Fallout 76 (XO) – Armageddon outta here

Bethesda’s new online-only game has been out for a week now, as GameCentral offers a final verdict on the controversial release.

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Fallout 76 may be the most badly made video game we’ve ever seen from a major publisher. The idea of a multiplayer Fallout is perfectly fine, of course, and something that’s been planned, by more than just Bethesda, many times over the years. But given the concept’s potential the end result is baffling not only in terms of how much it gets wrong but in its haphazard implementation, resulting in a game that is not just broken on a technical level but in terms of almost all its major design decisions.



It is the technical issues that are most obvious at first though. Bethesda Game Studios (the developer, not the publisher) have been well behind the curve in terms of graphics for at least a decade now, with otherwise classic games such as Skyrim and Fallout 4 suffering from terrible animation, poor frame rates, and generally low-tech visuals. Fallout 76 shows some minor improvement in terms of foliage, but still looks like a souped-up Xbox 360 game – with some especially embarrassing sunbeam and smoke effects.

We want to get the question of graphics out of the way as soon as possible though, because apart from the performance they are the least of the game’s problems. Although it is bizarre how much Fallout 76 looks like some sort of abandoned mod, made by first year computer students that got bored after a couple of weeks and never bothered finishing it. The irony being that Bethesda has a very strong mod community, who regularly make their games look better than they ever did at launch. But being an online-only game we assume they’re not going to be able to help Fallout 76.


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When Fallout 76 was first announced Bethesda were very quick to point out that the game can still be played entirely on your own, which is very true. A maximum of 23 other people are always there in the world with you, but this is undermined by one of the game’s few positives: a much larger game world than Fallout 4. As a result, you rarely ever see anyone outside of Destiny style public events.

Joining up in a team of up to four is easy, but it offers no special bonuses and makes no effort to synch up quests or allow you to form factions, set-up your own town, or do any of the other things you might have assumed was the point of it being online-only in the first place.

But while that makes the game sound like Fallout 4 with optional multiplayer, the reality is sadly nowhere close to that. Another thing Bethesda were strangely proud to announce was that the game features no human non-player characters. We’d hate to think that was meant as a way of hiding how bad their facial animation is, but apart from a lot of identical-looking robots it means that in story terms you never speak to anyone, just read endless notes and listen to audiologs.

There is a story, though. Fallout 76 is a prequel to the other games and has your vault full of post-apocalyptic survivors emerging as one of the first to try and establish a new working government and society. This proves much harder than expected though, in part thanks to a new breed of weapon-wielding zombies called the Scorched. This set-up is fine but it all feels very distant, as you constantly hear about other characters you never meet and who seem to be far more involved in changing events than you do.

Fallout 76 (XO) – playing with friends does not make it better

Apart from the lack of interactive storytelling the gameplay is very similar to Fallout 4, with the same emphasis on picking up every bit of rubbish that’s not tied down in order to break it down and use as raw materials. This is used to craft equipment like weapons, armour, and medicine; as well as build your own base. This works, in typical glitchy fashion, via the use of a portable unit that allows you to redeploy the same set-up anywhere on the map almost instantly.



Except this rarely works properly – especially given the meagre amount of storage space for resources – and you quickly give up on any complex design aspirations and just slap down a few workbenches and a bed.

Your base is useful as a spawn and fast travel point, but you soon resent having to return as you spend so much of your time there engaged in tedious busywork thanks to the game’s new survival mechanics. You frequently have to repair weapons and armour, and make sure you’re fed and watered, but this has been perfectly calibrated so that it’s neither a minor detail that merely increases immersion or problematic enough to inspire a constant level of tension. Instead it’s just boring and pointless, which sums up the entire game all too well.

There’s a greater emphasis on character levels in Fallout 76 than other games in the series, with no chance to use any of the more powerful weapons or armour until you’ve spent dozens of hours levelling up – even though they’re dangled in front of you almost immediately. The perk system works differently than Fallout 4 but is neither better nor worse. It revolves around using collectible cards to grant you boons such as improved hacking or lock-picking skills (both of which work identically to Fallout 4) or similar improvements to your health resistance or weapon use.

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With the storytelling reduce to a purely passive state Fallout 76’s biggest problem is the undue emphasis this puts on combat, which is so mind-numbingly awful it almost seems like a parody. Fallout’s combat has always been poor, but this was mitigated by the other gameplay elements and the use of the V.A.T.S. system – which slowed down the action to almost a pause state and let you target individual body parts, and queue actions, at your relative leisure.


This can’t work in Fallout 76 because it’s an online game where time has to flow at the same rate for everyone, so all V.A.T.S. does now is act as an auto aim. The problem is that not only is the gunplay absolutely terrible but none of the enemy artificial intelligence seems to have been modified to account for the change in gameplay. Which means that most enemies just run straight towards you at super speed and you spend most of the time staring at your feet, trying to get a bead on them as they disembowel you.

Lest anyone forgets, Bethesda own Doom creator id Software and Wolfenstein developer MachineGames, which feature some of the best first person combat this generation; so how they could possibly think this is acceptable is beyond us. We’d say this also ruins the PvP encounters, but since there’s almost no penalty for death and nobody ever seems to be playing the dedicated mode that’s a moot point.

Fallout 76 (XO) – a game that gets almost everything wrong

The quest design is also inexplicably awful, again almost to the point of parody, with some of the most purposefully dull fetch quests we’ve ever experienced. Some of them are clearly meant to be ironic, such as cleaning up bottles at a firing range, but most are just legitimately boring as you search various run-down buildings for ‘clues’, which if you don’t find immediately the game points out to you anyway.

If all this is still not sounding too bad then we should reemphasise the point that at the moment none of this works properly. Bethesda Game Studios have a well-earned reputation for bugs but this is one of the most broken video games we have ever played. In terms of server stability it’s actually not too bad, although we have been thrown out numerous times and lost items to crash bugs.


A more frequent problem though is the frame rate slowing to a crawl for no obvious reason. The amount of object and texture pop-in constantly breaks any hopes of immersion, while the lighting system constantly flicks on and off for no reason, enemies get stuck in the scenery, and AI pathfinding reduces many encounters to pure farce.

One of the side effects of all this is that you’re never sure if things are not working because you’re not doing it properly or because the game is broken. Is that water purifier wired up properly or is it a bug? Is not being able to finish the mission with the token dispenser because you’ve missed something or because Bethesda have? You soon learn that 90% of the time it’s the latter.

Even great games – Dark Souls is the obvious example – have suffered from poor technical performance but Fallout 76 is not a great game. It’s very obviously something that was originally intended to be an extra mode for Fallout 4 but was never finished and has now been press-ganged into use as a separate title.

But it’s such a poorly made game that it risks ruining the reputation of both the series and its makers. In other words, the fallout from Fallout 76 will be something Bethesda are dealing with for many years to come.

Fallout 76 In Short: A disastrous failure whose technical shortcomings may one day be fixed but whose design failings, and obliviousness to its own potential, suggests a game that is irrevocably broken. Pros: The game world is the largest and most interesting of any Fallout title. And if you’re very lucky, and get it at the right angle, it can even look fairly impressive. Cons: Dull, repetitive gameplay with tedious quests, horrendous combat, and glitchy base construction. Lack of non-player characters ruins the story. One of the buggiest games ever released. Score: 3/10

Formats: Xbox One (reviewed), PlayStation 4, and PC

Price: £59.99

Publisher: Bethesda

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios

Release Date: 14th November 2018

Age Rating: 18

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