Fallout 76 developers discuss the new addition of Expeditions to the game and what it was like to bring players to a different era of The Pitt.
Since the release of Fallout 76 in 2018, the game has seen a wide range of updates that have given players more to do and explore. One of the biggest additions yet is the introduction of Expeditions, which were first teased for Fallout 76 last summer. These are a new type of free DLC that will take players outside of Appalachia for the first time, with The Pitt - the remains of Pittsburgh - becoming the first stop available earlier this month.
Fallout 76's Expeditions: The Pitt is perhaps the most ambitious DLC yet, taking players back to an area some Fallout 3 veterans may be familiar with, as The Pitt was first introduced as a paid expansion for the game in 2009. In the timeline of the Fallout series, Fallout 76 takes place before any other entry, meaning players will experience a different version of The Pitt than previously seen. Expeditions will take players on a vertibird ride to The Pitt, where they can play through Missions with randomized objectives that will keep the goals of each trip feeling fresh.
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Fallout 76's Design Director Mark Tucker, Art Director Jon Rush, and Quest Designer and Writer Joshua Moretto participated in a joint email interview with Screen Rant where they discuss the pressure behind creating the new DLC, how Fallout 76's Pitt differs from Fallout 3's, and designing Expeditions with fans in mind.
This is the first time Fallout 76 players will be leaving the world of Appalachia, which I know a lot of players have really been looking forward to. Without giving too much away, what new things are you guys most excited for players to finally get to experience?
Expeditions gives us the ability to go to new and old places within the Fallout Universe. So, first and foremost, having the opportunity to show firsthand the immediate aftermath of the Great War, just a few decades after the bombs fell, in different places, is exciting to us. There are so many more stories to be told in these locations, starting with The Pitt.
We wanted players to step off the Vertibird and see they weren’t in Appalachia anymore, and The Pitt provides us with the sharp contrast to achieve that. Players will get to witness the oppressive toxic smog filled areas and meet the people trying to survive there. The stories that unfold through NPC dialogue, notes, and environmental storytelling all add up to some exciting new things for players to learn about what has taken place there.
But most of all, we are excited about the Missions – which is a new content format we have introduced with the Expeditions feature. Missions support teams and solo players. We designed each mission to feel like the finale to an Epic questline. They are repeatable with a random set of different objectives – so there is a lot of variation that can occur with each play through. Players can take their time to complete missions and explore the areas, since there are no overall time limits on completing Missions. Speaking of exploration, Missions also include optional, secondary objectives players can choose to do that require additional exploration to find things that certain NPCs are looking for. Like Quests, players can log out and come back to continue their previously saved checkpointed progress.
We have made sure to better support teammates in Missions like our Public Events. For example, any member of a team can progress Mission objectives – and if an objective requires players to locate and find things, it is tracked for the team, not individually. This makes it easier for teammates to help the Leader out.
Did creating the first Expedition have pressure associated with it for you guys, since it was the first foray to a new map and a new style of adventure for players?
Great question! Yes, not only was there a lot of pressure to create these new areas, but there was a slate of new problems we had to solve to make it all work well for 76. Re-visiting a location like The Pitt has the added pressure of meeting fan expectation. First off, the format of Expeditions is different than previous Fallout DLCs that added new locations. So while we are headed back to The Pitt, the experience will be a bit different with this new format. We landed on a Mission structure instead of an entire new world map, mainly because we don’t want to lose focus on the primary world of 76 being Appalachia. We can go visit and help these other locations, but at the end of the day, we want the focus of 76 to be on Appalachia and how that continues to evolve and rebuild.
The Pitt first made an appearance in DLC for Fallout 3, which canonically takes place after the events of Fallout 76. Are there any interesting Easter eggs players who played Fallout 3's The Pitt?
I don’t want to spoil any Easter Eggs, but we do have a lot of things in this release that were first seen in the Fallout 3 DLC, for example, Steel Ingots are back. We also have re-introduced the Auto-axe in this update which will come in handy when you are face to face with Trogs. So, yeah, folks that are familiar with The Pitt from Fallout 3, will see and find some things that are familiar. That said, there is still a lot of new and exciting things there as well. Remember, over a century separates the two, so while some things will be familiar, there are still many differences in this earlier version to explore and discover.
The Pitt Expedition was available first in a Test Server, were there any especially big or interesting takeaways or changes that stemmed from that?
We always get a lot of great feedback and data from our Public Test Servers. Aside from helping us discover bugs and issues, we got a lot of good feedback on the new Union Power Armor and the rewards structure for the Missions. In both cases, we went back and made a lot of adjustments to better match player expectations. The initial Mission rewards weren’t providing enough value to players, so we went back and juiced them a good bit. One particular change we made was to add in the chance to get Legendary Modules. Once this hit the Test Servers, the feedback was really positive. The Union Power Armor in its first form wasn’t really setting itself apart from other Power Armors in the game, so we added increased Carry Capacity to create another competing choice for players that like to use the Excavator Power Armor. While it can’t carry as much as the Excavator Power Armor it does have decent baked in damage mitigation, but on top of that, it has Poison Resist Bonuses, which has a lot of utility for players. We turned around the changes and got them back up on the Test Servers. The feedback was really positive on those adjustments too.
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The idea of including randomized objectives for The Pitt's Missions is a great way of adding more replayability to the new area. How much diversity will players see between different Mission runs, in terms of these objectives and any story elements they encounter along the way?
Both Missions take place in different locations within The Pitt. Each location has a lot of area to cover and explore. If players want to see every nook and cranny, that alone will take a while. In addition, Missions will require players to complete three primary objectives. Each primary objective has 3 different options. On top of that, players can choose to complete optional secondary objectives as well. So, when you combine the massive spaces to explore, the variety of primary mission objectives and secondary objectives; that leaves you with a good deal of replayable content.
This update also includes the redesign of Whitespring Resort to make it more of a player hub. What made you guys want to include those changes alongside the introduction of Expeditions, besides how the Whitespring Refuge ties into the use of the vertibird?
The Whitespring Resort is one of the most memorable locations in all of Appalachia. Here you have this grandiose and decadent pre-war resort still being maintained by its robot staff to the point where it almost looks completely pristine and unscathed by everything that is going on around it. Take that and add in some pre-war top-secret government undertakings and you have something special and memorable. But, more importantly, Whitespring represents the last bastion of what pre-war civilization could be like. Its over-the-top and ostentatious – something humanity doesn’t really get to experience in the Wasteland. As a player, it’s a refreshing place to visit after you’ve been combing the Wasteland for adhesive and gears. The walls are all intact. There are no mystery stains on the carpet… I mean, there’s carpet! This is part of why we wanted to create another reason to go back to the Whitespring. It’s such a wonderful change of pace from everywhere else.
Lore-wise, it also made a lot of sense. The Responders have reformed and need a place to setup a base of operations. Whitespring is a great location to do that. It has built-in automated defenses with its robot staff and it has a ton of functional space they can adapt to their needs. In addition to that, there is a lot of room to grow their operation. They were very fortunate that “Management” agreed to let them setup their Refuge there.
In terms of designing this era of The Pitt, can you elaborate on the aesthetic inspiration you took from real-life Pittsburgh and Fallout 3?
Our art and design teams spent a lot of time looking at real world visual reference of Pittsburgh as well as the Fallout 3 DLC. All of the spaces we built for this release had inspirations from real world locations in Pittsburgh. The spaces in our first Mission, Union Dues are more quintessential Pittsburgh with the Industrial District and the Foundry. Real world places like J & L Steel and the Carrie Blast furnace provided a lot of inspiration for these locations. Our second Mission takes place in areas that are a lot less “stereotypical” Pittsburgh with the Trench and Sanctum. The Trench is a downtown area that has collapsed into the ground – so the inspiration for the structures and architecture came mostly from looking at old shots of downtown Pittsburgh from the 1950s. Sanctum had multiple sources of inspiration. There are two very old churches in downtown Pittsburgh, First Presbyterian, and Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, both of which helped to guide our ideas for what Sanctum could become. Along with that we have catacombs. Now, anyone who is familiar with Pittsburgh, knows there aren’t any real catacombs there. However, there was an enterprising pastor back in the 1920s that created fake catacombs to attract visitors and ultimately try to get them to join his church. This real history seemed more Fallout than Fallout, so we took some liberties with it, and made it a bit more real in our timeline.
So we took all that real world inspiration, and then wanted to make sure it fit with the aesthetic and tone that was established in Fallout 3. We didn’t want to stray away from that look – if anything, we wanted to double down on it because we wanted to establish The Pitt being just as bad in our timeline as it was in the Fallot 3 timeline. Our Art Director, Jon Rush, spent a lot of time looking at the lighting and atmosphere from the Fallout 3 spaces and worked with the art team to capture that with our spaces. I think they did a fantastic job!
Can players expect to see a lot more stories and gameplay come out of The Pitt in the future?
We have a lot of plans for how we want to expand Expeditions. Obviously, the most exciting part of the feature is the ability to add completely new locations. Of course, the structure of Expeditions also makes it straight forward for us to add new Missions to an existing location. So, both options are on the table for future content releases. That said, I am not quite ready to talk about what our specific plans are for future Expedition updates.
Is there anything you guys want players to know about The Pitt or Fallout 76 Expeditions in general?
Like all of our previous Fallout 76 updates, this latest update featuring Expeditions: The Pitt is also free. So I encourage everyone to pick up a copy of Fallout 76 and check it out!
Deven McClure is a Senior Gaming Writer covering news, reviews, features, and interviews for Screen Rant, specializing in the simulation genre. A lifelong lover of video games, she began writing for Screen Rant in 2021. When she's not working, you can undoubtedly find her playing her latest video game obsession - most likely something with farming and crafting. She's been playing games since early childhood, first becoming obsessed with Animal Crossing for the Gamecube at 8 years old, and has loved learning about them ever since. Originally from California where she studied arts and child development, Deven moved to New York in 2017. After her move, she attended Gotham Writing School with a focus on article and television writing. She now lives in Brooklyn with her boyfriend and cats, Timmy and Tommy - named after the two adorable Animal Crossing characters, of course.