Opinion/Review of Fallout76 (Mostly Positive)
Opinion/Review of Fallout76 (Mostly Positive)
I am going to cut to the chase, there have been a ton of reviews damming the game, but I am having fun. If you expect this version to be anything like the other fallout games, you will be disappointed.
It’s just the Fallout world.
The premise is, you are part of the first vault to open. As such, you are NOT going to see other human NPCS. Anyone that wasn’t in a vault is either dead, mutated, dead AND mutated, or infected with a regional malady associated with the Scorched Beasts. (or is still locked away in another Vault somewhere).
The premise is “you will rebuild!”?
Well, yeah, but Vault-Tech, true to their real intents, doesn’t really care about their Vault Dwellers.
Just like every other Vault we have encountered, we are lab rats. We are the test subjects to see if people can survive, that’s it. Of course, our Vault Overseer has her own mission when she gets out; to secure the missile launch sites for Vault Tech (not the USA, or for the benefit of the people, just Vault-tech.)
My goal is, survive. By any means necessary. If that means attacking people to steal their stuff, or trading with them, or even just lending a helping hand and a can of dog food to your fellow survivor, you do what you have to do. I’m not getting a replacement part for my Vault’s water system, I’m not hunting for my son that was stolen while I was in cryosleep. I’m not seeking revenge for someone trying to kill me. Those all assume there are people left to interact with. THEY ARE ALL DEAD. (…at least that’s what we know for now).
So I have to spend a lot of time staying fed, hydrated, and healthy. Along the way I am trying to build a place to live that is better than a campfire, a bedroll, and a couple of workbenches out in the rain. Unfortunately, I have to deal with assholes and the local inhabitants that want to destroy my shelter. So, I have to try several times to find a safer place to set up. Along the way, I need to find out what happened to my Overseer, and what happened to the poor inhabitants that didn’t get to be in a vault.
And maybe find out why after all the crap that the survivors had to deal with, they were all wiped out by the scorched plague. If only for your own survival. And to do that, you have to be equal parts Rambo, Dr. Quinn, and Baretta/Columbo/Sherlock. (Okay I’m 55, so my references are dated).
If you play the game with this mindset, then the restrictions the game design puts on your adventure allow to exercise your suspension of disbelief enough to get immersed in the game. Why do monsters keep coming back after you kill them? In what fragments of sentience they have left, this is their territory, or they had a programmed purpose to be there, or it’s their breeding area, or they spent time building defenses (supermutants) and they don’t want to start from scratch elsewhere. (They’re superior anyway…)
So why do some Scorched just stand still? I think once the infection totally consumes them, their bodies start to lock up, and eventually they become frozen. (Those that are frozen in place otherwise, just succumbed to the infection so rapidly they had no transition period where they were zombified by the (hive?) scorched beasts. Same with the Ferals, they stand still or shuffle in place until acting on an external stimuli.
Within this framework, I can have fun. I love #OXHORN and his research of lore. I like to dig for those nuggets of info, because it’s part of a survival game set. The person with the most useful information usually wins.
Do I hate that I have limited stash? Yes. But a conceivable argument can justify it, so it’s an annoyance and not a deal breaker. Do I hate that sometimes my camp just disappears? Yes, but maybe it was torn down and ferreted away by another survivor or monsters. I just “head to the Overseers camp and grab the C.A.M.P. she left behind”, and rebuild again. Disasters happen and your house can disappear. (look at the fires on the west coast or the hurricanes on the east) Does it require some suspension of disbelief and imagination to keep this together in-world? Yes, but it’s all pretend, anyway.
I just completed the “final exam” of Fire Breathers training, and I am currently at level 21. I’ve hardly scratched the surface of this map. Is this Fallout 4? No. But in that game I was an armored tank with a laser Gatling gun and melee was for other saps that couldn’t shoot straight. In this version of the world, tanks die quickly. I’ve lovingly modded and upgraded my .308 rifle until it’s a very lethal sniper weapon, because the best way to survive an encounter is to kill everything before it even sees you, but keep other weapons handy for when your fat falls in the fire. I’m having to use grenades because sometimes those mobs won’t wait their turn to kill you, one at a time. And melee is a necessary thing because most of the time I’m alone, and sometimes you don’t see ‘em until they are slashing your backside (pop-in monsters that spawn from nowhere…). I have to make use of all kinds of weapons because that’s all I have, and sometimes things break or you run out of ammo.
That’s fun.
I explore each new area with an abundance of paranoia and caution, because I have no idea if there is a Deathclaw, or a mongrel dog behind that next rock. At any moment I could get overrun and killed, so until I get used to what’s in an area to a point I can “groundhog day” predict what critters are in the area, I have to respect the wilderness. And it is a lovely wilderness at that. It’s just sad to explore it alone, most of the time. But that’s THIS game. It’s not dialog trees, its unpredictable vault dwellers that are generally decent helpful people, but occasionally are assholes. To misquote the ski instructor from Southpark, if you go into this expecting it to be anything other than ITS OWN GAME, you’re going to have a bad time.
So is it worth playing? Sure, if the parameters I’ve described sound like fun. Yes, if you are on a PC so you can aim with a mouse instead of using VATS and a game controller. (hey I’m biased)
Was Bethesda a bunch of lazy, money grubbing bozos that oversold, under-delivered, misled in their B.E.T.A. hype, and decided it was more profitable to wring another few coins from a game engine that is ancient, still buggy, and lacking in numerous ways? Hell yeah, but they are in it to make money, not art. They deserve all the scorn they are getting as a company for releasing it before it was ready. They were lying when they oversold presales for BETA access when it was little more than server load tests. But that’s them, trying to make money and pay the bills. That’s what passes as acceptable behavior from game developers these days, and we let them get away with it. That’s on us to not fall for that shit next time, because Bethesda has demonstrated that they can’t be trusted anymore. No more presales. I’ll wait a month next time (if I had, I would have saved money buying Fallout76 and time dealing with all this 1st month crap). I’d have *still* bought the game because the world and its lore interest me and entertain me. And like Skyrim and Fallout4, it’s the mod community that often make the games better, like it or not. But my patience has its limits, and the upcoming games (Elder Scrolls 6, etc) need to show some innovation and a new engine. This game is pushing my patience and forbearance to its limit. I’m holding out for the DLC, because the company has committed to keeping this game going so they are going to have to work twice as hard to sell it with the crap scores they so deservedly got. Maybe the next Vault that opens will be NPC’s we get to have dialog trees with and have to help, or maybe they will be robots with their brains transplanted and we’ll have to do tasks for them, or they will be mutated slime creatures that we have to kill off like the scorched. I still have a lot of world left to explore.
So, if you see a guy wandering in the wasteland with a miners helmet and pastors vestments, with an in-game handle of Amigoid* hit me up for a stimpack or some food. I’m happy to help someone else survive this experience.
*I was the founder of two Commodore Amiga users groups, back in the day. Yes I am old. Bite me. J