Fallout 76 Falling Down

I am way, way late on this. I play a lot of computer games but I never buy them when they come out. I pick them up two or three years later when they are 75% off. Rarely am I tempted otherwise. I only bought Cyberpunk 2077 in Jul 2023—probably better that I waited.

I definitely should have been Fallout 76’s target market. I’ve logged almost 300 hours on Fallout 3, almost 700 hours on Fallout: New Vegas, and a staggering 1,000 hours + on Fallout 4. I—however—obviously was not the target market for Fallout 76. Why would I say that? Because Fallout 76’s big selling point was that it was an MMORPG.

Those other Fallouts I played the hell out of? Single-person games. Is there an option for joint play? Maybe. I don’t know. I never looked for it.

So some marketing genius looked at Fallout’s very loyal and growing fanbase and said: what they really want is that thing they can get in numerous other games but has never been a part of this game of which they are fans.

Indeed: genius.

Anyway, I finally got Fallout 76 on deep discount in June of this year (2024). I just installed it last week, and after 10 hours of play, I uninstalled it. I’ve since reinstalled it and decided to give it another chance. It’s not the timesink the others were because my interest in it is lukewarm.

Along with the setting, a key feature of the Fallout games I’ve loved has been the story. The story and the characters that are a part of it are what keeps me coming back. The game play is important as well, and it’s the game play that got me hooked on Fallout 4, even though I think Fallout: New Vegas has a better story.

Fallout 76 has retained a fair amount of the gameplay from Fallout 4, adding in equipment degradation—something from Fallout: New Vegas. It’s also got a kind of movable settlement called a C.A.M.P, and the ability to derive much lighter components from scrapping junk. If these mechanics had been wed to a good story—or, honestly, a good enough story since I played the heck out of Borderlands 3 even though its story wasn’t a pale candle to Borderlands 2—I would have probably pushed to at least a few hundred hours.

I guess because it’s an MMORPG there is very little story. I had read in articles that the narrative had been significantly reinforced recently, filling a void that had existed since its release. If this is the pumped-up story, I shudder to think what existed on release. It has a limp plot that barely exists to string together some fetch quests. It feels really empty.

And—frankly—I’ve been avoiding other PCs. It’s my understanding that I am sharing a world—this is an MMORPG—and I think I’ve seen some other PCs running around, but I’m very low level, I’m not really great at the combat mechanics—a consistent theme with my gaming—and I am honestly not interested in engaging other players. There’s a reason I’ve never really bothered with the multi-player onliners.

I’m not complete done with Fallout 76, but even after deciding to give it another shot, I’m expecting to uninstall it again soon. There’s nothing that really invests me in the game or its story. I honestly can’t recommend this game and give it 2 unfocused wandering survivors out of 5.

Note: there’s a one-pager now available inspired by Fallout 76.