After Bethesda finally revealed the Fallout 76 beta start date and time, the company has started to open up a bit about the highly anticipated title. Even with a new gameplay trailer expected sometime this week, a lot of new details regarding the game have seemingly come through social media channels. With Fallout 76 being the first fully online experience in the series, many players have been wondering how Bethesda planned to handle death and respawn.
That’s a question that was asked directly to Bethesda’s Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Communication when he took to Twitter to try and answer as many Fallout 76 questions as he could. When asked what happens when a player dies during a quest, Pete Hines responded by saying players can simply pick the quest back up after they respawn. There’s no need to save because the game does that for players. One thing that wasn’t made clear is if there is any sort of penalty for dying or if players would need to find their body to regain lost materials or items.
The spur of the moment question and answer session didn’t stop there, however, as Hines went on to reveal even more information on the experience. When asked if places could be looted again by logging out and then back in, Hines revealed that lootable objects and places are on a reset timer of sorts. While he wouldn’t disclose how long of a timer these places were on, players will be able to return to locations to find new stuff.
In addition, it is theoretically possible for a player to build their base on top of another player’s base who has since left the server. If that player returns to the game and server, their base will be packed up inside of their C.A.M.P. and they’ll then have to pick a new location. However, considering the massive size of the game world and the huge amount of places available to build in, Hines doesn’t expect that this will happen very often.
Players still have a few weeks before the Fallout 76 beta begins as Xbox One players get first crack at the experience on October 23, with PC and PlayStation 4 following suit a week later. At this time, Bethesda has no plans to hold an open beta test, so interested players will need to first pre-order the game in order to get an access code. Even though the majority of the game will be available, Bethesda intends to stress the servers and online mechanics as much as possible by only keeping the beta open for a few hours at a time, instead of 24/7 like many other beta tests.
Fallout 76 launches on November 14, 2018 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The Beta starts on October 23 for Xbox One and then October 30 for PlayStation 4 and PC.
