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I have been a fan of the Bethesda era Fall games since they restarted the franchise with Fallout 3. Despite the flippancy of the franchise and the willingness to turn it into a shooter with a lighter RPG mechanics, I always come back to the franchise because of its open, post-apocalyptic palette, which allows me to explore while engraving my own story. The writing may have been useful at times, however, there is something in the formula they used that allows me to do random side quests. Their new entrance, Fallout 76, throws all the story content to a player for the benefit of an online game only, focused on multiplayer. Fall Game. Does this huge change work? Is it worth it? Keep reading to find out.
Fallout 76
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Platform: Windows PC (Revised), PlayStation 4 (Revised), Xbox One
Publication date: November 14, 2018
Players: 1 – 24
Price: $ 59.99
Fallout 76 started as an experiment to add multiplayer to Fallout 4, the previous solo game of the franchise. As such, it makes sense that the game looks a lot like its predecessor, although it seems to have received a bump in the visuals. The game also runs in the same engine, which would have been upgraded to the new game.
Textures, environments, objects and foliage are reminiscent of the previous game and do not impress much. The size of the map, which is mainly an open world, like all the others Fall Games can cause performance issues, ranging from floating random objects and textures, large framerate drops, full game blocks, and now the introduction of latency.
I put between 50 and 60 hours of play between the versions PlayStation 4 and Windows PC, whose construction seems more stable. I have not yet had a complete crash of the game, but I had several complete locks and the latency of the network is sometimes bad. The game itself is a little slow when you are in an area where a lot of things happen, but not too often.
The lighting in the game definitely seems to be the most improved part of the overall presentation, and sometimes I've been impressed by the surroundings. I spent the most time with the PC version of the game, with all the visual settings. It really seems like it has the most foliage of all Fall This game is strange because it takes place shortly after the nuclear holocaust.
Many fans and friends have asked me how much the game was broken or unplayable – the short version is Fallout 76 has generally been a stable and very playable game for me. I run the game on a good platform and on a gigabit Internet network. Falls and occasional framerate drops give the impression of combining network latency with the engine itself trying to keep up.
Most of my time with the game was again on PC. The game usually has a constant frame rate and I have never had impressive success. On the PlayStation 4, the game was more hollow and restless, but overall it was still mostly playable. Friends have told me very different experiences, but until now, my game has been stable.
Fallout 76 in terms of gameplay is all you've seen in Fallout 4 but as mentioned before – no real story or NPCs. The main game loop boils down to: explore, kill, recover, delete, then edit or create. There is really nothing else than that in the game, so if you do not like it, that's absolutely not your game. The multiplayer mode is there, but to be honest, it sounds arbitrary.
My problem with the multiplayer mode in the game is that Bethesda is stuck between the hammer and the anvil in terms of game design. There is no real threat or persistence in the game because the servers are arbitrary, your server C.A.M.P. or the base disappears when you disconnect or pack your bags. Other sandbox survival games have set up permanent servers where the player's input or construction is permanent.
In addition, the lack of urgency of other players or the player-versus-player fight removes the multiplayer factor for me. Once I built my base, I only ventured into cities to recover and I rarely met with player killers, or players from elsewhere. In addition, the PVP is discouraged unless both players shoot at each other, so it's a bit useless. There should be clear and separate servers.
The lack of traditional waiters is explained by the fact that Bethesda wanted to avoid breaking the immersion. Anyway, this happens regularly in the game with its archaic menus, or bizarre bugs here and there. Of course, enemies can have stupid physics and flying, or objects can be randomly unusable, but I would have preferred to only be able to go on a PVP server only.
On the contrary, in this game, the multiplayer mode gives the impression that you can only play in cooperation. Being a dick in this game will literally get you labeled as a player killer on the map, and you will also get a bonus. There were several times strangers and I cleaned areas or instances together. "It's more fun with friends" is very true here, because you can really have fun crushing ghouls.
As a solo experience, the game can be fun with the aforementioned gameplay loop that simply involves cleaning and improving things. I found myself immersed in the minutia of tearing up schools and hospitals for meal trays to get more aluminum to repair my guns. The problem is that it has become the major part of the game now and he may well be lonely.
As this is a survival game, you will have to deal with your hunger and thirst. Bethesda does not want to discourage occasional players, these mechanics are usually a simple walk to do and it will not take you long to get your first water purifier. After that, the game is usually a game of art and you will mostly scans to improve your equipment and materials.
It's a Bethesda open-world game, so I have to say that the game works better than I thought. I have not had a disconnected server yet, but it seems that console performance is more fragmented. This game probably works on the same technology and the same engine as the one Fallout 4and with most Bethesda games, the longer you play, the more unstable they are.
I have never seen the typical Bethesda goof, where the game was saved, but I have not seen the time that I put on the game begins to crumble. Perhaps this is due to the lack of real contribution of the players on the map, the fundamental change in the orientation of the game being encoded for several players, not for one. There are problems with latency and AI behavior.
There have been many times where the AI creep is completely outrageous. Regardless of the creature, there were many times I shot him in the head with my sniper rifle and they stood there staring at me. I think this could cause network latency to be a problem here and there, where sometimes my attacks – remotely or in melee – would hurt my enemies a few seconds later.
V.A.T.S. is basically totally unreliable now because it works in real time, while Fall games would pause the game when you launched the feature. This removes the last real tactical part of the franchise that remains, as enemies moving in real time make the reliability of V.A.T.S. at random, at best. I only use it to quickly spot enemies in thick foliage.
I wanted to have a section in this review for some of the questionable business decisions made in Fallout 76. On the one hand, the game has a micro-transaction store called Atomic Shop. This store currently only sells cosmetic items, which you can buy with "Atoms", which can be earned in game or – you guessed it, bought with real money. I did not even know it existed, to be honest.
The game is massively underutilizing the Atomic Shop and I had to see people talking about it on social media before going on a search. As the game uses the same engine as Fallout 4, he naturally recycled the assets of this game too. There are assets in C.A.M.P. creation suite that is literally copied and pasted Fallout 4, and it's unacceptable. Would all new assets be so difficult?
With the limited number of changes to the game and the blatant reuse of assets from Fallout 4I sometimes felt that it could easily have been presented as a fallout and that there would be much less backlash. In many ways, this is more like a money grab, an experience to see how a target audience that prefers role playing to a player reacts to a dramatic change in gameplay.
The modification of the benefits of these new bonus cards has made me fear that they will eventually be integrated into the Atomic Shop. It makes no sense to have changed a system that was not down, to focus only on a gacha type system, in which you are not guaranteed to get that advantage that you really want to a certain level. Bethesda has promised not to let you buy cards with money, but I think it's possible.
There is really no global story in Fallout 76 there are no decent side quests either. The main story assumed you followed the path of the safe's supervisor 76 after he left before you woke up. Unfortunately, it's about finding old holotapes and listening to him talk about his life. The only NPCs in the game are Mr. Handy robots and robots who shout nonsense or give quests.
The only quests you can get are mostly investigative quests or investigative quests, and you often think that you might encounter an NPC, but only to find another body, or a robot. The quests are useful, but mostly boring and soulless. I do not know, we had already done boring quests for Bethesda, but at that time we had an NPC with a story.
I think Bethesda could have at least tried to find a common ground, that the map is wide open and that players can play in the sandboxes, but that there are city-centers with real NPCs chaining long chains of quests. I understand why they opted for a purely multiplayer experience, but this decision killed any call that this game would have for many long-time fans.
Since there is no global story, there is no real end game to Benefits 76. The closest you can get now is to launch the nuclear weapon and summon a high level creature acting somehow as a raid leader. Once the boss is killed, rinse and repeat at another location. This game is entirely focused on cleaning and the discard loop, because the quests you can do are mostly disposable stories.
The music Fallout 76, composed by the pillar of the Inon Zur series, is fantastic. The instrumental pieces that were going to melt as I explored presented a beautiful balance between mystery, wonder and above all – a dark, gloomy, lonely feeling that reflected the same experience as playing. It fits the game so well and I really enjoyed it.
The few voices you hear, from the holotapes and the occasional robot here and there, are well done. My only complaint is that all these efforts were made to work the voice on these holotapes while all this could have been used for real NPCs. Having a real character with emotional body language, desires and needs would help make the game a little more alive.
The sound effects are generally excellent, especially the different weapons with which you can conquer the pain in the wastelands. I was pretty impressed by the sound design of the modern Bethesda games. Even though they may look identical – or perhaps identical – as before, they still sound very good here. The atmosphere of the environment definitely seems to have been improved.
In all, Fallout 76 comes as the basic gaming experience that you have found in Fallout 4, only with some kind of multiplayer mode. There is no real global story or NPCs that we can really talk about, yet there is a giant map to explore and gather things while growing stronger. It's the modern Bethesda Fall experience, distilled to this basic gameplay loop.
You can joke saying that Bethesda has finally listened to fans complaining about writing their story by completely deleting the story, but now they feel deprived of legitimate meaning. I can dig the monotony of salvaging and scrapping, but there is finally nothing left to explore. I do not know how far I can recommend it, especially when mod support is limited.
I enjoyed my time with Fallout 76 and I will come back to the game all the time, but I'm not sure how long the game will last after the initial buyers' downfall and interest – it can be as simple as players doing their own job. As a solitary experience, you can have fun, but do not expect a great story or anything, the game is literally what you do with it.
Fallout 76 has been tested on Windows PC and PlayStation 4 with the help of evaluation copies purchased by Niche Gamer. You can find additional information on the critics / ethics policy of Niche Gamer here.
Good:
- The main game loop can be addictive
- New world with many areas to explore
- Visuals seem to be an improvement over Fallout 4
- Haunted and adapted soundtrack
- Preston Garvey is not born yet, so he can not bother you every three seconds
The bad:
- Unreliable performance at times, framerate drops, rigid locks, etc.
- No real NPCs or motivation to play outside of exploration
- Available quests are boring and lifeless, usually search for quests
- Multiplayer feels arbitrary
- Bad server organization / lack of persistence, player structures disappear between sessions / servers
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