Julian Gerighty – Creative Director from Massive Entertainment – reintroduced the background behind the game, before a trailer showed a community rebuilding by growing crops in a safe zone while around their walls, desolation and lawlessness rule in Washington DC.

Otherwise the presentation focused on endgame stuff. For example, at the end of the new story campaign, players will choose one of three classes called specialisations which allow you to unlock new weapons and perks and advance past the normal level cap. On top of that, the new game will have raids, in which 8 players can partner up. Otherwise, the game is still following the template set down by the first game: there will be frequent content updates, with the year one content being three episodes of DLC including new story, new areas, and new activities. All those updates will be free for everyone, so no season passes this time.

Bethesda Game Studios, the folks behind The Elder Scrolls and the new Fallouts, today announced a mysterious new game named Starfield – “our first wholly original franchise in 25 years”, according to studio director Todd Howard. He called it a “next-generation singleplayer game” but, beyond that, didn’t reveal anything concrete. This is a game that’s a fair way out, something we won’t even see for a fair while, let alone play. But I can tell you for certain: space is involved.

As rumored, Fallout 76 is an online multiplayer survival game in the vein of DayZ or Rust. That's quite a departure from Fallout's traditional singleplayer roots, though Bethesda confirmed that Fallout 76 will have a storyline and quests to complete as in its singleplayer RPGs.

And unlike some other online survival games, you'll be sharing the world with relatively few other players. There won't be hundreds of players per server, but dozens. On Fallout 76's sprawling map, it sounds like you won't be running into other players every time you turn around. When you die, you won't lose your progress, either.

"This is not an MMO and this is not a battle royale," Bethesda's Pete Hines told Variety. "It’s supposed to feel like they just left the vault."

It will feature a base-building system that look similar to Fallout 4's settlement construction features and sentry defense systems. Those bases, as shown in gameplay footage, can be attacked and destroyed by enemies. According to Bethesda's Todd Howard, you'll be able to build your settlement anywhere on the map you desire, and you'll even be able to pack it up and move it elsewhere.

When you first shoot another player, you won’t deal too much damage until the other player responds, at which point a real fight breaks out. Higher level players won’t receive many benefits from preying on lower level players, either, and if someone is killed without fighting back at all, their killer becomes a “wanted murderer.” The murderer receives no reward for killing the player who doesn’t respond, and instead, a bounty is placed on their head. Other players can see their location on the map, and if they are killed they will lose the bounty money from their own pocket. “We turned assholes into interesting content,” Howard summarised.

Another big question mark in my mind is on the subject of nukes, which players can find and detonate, destroying other players, their buildings, and the environment around them. Using them is also incentivised as it’ll create a minature wasteland-within-a-wasteland, with new enemies and rewards. And where the anti-griefing systems may have allayed some of my fears, the discussion here did not. “Nukes, very cool,” began Steinman. “Nukes are very cool,” agreed development director Meyer.”