With base building and online co-op along the lines of Rust and DayZ. Well, that is according to anonymous sources that spoke to Kotaku to confirm that in addition to an open-world with story and quests the focus would be on expanding the settlement side of things from Fallout 4. With enhanced survival mechanics and possibly some competitive settlement vs. settlement multiplayer too.

Now, as someone who grew quite attached to settlement building in Fallout 4 (as seen below), I'm still in two minds about this. No matter how much fun, or relaxing, time was spend arranging train-cars to house all the different weapons and sets of Power Armor collected - a lot of that becomes somewhat meaningless without exploration. And discovering new locations, and characters, finding items, and them taking them back to a base. But, it's also clear that the footage seen in the trailer features assets similar to those in the Vault creation expansion released for Fallout 4 in 2016 -- so expanding on the settlement side makes perfect sense if using the same engine.


As per the Fallout 76 teaser trailer (also see below), we do know that it will be set hundreds of years before the events of Fallout 4 - which will no doubt play an important role in how the world is presented. Will there be ghouls that need to be cleared out in order to stop midnight attacks on your base? Will leaving Vault 76 to setup a new civilisation mean the return of the GECK? Whatever the case may be this will be the first Fallout game without a prominent Brotherhood of Steel presence - simply due to the time period. That being said, with Vault 76 reported to be located in the Capital Wasteland it would be quite the thing to explore a somewhat familiar location many years before the rise of Megaton and so forth.


One of the few lines of dialogue or voice, outside of the sweet sounds of Country Road, is "When the fighting has stopped, and the fallout has settled, you must rebuild." So even without these rumours it's safe to assume that overarching plot or story in Fallout 76 will be on rebuilding the world and seeing what can be salvaged in the process. Also, 2102 is the year that the experiments began that ended up creating the Super Mutants - so there's definitely room for stories to be told so soon after the Great War.