Re: Fallout 76 Pc Review
Donnell Simon
It's been just over a week since the Fallout TV series premiered on Amazon Prime, and one thing's for sure: It's a huge hit. You can hardly open a social media app without seeing content about it, the reviews are positive, and the active players for the Fallout games have doubled over the past week.
So was the show as good after eight episodes as it was after three? Absolutely. If anything, the show only got better as it progressed. The more inducted into the world, lore, and characters new viewers became, the more effective the show could be.
There was a lot to set up, after all. Some of us have been playing the games for years, so we knew all about Vault-Tec, the Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave, the New California Republic, Pip-Boys, gulpers, and ghouls. But if you're coming into the world fresh, that's a lot to take on.
Further, it expertly walked the line to give established fans something to chew on at the same time. The timeline of Fallout lore and stories spans hundreds of years, but the TV show is actually set after all of the games.
That led some fans to speculate that TV series executive producer and game creative director Todd Howard was trying to make the popular New Vegas game (which was not made by his team) non-canon, but in a recent interview, he clarified that both the show and New Vegas are very much canon, noting that the bomb fell on Shady Shands very shortly after the events of that game. The timeline on the show is cutting it close, but a generous interpretation allows it all to line up.
The series also canonized some specific choices that players could make in some prior games. For example, it's confirmed that the Brotherhood of Steel airship seen in the show is the same one seen in Fallout 4, meaning that the canon outcome for Fallout 4 is obviously not one where that airship was destroyed. (Players of that game had the option of pursuing paths that led to its destruction or not.)
The tease that we're going to New Vegas next season probably means that several multiple-choice outcomes from that game will have to be canonized, too. Is Mr. House still running the show? What happened to Caesar's Legion? Why does New Vegas look so bombed out compared to how it appeared in the game? We'll probably find out.
All told, new fans got to explore the world of Fallout for the first time, even as longtime fans got to see where the story has gone since they last played the games. The story hadn't been moved forward in nine years, since 2018's Fallout 76 was actually a prequel that took place long before any of the other games in the series.
Its user interface is often too opaque, and at times Fallout 4 has some of the same technical issues as Bethesda's previous games, from strange AI quirks to performance hitches and actual hard locks of the software. It's frequently unforgiving. And occasionally, despite a next-gen visual overhaul, its human characters still look a little terrifying. I'm not nearly as big a fan of the Diamond City radio DJ as I was of Three Dog in Fallout 3.
And all of that matters just enough for me to feel obligated to say it before I explain how, after more than 60 hours of Fallout 4 in seven days, the only thing stopping me from going back into it is taking this time, right now, to tell you about the game.
Like every Fallout game, Fallout 4 places you in the shoes of a fish out of water, thrown into the wasteland remains of a nuclear post-apocalypse. Before the bombs fell, some citizens were able to find shelter within the Vaults, massive, hyper-advanced underground cities designed to withstand the end of the world. You play as a survivor from Vault 111, who, through circumstances I should best leave unelaborated, finds himself transported 200 years into the future and separated from his family.
Fallout has a history, and that history never changes. From its inception in the '90s, that history has played a key role in charting the course of the Fallout universe in countless small ways. When did the bombs fall to begin the Great War? Who are The Enclave, and how did they become so powerful? Where did the Brotherhood of Steel come from, and why are there super mutants anyway? Answers to all these questions, and more, can be found in our timeline.
Still, after a few levels, it felt like a much a simpler way to play Fallout. At first, I missed the multiple layers and point systems present in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. I felt like Fallout 4 gave me less room to focus with my character, to determine his build and pursue it. The new skill system feels more general, more haphazard and do-what-you-want.
But after allowing it time to breathe, I didn't find myself playing Fallout 4 any differently in the moment than I did every other Bethesda game of the last decade. I snuck around, unlocking anything anyone had the temerity to try to close off, attacking enemies from afar. And the openness of the new skill system allowed me to hold onto skill points after leveling to use them as whim struck.
Bigger changes are reserved for VATS, or the "Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System." In Fallout 3 and New Vegas, hitting the left bumper on your controller would freeze time completely, allowing you to target specific enemies and their weak spots using a number-driven system of probabilities and critical hit rolls. And while the latter elements are still present, the safety of frozen time is nowhere to be found. VATS now slows time down to a crawl instead, which is still useful, mind, but not godlike in its broad, ass-saving applications.
Even with that change, Fallout 4 feels familiar out in the Commonwealth, Fallout's alternate-history catch-all merging of the New England states that most prominently features Massachusetts and Boston. Except that Fallout 4's shooting and movement make it feel like a functional, competent shooter now.
If the glitches that have come to exist like David Foster Wallace footnotes on every Bethesda open-world release have infuriated you beyond all reason, have ruined your ability to take any joy in its games, you may want to exercise caution. Multiple editors experienced full game freezes, though thankfully without the console locking up in turn using pre-release copies of Fallout 4. I found myself stuck on geometry a couple of times when I jumped somewhere I very clearly wasn't supposed to be. Anecdotally, the also game seemed to perform slightly worse over time, and benefited from a restart every now and again.
These issues applied on both PS4 and Xbox One. The PC version performed well with recommended specs, but we experienced major issues running the game on a 3D monitor. These are at least in part likely to be uncommon issues that pop up for a small group of people, and a number of performance problems were mitigated by pre-release patches on both Xbox One and PS4. We'll be monitoring the situation in the meantime.
In turn, Bethesda leverages this into a full loot system that resembles action RPGs like Diablo, replete with prefixes and suffixes. And there are noted, legendary versions of enemies in the game that drop unique gear that can also be modded. This applies to clothing and armor, too.
In a game that feels decidedly cruel and capricious, the loot and gear was a lifesaver. More than Fallout 3 and even New Vegas, Fallout 4 killed me with very little warning an awful lot. In fact, death seemed like the game's way of telling me I was either somewhere I just wasn't powerful enough to be, or that I needed to look at my gear and reevaluate my priorities.
This is the double-edged sword of crafting in Fallout 4. All the crap found in Fallout's world is now not just junk; it's materials to make mods for your stuff. This adds a great incentive and sense of reward to finding all sorts of things out in the wasteland. It also adds a sense of obligation to picking up every piece of trash left in the post-apocalypse, and there's only so much you can carry.
I used those materials for my gear, but you might use them for something else entirely; Fallout 4 also introduces a fully developed settlement component that allows you to 1) take over specific spaces, 2) attract settlers whose happiness is determined by the resources you make available to them, and 3) clear away most trash and debris and build complicated structures with elements powered by generators that can in turn be controlled via chainable switches.
The addition of such a major, time-sucking element is impressive both because of how well it works and because Fallout 4 would not otherwise be lacking for things to do. Without the weapon modding and settlement bits, Fallout 4 would still be an intimidatingly large open-world game that takes the fundamentals of Bethesda's open-world formula and grows them all the hell up.
Even companions see a deeper sense of development and interconnectedness. When you're not traveling with a companion, you can send them back to a specific settlement. And when you take on a different companion, they almost always interact with your previous partner in a way that reveals a relationship there.
All of that was great, but it's not where I wanted to spend most of my time. Fallout 4 continues the series' impressively effective apocalypse tourism. My favorite times in Fallout 4 felt like an archaeological expedition through an alternate history. The Commonwealth, like the Capital Wasteland before it, is a character all on its own, full of black humor and tragedy. There are so many stories everywhere, whether in Bethesda's macabre but impeccable set dressing or in more fleshed-out incidents that feel like nothing so much as post-nuclear ghost stories. Fallout 4 feels like wandering through a giant, haunted city, and I want to know every secret it has.
Bethesda's open-world strengths have always differed from its contemporaries in that focus on world-building and a sense of place above all else. Fallout 4 has all the ambiance and history that made its predecessors such wonderful places to get lost for hours at a time, with a much more coherent set of stories within it. That Bethesda has integrated a major building and crafting tool while finally building a great-playing game almost feels like a bonus.
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