During PAX East, Bethesda released a twenty minutes of the up coming Wastelanders patch for the MMO, Fallout 76. Wastelanders will be free and is coming to the game on April 7th, which is the same date Fallout 76 will be coming to Steam. “We get to go back to one of the strengths of Bethesda, the conversations, we’re trying to connect with you, with human beings, with emotions. Trying to give you a real impetus for why you’re doing the things you’re doing.” Baudoin said, a developer of Fallout 76 and a member of the panel presenting Wastelanders.
Along with lead designer Ferret Baudoin, the panel was comprised of developers of Fallout 76 and Wastelanders such as design director Mark Tucker. Wastelanders is intended to change the gameplay loop of Fallout 76 from exploration and looting scrap materials to a gameplay style that more closely resembles that of previous entries. The most important addition of Wastelanders is the addition of NPCs to the game. NPCs will now be doting around the campaign, they will now be passing on vital bits of information, instead of holotapes, or audio recordings which were the previous method. This comes with full conversations, which a player’s charisma rating will partially dictate how the encounter will play out.
“Before, we were doing a lot of interesting quests for characters that had effectively died before you came through, now you get to see these characters, interact with them, and there’s some very memorable ones in the line-up,” Tucker commented. The gameplay demo, rested heavily on exploration, showing off the new NPCs and their impact on the game. Some settlements were shown with NPC human vendors, along with roaming caravans of brahmin and traders.
Fallout 76 has been plagued with controversies, ranging from a game that was received as underwhelming, Fallout 1st, to prevalence of hacks and exploits that Bethesda has be claim to be slow to respond to. Wastelanders is the final update in a three part roadmap, that is intended to complete Fallout 76’s experience.