Bethesda organized a preview event for Fallout 76 at The Greenbrier resort last week. We got a lot of information already and yet more is coming through.
Speaking with Engadget during the recent press event, Design Director Emil Pagliarulo described Fallout 76 as 'solo but together'.
The stories and quests are individual to each person playing the game, and that includes the main quest –- following the Overseer's journey as she ventures out into Appalachia to secure the missile silos. So when you're in a team, the goal is to help each other in any way you can. "Solo but together" might be a good way to look at. If you play the game with the same group from the beginning, you'll be experiencing these stories at relatively the same time. Events are an exception -they can be solo'd, but are intended to be done as a group –- and that includes your own team.
That said, certain things are easier if you work in a group. Definitely. Especially the end-game content, where you're trying to collect and decipher nuclear codes. So we encourage joining up, but we don't require it. What I've generally found is that even if you're solo'ing the game, the fact that there are other players in the world with you means you always have help within arm's reach if you need it. For example, recently I was solo'ing a pretty early event that has you killing waves of Scorched. It was difficult, but I was doing it. But I was expending a lot of ammo and Stimpaks in the process. Out of nowhere, another designer who was playing wandered into the event and started helping me out. It was a huge relief. So those moments are common, a little assist when you need it the most.
Pagliarulo then went on to explain how quest progression would work when grouped with other players.
We track the progression separately on the onscreen UI. If a quest has a star next to it, that's the one the team leader is currently doing. If you have the same quest, then your objectives will show up too. If the team leader is on a different objective than you, their objective will have a star next to it –- yours won't. So a lot of the fun –- and we saw this quite a few times with the Greenbrier groups -– is communicating with your team and letting them know where stuff is. "Hey, this chest has a star over it, your objective is over here." That type of thing.
Fallout 76 is due for release on November 14th. However, in a twist from tradition, Bethesda decided to allow beta progression to be retained once the full game ships. That essentially means you can start playing Fallout 76 on October 23rd on Xbox One and October 30th on PlayStation 4 and PC; the beta includes the entire game anyway, and progress will carry over.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
