Fallout 76 is the next aboard the battle royale bandwagon, bringing a 52-player Nuclear Winter to the game this fall, with a sneak preview week for the game on all platforms beginning tomorrow, June 10.
“Fuck yeah, we put a battle royale in Fallout 76,” said Tom Mustaine, the co-director of Bethesda Game Studios.
In Nuclear Winter, players will battle it out in Appalachia’s wilds to be crowned the overseer of Vault 51. Combat takes place in the existing environments and will involve the usual hazards and wandering monsters found elsewhere in the game, from scorchbeasts to nukes, which players may discover and call in as a kind of ultimate perk.
Competitors were shown fighting in red and blue vault suits, meaning they can team up in addition to the PvE component of gameplay. The map size will be restricted by a shrinking ring-of-fire “Storm.”
Fallout 76 launched in November and has spent a solid six months building and rebuilding what was a flawed game with spare features at launch. Bethesda Game Studios chief Todd Howard acknowledged as much when he appeared to introduce the Fallout 76 development team. “We had a lot of difficulties at launch,” he said to nervous laughter from the audience, “and we got a lot of well deserved criticism.”
Mustaine and Fallout 76 project leader Jeff Gardiner said a free week will be offered to all platforms (PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One) beginning tomorrow and running to June 17. A preview of Nuclear Winter will be available then, too.
