[Megathread] Fallout 76

[Xykotic]

Lol what the fuck?

Fallout 76 is already 35% off on Amazon and that's where I bought it since I had a gift card... I contacted their support to ask if they had any price protection and would refund the difference and the customer service rep said no... Then they suggested canceling the order to me and I was like what (and thought to myself that their policy says no digital refunds)? I said sure, because why not? A couple minutes went by and they came back and said, sorry, but actually we don't offer refunds on digital purchases, but we will make a one time exception for you and they gave me a full refund on the game...

What just happened? I feel like I just scammed Amazon... Or they scammed themselves on my behalf? Do I just get a free game now or do they call up Bethesda and deactivate my key or something?

Never been in a situation like this... :P

Based on this I'd bet you they have crappy management systems being overloaded by black friday, and that just giving up and giving you the money back was the easiest solution, where as the alternative might have required more work and thus having to pay someone to sort it out.

[Endus]

I can't take these reviewers seriously when they so much harsher towards Fallout 76 than the same reviewers were to, say, No Man's Sky at launch, when announced features were straight-up not present. It's less glitchy than Fallout 4 was, and the systems mostly work exactly as intended. Downranking it this hard over, essentially, a subjective preference on the method of storytelling seems bananas.

Especially when games like Gone Home use the same style and are critical darlings.

[barackopala]

I can't take these reviewers seriously when they so much harsher towards Fallout 76 than the same reviewers were to, say, No Man's Sky at launch, when announced features were straight-up not present. It's less glitchy than Fallout 4 was, and the systems mostly work exactly as intended. Downranking it this hard over, essentially, a subjective preference on the method of storytelling seems bananas.

Especially when games like Gone Home use the same style and are critical darlings.

Despite gone home being a snoosefest with a plot and pretentiousness so far up its own arse you can smell the stink from when you launch the game, fallout 76 has no plot and its mechanics are finicky and glitchy at best.

[Endus]

Despite gone home being a snoosefest with a plot and pretentiousness so far up its own arse you can smell the stink from when you launch the game, fallout 76 has no plot and its mechanics are finicky and glitchy at best.

Nawp. Wrong on both counts.

[Ochinko]

I just cant understand the reasoning behind all these bad reviews. They stated exactly what the game would be like, their idea behind it and their intention behind trying a semi-internal desire to try an online version of Fallout.

While it does have plenty of Bugs that can be annoying at times (Mobs spawning underground or inside objects, Pricketts Fort, etc) the ovetall game experience is perfectly fine. You have a massive amount of options to choose from in terms of weapons, their choice of letting you wear whatever outfit you want over your armor is just brilliant (llok at other games complicated or lack of transmog) and the perk card system is way more interesting than thought.

People complaining about the lack of NPCs either didnt know what the game would be like or they are just looking for a reason to hate on the game. You are literally not missing out on anything Fallouty with the amount of lote via journals, holotapes and terminals.

For what it ventured out to do its a huge success and you got to give Bethesda some credit for their (ongoing) effort.

Its just sad that reviewers and players seemingly a combination of hating cause its cool or blatantly ignorant of the intention of FO76.

The meme with “quit having fun” pretty much sums it up.

[Eleccybubb]

For what it ventured out to do its a huge success and you got to give Bethesda some credit for their (ongoing) effort.

Why should I give Bethesda credit for releasing a multiplayer game that lacks polish?

Most other devs get crucified for it.

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Cheapest I can find RDR2 is £46.

I can buy FO76 for £25, that's half price, I've never seen a "triple A" game drop in price so fast.

£32 on Amazon for me.

RDR is £49.

Find it quite amusing that a game's like nearly half off a week or so after release.

[Keile]

fallout 76 has no plot and its mechanics are finicky and glitchy at best.

If you actually played it...you would realize there is a plot.

The Scorched Plague plays a big role in it. The entire reason the place is empty is because of this plague. People had to leave Appalachia, as the Scorched plague was spreading out of control. It's kinda like a zombie plague, only the Scorched maintain at least some level of intelligence, though it eventually fades and they turn into burnt out husks (the random bodies scattered about that disintegrate when you touch em? That's what all Scorched eventually become.) I'm not all the way through it, but part of following the Overseers trail involves developing an inoculation for it.

Now I gotta go back to farming Black Titanium.....I have a Power Armor to build....

[Eleccybubb]

If you actually played it...you would realize there is a plot.

The Scorched Plague plays a big role in it. The entire reason the place is empty is because of this plague. People had to leave Appalachia, as the Scorched plague was spreading out of control. It's kinda like a zombie plague, only the Scorched maintain at least some level of intelligence, though it eventually fades and they turn into burnt out husks (the random bodies scattered about that disintegrate when you touch em? That's what all Scorched eventually become.) I'm not all the way through it, but part of following the Overseers trail involves developing an inoculation for it.

Now I gotta go back to farming Black Titanium.....I have a Power Armor to build....

That sounds..... awful.

That sounds like the most basic plot ever.

Hell that's literally similar to every cliche horror plague plus Land of the Dead thrown in with the whole intelligence thing. Except the "zombies" are dead.

[Puupi]

That sounds..... awful.

That sounds like the most basic plot ever.

Hell that's literally similar to every cliche horror plague plus Land of the Dead thrown in with the whole intelligence thing. Except the "zombies" are dead.

How's that any worse compared to Fallout 4 plot? Or Skyrim? Or Bioshock? Or Resident Evil?

It isn't. It's a basic plot, like all other AAA games have.

[Jastall]

My only real take away concerning criticism is this:

If you weren't previously a Fallout fan, you're not going to like it period. Its not a sequel, its a side project of what Bethesda already has so they arent doing anything to pull in outsiders. It's on the same engine we all know and meme about. I would never expect a newcomer to accept the "features" of the engine.

If you're a Fallout fan I just cannot come up with a logical argument in my head to hating this game besides not liking the era its set in or playing with others. Other than that, it's Fallout. No more, no less. Please miss me with the "but NV was open-ended!". Its the only one like that because it lacked a strong central narrative. And if its ending played out today you guys will be complaining that most of its tied to cutscenes and none of really mattered after the fact...oh wait there is a game like that...its called Fallout 4.

The game is buggy....that's Fallout
The game world is mostly empty post-apocalyptic scenery...that Fallout
Most of the story is told on terminals and holotapes...THATS FALLOUT!

Remember this game is set in a time we're most of the world still have smoke coming off it it. Everyone is dead or a ghoul or a raider. I personally think its dumb that theres even a radio station.

Could not agree less. Fallout did not start with 3, it started with 1, and it wasn't an open world game nor was it mostly empty and devoid of NPCs, hell it was a game in which a pacifist run was (mostly) possible. 1 and 2 were buggy of course, but in Black Isle's defense they didn't have half of Bethesda's resources, and less than half the bugs.

Even 3 and 4 have lots of NPCs and stories you take part in. Is there a lot of text? Sure. But it's not all of the story by any stretch of the imagination. The text is there to enhance the story and build the world, it's not expected to replace the story in its entirety.

And of course New Vegas is pretty much all about its NPCs and stories, and a lot of the fanbase considers it the most accomplish Fallout of the non-Black Isle era for a very good reason.

[Deleted]

It's funny hearing all these "the game has no plot" -comments, coming from people who haven't actually even picked up the game, or if they did, they tried it for an hour or two, that are regurgitating the review vomit of YouTubers and bloggers who played the game a dozen or so hours, running around with their heads up their ass near Flatwoods trying to figure out what the hell is going on, when if you actually do play the game a bit longer, you discover the plotlines for the Enclave, and uncover their existence in Appalachia, and why the Whitespring Bunker exists, and what and who MODUS is, and what happened with Senator Blackwell, and so on and so forth, as well as the storyline of the Brotherhood of Steel, why they were there, what they were doing there, follow the last steps of Paladin Taggerdy and her team to their inevitable tragic end, listen to Elder Maxson talk and explain why he's creating the Brotherhood, and what he wants the Brotherhood to be, and what he doesn't want it to be, and Maxon's back and forth with Taggerdy across the continent, and then there's the storyline of Abbie and her quest to get the Scorched Detectors online, and the Free States, who they were and why, and then of course the Fire Breathers, and the struggles of that squad of firefighters in the hellish mine, and you find out about the mining wars, about the Excavator PA vs the Autominers, and why there are so many robots everywhere, especially in Watoga...

And a million other things in countless notes and terminal entries, and minutes upon minutes of amazing voice acting. Such amazing storylines - in my opinion much more engaging and emotional than anything in Fallout 4 or 3 (not even going to touch New Vegas because obvious reasons) - and such memorable characters. But, ehrmagerd, I didn't get to see an NPC model walk around and bitch about the weather. What do!?

Nah, I'm sure the YouTubers who found a couple repeatable events and did some of the breadcrumb quests of the Overseer line are right. What do I know. I've just played it for like 120 hours now.

[Endus]

Could not agree less. Fallout did not start with 3, it started with 1, and it wasn't an open world game nor was it mostly empty and devoid of NPCs, hell it was a game in which a pacifist run was (mostly) possible. 1 and 2 were buggy of course, but in Black Isle's defense they didn't have half of Bethesda's resources, and less than half the bugs.

A big part of why Fallout 1 and 2 don't "feel" empty is because the game literally skips the emptiness for you. You only load into a map when you reach a location of interest or get a random encounter. The vast majority of their map is empty. You just don't experience it directly.

Even 3 and 4 have lots of NPCs and stories you take part in. Is there a lot of text? Sure. But it's not all of the story by any stretch of the imagination. The text is there to enhance the story and build the world, it's not expected to replace the story in its entirety.

Two issues;

1> In many cases, it did replace other forms of storytelling nearly completely. The vault of Garys, for instance; other than a bunch of cloned Garys running round saying "Gary?" and literally nothing else, the only way to figure out what the balls is going on is via terminal entries. The same holds true for a ton of locations in Fallouts 3 through 4. It's absolutely a technique they relied on and made use of.

2> Fallout 76 does not rely on terminals and holotapes exclusively to begin with, in its storytelling.

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But, ehrmagerd, I didn't get to see an NPC model walk around and bitch about the weather. What do!?

Seriously, for all the "took an arrow to the knee" memeing, for all the bitching about Preston, for the complaints about the reductive silliness of Fallout 4's climax (even though it's not that freaking different from New Vegas'; same three-factions-and-your-own-path option), I really don't get why this is the step too far.

[Poppincaps]

I can't take these reviewers seriously when they so much harsher towards Fallout 76 than the same reviewers were to, say, No Man's Sky at launch, when announced features were straight-up not present. It's less glitchy than Fallout 4 was, and the systems mostly work exactly as intended. Downranking it this hard over, essentially, a subjective preference on the method of storytelling seems bananas.

Especially when games like Gone Home use the same style and are critical darlings.

1. So you're going to take basically every reviewer with a grain of salt? The game has a 55 on Opencritic. EVERYONE feels like it's not good. Or at least all the reviewers.

2. Gone home didn't have previous titles in the series that incorporated moral choices or human NPCs. Fallout does. People are comparing Fallout 76 to its predecessors. As they should, because if Bethesda made Fallout 76, there's no reason why they couldn't have made Fallout 5 instead. Seems like they should've.

3. You say its less glitchy than Fallout 4 was. Based on what? Your own experiences? That's a poor metric to weigh it on. General consensus seems to suggest that Fallout 76 is far buggier than any previous Fallout game. Which makes sense considering they tacked on Multiplayer onto what is basically Fallout 4 with a new lighting engine. Of course there are going to be more bugs.

[Jastall]

A big part of why Fallout 1 and 2 don't "feel" empty is because the game literally skips the emptiness for you. You only load into a map when you reach a location of interest or get a random encounter. The vast majority of their map is empty. You just don't experience it directly.



Two issues;

1> In many cases, it did replace other forms of storytelling nearly completely. The vault of Garys, for instance; other than a bunch of cloned Garys running round saying "Gary?" and literally nothing else, the only way to figure out what the balls is going on is via terminal entries. The same holds true for a ton of locations in Fallouts 3 through 4. It's absolutely a technique they relied on and made use of.

2> Fallout 76 does not rely on terminals and holotapes exclusively to begin with, in its storytelling.

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Seriously, for all the "took an arrow to the knee" memeing, for all the bitching about Preston, for the complaints about the reductive silliness of Fallout 4's climax (even though it's not that freaking different from New Vegas'; same three-factions-and-your-own-path option), I really don't get why this is the step too far.

I don't want to experience the emptiness, that's the entire point. Not to that magnitude. I know that most of the West Coast was blasted landscapes and irradiated deserts only inhabited by beasts, mutants and ne'er-do-wells of various flavors. That's reflected in random encounters, I don't need to travel them. FO3/NV/4 balanced the stretches of wilderness with civilization and factions, 4 and NV more than 3 which is a part of why I hold these games in higher esteem than 3. FO76 doesn't, not really. There's your base, some computers giving you quests, a few locations inhabited by robots who are just there, and that's it. The vast majority of the map is just there so you can shoot and loot it.

And my cotton socks, I'm not saying there wasn't environmental storytelling in prior games stop putting words in my mouth for pete's sake. I'm saying it wasn't the only kind present in the game. I'm fine with some locations relying on that; Vault 11 and the Survivalist in NV were triumphs of environmental storytelling, or to go back even further The Glow in FO1 and the ruined Mariposa in FO2 were as well. But having 99% of the game rely on it is just cheap and not immersive at all.

Stories work best when you experience them, not when you pick up the pieces afterwards. To use a too often brought up example, Bioshock wasn't about the rise and fall of Rapture even if that heavily featured in its backstory, it was about Jack and his journey which you experience yourself with characters in the game. FO76 has tons of neat stories... that you don't experience. You just arrive after all that is important is said and done and you pick up the pieces. Again, a few stories in the game working like that is fine when they are crafted to suit that technique, but not the entire game. Just like a chase sequence in an action movie is cool, but don't make the entire movie a non-stop chase sequence with nothing else.

[Heathy]

its like when you make a game using the same engine on game dev tycoon, it automatically get a bad rating because its not brand new, really the only revolutionary thing going on with 76 is its multiplayer, that is quite impressive in itself for this engine, but not really in the grand scheme of things.

I think ppl were expecting more, didn't play it for long enough or just weren't that invested to begin with, I got to the bit of the ign review where he said something like 'monotonous gathering and crafting treadmill' i stopped it there, who the fuck did they get to review the game obviously someone random off the street because the guy didn't play fallout 4? i'm guessing he wasn't exactly someone who was interested in this sort of game to begin with.

i mean i could review a fifa game and tell you there is too much kicking balls around, but it wouldn't exactly be a fair assessment. it would be my own bias subjectivity being spouted as objectivity.

ign 'too much water'. the only reviews ill actually listen to are ppl playing the game, I watched angry joe playing the beta and he didn't have that much fun with it. but he did have SOME fun with it. the bugs and the pvp were turn offs for him, but for the parts where he was going around with his friends, fighting enemies, they were laughing and having fun. they were turned off by bugs and they didn't like the pvp that much. but they were able to have fun with the game and that was enough for me.

[Endus]

I don't want to experience the emptiness, that's the entire point. Not to that magnitude. I know that most of the West Coast was blasted landscapes and irradiated deserts only inhabited by beasts, mutants and ne'er-do-wells of various flavors. That's reflected in random encounters, I don't need to travel them. FO3/NV/4 balanced the stretches of wilderness with civilization and factions, 4 and NV more than 3 which is a part of why I hold these games in higher esteem than 3. FO76 doesn't, not really. There's your base, some computers giving you quests, a few locations inhabited by robots who are just there, and that's it. The vast majority of the map is just there so you can shoot and loot it.

New Vegas had wide swaths of completely useless terrain. The game felt like they needed another year for adding content but got told to wrap it up early.

Also, you're either being uselessly reductive with your "the vast majority of the map is just there so you can shoot and loot it" crack, or you're objectively wrong; either that accusation applies to all prior Fallouts just as much, or it doesn't apply to Fallout 76 either.

And my cotton socks, I'm not saying there wasn't environmental storytelling in prior games stop putting words in my mouth for pete's sake. I'm saying it wasn't the only kind present in the game. I'm fine with some locations relying on that; Vault 11 and the Survivalist in NV were triumphs of environmental storytelling, or to go back even further The Glow in FO1 and the ruined Mariposa in FO2 were as well. But having 99% of the game rely on it is just cheap and not immersive at all.

Also isn't the only kind in Fallout 76. Not even close. Nowhere near the 99% nonsense you're claiming.

Stories work best when you experience them, not when you pick up the pieces afterwards.

You're confusing the backstory with your story. They aren't the same thing. And Fallout games have always been extensively about backstory, at least as much as your own story.

You absolutely do have a story and agency in Fallout 76.

To use a too often brought up example, Bioshock wasn't about the rise and fall of Rapture even if that heavily featured in its backstory, it was about Jack and his journey which you experience yourself with characters in the game. FO76 has tons of neat stories... that you don't experience.

This is directly hypocritical.

You gloss over missing the early years of Rapture and accept that as "backstory", but refuse to give some of the content in Fallout 76 the same consideration.

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1. So you're going to take basically every reviewer with a grain of salt? The game has a 55 on Opencritic. EVERYONE feels like it's not good. Or at least all the reviewers.

I've said openly that I have no idea what their justification for those scores is. There are cases where you can see the same reviewer give Fallout 76 a much lower score than they gave something like No Man's Sky at launch, when NMS was flat-out missing promised features and hugely failed to meet expectations or even pre-release footage.

2. Gone home didn't have previous titles in the series that incorporated moral choices or human NPCs. Fallout does. People are comparing Fallout 76 to its predecessors. As they should, because if Bethesda made Fallout 76, there's no reason why they couldn't have made Fallout 5 instead. Seems like they should've.

Judging it poorly because it's different from other Fallout games, when the goal was to make it different from other Fallout games, is a useless scoring methodology.

Also, they're working on Fallout 5. They announced that pretty much the moment they announced Fallout 76.

3. You say its less glitchy than Fallout 4 was. Based on what? Your own experiences? That's a poor metric to weigh it on.

It's literally the only metric anyone has available to them. I've seen people continuing to complain about bugs that were fixed in the beta.

[PACOX]

Cheapest I can find RDR2 is £46.

I can buy FO76 for £25, that's half price, I've never seen a "triple A" game drop in price so fast.

Literally happens every year for Black Friday.

When the PS4 came out I got launch titles for free because Target was doing buy 2 get 2 free.

I didn't pay full price for 76, had it day 1. Got it on GMG for 15% off or whatever it was.

[Jtbrig7390]

Literally happens every year for Black Friday.

It literally doesn't happen every year for a AAA game that came out a week before black friday.

[PACOX]

If you actually played it...you would realize there is a plot.

The Scorched Plague plays a big role in it. The entire reason the place is empty is because of this plague. People had to leave Appalachia, as the Scorched plague was spreading out of control. It's kinda like a zombie plague, only the Scorched maintain at least some level of intelligence, though it eventually fades and they turn into burnt out husks (the random bodies scattered about that disintegrate when you touch em? That's what all Scorched eventually become.) I'm not all the way through it, but part of following the Overseers trail involves developing an inoculation for it.

Now I gotta go back to farming Black Titanium.....I have a Power Armor to build....

Speaking of the Scorched, I like the initial design of them despite the engines limitations.

The way some pose as the burned bodies on top of random bodies falling apart would be awesome in a horror game.

[Poppincaps]

I've said openly that I have no idea what their justification for those scores is. There are cases where you can see the same reviewer give Fallout 76 a much lower score than they gave something like No Man's Sky at launch, when NMS was flat-out missing promised features and hugely failed to meet expectations or even pre-release footage.



Judging it poorly because it's different from other Fallout games, when the goal was to make it different from other Fallout games, is a useless scoring methodology.

Also, they're working on Fallout 5. They announced that pretty much the moment they announced Fallout 76.



It's literally the only metric anyone has available to them. I've seen people continuing to complain about bugs that were fixed in the beta.

I mean if you read the reviews you'd know their justifications. People think the multiplayer aspects are half-baked, they've removed the moral choices that have been pivotal since Fallout 1, which results in a story that isn't as engaging, since you're not actively participating in it, etc.

You can disagree with those points. You can like the game. No one is saying that you can't. What you can't do is disregard people who disagree with you or paint the game as actually being good and people are just being ridiculous when both reviewers and consumer alike are not liking this game.

And yes the point of Fallout 76 was to create something different, but it's evident from the general consensus that different in this case wasn't what the majority wanted, and that different in this case isn't even executed well. Also they haven't announced Fallout 5. We can assume they're making it of course, but next is Starfield and then after that is Elder Scrolls VI. Unless Bethesda makes a new team, we likely won't see Fallout 5 for 10 years.

As for bugs, almost every review I've read has said this game is incredibly buggy. More so than any previous game. All of it is anecdotal of course, but i'll take multiple people saying it's buggy as fuck over you and maybe a few other people in this thread saying its not.