You can Smooch the Fallout 76 NPC's, But Not Travel With Them

E3 is over but not quite behind us just yet, as Journalists and influencers (ugh) are still out there, mingling with developers and publishers, asking questions and trying out games. A necessary practice, considering so little of substance was unveiled during this E3 that follow-up questions are kind of important. For example: Fallout 76, the infamously terrible open-world survival multiplayer thing that Bethesda has tried to pass off as a legitimate Fallout game, is apparently getting a new update that will add actual NPC’s, branching dialogue, and other stuff like that to the post-apocalyptic world. And while that roused a half-drunk audience into a round of applause, we still don’t know that much else about it.

But fortunately, PC Gamer was on the case, and asked project lead for Fallout 76 Jeff Gardiner for more details -- and specifically, the question everyone cares about – can you bump uglies with any of these new NPCs?

"We're going to keep the companion details loose, I'll be honest with you… But the general gist of it is: they'll be romance-able, you'll be able to get quests from them, advance their storyline."

That’s good! They’ll even judge your actions like in past Fallout games! Woo! But there’s a catch: not only will they not be able to follow you around on adventures, no other NPC’s will really be doing that either.

"The following part, right now, they're basically going to be in your camp. Or in towns. We have technical limitations there, frankly… Obviously, if I kill [an NPC] in the game, other people need to be able to interact with that NPC, so they will be in closed areas, frankly, and other areas where we can control the environment better than an exterior."

He did say that there might be some small instances of going out with NPC’s in controlled environments, but otherwise stuck to his guns and stayed every bit as loose as he said he’d be.

Well, I’d like to have faith, but considering how this game has been going anyway… they’ve got a lot of work to do before they’ve even kind of worth that.