After this week's official reveal of Fallout 76, fans and even the press have been wondering and speculating on what kind of Fallout game this will be. Is it an MMO? Is there PvP? Will it be online all the time?
Well, we got a chance to chat with Bethesda Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Communications, Pete Hines to discuss some of these things. Naturally, the conversation focused mostly on what Fallout 76 is and isn't, although we do agree that it's arguably the company’s most ambitious game to date. It’s got an Open Beta happening very soon and is slated for a release this November.
We got a lot of information during the company’s E3 presentation and from the recent No Clip documentary,but the core question still remains for a lot of people: What exactly is Fallout 76?
This Is What It’s Not
“Folks instantly want to look at a game and say, ‘That’s like this,’ because it’s easy to define and wrap your head around,” Hines explained. “Except when the thing that you’re making isn’t like any of those things. You’re painting a bad picture in your own head of what this is.”
When leaks about Fallout 76 first starting pouring into the internet, the word on the digital street was that it wouldn’t be anything like any past Fallout games. People were comparing it to Rust, saying that it was a hardcore survival-focused RPG about building and fighting other players.
The reality of the game is that, yes, elements of those concepts are present, but it’s reductive to try and boil it down to a direct comparison like that.
“I mean, it’s nothing like Fortnite,” Hines said. “It’s not even remotely an MMO. It’s not like this or that. It’s not like Destiny. It’s not like any of those things. It’s not like Rust, other than it’s an online world with people in it. Fallout 76 is a roleplaying game. It is not a PvP, kill everybody, fest.”
From what I’ve seen and been told, the best way to think about it is to imagine a world much larger than Fallout 4and remove all of the named human NPCs from it. Add in more robots, more ghouls, and more irradiated creatures and areas, then throw in a few dozen players to fill the gaps and add to the nuance.
But again, even that is still overly reductive. Until we get the chance to go hands-on, it’s hard to really articulate what the moment-to-moment experience will be like. Bethesda was not allowing hands-on demos at E3.
What About NPCs? Questing? Playing Solo?
“There are still tons of quests,” reassured Hines. “That’s what I do, when I play, I am building my character, questing, and leveling up, and deciding what kind of stuff to be good at and finding things in the world.”
In short, you can totally still play this like a Fallout game. If you liked the base building stuff from Fallout 4, then great, you can indulge in that sort of stuff more since you’re able to build anywhere and move things everywhere. But you don’t have to do that just like you don’t have to fight other characters necessarily.
“Sometimes when I play I build a base and setup shop somewhere but then other times I don’t and I’m nomadic and decide to use workshops and craft stuff as I go,” said Hines. “Then sometimes I don’t group up with other folks or fight people at all and just wave and say hi when we pass. I’m gonna play this like I’m playing by myself to see what that feels like. There are lots of different types of robots in the world that you can interact with and have dialog with and give you quests. There are lots of ways to give a player a quest.”
To be clear though, Fallout 76 isn’t going to be an empty world. If no one is online, you won’t have a lack of things to do.
“It’s more so like when you see a character, like previously in our games when you see a character we identify it for you by saying this one is a vendor or this one is a raider, there is a red thing on your compass, so you know it’s bad guy,” explained Hines. “That’s a Brotherhood of Steel soldier that’s neutral until you shoot them, or something for example. But now, it’s up to the players themselves to decide which way it’s gonna go.”
Dungeons & Dragons & Nuclear Bombs
In that sense, it will ideally foster a lot of emergent player interactions and gameplay. For me personally, some of my favorite gaming moments have happened when playing online. I’ll never forget playing H1Z1 in beta, back before it was a battle royale-focused game, and having to decide whether or not players were friendly or hostile.
Fallout 76 is sounding like that sort of dynamic once again, but in the Fallout universe. In a way, it’s even more of a roleplaying game than past Fallout games.
“I’ve used D&D to describe it before,” said Hines. “When you play D&D no one hands you a script and says, ‘Here’s your dialogue for your Dwarven Warrior.’ No, I’m gonna give you a situation and see how you handle it. Now with Fallout 76, it’s like the game is the DM and everyone inside the game has to decide how they’re going to play.”
It’s still unclear exactly what the story will be beyond needing to rebuild society immediately after the bombs dissipate 20 years later. Fallout games always have such rich and dense worlds full of things to do, so hopefully the scope of this game’s design doesn’t dilute the content.
“It’s definitely a different version of the Fallout vision,” said Hines. “There’s a reason we called it Fallout 76, it’s not a direct continuation of 1, 2, 3, and 4. It doesn't mean that this is all that Fallout will be now. It just means we wanted to try an idea that the team had and really wanted to see what it would be like if every person was a character in the same world.”
Shared World Multiplayer
Speaking of, even though you can play primarily solo, this is a 100 percent always online game by design. You need an internet connection to play at all. In that way, it’s like Rust, Destiny, The Division, and other multiplayer games, but the similarities mostly stop there.
“Other people will show up in your world all the time,” said Hines. “We keep worlds feeling like it has the appropriate number of players. The Elder Scrolls Onlinedoes something similar with how it moves you around behind the scenes to whatever feels appropriate instead of you needing to pick a shard of a server like in some MMOs. No. You’re just gonna get on and play. For example, you could be playing in a world by yourself and you don’t see anyone that you know. Then later you go to login and you see that a friend is playing, and you could just decide to go play with a friend and your character is there, your stuff is there, and everything you’ve done goes with you in the same version of the world.”
Having recently played State of Decay 2, I was immediately reminded of how frustrating that game’s co-op system is at times. Since everyone can play either offline or online, the world you play in only belongs to the host. That means if I joined a friend’s game, I would keep my character and items but not have access to my base or world progression. Fallout 76 has, supposedly, been developed with a way around that common issue in mind.
“All your stuff, including buildings, go with you,” assured Hines. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, that’s on the other server,’ no, that’s all your stuff, so it’s with you. Where your character is, that’s where your stuff is. If two players have structures on the same spot, we have stuff that works through how all that plays out. Don’t think about your stuff and character being separate, no, you’re using old game concepts to think about how this works. You can build things anywhere and you can move it anywhere.”
Building For The Future
It all sounds great and super ambitious, but like with anything that takes a developer outside of their comfort zone, I’m remaining cautiously optimistic. I’m still not sure how they plan to deal with trolls griefing other players and whether or not a bounty system will really be enough. Hopefully the Open Beta can help answer some of those questions.
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