'Cat and dog people rejoice!': Fallout 76 is finally introducing camp pets 'at the end of this year'

Cat stretching by its bed — (Image credit: Bethesda)

There was a small segment for Fallout 76 during the Xbox livestream at the Tokyo Game Show, in which the creative director Jon Rush took a second to celebrate all the wonderful camps made in the game so far and ended by announcing a new feature for Fallout 76 that'll arrive at the end of the year.

"We wanted to give a huge shoutout to our playerbase over here," Rush says. "The Japanese Fallout 76 community has been one of our most talented and dedicated. From playtime, to levels, to camp building, you guys have been an absolute joy to watch and play with." After this, we got a little montage of some of Bethesda's favourite camps, which are all significantly better than mine. But Bethesda's time in the showcase wasn't just spent looking at pretty pictures—there was also an update tagged onto the end.

"We'd like to confirm some exciting news," Rush continues. "Cat and dog people rejoice! We're excited to tell you that camp pets are finally coming to Fallout 76 at the end of this year. These new furry friends will reside in your camps and can be interacted with in a number of ways." That's all the information that Rush shared during the showcase, but he did promise that there'll be more news in the coming months.

This is great news for anyone like me who makes a habit of collecting a clowder of cats at any given chance. But unfortunately, unlike all of my bases in Minecraft which are full to the brim with cats, we'll probably only be allowed one animal at a time, thanks to the restrictions of the animal friend perk card.

The animal friend perk lets you tame one animal at a time, but these animals could be dogs, cats, mole rats, or even a radtoad if you have a high enough rank. At one point, people at the highest rank could even tame deathclaws or mega sloths, but this was removed in Patch 9 as these beasts are no longer classified as animals (rightly so).

However, there could still be a chance of taming multiple animals and, therefore, keeping an army of cats at your base. Rush did say that more information about this new feature will be coming in the next few months, but I'm not getting my hopes up just yet.

Elie is a news writer with an unhealthy love of horror games—even though their greatest fear is being chased. When they're not screaming or hiding, there's a good chance you'll find them testing their metal in metroidvanias or just admiring their Pokemon TCG collection. Elie has previously worked at TechRadar Gaming as a staff writer and studied at JOMEC in International Journalism and Documentaries – spending their free time filming short docs about Smash Bros. or any indie game that crossed their path.