Fallout 76: Atlantic City | Boardwalk Paradise - Official Behind the Scenes
Fallout 76 enters new territory with Atlantic City: Boardwalk Paradise. Join Community Manager Devann McCarthy along with Senior Quest Designer Ellys Tan, Lead Quest Designer Joshua Moretto, and Lead Monetization Designer James Phillips from Bethesda Game Studios for a deep dive into what you can expect with Fallout 76: Atlantic City, including a peek at new locations, a casino, expeditions, the three main factions of Atlantic City, stories and quests you'll find, some of the threats you'll face, characters, and more from this free update, available to players on Public Test Server today, October 2, and available on all platforms December 5.
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00:00 Welcome back to another Fallout 76 Developer Deep Dive. I'm your host LadyDevon and I'm joined by a few of our Fallout 76 developers here.
00:18 We've got Senior Quest Designer Ellis Tan.
00:21 Hello there.
00:23 And Lead Quest Designer Josh Moreto.
00:25 Heya.
00:27 And returning to our Dev Dives is our Lead Monetization Designer James Phillips.
00:32 Howdy.
00:33 Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate you taking time out of your busy dev schedules. We know you have a lot going on in preparation for Atlantic City.
00:41 So, since we have a lot of information to cover with this update, we're just going to jump right into it.
00:47 And in fact, there's so much to cover on Atlantic City that we're going to break this into two different segments for you guys.
00:53 So this part one of our Atlantic Deep Dive, let's go right into it.
00:58 So, first off, we are so excited to head to a brand new location.
01:04 Out of all of the locations that we could have possibly chosen in the Fallout universe, what made Atlantic City stand out to you?
01:12 When we introduced Expeditions to Fallout 76, we started with The Pit, which is a classic fan favorite location, which we felt would feel very distinct from the woods and hills of Appalachia.
01:24 Everyone wanted to revisit The Pit.
01:27 But when we looked to our next location, we wanted something that would feel as different from The Pit as The Pit did from Appalachia.
01:34 And as a native New Jerseyan, I'd been hoping for a long time that we'd get a chance to introduce my home state to Fallout for the first time.
01:42 And Atlantic City was the perfect opportunity for this.
01:46 Quick segue since you just said that that's your home state, Josh, what does Atlantic City look like in-game versus what you're used to in real life?
01:55 It's a lot more rundown, which I think is understandable in the post-apocalypse.
02:03 It's been through a lot.
02:05 The glitz and glamour of America's playground is somewhat worse for wear, let's say.
02:11 Speaking of how rundown it is and everything, what happened to Atlantic City during the Great War and how did that shape it into the location that we're about to explore?
02:22 Well, no place was untouched by the Great War.
02:26 Atlantic City weathered better than most.
02:29 It was a tourist destination, it had no real military or strategic value, so it wasn't a direct target when the bombs fell.
02:36 And combined with some good disaster preparedness, it helped keep things together in the aftermath.
02:42 By the time our players traveled there, Atlantic City has reached a tenuous stability, with varying of its groups working together grudgingly to keep it as functional a place to live as they can.
02:55 Unlike a lot of settlements that we've seen in Fallout and in 76, this is a place where people are living, have entertainments, functional power, water, which is not to say that they're without their struggles.
03:10 So, Alice, tell us, how does Atlantic City compare to Expeditions and The Pit?
03:15 Atlantic City is coming in two content releases.
03:19 The first release includes two Expeditions, very similar to The Pit, and the second release includes one more Expedition, as well as a variety of quests that you can do in Atlantic City.
03:34 And you will be able to explore Atlantic City freely outside of Expedition, like sort of the traditional Expedition content that we know of from The Pit.
03:44 So, can you tell us about the residents of Atlantic City? Are there any new characters or factions that we can expect to meet?
03:51 Well, Atlantic City is held together by three main factions.
03:55 We have the municipal government, who are keeping the power and lights and food working in Atlantic City.
04:02 We have the organized crime rackets of the family, our sort of mobster organization.
04:08 And then we've got a very chaotic, kind of crazy bunch of guild of entertainers known as the showmen.
04:16 Each of them controls something vital to the continued functioning of Atlantic City and its tenuous stability.
04:24 The government, as I said, keeps the power and water flowing.
04:27 The family controls all of the vice, the gambling, the booze, the chems, that, you know, people in the post-apocalypse kind of need to get through the day.
04:36 And then the showmen run all of the entertainments.
04:40 And those range from mundane, you know, stage performances, music, and singers and so forth,
04:46 all the way to deadly games of chance and high-risk game shows that the desperate of Atlantic City can take part in,
04:55 in a chance to make a better life for themselves and experience a bit of the high life.
05:00 So on the topic of stories, can you tell us a little bit about what is the story taking us to Atlantic City?
05:09 Like what kind of stakes are at play? What kind of choices are we going to be able to make?
05:14 There's a few different stories happening.
05:17 Each of our three expeditions invites you to work closely with one of the three factions and help them achieve their one of their primary goals.
05:27 So for example, the family is all about keeping the money flowing.
05:31 They're not afraid to use these cutthroat business tactics, including cooking the books to avoid paying taxes and paychecks to the other factions.
05:39 So you have angry showmen and municipal auditors barging into the casino looking for their dues,
05:45 and then it's the players' problem to sort of fend them off.
05:49 And in our story content, our quest content, we get to explore the deeper consequences of what these factions are doing
05:58 and of the indulgences that people are taking in the city.
06:01 There is this highly exclusive designer drug known as Devil's Blood being traded in the upper echelons.
06:08 So how does the Devil's Blood affect somebody who gets addicted to it?
06:12 What happens if you cross the family or the showmen?
06:16 We have a main story, which is a very personal story about a family who has come to Appalachia on the run from Atlantic City.
06:24 So the player will help deal with some of the consequences they're facing
06:28 and make choices affecting the family members' perspectives and where they end up at the end of the story.
06:34 In addition, in contrast to The Pit, where it was sort of an all-out war for survival between the fanatics and the Union,
06:43 with the sort of extra hurdle of the troggs, in Atlantic City, the threat to the city itself comes from outside.
06:53 Atlantic City is bordered on one side by the ocean and on the other side by the dense forests of the New Jersey Pine Barrens,
07:01 which in the aftermath of the Great War have retaken territory that used to be developed by people
07:11 and have started to encroach on the city's borders.
07:14 So now we've heard about the factions, the quests, the expeditions that we've got coming to Atlantic City.
07:21 Some of our players noticed a unique character, though, in our Season 13 rewards.
07:26 We introduced a new camp ally named Joey Bello.
07:30 Can we expect to see any ties or references to him in there?
07:35 Yeah, Joey definitely brought a little bit of that Jersey Boardwalk personality to Appalachia.
07:40 His unique brand of humor definitely gave something special to the player.
07:45 We might actually even see some signs of a past performance with Uchron,
07:49 but now you can only really see him to perform live in Appalachia.
07:53 Speaking of performances, we've heard him talk about his life in Atlantic City,
07:58 and he's told us there's a pretty lively boardwalk and casino.
08:02 So what kind of activities can we expect to take part in on the boardwalk?
08:06 Well, the boardwalk is the home to the Showmen, and they run all of their games and entertainments from there.
08:14 So you'll actually get to participate in one of these in one of our first expeditions,
08:21 when you will join as a competitor in one of their most dangerous of game shows for a chance at a great prize.
08:30 In addition, the players will be able to visit a casino run by the family.
08:35 So there will be casino games, which the player will be able to acquire and bring home from Atlantic City
08:41 and build in their camps and bring some of that casino flavor all the way back to Appalachia.
08:48 So I see we're taking notes from our Nuka World on Tour update,
08:52 where you could earn the games in Nuka World on Tour through tickets by playing the mini games.
08:57 Is that kind of the same vein that we'll see on the boardwalk?
09:01 Some of those casino games will be earnable just from playing the expeditions,
09:05 but there will also be tons of other rewards that you can earn for that season,
09:08 which will be tied to Atlantic City and kind of a new story there.
09:13 So this next question is for all three of you.
09:16 Do you have a favorite character or location that you are excited for players to experience?
09:22 Josh has briefly mentioned that the Showmen are inviting players to come star in their game show.
09:30 It's actually called The Most Sensational Game,
09:34 which may sound a bit familiar to those who have read classic literature.
09:38 But this game takes place on the boardwalk in what is called Showmen's Pier
09:44 and down to the depths of an underwater aquarium,
09:48 which is a really gorgeous location and it's unlike anywhere else in our game.
09:53 So I'm excited for players to experience that and to meet the members of the Showmen.
09:58 They're a cast of eccentric and ambitious characters
10:01 who will go to any lengths to achieve their unique vision.
10:05 So that makes them quite unpredictable and sometimes scary.
10:10 I'll jump in and say that there's a lot of fun characters in it from my perspective.
10:15 You're going to meet a deeply in over his head accountant for the family
10:22 who's going to need your help really badly.
10:25 And he's a lot of fun.
10:27 The thing that I really like from the Atlantic City update is
10:31 particularly the boardwalk and the vibe of it.
10:34 We've had so many kind of dark and dreary places in the great stories we've told with the pit,
10:39 but this is such a different take on what you can see in a Fallout world.
10:43 And it's really fun to see all that alive in both the characters, the Showmen, and in the spaces.
10:49 The boardwalk really does feel fun.
10:52 What was the most challenging aspect of development for Atlantic City?
10:56 Do you have any fun stories to share with us?
10:59 So one of our challenges was listening to a lot of the feedback that we got from the pit expeditions
11:06 and looking at how players were engaging with it compared to our other daily content options.
11:13 And so going into Atlantic City, as we developed it,
11:17 we realized we wanted to make some changes to the expedition format
11:22 to bring it more in line in terms of the player's investment
11:27 with other daily options such as events or the daily ops.
11:33 So you saw some of these changes already when we removed the ultrasight battery charge costs to launch expeditions,
11:41 but we're going even further with this release.
11:44 We wanted this to be a piece of repeatable content that's approachable and fun to do over and over again.
11:51 So we wanted to make the action a bit snappier.
11:54 I'm enjoying the new expedition experience, and I hope players do as well.
11:58 If we did a good job, then it should be pretty much seamless.
12:02 Yeah, and I wanted to add that not only is the investment just in the player's time,
12:06 but we want to make sure that they're super rewarded for it.
12:09 That's probably something we'll get to talk about more in the second Dev Dive.
12:12 Absolutely. We will go into all the different rewards that you can expect to earn in Atlantic City.
12:19 We'll also talk about a new cryptid and the new encounter group.
12:24 Before we get into that next Atlantic City Dev Dive, though, it's time for us to start wrapping things up.
12:30 But I do have one very important last question for you.
12:34 Great debate amongst the Fallout 76 community. We need your help on this.
12:39 Is Cobbler a pie or not?
12:43 I will only accept it as a pie if it has bottom crust,
12:47 because that's how I've always experienced pie.
12:51 I'm going to go with a very pedantic answer.
12:55 By definition, a pie is either filling in a pastry shell,
13:02 filling topped with pastry, or both.
13:06 Cobbler is filling topped with batter, biscuits, or dumplings, all of which qualify as pastry.
13:12 Therefore, it is a pie.
13:15 Ooh, James, where do you sit on this?
13:18 I think that was a pretty authoritative answer, but I'm pretty sure I would say it's not a pie.
13:24 Well, thank you guys so much. That's all the time we have for this Developer Deep Dive.
13:31 Thank you again, Ellis, Josh, James, for joining us.
13:35 We'll let you get back into the casino.
13:38 Thank you so much to all of our players out in Appalachia.
13:42 We can't wait to share Atlantic City with you all on December 5th.
13:46 We will return next week with another Developer Deep Dive into Atlantic City,
13:50 where we'll get the scoop on a new encounter group, cryptid, rewards, and more.
13:56 We'll see you in Appalachia.
13:58 (dramatic music)
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