Welcome to our review of Fallout 76, our adventures in Appalachia were quite special and we want to tell you all about it!
Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of Skyrim and Fallout 4, welcome you to Fallout 76, the online prequel where every surviving human is a real person. Work together, or not, to survive. Under the threat of nuclear annihilation, you’ll experience the largest, most dynamic world ever created in the legendary Fallout universe.
Reclamation Day, 2102. Twenty-five years after the bombs fall, you and your fellow Vault Dwellers—chosen from the nation’s best and brightest – emerge into post-nuclear America. Play solo or join together as you explore, quest, build, and triumph against the wasteland’s greatest threats.
The game starts in the vault and without any bit of help, you are on your own. Find the way out of the vault, though easy, is your first mission. Then you are given the task to follow the main storyline and go find the overseer.
As this game is set in West Virginia in a post-nuclear world, the idea is for your vault to repopulate the world. This in itself is just a mere pretense for the intense experience Fallout 76 will bring. Aside from some other players, you will not meet a single Non-playable character, unless you count those silly robots all over the place to be NPCs.
Much like how I would expect a post-nuclear world to be, it is vast and mostly empty when you go at it alone. For my review, I did just that, I went solo and did not go into any teams or did any trading with fellow players. All to see whether or not this game could be fully enjoyed alone, but more on that in my conclusion.
The world of Fallout 76 is huge and consists mainly of the big dividing wasteland and the 4 surrounding parts. More than once did I just stop my gameplay to have a look around. I have seen gameplay videos on the internet with places I am yet to explore and I must say, the exploratory level is on par with Zelda: Breath of the Wild, always a new place to discover, always a place to revisit.
Imagining that I played this game on the Xbox One S is something else that impressed me, I wonder how gorgeous this game must look on the higher end Xbox One X… The world around us is already so densely created and just looks the part. Especially that one time that I went into an amusement park and just saw the wasted away attractions, glorious how Bethesda captured this.
Gameplay itself, as you know nothing when you start the game and the lack of a tutorial, makes it more challenging at first than you would like. Getting attacked by enemies out of nowhere and not having any weapons, it can happen if you are not careful.
I will be honest, it did happen to me, I only found out after my first demise that I was able to find a machete and a basic gun in the first few minutes of the game, a place I just passed by without giving it a second. I was set on going to the overseer and I just ignored the basics of survival. Luckily you can opt to revive easily and I decided to retrace my steps, lucky me.
With my new found gun and machete, I felt more at ease in this godforsaken world, no longer afraid of what lurks around the corner, but with my machete in hand, ready for all comers. Frankly, I ended up scrapping my machete soon after, I had found a better weapon and decided to scrap it.
With actual survival as the red thread in this game, it became clear from the very start that I had to loot everything and craft my way to get not only better gear, but also better weapons, armor, drinks, energy and so on. That same crafting and looting system is something that I often hated. It kept me from exploring and well, that was for me the main attraction when I was not brutally taking out enemies.
Enemies that come in various shapes and sizes too, whether they had a beehive on them, were mutated or just half dead or shown symptoms of gigantism, enemies are a bit on the slow side to fully notice your presence, but once they do, they attack in group. I had mutated dogs chase me down, a mole rat that came out of contaminated soil and so on. The variety was enough to keep my attention up.
Though the single player experience did not fully do the trick, I had some players be total d*cks and they kept jumping me or that one guy that kept running around me when I was trying to rest, …. I imagine it would be nice if you had a team to fully experience a game like this. Though on the other hand, the maps are so big, the very few players present at all times, often do not annoy you.
At one point, I was going on for at least an hour when I realized I had not seen a single human player. Aside from some robots and enemies, I had just been slowly strolling through the lands of West Virginia. Having never visited the real deal, I did go onto google to look up if real references where used in the game and I must say, I was pleasantly amused by the resemblance and depiction of some.
While fun, Fallout 76 can get tiresome at times as I often felt the lack of NPCs to be too obvious. Though I must say, I would completely understand if Bethesda introduced this by design. One would expect the lands to be near empty after a nuclear war…
In conclusion, Fallout 76 is best played in teams. It will allow you to properly handle tasks and take on the bigger enemies the world of Fallout throws at you. Playing Solo was mostly just a massive exploratory delight and while fun, it’s clear this game is meant to be played with friends.
I did enjoy the game, I just kinda expected more adventure in it. Though I will gladly dive back in any time to enjoy the show. Welcome to Appalachia!
