Ghouls and other mutations in their initial state. Other Fallout games mention events near this year, such as the appearance of some of the first super mutants;
- It uses models identical to those in Fallout 4, from Nuka-World mascots and robots to the frightening "space monkey" at the edge of the bed, so it must use the same graphics engine;
- Given the dolls and toys in the room shown, it is easy to assume the player-controlled character entered the shelter as a child;
- The trophies curiously shown include awards for "eating the meat no one wanted," cleanest bathroom, best haircut, and more... The one that attracted the most attention is for the isolation program, bearing the words "In recognition of your commitment and dedication to our isolation program. Sacrificing many so that some may live."
In short, regarding the last point: if the Vault opened after 20 years and the character is there alone 25 years after it was "sealed" as a shelter, it may have something to do with the character being isolated inside it. Who knows?
A little of everything we saw in Bethesda's previous games in the franchise is also included in the trailer, almost as a commemorative reference. We also see a television, this time in color, showing the entrance to Vault 76 with the words: "For when the fighting is over and the fallout has settled, you must rebuild. In Vault 76, our future begins now."
Post-Apocalyptic 'Online Minecraft'?
This quotation in the trailer may indicate that players will literally rebuild the world. It is not like the other games set 200 years or more after the great war, when civilizations and means of survival are already established. It is as though we will have to fight, then survive and rebuild when the chaos subsides.
In my opinion, I do not know what to assume about all this. I was not a big fan of the direction the franchise began taking in Fallout 4 with its "settlements," the endless search for resources, repetitive missions, and limited emphasis on the survival horror and immersive interaction with other characters presented in Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas. The latter was produced by the wonderful Obsidian Entertainment, responsible for titles such as South Park: The Stick of Truth and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II.
This appears to be a new era for Fallout, and I am unsure whether I will dive in headfirst as I did in the previous generation. But just in case, I already know my resolve is weak, and I will prepare a month of vacation around its release.
What about you? Did you manage to discover anything else? What do you think or hope the game will be like? Tell us in the comments what you expect from Fallout 76.
Fallout 76 is already listed for preorder by American retailers at $59.90.
