CHARLESTON — A day gamers across the United States, especially in West Virginia, have been waiting for is here.
Fallout 76, the video game set in a post-apocalyptic West Virginia, hits select store shelves worldwide Tuesday night will full release on Wednesday.
“I think it will be flying off the shelf,” Scott Baldwin, the GameStop Assistant Manager at Charleston’s Southridge location, said. “We have a lot of copies. Granted, I would make sure to get the preorder because you get bonuses with it, but it’s going to be a hot item around Christmas especially for around here. It’s very big for the state.”
Video game company Bethesda Softworks made the announcement about the video game in June. “Fallout 76” is in the ninth game in the “Fallout” series but it is the first online multiplayer game by Bethesda Game Studios. The map on “Fallout 76” is also four times the size of “Fallout 4”, the last video game in this series, that came out in November 2015.
When the game was announced in the summer, pictures of the game were also rolled out. Around 50 sites in West Virginia will be featured, including Camden Park in Huntington, the state Capitol, the Greenbrier Resort, the New River Gorge Bridge and Woodburn Hall at West Virginia University.
The premise of the game, that takes place twenty-five years after the Earth was destroyed by a nuclear war, is a narrative prequel to all other “Fallout” video games. A player character is from a fallout shelter called “Vault 76” and is released from the Vault on “Reclamation Day.” From that day, it is the mission of the player character to re-colonize the area.
“I actually got to play the beta version,” Baldwin said. “I enjoyed the game a good bit. It’s not exactly a 1-to-1 of the state, but it is very close. Charleston is exactly where it should be in the game.
“Each “Fallout” is actually based in a certain state. This is the first game that I know of personally that is based in West Virginia and actually has stuff in it from West Virginia. That’s what got me, it is really cool.”
Baldwin said the Southridge location in Charleston is leading all GameStop locations in the presale for “Fallout 76” with around 600 physical copies ready to be sold. He noted it is by far the largest presale of a game in 2018.
Jake Flatley/wvmetronews.com
“Fallout 76” gear set up for sale on the GameStop at Charleston’s Southridge location.
He also added that the Southridge location along with many other video game retailers across the country are holding special events on Tuesday evening to bring in the video game.
“We are going to have food, hopefully face painting, we will have music,” he said of Tuesday night’s events. “We are going to have a competition who can beat the first boss of “Fallout 4.” Whoever can beat it the fastest should get a copy of the game and second place will probably get a strategy guide.”
The release of the game at the Southridge location is at 8 p.m. Tuesday and Baldwin encouraged anybody to join the release party.
“Fallout 4” was Bethesda Softworks all-time best selling video game, including making more than $750 million dollars in the first 24 hours of its release in November 2015.
“I’m a huge fan of the open world part,” Baldwin said. “I like to go out and explore to see what I can find. See what mischief I can get into. I like to build, I like to fight monsters. I actually fought the Grafton monster in the game. I thought that was really cool.
“I like finding random little tidbits about West Virginia that I didn’t even know about. I knew about the Grafton monster, but to actually see it in a game is nice.”
By Jake Flatley
