Highlights
- Bethesda has shared a developer preview of the Fallout 76 Skyline Valley update.
- The three-minute video features Creative Director Jonathan Rush going over the biggest highlights from the upcoming expansion, including an entirely new region of Appalachia to explore.
- Skyline Valley is planned to be released in June 2024, with Steam users already being able to try it out via the game’s public test server, open to everyone who owns Fallout 76 on Valve’s storefront.
Bethesda has shared a new developer preview of Fallout 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 upcoming Fallout 76 update.
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 after Fallout 76 Season 16 comes to an end in early June.
Fallout 76 Players Are Loving the New Romanceable Assaultron
Many Fallout 76 players appear to be absolutely loving the new romanceable Assaultron that debuted as part of the Season 16 content drop.
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 former Fallout 76 Art 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. While Fallout 76 has 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 of Skyline Valley has been available to Steam users via the Fallout 76 public test server since April 2024.
New Fallout 76 Hotfix Accompanies Skyline Valley Preview
Aside from this video overview of the upcoming expansion, Bethesda also dropped another Fallout 76 update on May 9. The new release is a minor hotfix that addresses a trio of issues, including a bug that would sometimes lead to Fallout 76 crashes following 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
Fallout 76 is a new horizon for the long-standing series, giving players an MMO world to explore, where they can meet other players and embark on quests with them.
- Released
- November 14, 2018
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer
- Engine
- Creation
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol
- How Long To Beat
- 34 Hours
- X|S Enhanced
- No
- File Size Xbox Series
- 96 GB (April 2024)
- Metascore
- 53
- PS Plus Availability
- Extra & Premium
