Fallout 76 Infestations are now active in the game’s PTS server. Coming to all players on June 2nd, the upcoming mechanic allows existing areas to be populated by groups of high-end enemies that will drop new four-star legendary mods.
Last night, we attended a media demo for the upcoming end-game activity, and got the chance to ask about the purpose of these new missions. For the Fallout 76 team, new activities such as Infestations are designed to give players more to do on the same map while the team also works on larger-scale additions.
Lead designer Carl McKevitt explained that the new Infestations mechanic has been through a lot of iterations since its conception. “Initially, we started with a much more subtle system that was closer to what we’d call a rare spawn for certain high-level mods. As we play-tested that, we were finding there was a lot of dynamic, interesting combat that was coming out of it.”
Infestations were designed as a method of taking the existing Fallout 76 map and making it feel more alive. “The initial conception of it was to make when you’re exploring the map feel more alive and engaging and emergent when we run into these things,” he continued. Additionally, the feature could change even more as time goes on with McKevitt adding: “I don’t anticipate that evolution stopping even after launch.”
Fallout 76 currently has years of additional features and updates in the works. Creative Director Jon Rush added that activities such as fishing and the new Infestations are “ways to enrich kind of the existing experiences and qualities of the game”. Before now, there were few reasons to return to locations, but dynamic Infestations push you to want to return to areas you’ve already exhausted.
While the team is working on filling the same maps with new things to do, that doesn’t mean new locations aren’t coming to Fallout 76 in the future. In fact, the team teased that there are new locations currently in the works for the multiplayer Fallout game.
“We’re going to also have the updates that are like the big, you know, things and the new places and the stories and stuff that everybody, us as Fallout fans as well, really want, Rush continued. “But when we’re looking at the map, you know, I look at our map as kind of the main character of the game and really the number one asset for Fallout 76 is this map.”
Rush explained that the goal is, to make the Fallout 76 map feel like its “sizzling”, alongside adding new places to explore. Instead of clearing a map and moving onto the next one, the developers want something to always be happening, for players to always have something to do.
“We have a lot of really cool locations in the game that, once you’ve been there once or twice, there’s really not much of a new to go back. Unless you’re farming specific things,” he continued. “And so, Infestations brings that kind of, what if, what happens when this place is overtaken by Super Mutants, by Robots, by Scorched. What does that look like? What kind of life does that breathe into these spaces that have been on the map since launch?”
Right now, Infestations are only available in the game’s main Appalachia map and they’re only available on the surface. However, the team is looking to expand the feature outside of those constraints.
What’s clear is that the energy around Fallout 76 has not dissipated at all. While fans wait a millennia for the next mainline game in the series, or even the upcoming remasters of Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the 76 team is far from done with their take on the series.
