Fallout 76 - what a game it is 2 years later

We're living in a weird time, where releasing full games on day 1 almost feels like a mistake. Just the other day the Cyberpunk 1.2 patch 2077 changelog was released, a wall of text hundreds of lines that demonstrates, as if it were further needed, how the game on day 1 was, without mincing words, incomplete.

But Cyberpunk is only the latest in a long line of titles that have gone down in history for their turbulent release (how can we forget the epoch-making disaster of No Man's Sky, just to name a title), and it will certainly not be the last.

The real problem with these disastrous launches is not so much the game in suit, which mainly angers those who buy pokémon games with pre-orders, but which often gets lost track, without knowing what they become over time.. The impressions that are formed at the first run of the game a few minutes after the release often become definitive and remain forever in memory, ignoring everything that follows.

Today I decided to take the problem a little to the chest, returning to one of those titles that managed to squander a legacy of hype and dreams in a spectacularly sad way lasted almost twenty years and perhaps hurt me more, a title that was supposed to satisfy all my biggest dreams as a pimply teen and that turned into a nightmare: Fallout 76.

Its disastrous release caused a popular uprising, with players enraged by an empty, boring, monotonous and most of all incomplete game. Our IlCirox in the his review even refused to rate it, for this reason.
Quoting a recent interview by Todd Howard, there were very few things that didn't go wrong when the game came out.

More than two years after its release, I decided to give a Fallout 76 the chance that I hadn't given him in his time, completely ignoring the development of the title over the years and pretending that the game was released today.

Curious to understand if Bethesda had really learned from her mistakes, I threw myself into the mountains of Appalachia with a new number on the suit: 76.

A shocking start, but only for the player

In recent years, Bethesda has put us in front of extraordinary openings: from the iconic Skyrim cart to the Fallout 4 atomic attack.

I was therefore amazed by the flat calm with which the player is introduced in Fallout 76.

The first thing we discover is the provenance of the protagonist, one of the best minds in America, preserved for the purpose of rebuilding the nation 25 years after the atomic war.
The only thing we are told before exiting the vault is that the director (overseer in the English version) actually has additional responsibilities, and that it will be our job to find her.

Although the opening of the vault was an event, with the structure still full of trays and balloons, none of our colleagues are in sight., and the overseer is the only person we have news of. I didn't find this approach particularly engaging, and it took me a few hours to start feeling part of the lore of the game.
As the hours went by, I got hooked on the story, and started playing it as I would any other Fallout.

Unfortunately, despite the best experience, the story of Fallout 76 seemed to me built following a manual rather than an idea, looking at all costs for a safe recipe that would have made fans happy and ended up having the opposite effect.

The main quest begins immediately with the run-up of a character, the overseer, of which we have only read a note even before leaving the vault. There is no emotional involvement, we follow a stranger that our character knows, but we the players know nothing about and who we want to know nothing about at that point in the story.

The background is weak in its presentation, and despite stimulating the players' curiosity as an unknown event and main quest, it doesn't have a real hold, especially in the early hours of play. Moving on to the fact that one of the very first missions is a gun-for-hire, something that would scandalize a person who has just emerged from 25 years of imprisonment and who had left a different world outside (in war yes, but not between Americans), which can you say about the super mutants? If they are known and recognized in the Fallout lore, how is it to be justified that a person fresh out of the vault is so indifferent to their presence?

Imagine the situation: exit the vault, an enclosed place where you haven't had any updates from the outside world for years. Not only does the world start shooting you on sight as if it were a normal thing. No, at some point you find these huge beasts armed with hammers attacking you. I think the more composed of us would scream like crazy as they run away and tear their hair. But no, it's all normal, one comes out of the vault and there are huge green monsters. We shoot them, they die, and it goes on like this, quietly, as if it were normal. Clearly there are attempts to explain the surrounding world, such as the first encounter with a Ghoul, but Fallout 76 completely fails to make the player empathize with the story, taking too much, too much, for granted.

Alone in company

Before getting my hands on the game I expected a strong multiplayer experience, something that would force players to live together and cooperate.

To my surprise, and I admit with a little relief, the game instead leaves you very free to explore the surrounding world, with a non-mandatory PvP that can be activated in a special panel. The experience is the classic one of a Fallout, based on a well-defined story that leads the player to explore the map far and wide.

There are obviously many ways in which the game tries to entice people to play in groups, but they are not necessary at all. It can be safely said that Fallout 76 is a story-based work where multiple players explore asynchronously with sporadic swaps and random encounters. Unfortunately or fortunately none of my close contacts have a copy of the game e I couldn't try multiplayer exploration, but this has not affected the experience in any way, on the contrary, perhaps it has only made it more authentic.

The real gripe with this Fallout server-side management is in the implementation of AI, is in the how they are handled. From the endless amount of glitches, busted animations and jumps left and right it is clear that the mobs are entirely managed on the server side. While the choice is defensible in terms of co-operation between players, it often makes it impossible to shoot or engage in hand-to-hand combat.

For the record, however, I must point out a big limit imposed by Bethesda: in response to the requests made by many players to be able to have private servers, Bethesda has created a service, obviously for a fee, called Fallout 1st.
Among the various benefits (many cosmetics, of course), there is the possibility of having your own private server where you can play with up to 7 friends. Hiding such an important feature behind a paywall has angered so many people, and with good reason.

In such an inconstant and criticized title, perhaps one had to try to make less money and to make the players feel a little more "pampered".

Technique and design

Bethesda never denies itself, and also Fallout 76 is the classic ups and downs of things done really well and things done really badly. Starting from the merits, I was amazed by the graphic quality of the game, a notch higher than that of Fallout 4. The bright colors and a little cartoonish have been reduced, with the game that always presents itself with realistic graphics and no longer in the post style. -apolcalittico of the previous titles, but which no longer exaggerates with excesses.

The result is visually very satisfying, with realistic vegetation, the stretches of road that seem real and the houses that give the absolute idea of ​​broken life. There are still some elements that look like a jumble of pixels (such as certain bikes), but they are few and certainly do not affect the visual rendering.

One of the best ways to enjoy the graphics of Fallout 76 is probably the photo mode, very accurate and with lots of filters and poses (unlockable) for our character. If you love photography and die because they attack you while taking pictures, you will have something to enjoy.

With such accurate graphics, it is no coincidence that the setting is a spectacle, not only visual but also emotional. The world of Fallout 76 gives a darker, colder feeling, it's really scary (also thanks to the enemies that spawn late and attack from behind). The soundtrack along with the audio effects keep the player on a tightrope the entire time, forcing one to be on the lookout for the duration of a session. The anxiety that once was felt only by exploring the dark vaults is now repeated outside, in the open world.

If the visual rendering is the one that deserves the green check the most, there are a couple of elements that instead are really red pencil. Of all, the most hateful thing is that NPCs rise in level with the player. It is not acceptable in single player, let alone in an online open world. Yes, I know, it is becoming common practice, but I will continue to emphasize that until we go back. In my opinion such a thing completely disintegrates the gaming experience and the sense of progress, flattening the world from start to finish. The management of the camps is also revisable: what was perhaps the most criticized feature of Fallout 4 is revived and strengthened, with a very advanced field construction system. Thanks Bethesda, but if I wanted to make my court for friends to attack, I was playing Rust.

Conclusions

While Fallout 76 made me regain the desire to play open worlds, it failed to convince me to be the title to do so. There are many, many new features compared to previous games, many of which I can't wait to be brought back in single player. Unfortunately, however, the context in which they are presented is poor, and it is not worthy of the most well-known post-apocalyptic saga of all time.

Fallout 76 is credited with making me realize that what I wanted as a kid wasn't a world full of players, but a world where other people could at best become part of my story.

I really want another chapter, with new settings, new stories, new weapons and new characters, but not like this, not with other people buzzing around me to complete a sketchy and unconvincing story. I prefer 100 bugs in an inspired and profound game than an overall coherent experience, but one that is nowhere near thrilling.