Fallout 76 sleuths have made a map of post-apocalyptic West Virginia
Post-apocalyptic cartography
Over on Reddit, prospective vault dwellers have been diligently constructing a map for Fallout 76. It pays to be prepared for the apocalypse. Despite the fact that the Fallout spin-off was only announced just before E3, the user-created map is already in its sixth iteration. It’s all speculation at the moment, but thanks to West Virginians chiming in, it might also end up being pretty close to Bethesda’s version.
So the map’s creators aren’t going in blind. The Making of Fallout 76 documentary from Noclip gives us a brief glimpse at a portion of the map, accompanied by developers talking about landmarks, concept art and in-game footage that all build up a very vague idea of what the map will look like. They’re using that, along with trailers and local knowledge, to create a pretty convincing post-apocalyptic West Virginia.
Read the comments and you’ll see in-depth discussions about water towers, ferris wheels and West Virginia University almost certainly becoming Vault Tech University. At some points it just devolves into a history lesson about the state, which is just as interesting.
As detailed as the fan map is becoming, Bethesda is obviously going to be taking a lot of liberties to cram the whole state into the game. Let's not forget about that whole nuclear war that we can probably assume changed a few things, too, even if the bombs didn't drop directly on West Virginia.
We’ll find out exactly how close the map is when the game launched on November 14. In the meantime, here’s everything we know about Fallout 76.
Cheers, PC Gamer.