No, it’s not Athens after a particularly wild HallOUween weekend.
It’s a post-nuclear war Athens, Ohio, and the fictional Hocking University (cough, cough, Ohio University) in the latest expansion of the hit online video game Fallout 76 released on Dec. 2. According to the publisher Bethesda, the game expansion takes place in rural southeastern Ohio, and is the largest map expansion yet to Fallout 76.
The centerpiece of the expanded map is the real-life city of Athens after nuclear war has destroyed Earth and has left the survivors to roam the wasteland.
In the game, Athens and “Hocking University” closely model the layout of their real world counterparts – including familiar street names to Ohio University alumni like Court, Union, Washington and Congress streets and Richland Avenue.
The Dispatch’s wasteland explorers found plenty of homages to many of the landmarks in Athens and Ohio University, including College Green, the Athens County Courthouse and Peden Stadium. There are also many references to the famous annual “HallOUween” block party every year, although it is called Athens Halloween in the game.
Popular destinations including Hocking Hills State Park and Stroud’s Run also feature in the game.
The broader area includes a scorched landscape filled with mutated enemies, environmental hazards, and hidden rewards—bringing the game to Ohio for the first time with Walton Goggins, the star of the popular Amazon series based on the long-running game, to voice the Ghoul.
Fallout 76, released in 2018, is Bethesda’s online multiplayer survival game set in post-apocalyptic Appalachia spanning parts of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New Jersey and now Ohio. Regular updates and community events have contributed to the game’s growth since its launch. The first Fallout game was released in 1997.
Dispatch reporter Nathan Hart contributed to this report.
Cole Behrens covers K-12 education and school districts in central Ohio. Have a tip? Contact Cole at cbehrens@dispatch.com or connect with him on X at @Colebehr_report
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Post-apocalypse Ohio University, Athens featured in new ‘Fallout 76’
Reporting by Cole Behrens, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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