Fallout 76: Skyline Valley brings new energy to its ghoul population, literally

Fallout 76 players are about to embark on a very big new adventure this coming June. Bethesda has announced the Skyline Valley expansion, which brings the first ever main map expansion to the game with a wealth of new content, quests, and locations to explore, as well as new enemies to contend with, new weapons to discover, and much more. It marks a new era for the game as the developers prepare a wealth of upcoming content, and we got to get a taste of this new chapter in a closed preview event.

A shocking turn of events

Fallout 76: Skyline Valley expands the main game’s map down to the southeast, opening up the Shenandoah Valley region for exploration. What players will notice right away as they enter the region is that there is a massive red storm of lightning and chaos swirling over the region. The second thing they will probably notice quickly is that there are some very interesting new threats in the area – especially the feral Ghouls with electricity shooting out of them known as the Lost.

The Lost and Ghouls like them sit at the heart of matters in Skyline Valley, and it can all be traced to Vault 63. This particular Vault was built quickly and not well sealed from the radioactive effects of the nuclear apocalypse, so every inhabitant inside Vault 63 became a Ghoul, warped and physically degenerated by nuclear fallout at the benefit of gaining resistance to radiation and even being healed by it. More than that, some of Vault 63’s inhabitants have similar electric capabilities to the feral variety you find outside.

We quickly learned that this Vault was built with the purpose of researching weather control technology, but things went terribly wrong as they often do for Vault-Tec experiments. The weather control tech malfunctioned, creating the perpetual storm and energizing some Ghouls with electric properties. Unfortunately, many of those Ghouls went insane from the affliction, hence being called the mindless and vicious Lost. It’s an incredible setup that makes Shenandoah Valley one of the most interesting additions to Fallout 76 so far.

Though our adventures stopped at discovering the broad strokes of what’s going on in Shenandoah and Vault 63, there is so much more to see in the new expansion. Players will discover new weapons, plenty of quests, new camp supplies, and engage with terrifying enemies, including a deadly new Robobrain mech that is capable of wielding electric currents in weapons on its arms. New wildlife will include the scariest looking turkeys you’ve ever seen, mutated by radiation and acting more like velociraptors than festive Thanksgiving poultry.

It’s also worth noting that unlike previous expansions to Fallout 76, this is not a new map that you load into like the Pitt. Shenandoah Valley and the quests of the Skyline Valley expansion are built into the main map, marking the first proper map expansion in the game’s history. Players will be able to pick up a quest to kick things off pretty quickly, and then they can march right down to Shenandoah from whatever their closest discovered landmark is. It’s an ambitious first for Fallout 76 and makes the Skyline Valley expansion feel like it’s part of the full world of the main game right away.

Calm before the storm

Our time with Fallout 76: Skyline Valley was brief but fruitful. The new Shenandoah Valley area looks as treacherous as it is interesting, and we’re more than excited to see what kind of crazy adventures it was offer beyond the opening hours. With weather control on the menu, interesting new factions to work with or against, and bristling new threats to contend with, our adventures are about to get galvanized, and it’s just the start of things to come. Stay tuned for more as the Fallout 76 team reveals a wealth of further content alongside Skyline Valley in the months ahead.

These impressions are based on an early preview PC build played at a closed event. Fallout 76: Skyline Valley comes out on June 12, 2024, for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, and PS5.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.