In a church where it appears some grim deity was being worshipped, skeletons are still sitting in the pews, a drinking glass next to each while a beverage pitcher and a box of rat poison rest on the altar. There's a haunted lodge where the pictures spin on the wall, doors slam, and chilling screams can be heard.

Cranberry Bog, overgrown with oppressive plantlife and foggy swamplands, feels completely otherworldly, separated from the rest of West Virginia by the Savage Divide, a wartorn strip of land filled with angry robots and growling molemen.Р”Р„s quests and exploration move you back and forth across the map, though, repetition begins to set inР”Р„long with major points of interest like the robot-staffed Whitespring Resort, the remnants of a crashed space station, and the devastated capitol building, there are plenty of small but fun locations to uncover. The further out you travel, the harsher and deadlier the world gets, from the chemically blasted lands up north to the toxic air of the mining and industrial zones in the south. When first stepping out of Vault 76 you're in a heavily wooded mountainous region where the buildings are gently rotting but not completely devastated by nukes. But in most cases I'm perfectly happy reading the history of the region, its conflicts, and the trials and tribulations of its long-dead population.Р”Р‡allout 76 is a shockingly big and beautiful world to explore. Sometimes I miss talking to NPCs as in singleplayer Fallout games, and I would have liked meeting some of these diary writers in person-the fact that everyone is already dead definitely detracts from the drama and urgency. I've investigated a child abduction cold case, I joined a secretive costumed crime-fighting guild, and nosed around in the email of politicians and businessmen. There are interesting personal tales to be discovered and pieced together, too, and mysteries to solve. Sometimes they lead to side quests, usually requiring bouncing around a few different locations and killing the enemies you find there, but there's a lot of strong world-building, explaining how the various factions were established and began to war against each other. But the smaller stories, written in terminal entries and typically inconsequential to the main quest, are often well worth nosing around for. I'm not a fan of most of the voice acting in Fallout 76, in particular one raider robot who will dominate your headphones for a large portion of your mid-level questing-the most irritating robot in a videogame since Claptrap.

The rest of the population are dead, or robots, or have been monsterified, meaning your quests and the story exclusively come from notes, diaries, a few extremely talkative bots, and holotapes. You're not alone: the other two-dozen players on the server represent the only living humans in what's left of Appalachia. 25 years after the nukes fell during the Great War, Vault 76 opens and you step out into post-apocalyptic West Virginia to find out what happened to your vault's Overseer, who set out before you.

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