Bethesda has released another little nugget in what feels like the interminable slog towards the release of Fallout 76 – a full color rendition of the map where players will vie for survival in post-apocalyptic West Virginia.
The news came alongside this weekend’s stress test for select US-based Xbox One pre-orders purchasers who’ve been chosen at random. The test runs on a previous build of the game – a different version to the one used for the Beta later this month and is quite simply a dress rehearsal for said Beta. We imagine Bethesda opted to release the map to counter the inevitable leaking of select details by less than scrupulous participants.
The map is touted as being four times larger than the playable area in Fallout 4, which makes it seriously big. Contrary to Fallout tradition, the map is no longer confined to the Pip-Boy and the oft unwieldy night-vision green and black format of past games, and is in full, glorious color.
As for the lay of the land, the map doesn’t mark down landmarks or locations other than small stylized cartoons of points of interest as well as major roadways, highways, waterways, and basic topographical data. The points of interest are characterized by variety with very few of them resembling one another, hinting at a rich and diverse set of locales to explore and maybe call home.
Distinct regions are extremely prominent and give a good idea of the scale of Bethesda’s ambitions with Fallout 76. The location of Vault 76, the starting point of the game, can be spotted in the top left quadrant giving an indication of where it stands in relation to the rest of the map. The red area in the bottom right appears particularly menacing and may prove to be the location of high level content given its distance from the Vault.
Fallout 76 releases on November 14th for PlayStation 4, PC, and Xbox One, while the Beta starts from October 23rd on Xbox One – thanks to an exclusivity deal with Microsoft – and October 30th for both PlayStation 4 and PC.
