Review — Fallout 76
Reclamation day is at hand and it’s time to reconquer the Wastleland. But is it worth a visit?
Fallout 76 is Bethesda Game Studio’s first foray into massive multiplayer online games, and unlike its counterpart The Elder Scrolls Online (developed by sister company ZeniMax Online Studios) it failed to capture my undivided attention. There, I already said it, I don’t like the game… Unlike TES Online, which I explored for a fair bit and actually enjoyed a lot, Fallout 76 falls short on so many levels. And that’s a shame really, because I have always enjoyed the Fallout series, all the way from Fallout 3 through New Vegas and Fallout 4. All of these, to my mind, are actually great games. People have come to expect a certain quality from Bethesda’s signatures series, and even though both the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series are notorious for their many bugs and glitches, most entries in the series manage to create a wonderful setting and amazing play experience. But Fallout 76 with its online-only formula — undoubtedly sparked by the success of TES Online — just doesn’t do it. Let’s find out what’s wrong with it.
Things already went south even before the game’s beta was accessible. Fallout 76 was announced at E3 this year, and almost immediately led thousands of people to sign a petition to have Bethesda included a single player mode in the game. The game clearly had a bad rep from the start. When I heard about the online-only feature, I was very skeptical as well. I feared for lack of content and a bland story, and it turns out I wasn’t far off.
And so it begins
The game is set in the year 2102 and is actually a prequel to the other Fallout games. The player gets to create their own character, a resident of Vault 76 which is located in the United States, in the state of West Virginia to be precise. Twenty-five years after a nuclear war devastated the world, “Reclamation Day” has arrived, and the player is sent out to reclaim the Wasteland for the people. During those twenty-five years a lot has happened, and it is up to the players to fix everything. But you’re not alone of course, this is a multiplayer game after all. But each server only holds about twenty-something people, and with a world map this large, you might not even encounter anyone. The game encourages you to team-up when you meet someone, but also offer you to fight them once you reach character level 5. So, what are you supposed to do? Work together to try to turn the Wasteland into a hospitable and nice place to live, or to murder each other? This second option would seem counterproductive to what the game is all about, namely being the first people to exit the Vault and re-inhabit the Wasteland.
This is the game’s explanation as to why there are no NPCs walking around. The player is set out on a quest to reclaim the Wasteland, and does so by following clues left behind by Vault 76’s Overseer. You are being sent from one corpse to another, from one hideout to the next, and from one stash of items to the one after that. Interaction with the Overseer, if you can call it that at all, happens through recorded messages left behind on holotapes. You play these messages by putting the tapes in your Pip-Boy 2000 Mk VI, the go-to device for all aspect related to quests, inventory, health, and status. But I rarely found myself really listening to what the Overseer had to say, or what happened, or what I had to do next. The long drawn out conversations get easily overwhelmed by the environmental noise, and if you are attacked by anything at all, you won’t hear a thing anyway. This shows an issue with always-online games, where you can’t just pause the action unless you’re in a somewhat safe environment. The Fallout series has been notorious for lacking cinematic cutscenes, and 76 is an even worse culprit. When you take out all interaction and dialogues with NPCs, what is left feels literally like a barren wasteland. Maybe that was Bethesda’s point?
Take me Home, Country Roads
Appalachia, the game’s fictional version of post-nuclear West Virginia, looks good from afar, but is far from good looking. While the lighting makes the game look gorgeous from a distance, the textures seem to have decreased in quality when compared to Fallout 4. The character animations haven’t improved either. The enemies still look more or less the same, with the same colour schemes and with very predictable movement. I was very impressed by the sleek and agile movements of Fallout 4’s Deathclaws for example, but in 76 I’ve yet to encounter an enemy that rivals basically anything from the previous games. You’d expect improvement, but I haven’t really seen it.
It’s not all bad of course. Fallout 76 brings back the innovative S.P.E.C.I..A.L. system and tweaks it a bit. Whenever your character levels up, you get to invest a point in one of the seven attributes: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. Each of these attributes correlates with certain aspect in the game. The higher your Strength, the more damage you can do with melee weapons or the more items you can carry. A higher Perception skill will allows you to spot enemies sooner. The luckier you are, the more chance you’ll get on scoring a critical hit or finding more money in containers. And so on. But in 76, every other level you get a pack of Perk cards. Each card has a level and an effect. You can slot these cards under their corresponding skill in the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. tree. The higher each skill’s level, the more or stronger cards you can equip. Certain cards allow you to deal more damage with certain weapons, or enhance the effect of certain healing items. There is a huge variety which allows you to mix and match as you please.
Fallout 4 brought weapon crafting to the game, which sees its return here. Again, you’ll be able to craft your own pipe-pistol or hunting rifle, or enhance your baseball bat with barbed wire for more damage output. Every weapon you find can be dismantled for crafting materials, or repaired and enhanced as you choose. Picking up all the junk of the floor should never weigh you down too much, as you’ll often find crafting stations across the map to make good use of it. You can even create your own mobile crafting stations with your portable C.A.M.P. You receive this at the start of the game and take it with you as you go. You can build a campsite wherever and whenever you want to. You can even save it as a blueprint and put the same camp somewhere else. This allows you to create your own little space, which you can then tailor to your own desire.
Fallout 76 is still a multiplayer game, and while you can fight other players if you want, this really isn’t the main focus of the game. Unless the other player retaliates, you won’t be able to do significant damage on a player-controlled opponent. But working together is where it’s at. Completing quests becomes easier, as you can split up and each take on different parts, or add more firepower for taking out big enemies.
What’s this, a game for ants?
Just like any other Fallout game, 76 has its fair share of bugs. But while Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4 are the gaming equivalent of A Bug’s Life, Fallout 76 reminds me way more of Starship Troopers. If this reference doesn’t make sense, I’ll put it like this: playing Fallout 76 feels like an unwinnable battle against its many bugs and glitches. Innumerable frame drops and constant freezes really takes away any pleasure you might get from this game. Characters glitching, never-ending loading screens, uncompletable quests, being unable to place your pre-build camp somewhere… In short: it’s terrible. And that’s a shame.
Talking about ants, the wasteland is still littered with a variety of horrifically mutated animals and humans. Ghouls are still around, just like the super-mutants, radroaches and molerats. But Bethesda added some new and interesting enemies to join the fray. This doesn’t mean that combat has become more interesting. As mentioned before, the enemies still move in predictable ways. The AI has not been improved, and most enemies can be dispatched of from a fairly safe distance. VATS has returned as well, but being an online-only game has some implications of course. In previous games, pressing the VATS-button paused the game and allowed you to focus on specific body parts of an enemy. Each part shows a percentage, which indicates how likely you are to hit that target. In Fallout 76, the game keeps on going of course. There is no pausing here. This ensures VATS is being delegated to a secondary tool, mostly being useful for taking out the small and almost unnoticeable creatures.
The verdict
I think I can be short about this: Fallout 76 is not a good game. There are way too many bugs and glitches, there is not really much to do, the map feels very empty without NPCs and the graphics seem to have downgraded from its predecessors Fallout 4. But, there is always hope. Who’s to say a future update will transform the game in one of the best games ever? But it is far from decent at the start, which will have a negative impact on its popularity and player base. I’m looking at you, No Man’s Sky. So for now, I’m sad to say Fallout 76 is barely worth the price tag.
2/5
Reviewed on PlayStation 4
