I sat down to watch Bethesda’s BE3 press conference excited to see more about Fallout 76. They had a lot for that game, and quite a few other things, big and small, as well.
Bethesda kicked off their E3 press conference with a song performance by Andrew W.K. as a lead in to discussing upcoming Rage 2. The colorful post apocalyptic shooter from Avalanche Studios will be available spring 2019. In Rage 2 you will play as Walker, the last Ranger of the wasteland that will use a variety of weapons in taking on aggressive factions and large mutants. The term “If you can see it, you can drive it” was used indicating that any vehicle you come across can be player controlled. Have a look at the fast paced gameplay in the feature.
Elder Scrolls: Legends, Bethesda’s free-to-play digital collectible card game, will be joining Android, iOS, Mac, and PC by getting console releases. Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One will be getting versions of the game later this year.
Elder Scrolls Online announced two new upcoming expansions. The first, Wolfhunter, is an expansion focusing on dungeons and werewolves, and the second is called Murkmire, which is a story that will take players back to Black Marsh. Both additions will be available later this year.
Doom Eternal was teased. Hell on Earth was (shown) hinted at. Not a lot was said except to stay tuned for more info from them at QuakeCon in August this year.
Quake Champions, which is in early access, has a free to play trial this week. From now until June 17 if you download arena shooter, it will remain free for you even after the trial period is over.
Arkane Studios announced more content for Prey, three new modes and new DLC. The three modes are: Story Mode, Survival Mode, and New Game Plus and are all available today in an update for free. The DLC is called Mooncrash, also available today for purchase. The new chapter takes place on… the moon and looks to have the player replaying sections multiple times. Arkane also took the opportunity to tease a PvP mode, Typhon Hunter. The new mode wiill be available this summer and will have one player as a human facing off against five opponents playing as mimics. Check out the Mooncrash launch trailer.
Machine Games was on stage teasing their next game in the Wolfenstein series. Wolfenstein: Young Blood is set after the previous games chronologically and will follow the story of B.J. Blaskowicz’s twin daughters. Set in the alternate history’s version of 1980’s Paris, the game with now two protagonists is meant to be a co-op experience.
Next up was the reason for the press conference: Fallout 76. Todd Howard was on stage and alongside multiple videos we learned that Fallout 76 is a prequel and follows the inhabitants of Vault 76, the first vault to open to the mainland on Reclamation Day. Fallout 76 is “entirely online,” “softcore survival” game where other inhabitants of the wasteland are player characters. You will be able to play the game’s story and questlines solo, but it seems that the intended fun will be teaming up with friends to explore and get creative in the world.
It was expressed that when you join your friends, all your progress would go with you. They showed off some of the in-game building tools, saying that you could build wherever you want and then move what you had built wherever you wanted. They also mentioned the existence of functioning nuclear bombs scattered around the wasteland that you could discover. Each looked to need multiple keys to be able to launch and it implied you would need to team up with other players in order to obtain all the necessary ones. Finally they announced a release date of November 14.
Fallout Shelter has been ported to the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 and is available now. For free!
Bethesda then showed a mobile RPG game, Elder Scrolls: Blades. Blades is a gorgeous mobile dungeon crawl experience with tap-to-move or “thumbstick” movement mechanics. There will be three modes: Abyss, a rogue-like experience; Arena, for PvP; and Town, your story hub where you will build a town and embark on quests. Bethesda wants to bring the game to every possible platform they can and it will be a free download on Android and iOS sometime this fall.
Bethesda then closed out its conference with two extremely brief teaser trailers for games we all already knew were in development. Starfield and Elder Scrolls IV. No real news on these except the official announcements. See them both here.
What I have learned from Bethesda: I am looking forward to seeing more about Doom Eternal and I haven’t completely written off Fallout 76 or Rage 2 just yet!
