Multiplayer
Multiplayer is the core element of this game (if you believe Todd Howard or Pete Hines) so one would expect it to be fleshed out and work perfectly, however this is not the case. In my experience, both on launch day and in the BETA, PVP is disappointing and poorly put together. Shooting in this game for the most part is okay, but all its’ issues are glaringly obvious in PVP; guns will miss seemingly perfectly aimed shots and a players healthbar can go down unexpectedly due to server delays or errors, meaning if engaging in PVP you may die without warning. There is very little risk and reward with the PVP system, the reward for killing another player is around 10 caps and all their junk, however most players won’t carry a large amount of junk on them at any given time due to the games extremely low carry weight.
NPS, Storytelling and lore
Very quickly after exiting the vault a player finds out every human NPC in the game is dead; every single one. A traditional staple of every single fallout game in the series is the characters; every game had hundreds of voiced NPCs with their own stories that made the game world feel alive, but this is completely absent from Fallout 76. The only NPCs a player will encounter are enemies and robots. Some Robots have excellent dialogue and are well written which is nice to see. However, in around 20 hours of gameplay I have only encountered around 3 voiced Robots. The main methods of story telling are terminals, notes and holotapes. Environmental storytelling was done extremely well in Fallout 3, New Vegas and to some extent Fallout 4 but NPCs always remained the primary source of story in every game. In Fallout 76 a player is expected to read and find all the lore for themselves; this would not be a problem if it didn’t get repetitive so quickly, in some areas a player will spend 20 minutes reading terminal after terminal and listening to holotapes that can go for 6 minutes long (holotapes are also broken, I will go into this further later). Adding insult to injury, since this game is online so when entering a terminal or reading a note the game doesn’t pause, meaning if you are attacked by an enemy or another player you will have to exit out and come back after finishing combat.
Game Mechanics and Perk System
The perk system in this game is incredibly confusing and annoying, it is nothing like any pervious Fallout game. From my understanding it goes as follows: a player will start in 1 with every special stat, every 1 level up they can choose to rank up a perk card, perk cards are specific to each stat and can be ranked up to a maximum level of 3, if upgrading a strength perk card it will also increase the players strength by 1, perk cards depending on their level will have a base stat requirement, a level 3 strength card will require 3 in strength to use, every 5 levels a player received 5 random perk cards that can be specific to any of the base SPECIAL stats, this means that character building is largely up to chance and can vary widely from what a player actually wants to do. For example, I had to wait until level 10 before I could start ranking up shotgun damage because I didn’t get the card in my level 5 card pack. Game mechanics are useless, stupid or outright weird. A heavy emphasis is placed on crafting and modifying your weapons, yet the system remains confusing and worse than it was in Fallout 4. A player cannot swap mods like they could in fallout 4, if you replace a mod on your gun it is scrapped completely and cannot be put on another gun. Weapons have level caps, most shotguns can’t be used until level 5 and some rifles cannot be used until level 25, this gives players no incentive to try and fight higher level enemies to get higher level loot. A players’ carry weight is also extremely low, I have 6 perk points in strength (this stat directly affects how much you can carry) and my carry weight is still at 190 pounds and I run out of room constantly. A solution to this in Fallout 4 would be to fast travel back to your workshop and dump all your junk in it. In Fallout 76 however, the CAMP system has a 400-pound weight limit, players can max this out in 4 hours of gameplay, it completely hinders the base-building system which Bethesda advertised so much in its promotional content for Fallout 76. My biggest pet peeve however, is how quests and events interact with each other. Visiting some places in the game will trigger an event quest which will prompt a player to fight of waves of enemies or defend a workshop, things like that. This would be fine if Bethesda didn’t put majority of these events in areas tied to quests, more times than I can count I have been in the middle of a quest and an event has started, throwing hoards of enemies at me or most frustratingly interrupting whatever holotape I was listening to. Another problem with events is if one is triggered, PVP is not enabled (or at least it glitches in my experience). I was killed by two players and when I tried to kill them to retrieve my loot, an event triggered, and I could no longer do any damage to either of them; meaning that I permanently lost my loot. One of the largest inconveniences in the game is the fast travel system. The game has a vast and sprawling map which is good for exploration, but many quests send you to places very far away from each other, in Fallout 76 if a player wishes to fast travel, they must pay caps in order to do so, some places cost only 9 caps but others can be upwards of 30. This would not be a big deal if quests and sources of money weren’t so rare, some quests will pay out around 100 caps but after fast traveling to 3 or 4 places this can run out very quickly and leave you stranded. Adding to this problem most items a player can sell to vendors will only be valued at 1 or 2 caps regardless of what item they sell, meaning that selling loot you find isn’t a viable source of income.
Settlement System
Fallout 4 was the first fallout game to introduce base building and it was implemented quite well. Fallout 76 ‘expanded’ on this (I use that term very loosely) and introduced the CAMP system, all players are given a camp which allows them to set up and build a base anywhere on the map (except for interiors and areas important to quest). This sounds good in theory but in practice setting up a base anywhere can be annoying, as you can’t scrap any trees or junk that would get in the way of your building, I assume this is to prevent players from griefing. This is also incredibly annoying considering you can claim workshops out in the wasteland, nothing in the settlement area can be scrapped, which greatly reduces the amount you can build and forces you to build around whatever is already there. The settlement system has also been ported very poorly to PC, players must use the C and Z keys to navigate menus and often you will have to double press certain buttons to do one action and using a mouse can be very frustrating as walls will snap to a floor facing the wrong way and flip is almost impossible. Another annoyance present in the system is that objects cannot be floating, in fallout 4 you could snap floor pieces to others and they would be able to hang off each other, this made sense considering most of the map isn’t level. However, in fallout 76 the entire object must be touching the ground which restricts building quite a lot, especially if you’re like me and built your base very far away from everyone on a mountain. Initially a player will not be able to build everything in the CAMP system, most items are locked behind schematics that a player must either find or unlock through quests. Another problem with the system is resource producing items. Water purifiers and mineral processors both produce items, however they do not go into a players’ stash, where they would be safe from looting, they go into a separate inventory which any player can loot. When building an item like this, the game instructs you to build turrets to protect them, however in my experience no turret has gone hostile from me stealing items from a water purifier or mineral processor; rendering turrets useless as a defence against this.
Bugs
Like any open world game Fallout 76 is riddled with bugs, in most Bethesda titles players are given access to a console which they can use to fix a lot of these, you can progress a quest, spawn an item you didn’t receive or toggle clipping if you’re glitched inside a wall. Of course, you can’t do this in fallout 76 since it’s online. Multiple times I have spawned underneath my base and had to fast travel away to get out. In a quest, I didn’t receive the schematics I was supposed to get which permanently locks me out of building a tinker workbench in my settlement. There are numerous texture glitches meaning either a texture will load at an awful resolution, be blocky and glitchy or sometimes won’t load at all and leave a black space covering the area (this last one mostly happens on water). Terminals are also quite buggy, more than a few times I have had to quit the game as when I enter a terminal as my menu disappears, and I cannot exit it. Considering how often a player will be using terminals this is unacceptable. Holotapes are also bugged (or at least I hope Bethesda didn’t do this intentionally), if a player picks up a quest related holotape it will play automatically, interrupting whatever holotape they were already listening to. More times than I can count I have been listening to a holotape, picked up another one and had to start the first one over again. Many quests will prompt you to listen to multiple holotapes, meaning if you want to listen to them in order you will have to stand and wait at the next one for 4-6 minutes depending on how long the holotape goes for. If a holotape is not on a dead NPC’s inventory there is an option to press R to play it straight away, however this never works. Performance is okay for the most part (keep in mind I have a GTX 1080 running in MSI’s gaming mode paired with an i7 7700k and more than enough ram) but in certain areas I will drop below 30fps, considering my setup this isn’t acceptable for a game released in 2018. Touching on graphics, the game does look nice in some areas, but the rendering distance cannot be adjusted, meaning areas will load in items and foliage randomly. Furthermore, some areas of the game are undamaged by the war (I’m not sure how this is explained from a lore perspective) but these areas look disgusting, the contrast and brightness is way too high and the clean textures Bethesda have used are not detailed enough to look realistic. NPCs are also coded poorly, they are incredibly stupid and often stand in front of the player not moving or attacking for some time before engaging in combat. Let’s not forget about the Bethesda.net launcher, in order to avoid paying the 30% fee steam charges, Bethesda has forced everyone to use their Launcher, this wouldn’t really be a problem if the launcher worked. When the BETA came out Bethesda got the countdown timer wrong and when players tried to play the game the Launcher deleted their installs. The launcher also doesn’t have any of the useful features Steam (and other launchers from competent developers) has, like hours played and a tool to move your install folder, it also conveniently doesn’t have a reviews page for the game like Steam does. Bethesda also released a 30gb patch on launch day which is larger than the game itself meaning I had to move my install folder from my SSD to my HDD and since this isn’t supported by the launcher, I had to redownload the entire game.
Lore Retcons
Bethesda while making this game quite obviously reused a lot of assets from fallout 4, this consequently has some lore complications given the time scale. The first of which is the use of caps. It is established in Fallout lore that caps were first used in 2161 when the water merchants in the Hub began backing caps with water. Fallout 76 is set in 2102 which leaves me wondering how caps are being used. Another problem is the brotherhood of steel, founded in 2077 in California, most lore is absent about the brotherhood until 2134, although I guess an argument could be made that the brotherhood both organised itself and sent a unit out on a 2,100-mile journey through a nuclear wasteland to West Virginia for no apparent reason. Also, certain armour pieces have a Zealot legendary effect. Zealot is a rank in the Children of Atom which aren’t present until the events of fallout 3.
Summary
Overall Fallout 76 is an overwhelming disappointment, Bethesda has clearly only made this game with the intention to make money. They have tried to appeal to two completely different target audiences and failed miserably. Many fanboys and shills for Bethesda will give the same excuses:
This isn’t fallout 5 it’s a spin off: Fallout New Vegas was a spin of and is probably the most adored game in the series, also not to mention the fact that just because the game is a spin-off doesn’t give it an excuse to be bad.
Online means constant bug fixes: Bethesda have had 10 years to fix fallout 3 and almost as long to fix fallout New Vegas. If Bethesda couldn’t do it then they likely can’t do it now. Regardless of whether Bethesda does release patches that fix all the bugs, it’s still unacceptable that they released a full priced game that is riddled with bugs.
It’s fun with friends: This might be true, I’m not sure as none of my friends have bought Fallout 76 because they have read reviews on it. However, this games lore is dependant on holotapes and terminals, having to get your party of 4 or more to quiet down every time you want to listen to a holotape or read a terminal would get repetitive and annoying very quickly.
This game isn’t worth $60, and no one should pay that price for it ever. This game is probably the worst Fallout game in the series (yes even including tactics) and its not a good game on its own either. It is a clear and desperate attempt by Bethesda to profit of the hype from Fallout 4.