Fallout 76
Intense overall intensityWhat's in it
Ranged and melee combat against human raiders, mutants and ghouls produces blood spray, and targeted V.A.T.S. attacks can sever limbs and blow apart bodies.
Chems such as Stimpaks, Psycho, Jet and Mentats plus alcohol are crafted, consumed and traded, grant gameplay effects, and can cause addiction.
An in-game Atomic Shop sells items for real-money 'Atoms', including consumable repair and scrap kits that affect play alongside cosmetics.
Character and NPC dialogue uses strong profanity including 'fuck'.
A post-nuclear setting drives the story, with a plague that wiped out the region's inhabitants recounted through corpses, audio logs and quests.
The Atomic Shop rotates limited-time offers, the seasonal pass expires, and a low stash weight limit is lifted by the paid Fallout 1st subscription.
Unsettling ruined locations and folklore creatures such as the Mothman and ghouls create a spooky atmosphere.
Raiders and hostile factions carry out looting and killing in the world, and players may attack one another.
Mutated wildlife and creatures can be hunted and killed for meat, materials and quests as ordinary combat.
Suggestive themes and mild flirtation with human characters; nothing sexual is shown.
Who can reach your kid
What it is
Fallout 76 is an online, open-world action role-playing game set in a post-nuclear West Virginia twenty-five years after the bombs fall. Playing alone or with others on shared servers, you explore ruined towns and wilderness, complete quests, build a portable base, and fight raiders, mutated animals, robots and ghouls using guns, energy weapons, melee weapons and explosives. Combat is bloody and can dismember or blow apart enemies. The game references and lets you use in-game drugs and alcohol, includes strong profanity, and sits against a bleak backdrop of nuclear war and a region-killing plague. It is played entirely online with voice and text chat, and sells items and a subscription for real money.
How it's framed
The game frames survival and rebuilding in a devastated wasteland as the central goal, treating combat, scavenging and chem use as ordinary tools of endurance rather than as celebrated wrongdoing. Its darker material — mass death, the plague, and the collapse of society — is presented as grim history to uncover through exploration and recordings. Its monetization is built around an optional real-money store and a subscription whose storage and convenience benefits press on players who do not pay.
Details
- Developer
- Bethesda Game Studios
- Publisher
- Bethesda Softworks
- Released
- Apr 14, 2020
Similar games
We built this because we needed it
Balanced Play pools your kids' game time into one budget across Steam, Switch, PlayStation, Xbox and more. We're taking 100 founding families — free for life.
Claim a founding spot →Free for life for the first 100. No card, no spam.