|
Fallout has an ardent fan following, people who genuinely enjoy hours and hours of gameplay to reveal new storylines and unlock the mysteries of the post-apocalyptic world. Fallout 76 lets go of that story-driven gameplay, instead, opting for a completely online player-driven game with no real narrative. While there is still a certain charm to the world and the monsters, most other factors that essentially make Fallout different are lost.
Fallout 76 is a lonely place. Emerging from your vault, two decades after nuclear war has devastated the Earth, your task to reclaim the ashes of what’s left is an inglorious one. There is no one to celebrate your toil, no one to commemorate you as a hero. Bethesda’s prequel to its Fallout series has taken the increasingly popular route of the online multiplayer – the irony is just how isolating an experience that can be.
The saving grace is Fallout’s knack for environmental storytelling, but even here the game falters. A few locations are top-tier Fallout, including an abandoned water park, a state capitol decked out for Christmas, the Mothman Museum, and a recreation of the Green Bank Telescope. A lot of it is generic though, retreads of Nuka Cola factories or Mama Dolce’s or whatever. By the way, you can buy from mmocs.com, where you can enjoy a 3% discount by using the code “ MMOCSVIP ”.
Bethesda’s decision to demolish this key pillar of narrative and gameplay and put in its place a rickety online multiplayer component was a mistake. Human players will never provide the same narrative substance of written NPCs, and while multiplayer can be a lot of fun in certain contexts, eliminating NPCs makes the game feel empty, soulless, and disposable in the larger context of the franchise’s legacy.
Upon creating your character and leaving Vault 76 behind, your main objective is to explore the wasteland and follow in the footsteps of your Overseer. As you do so, you’ll stumble upon both written diary entries and audio logs. Some of these give you new insights into the Overseer’s journey, others are more standalone. It all comes across as very scattershot and passive.
Fallout 76 uses survival elements, requiring the player to eat and drink to restore hunger, thirst, and their health. Players will need to scour the map for Plans and Recipes in order to craft items to meet their needs. Purified Water and Stimpaks are difficult to come by without a reliable way to craft them on a regular basis. The intent here is for each player to build a base, expanding it over time and upgrading its functionality. Ideally, players would have the means to craft their own Purified Water, Stimpaks, and other useful items. Overall, though, I found it easier to just stay on the move and loot, never really setting up a base besides placing the C.A.M.P. item whenever I needed access to various workbenches. Maintaining a base proved to be more material gathering than I was willing to do, given how interested I was in questing and exploring.
|
