Fallout 76 Review

Fallout 76 takes us to picturesque West Virginia and gives us our earliest glimpse into the alternative history of the cult series. Not without its fair share of controversy, the game takes the series into the realm of multiplayer, filling the world with fellow survivors from Vault 76. The important question though is, is it any good?

Bethesda’s daring move in 2008 to take the beloved isometric RPG that the Fallout series was into first person whilst keeping, or trying to keep, the things that made it Fallout will split the community forever. But you’d be hard-pressed to argue that Fallout 3 and the games that followed, New Vegas and Fallout 4, weren’t solid games. They made a transition that sounded impossible into something that worked, albeit with issues.

Fallout 76 is in the same spirit, trying to take a franchise known for being a single player role playing game (outside of a few offshoots) and turn it into a multiplayer survival game. Time will tell whether they are ultimately successful, this will be and has to be an evolving game, but as it stands right now, they haven’t nailed the transition as well as they did with perspective.

The game starts us off in Vault 76, one of the Fallout universe’s giant underground bunkers designed to keep the lucky few safe whilst the bombs fell, opening up again when safe to allow humanity to rebuild. Most of these Vaults throughout the series however, have been social experiments with only a few, like Vault 76 itself, acting as control vaults that ultimately worked as advertised (mostly).

As you locate the exit to the titular vault, hot on the heels of the facility’s overseer, you are told about her mission to secure three nuclear sites in the Appalachia region via holotape (the Fallout version of an audio log). You’re then set free to wander and survive, or to head towards the quest markers and start your adventure. It’s not as strong an opening as you’d probably expect based on prior games but it does the job.

The world you are thrust into is occupied by up to 23 (for a total of 24) other players, the map itself is roughly four times the size of Boston in Fallout 4. Visually the West Virginia of Fallout 76 is very attractive, lush vegetation and a wider colour palette than what we are used to in Fallout make it a joy to look at. It’s almost as if Skyrim and Fallout had a baby! Unfortunately, the building interiors and built-up areas don’t hold up as well, the prefabs and tilesets that make them up are showing their age now.

As you’ve no doubt heard, there are no traditional human characters doling out quests to players. The vast majority are framed in such a way that you think you will meet a person, but then you find their corpse and a holotape to explain what to do next. If your next mission isn’t dictated to you from a voice recording then it’s likely to be given to you by a robot, this brings us to probably the most frustrating thing about Fallout 76; the world feels empty.

Initially not meeting any people really adds to the sense of isolation and loneliness you’d expect to feel, thrust into an uncaring post-apocalyptic world with nothing except your clothes and a Pip-Boy. Quests being souped-up voicemail messages saying where someone has gone and to meet them there feels like an on-the-nose nod to Fallout 3’s main quest which had you following your Dad around but it feels extremely frustrating never getting the resolution. You get given task after task by disembodied voices luring you in with the promise of physical contact only to be denied.

But what about the other players I hear you cry, this is problem number two. The map is so large that 24 players just get lost in the sheer size of it all. People do often clump together around major points of interest or during public events that happen periodically but even if you constantly go out of your way to bump into people, you will still play a significant portion of the game on your own.

This is where the quest design combined with the lack of characters really affects things. The main quests just aren’t very interesting and they lack any sense of drama due to their delivery via holotape and computer terminals. The meat of the quests are still fine and enjoyable to complete but the drive to get them done is lacking because you don’t feel invested in the who and why of what you are doing. The game’s new addition to the lore, the Scorched, actually have some interesting detail to them, but functionally as an enemy type they are red feral ghouls that can shoot weaponry.

The game is marketed as a multiplayer player versus player survival game, but the PvP design is on the conservative side. It’s essentially consensual because if someone attacks you and you don’t attack back you take a lot less damage, as soon as you hit back you take full damage. And whilst someone CAN kill you if you don’t hit back, they get branded as wanted and get a bounty on their head. They show up to everyone in the world with a star and you get bonus rewards for taking them down.

The other aspect of the game where other players matter are the public events that happen all over the map periodically. When one starts you can fast travel to them (for a price), friendly fire is off during an event so you can’t accidentally trigger PvP as you work together to complete a specific objective. These usually take on some kind of horde mode scenario where you defend objectives from waves of enemies, but can be a little more involved like trying to repair a power plant whilst it’s under attack or repair machinery as it creates canned food for example.

Rewards for these seem a little untuned though, you’ll typically be fending off multiple waves of enemies and you’ll generally get some crafting materials, some armour and a minuscule amount of ammunition back. Far less than what you expend, meaning you must go out and gather stuff to craft more ammo because you take part in events.

So what about the survival part of this survival game? If you’ve played Fallout 4’s survival mode, it’s basically that combined with a streamlined take on the settlement mechanic. You now have hunger and thirst bars to keep track of and diseases that affect your stats. Fortunately, these mechanics aren’t too fiddly, at least once you get a couple of perk upgrades to slow down how quickly you starve and dehydrate!

The C.A.M.P. is Fallout 76’s take on the settlement system, with you able to build a base anywhere in the map (as long as it doesn’t intersect anything premade), giving you a home you can fit with various workshops and that doubles as a free fast travel point. This is useful considering you can move your C.A.M.P. at any time for a few caps.

The game has some issues that just suggest not much thought was put into them, VATS is a system that in the 3D Fallout games slows time and lets you tactically target body parts as a way to supplement normal combat. In Fallout 76 however the game can’t pause or slow down as it’s multiplayer so VATS has become an auto-aim that lets you hit your target no matter how you are facing. This just doesn’t feel right at all, neither does the fact that the menus again use the Pip-Boy arm computer but again it doesn’t pause. In the heat of battle this makes it next to useless as whilst it’s an immersive thing it’s not conducive to quick selections.

It’s all a bit schizophrenic, the main quest and solo content rarely intersects with the multiplayer side of it all and the survival elements are so tame that they rarely become an issue. But even with all that said, it can be fun even if it feels like you are playing a cutdown Fallout 4 at times. Gunplay feels solid although hit registration is at the whims of the server you are connected to, most of my sessions it felt fine but at times it felt really off.

Also something to note is I played on the base Xbox One, for the most part performance in general gameplay was fine but in firefights, especially in built-up areas that could tank to sub-10 frames per second which made combat all but impossible, using VATS was the only viable option because there was no way I could realistically aim without it.

As I said at the start of the review, Fallout 76 could become a good title if Bethesda make good on its promise of constantly adding and improving the game. Unfortunately, as it is right now on launch, it’s distinctly average because it doesn’t really know what it wants to be, multiplayer feels neutered and questing solo feels bland and empty.