On April 7, Bethesda will release its most significant update yet for Fallout 76. The new Wastelanders DLC will be available as a free update for all existing players, bringing many features that Bethesda unveiled during its E3 2019 press conference.
Fallout 76 will finally make its way to Steam on April 7 as well. Bethesda announced this last March, but missed its 2019 launch window. The Wastelanders update will be available for new players purchasing the game on Steam, and to those who already own it on PC, PS4, or Xbox One.
Wastelanders, too, was initially set to launch in 2019 but was pushed back to early 2020 in October to allow more time for polishing.
The Wastelanders DLC will bring a revamp of the game’s original campaign and new story missions, locations, characters, and high-tier loot to the game’s post-apocalyptic West Virginia setting.
Wastelanders also brings fully voiced NPCs, a feature that elicited a rousing ovation from Bethesda’s E3 crowd last year, marking a major change in the game’s design philosophy. Ahead of the game’s release, director Todd Howard explained that the lack of NPCs was meant to emphasize the game’s online-only, shared experience.
Additionally, bringing Fallout 76 more in line with its predecessors, the update adds a new reputation system that can change a character’s standing with the game’s various factions and classic dialogue trees.
Wastelanders is set to bring new life into Fallout 76, which struggled during its 2018 release thanks to mediocre critical response and a host of launch bugs. Bethesda has since doubled down on their support of the game, closely listening to feedback from the game’s community. Back at E3 2019, the company revealed that the game would be getting a massive overhaul, revealing both the Wastelanders and Nuclear Winter updates.
During the E3 presentation, Howard told fans “We had a lot of difficulties at launch and we got a lot of well-deserved criticism. But the team kept working on it, and you kept playing it.”
With Bethesda’s continued work, Fallout 76 could become a long-term success story, putting it more in line with Sony’s troubled No Man’s Sky, which gained renewed enthusiasm from gamers after the game’s Next update.
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