Summary
Bethesda has shared a new developer preview ofFallout 76: Skyline Valley. With a runtime of nearly three and a half minutes, the new video has plenty of time to go over the biggest highlights of the upcomingFallout 76update.
After being teased in late 2023, Skyline Valley was officially announced alongside the Duel with the Devil seasonal content roadmap in March 2024. The massive update is set to debut afterFallout 76Season 16 comes to an endin early June.
Bethesda Showcases Fallout 76’s First-Ever Appalachia Map Expansion
With Skyline Valley now only being about a month out, Bethesda has released a new video overview of the upcoming expansion featuring formerFallout 76Art Director Jonathan Rush, who was elevated to the position of Creative Director in January 2024. The May 9 clip sees Rush walk fans through some of the novelties included in the upcoming update, the biggest of which is a new region to explore. WhileFallout 76has already introduced several new locations—Pittsburgh and Atlantic City—via its Expeditions, Skyline Valley will mark the first-ever expansion of the base game’s map.
The new area will be added to the southern part of Appalachia, with the titular Skyline Valley being based on the Shenandoah Mountain region in West Virginia. The May 9 developer preview also goes over some new types of enemies, including giant mutated North American turkeys called Thrashers and a trio of coordinated Robobrains with an aptly unified name of Storm Goliath. Skyline Valley will also feature the Lost, a new type of electrified ghouls that can be both friends and foes, much like their regular counterparts. One of them is Hugo Stoltz, the overseer of a mysterious Vault 63 found in the center of the titular valley’s violent electric storm. Rush indicated that players will be able to choose between befriending and betraying this NPC over the course of the main Skyline Valley quest.
Fallout 76 Skyline Valley Update Is Currently in Open Beta Testing
The creative director has also suggested that the upcoming expansion may not be solely geared toward high-level players, which has been the case with the majority of the game’s post-launch content released to date. Instead, Rush has framed the update as part of Bethesda’s efforts to continue rolling out content for all players, “regardless of level.” A preview version ofSkyline Valley has been available to Steam users via theFallout 76public test serversince April 2024.
New Fallout 76 Hotfix Accompanies Skyline Valley Preview
Aside from this video overview of the upcoming expansion, Bethesda also dropped anotherFallout 76update on May 9. The new release is a minor hotfix that addresses a trio of issues, including a bug that would sometimeslead toFallout 76crashesfollowing the April 30 patch. Various weapon visual effects have also been improved, with the update also fixing a problem that prevented repeatable daily S.C.O.R.E. challenges from appearing for users playing the Microsoft Store version of the game, which is the same one that’s distributed to PC Game Pass members.
Fallout 76
WHERE TO PLAY
Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of Skyrim and Fallout 4, welcome you to Fallout 76. Twenty-five years after the bombs fell, you and your fellow Vault Dwellers—chosen from the nation’s best and brightest – emerge into post-nuclear America on Reclamation Day, 2102. Play solo or join together as you explore, quest, build, and triumph against the wasteland’s greatest threats. Explore a vast wasteland, devastated by nuclear war, in this open-world multiplayer addition to the Fallout story. Experience the largest, most dynamic world ever created in the legendary Fallout universe. Expand southward to Skyline Valley – a brand-new region of Appalachia. Investigate the cause of the electric storm circling overhead and unveil the mystery around Vault 63 and its dwellers, including a shocking new Ghoul type – The Lost.
