On April 7, Fallout 76 is getting human NPCs. This feature, coming out out in what's called the Wastelanders expansion, will be free for Fallout 76 owners. Talking to human NPCs will happen simultaneously on Steam, Bethesda.net, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Wastelanders includes an all-new new main quest, starting from the moment you step out of the vault. Your human NPC neighbors are there for the befriending or betraying, while new high-tier creatures and gear make it all possible/impossible. Good ol' dialogue trees will alter your choices and build up an all-new reputation system with the two factions rising up in Almost Heaven West Virginia.
Interacting with human NPCs—rather than robots/droids—landed seemingly high on players' lists of things they wanted in the Appalachian post-apocalypse. It appears that humans (as in human players) like to interact with other humans (as in human NPCs) more than non-humans or, even more distanced, audio logs. Even when playing in Pretend Land video games, people are social creatures, and ignoring other live players in the multiplayer environment wasn't cutting it either. So now NPCs are coming into the area from outside Virginia. Some of them wear scary raider armor and skull masks! And I don't know what that mutant-looking AT-ST Walker is, but I hope the player in the trailer brought a lot more arrows. Welcome, bows and arrows. We've been expecting you, too.
This announcement is also notable because it marks Fallout 76's debut on Steam. It's been available at several online retailers except Steam this entire time (e.g. Amazon, GreenManGaming, Humble Store, Direct2Drive—wait, Direct2Drive is still around?)
Fallout 76: Wastelanders is literally a new beginning for the embattled Fallout MMO. Hopefully it puts the game in as good of a place as Bethesda's other big huge MMO, The Elder Scrolls Online. And I say that mainly because I need these projects to subsidize the development of the upcoming Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI.
