The next Fallout 76 update will be one of the largest yet, expanding the online game’s already massive Appalachia map with a whole new region set in a post-apocalyptic alternate history version of Ohio.
Titled Burning Springs, it’s the very first time that the series has ventured into the area, and production director Bill LaCoste argues that this presents the team with a unique opportunity to expand its lore. “We've always said as a team that the main character of this game is the world,” he begins. “Ohio was a blank slate. There are maybe four or five references to Ohio in all of Fallout, so this was a good opportunity to build on something and add something to the Fallout universe.”
Creative director Jon Rush echoes a similar sentiment. “We've never really talked much about what happened to Ohio post-war,” he says, “so that seemed like a fun place to explore.”
Movie magic
The update will coincide with the second season of the successful Amazon Prime Fallout TV show, which is set to premiere in December and returns to the fan-favorite setting of New Vegas. The developers of Fallout 76 are very keen to imbue the Ohio wasteland with the key characteristics of that Vegas locale.
“We saw where Season One ended. It ended in the desert of Vegas. You got Vegas in the background, you’ve got a big Deathclaw skull, and when we saw that we decided we wanted to make a new region,” Rush reveals as he explains that the team distilled everything down into “three pillars” so that the map expansion would be “very much in line with the tone that people experience in Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas.”
“We want there to be a lot of desert, we want there to be a lot of Deathclaws, and we want there to be a lot of raiders,” he continues. “Desert, Deathclaws, and raiders - those were the three guiding factors in shaping this new region. Even though geographically, it is a different part of the United States, tonally it's going to remind people very much of those earlier games.”
The influence of the show extends further than just the map, though, with one of its major characters appearing as a non-player character (NPC) in one of the new cities. Voiced by actor Walton Goggins, The Ghoul is an integral part of the update’s new bounty hunting mechanics, and players will frequently need to visit him in order to collect these highly repeatable quests. Nailing the feel of his dialogue was something of a two-way process, requiring input from both the actor and the writing team.
“He's an absolutely wonderful actor and he's great to collaborate with,” says Rush. “We had writers on the game side who were writing the dialogue for the character, and we had a writer on the show side doing dialogue for the character as well. Then, when presented with those dialog options, of course, Walton, being The Ghoul, had adjustments to make on his side, too, but then once he was in the booth, he became The Ghoul and just knocked it out the park. It was pretty amazing.”
“I don't think those scripts should ever be looked at as a blueprint,” he adds. “It's more of a suggestion, and the real magic happens when an actor like Walton Goggins comes in and makes it that character; that's when it truly comes to life.”
Just getting started
Bounty hunting quests involve tracking down a certain NPC somewhere on the map, drawn from a large roster of potential targets. “What's randomized is the location,” Rush explains. “We do have a roster [of targets], and what's great about that feature is that it's been made to where we can expand upon that pretty easily, both in terms of the targets that you're hunting and the locations you're doing them in. So we already have more plans for bounty hunting down the road with that in mind.”
Aside from these tasks, players will also have two new live events to contend with: Sinkhole Solutions and Gearing Up. Both have been designed to be repeatable and give players the chance to obtain rare legendary items with each run. “As fans of the game and avid players of 76, when we're testing these new features we're always asking ourselves, ‘Why would I want to do this again? What's going to keep me coming back?’” says Rush.
“I feel like we're just getting to the point where it's a base game"
Bill LaCoste
This is all on top of some new story content, countless fresh locations for those eager to go wild with the expansive building mechanics, and plenty of hidden secrets waiting to be uncovered. It’s a gigantic heap of content, but after years of steady new additions, the developers show no signs of slowing down.
“Seven years in, I feel like we're just getting to the point where it's a base game,” remarks LaCoste. “We’ve got all the systems in place now, we've redone a lot of the combat, we’ve rebalanced the perks because systems that worked back at launch sometimes need to be revamped to fit the mood of the current vibe of the game.”
The result is a robust experience that’s just waiting to be rediscovered by lapsed fans or those hot off the heels of the show. “I think Fallout 76 is a great place to start,” declares Rush. “You can hop in and play it solo, or if you want to team up with other people or your friends, you're more than welcome to do that. There's hundreds and hundreds of hours of awesome Fallout storytelling, a huge map to explore, and there's never a shortage of things to do while you're in there.”
If you’re keen to give Fallout 76 a try in the build-up to the Burning Springs update, the game is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One or PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S via backwards compatibility.
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