E3 2018: Fallout 76 Details New Monsters And Nuking Your Friends

Fallout 76 received the most stage time at Bethesda's E3 2018 showcase, but even after the deep dive it left some questions unanswered. More details have emerged that shed light on the types of monsters we can expect from this version of the wasteland, as well as how your player character will level up and interact with other humans.

In NoClip's Making of Fallout 76, Bethesda developers talked about how the new time period is opening up new monster design opportunities. Since it's closer to when the bombs fell, they reason, their mutations can be bigger and stranger.

At the same time, some classic Fallout enemies are off-limits for narrative reasons. Raiders don't make sense within the context of the story, and besides that, Bethesda didn't want to force players to second-guess whether the human character they were meeting was a human or AI. Its solution is the Scorched, a new race of Ghouls that are almost feral, but retained enough intelligence to wield a gun.

Enemies aren't the only ones being mutated, though. Mutations can be used to tweak your character, usually with a paired positive and negative effect. You can cure them if you want, or in the late-game, you can seal them to your character permanently. You can also customize your character with perk cards, which provide both loot and trading opportunities.

Finally, the studio addressed just how launching nukes will work. This will be a somewhat rare occurrence since it's late-game content, and it relies on working together to secure launch codes and solve puzzles. Nuking an area also makes it home to more high-level enemies, so producer Todd Howard suggested that players will still be incentivized to have the fun of launching a nuke even if they don't want to harm other players. They can create their own high-level area by targeting somewhere that other players aren't occupying.

For more on Fallout 76, including how to secure your very own Power Armor helmet with the collector's edition, check out our release date and pre-order guide.