Ask any fan of Fallout 4 and they’ll tell you straight — the greatest stories in this series are never spoken, they’re scattered all over a floor somewhere. Though there’s an overabundance of holotapes and notes to scoop up in Fallout 76, there’s also an incredible amount of environmental storytelling here. The sordid stuff that Bethesda’s artists and designers are famous for.
Being the earliest game in the Fallout timeline — set a mere 25 years after the bombs dropped, instead of hundreds of years after — Fallout 76 is filled with the fresh detritus of non-vault folk who tried to eke out a living (and failed). Forget quest-giving NPCs. The world has moved on and you’re waking up to smell the ashes. Only ghost stories remain and they’re told passively to the eagle-eyed Vault-dweller with a detective spirit.
We were one such adventurer. Starting out, we set our course to the world’s end in the southeast in search of quality Fallout 76 environmental storytelling. Hideously under-leveled and soiling our Vault-Tec-issued jumpsuit, our one-man caravan of courage took us to strange, strange new places…
Paw Intelligence
We’re not five minutes out of Vault 76 when we stumble across an isolated shack in the southeast. Upon murdering a pack of skinless dogs we notice something in a nearby dog kennel. “Ruv – 1/2Rguv + Λguv=8πG over c^4 * Tuv” is chalked on the floor, plus there are test tubes and a periodic table pulled inside. We honestly couldn’t tell you why Einstein’s formula for a non-expanding universe interests the kennel’s owner (who may, in fact, be a mutated super pooch).
Lighthouse to Nowhere
Real-world West Virginia has a navigational aid built in it even though it’s landlocked. We couldn’t tell you why. The Landview Lighthouse makes an appearance in Fallout 76, though, and its uppermost level contained the corpse of a weird cultist named Brother Moncrief.
Seems this zealot has been collecting Firefly goo to light the place up and please The High Priestess. His theory: a goo-powered lighthouse will surely cause “The Great Mothman” to appear.
The Creepy Church in Sutton
Creepy moth-based denominations aside, Appalachia got overly-religious in more mainstream ways elsewhere. We wandered into a town called Sutton and received some very mixed tourist messaging. On the one hand, the gates of this ramshackle town/makeshift fort were adorned with a large 666 signs. Beyond the walls and inside the church? A congregation of corpses and the word REPENT carefully written by quite the calligrapher on a wall behind the altar.
We backed out slowly…
The Greenbrier / Whitespring Resort
Bethesda made this a major location in the game (and, incidentally, it’s also the actual, haunted, real-life place). Renamed to The Whitesprings Resort for copyright purposes, The Greenbrier Hotel is an oddity in that its stately grounds and decadent halls have been maintained to perfection.
Why? What are the main directives of its small army of friendly Protectron staff? And what of the real-life nuke bunker that was built under the hotel in 1962 in an effort to house and protect Congress? So many questions…
The Lake Bar
Curiously, we spotted a makeshift bar in the middle of an evaporated lake. Upon entering we were presented with a friendly sign that said “Welcome! Drinks are on me!” Further investigation revealed a dance floor of sorts set up with a jukebox and half-naked mannequins. In the corner, three corpses were sprawled on a loveseat. Each of their skeletal hands held a bottle of some description.
Radio Tower Last Stand
Much later still, we stumbled across a prominent radio tower in Appalachia that was absolutely swarming with Super Mutants. Upon clearing them out and ascending the tower we spied a trail of human corpses and a locked safe at the top with a note.
Closer inspection revealed a “screw you” note to the green freaks who had almost certainly trapped in the author. He or she detailed where they had flung the safe key (onto an outhouse roof below).
Somewhat illogically, Angry Note Writer also wrote one final jab at the illiterate Mutants. Sick burn.
Earthquake Shriek Shack
At this point in the journey, one of our squaddies radioed about some strange goings on in a completely different part of the map. He said he was in the middle of the woods when he heard distant screams. Upon approaching a shack the bloodcurdling shrieks intensified as a localized earthquake rocked the entire location.
Spooked, he ran. Later on, we asked Bethesda about the phenomenon. They was incredibly excited about us finding it and desperately wanted to reveal “the twist.” We declined. But it’s open for everyone to see now…
Huntersville
While sneaking our way through very hostile enemy territory filled with level 30 foes (we were lowly level 6 scum) a cool location popped into view. The mountainside town of Huntersville welcomed us with open arms, human cages, and bags of gore.
Inside, it’s clear that a serious battle had been waged. It was still going on, too. Super Mutant skirmishers traded bullets with a swarm of Vertibird drones. The pure chaos prevented us from finding out what happened here. We slunk out of range…
Wavy Willards Waterpark
Somewhere up north, another squaddie gave us live reports of a place called Crocolossus Mountain, a funland short on amusement. Think: Zebra rollercoaster cars, rusty water (possibly bloody) and hordes of Scorched park attendees.
We’ll not spoil what he found when he scaled the rollercoaster track up into the giant plastic crocodile’s mouth. Suffice to say somebody – or something – had set up camp up there. His comms went dead as the ingenious homemade traps kicked in.
Watoga
The end of our journey took us to the southeastern ghost city of Watoga. Unlike The Greenbrier it’s maintained by utterly savage robots who want to exterminate meatbags like us on sight. Our desperate sprint through its suburbs revealed evidence of a last stand made by some Brotherhood of Steel platoon, but discovering answers here is reserved for none but the most high-leveled players.
And that’s just a taste of some of the stories available, both irradiated and understated. We love a bit of environmental storytelling, and we’re satisfied with what we’ve found in Fallout 76 so far. In our twisted mind, the environmental storytelling of this West Virginian hellscape is just as John Denver once advertised in Country Roads — almost heaven.