Bethesda finally revealed some juicy details about its latest Fallout installment, including its November 14 release date, during a press event on Sunday evening prior to the start of the E3 gaming convention. The Fallout 76 reveal was a bit more in-depth than what we saw during the Xbox show Sunday afternoon, where we learned the game’s world will be four times the size of the explorable area in Fallout 4. That little tidbit was just the tip of the massive Fallout 76 iceberg.
For starters, Fallout 76 takes place before all other Fallout games. Set in the hills of West Virginia, it casts you as one of the best and brightest selected to repopulate the Earth. You’re also one of the first to emerge from a vault after the post-apocalyptic dust settles. You’ve spent 25 years underground preparing for what’s called Reclamation Day, when you’ll step out into the world above and begin to rebuild America.
But don’t worry: This won’t be a building simulator with a Fallout theme. Fallout 76 is an RPG at heart that expands on the base-building mechanics of Fallout 4 to encompass an entire settlement. And you won’t be exploring and building alone: Fallout 76 will be a dedicated online multiplayer game where every character you meet will be an actual player.
Game director Todd Howard classifies Fallout 76 as a “soft-core survival” game. You and other players can build settlements and move them anywhere you want. But you also must protect those settlements from mutated beasts, wildlife, and other players. Did a group just come in and destroy your settlement? Return the favor by locating one of the multiple nuclear missile sites and returning the favor. Don’t have the complete launch code? Find other players holding the missing pieces.
“You’ll decide the heroes, and you’ll decide the villains,” he said. Howard added that you can visit the targeted site after the dust settles to collect rare, valuable resources.
Given Fallout 76 is entirely online, your progression stays with your character. Even more, your character won’t be tied to one specific server, so if Bethesda’s network needs to shift you over to another server, your character remains intact. Bethesda will provide servers “100-percent” dedicated to the game for years to come.
While it’s an online-only game, you can still play Fallout 76 solo. There’s a story and quests to complete that are rooted deep in West Virginian folklore, and six distinct regions to explore with their own styles, risks, and rewards. Backing this massive area is an engine rendering 16 times the detail seen in Fallout 4. You can even see distant weather systems on the horizon, Howard boasts.
Fallout 76 will be playable in 4K with HDR on the Xbox One X console. We imagine this will be the case on PlayStation 4 Pro and Windows 10 as well.
Pre-orders for Fallout 76 begin June 15, 2018. The Collector’s Edition will include a map that glows in the dark, figures you can place on the map, and a wearable T-51 Power Armor helmet with a working headlamp.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.