To say Fallout 76 had a rough launch, a rough year and overall just quite a troubling existence would be an understatement. Sadly Bethesda made many moves that just seemed so out of character for them. Being an avid Fallout series fan it was sad to see the series go the way it did. Fallout 76 was rushed admitted Bethesda, shortcuts were taken, the game tried to focus on making players the NPC’s but the servers felt empty without, the missions were either just given by robots or endless holotapes, locations felt empty, the game was broken, the systems didn’t work properly and so much more was wrong with it, it was soulless. The only redeeming feature I felt was that Appalachia was huge and had a lot to explore.
Fast forward a year and a half, Bethesda announces Wastelander’s. A year has passed after Vault 76’s reclamation day, people (NPCs) are returning and finally new missions. Bethesda finally listened to what people wanted and added NPC’s. Between the release of the original game and now Fallout 76 has had a few updates, live events added and more.
I have mostly in my experience with Fallout 76 Wastelanders being spending my time with one of the companions you can bring to your camp, Commander Daguerre. She has crash landed from space after a deep sleep and wants answers as to why her crew has gone, what was the objective, what happened to Earth and so much more. This was simply a side quest but for two days I kept on with the quest and I was completely immersed within her story-line and with the new chat dialogue system similar to Fallout 3’s and New Vegas’s it felt really good being in full control of everything going on. I was supposed to be jumping into the main quest but Bethesda hasn’t skimped on this update, it’s huge, there’s so much going on and I feel that Fallout 76 is quite possibly a worthy Fallout title now;
Sadly though, there are still some glaring issues that still haven’t felt like they’ve been fixed at all. Performance issues on the PlayStation 4 Pro are still present unfortunately and it’s a shame because where I have placed my C.A.M.P has a beautiful view… with some mutant miners BUT it’s still beautiful, sadly it lags whenever I looked around which is a shame. AI are still unfortunately sometimes quite unresponsive often not attacking you when you’re right by them despite them being highlighted red. I feel like the VATS system while needing a rework because of the online play-ability is still not great I just wished it had been reworked in a much better way. Other graphical glitches are prevalent. When looking for the commanders ship the image on the screen kept duplicating itself until it lagged quite a lot so you couldn’t completely see where you were going in that area which did affect the experience as I couldn’t see.
Overall, I am hooked, to me it feels a lot more Fallout than it did previously but still the issues remain which stop it from reaching a completely overhauled state. Unfortunately as-well, you cannot overlook the handling of this game from the start. We are seeing more games releasing in a broken state or one that is devoid of promised features, such titles as No Mans Sky was one of them but it felt like the only error they made was due to time constraints, promises and bad PR but in the end they dealt with it correctly, didn’t keep screwing players over and it became a huge and well deserved success story. Fallout 76 didn’t just rush it and get it wrong once, Bethesda completely out of character pulled some massively shady moves through-out from collectors editions, collectable items, treating players pretty awfully, lying about the Atom Shop only being cosmetic, bringing out a costly membership for private servers and more. As hooked as I am to it, it still leaves a nasty taste in your mouth, do NPC’s, new quests, new items make up for the £50 people spent at launch? The collectors editions, the extras? It’s difficult, because on one hand the development team have been fantastic, they stuck with it, they kept on going and it truly is worth playing now, I don’t think it was ever worth £49.99 that I paid for it but I do feel that Wastelanders has mostly made up for the dodgy handling but we cannot forget about the handling of Fallout 76. Studios must learn from this and while I do think it’s worth it now I can’t forget what they did entirely because if we all forget, will it happen again?
Nerdy Bird Games 