Fallout 76’s new free update goes live and includes an alien invasion
Bethesda has gone through a long fix process Fallout 76, taking its flawed and deeply flawed roots and turning them into an interesting, experimental online version of the Fallout franchise. The game will receive a series of four free updates in 2022: Invaders From Beyond, a series of public events and chance encounters starring alien invaders; Test Your Metal, a series of battles in the arena with combat machines; Expeditions: The Pitt, players’ first trip outside of the Appalachians; and Nuka World on tour in the summer.
Tuesday, a new update for Fallout 76 aired, introducing Invaders From Beyond Season 8, the ability to earn seasonal rewards in Fallout Worlds, and new Custom Worlds settings that are fantastic for builders. This is a strong start to the roadmap, and the game has finally figured out how to bring the best parts of its post-apocalyptic fantasy to life.
Public events at the request of the players
“In Appalachia, there is a lot of focus this year on revitalizing and revitalizing our community events,” said Fallout 76 design director Mark Tucker during a conversation with Polygon. “We have been listening loud and clear to feedback that they need more public events, so this year we have made a concerted effort to really focus on delivering that kind of content to our players.”
This is the first event, admittedly experimental, involving an alien invasion of Earth. Aliens have been part of the Fallout franchise since the very first games, where they have appeared as easter eggs in both games. Fallout 1 as well as 2. They play a slightly more prominent role in Bethesda’s Fallout games, but so far this is their biggest scene.
“We discussed such an idea as [Invaders from Beyond] since we ever ran. It came up in a lot of our brainstorming sessions when we started talking about the seasons,” Tucker said. “It’s one of those delicate situations because aliens are a mystery; we don’t want to over-explain it or jumping sharks is the best way to express it. So instead of doing a big update, it’s something more limited in time – it happens, then it ends, and we May return to it in the future.”
Two other public events updates are coming in the future, and according to Tucker, Nuka World is a slightly higher concept, though the team can’t reveal too much about this update just yet.
“It’s a traveling roadshow; it got revived when someone who was a part of it when the world ended or stumbled upon it and figured out how to make it all work,” Tucker said. “They will bring it to Appalachia, and there will be new characters that will talk to you and more.”
Expeditions ahead
While the team has come up with a way to slowly renew and revive the areas around the Appalachians, a big experiment is taking place overseas in other parts of the post-apocalyptic country, or perhaps the world. Expeditions is a new game mode that debuts with The Pitt, and it’s meant to be a completely different experience than the everyday sheep hunting and hanging out with the Brotherhood of Steel at home.
“We call it ‘Expeditions,’ colon, ‘Pitt’ because we want to make it clear that we’re committed to the idea that there will be more of them,” Tucker said. “This is for when we want to do some other experiences that are harder to do in Appalachia. Yes, and that’s the worst thing to say about Pitt, but it’s a good breath of fresh air.”
Pitt first appeared in Fallout 3 as a premium DLC expansion in which players had to fight in an arena called The Hole and potentially lead a slave uprising against their captors. Perhaps he is best known as Fallout DLC, where you can eat a baby and whose fans have even learned how to speedrun.
“This place is very different from our current world, but it is also interesting to visit where you have been before. [in Fallout 3’s DLC] so you’ll see Pitt earlier in the timeline,” Tucker said. “News Flash: Still Not Good! We’ve worked out a lot of detail to the point where our team is building Pittsburgh’s fire hydrants and streetlights to really feel and look like Pitt, with atmospheric events, lighting, and everything. Our goal is for this to become a new cycle of gameplay that we can build on, and we’re structuring it so we can evolve it by adding more locations in the future.”
The patch, released on Tuesday, also brings a host of improvements to Fallout Worlds, including the ability to earn seasonal SCORE progress there and new customization options. These include the ability to turn dead enemies into clouds of confetti, the ability to change the carry weight and weather, and very mild building restrictions for very stupid or dense buildings.
