**** Official Fallout 76 Thread ****

Angilion said:
I've seen some people saying that there aren't any stories in FO76. That particular criticism is invalid. In addition to the main story and the faction stories (yes, there are factions - all dead of course, but factions none the less) there are numerous side stories and they're fitting for Fallout, i.e. mostly very grim. Here's one story from one location in the game, told in various holotapes and notes and some environmental storytelling:

You find the corpse of a young woman with an odd veil, which triggers a quest to investigate Riverside Manor. If you go there, you find a large mansion and guest house that was the home of Shannon Rivers. The name might be familiar to anyone who played Fallout 4 - she was the voice actor who played the Mistress of Mystery in the radio plays for decades, the one who was dumped by Hubris Comics for the upcoming Silver Shroud film that had the two characters working together in favour of a pretty young woman who didn't fit the character at all. In her home, you find that her husband (working with Kent Connolly, the avid Silver Shroud fan from FO4) had a precise replica of the Mistress of Mytery's training facility built under their house and hired a variety of trainers for her - he knew how worried she was about playing the character on screen so he gave her the chance to train to be able to do it for real in order to help her gain the necessary confidence. A lovely story...which doesn't stay lovely. This is the Fallout world, not the Disney world.

After the war, Shannon Rivers used those real combat skills she'd learned when some raiders attacked. After that, she decided to take in orphaned girls and only girls. Boys were turned away by force (she presumably killed those who wouldn't leave and presumably some starving desperate children wouldn't leave), as were adults (presumably - the only adults mentioned were old men and nothing was said about what she did to them). The girls were trained the same way, forming an organisation - The Order of Mysteries.

But it gets even grimmer than that. Shannon and her husband had a daughter, Olivia. A big turning point in Olivia's life was when she watched one of her childhood friends being turned away to fend for himself (and probably die) in the post-apocalypse world because he was the "wrong" sex. Olivia went through the Order of Mystery training, but was skipped for any important role in the organisation. Correctly so because she was rather lacking in any sort of leadership ability and not a very nice person anyway, but it festered and took her further along the path she followed. All the killing she did certainly didn't help, especially since it didn't matter how many raiders she killed - more kept coming. Nor did it help that her mother kept the Order secret, not openly helping anyone, because the Mistress of Mystery was a secret identity in the comics. She came to consider her mother to be deluded, ludicrously trying to apply a pre-war comic book to post-war reality. Then she met that childhood friend her mother had dismissed to fend for himself or die because he was the "wrong" sex. He'd survived by joining a band of raiders. Olivia devised a scheme to become a raider leader, planning to unite all the local raiders under her command. That childhood friend was her essential liason with the most powerful local raider leader and through him she sold out the Order, providing that raider leader with information about Order movements that enabled him to ambush and kill Order members one by one. In exchange, she'd get a high position in that raider gang. Finally, she killed her mother and thus ended the Order...and her childhood friend then killed her because she was no longer useful to the raider gang and was now a threat. The raider leader wasn't an idiot - he knew she'd betray him sooner or later, killing him to take his place as part of her plan to become grand dictator of all raiders. So he had someone she trusted kill her in exchange for favour. You find the final part of the story on the corpses of Olivia and Shannon Rivers.

Now that's a Fallout story - grim and ugly and all round nasty.

There's a lot that's wrong with FO76, but storytelling isn't one of the things that's wrong with it. It's not just fetch quests that are for long dead people and thus completely pointless even in the context of the game.
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Yes it is a bit irritating that people jumping on the bandwagon are slating everything about the game when this part is not worthy of it. I bought the game for the lore and I am not disappointed so far!
 
It's probably easy to write out a story when you don't have the complication's that NPC scripting brings to the table, just jot down a mildly conformative story, get a random voice actor to spew it out and done.

Any quest that may be associated with it is literally map markers and the scripting must be some of the least complex they've done. For the vast majority of people, this is probably fine, but it's still more corporate as usual from Bethesda. I understand the ethos surrounding simplification (the skill system in particular), but if all you do is simplify and don't bother using it to create more enthusing story arks, what's the point?

If they seriously waste time voicing the main character again in TES6 then, i just don't get it.

Either way, i see FO76 as their stopgap (I won't berate them for it) between releases as hopefully they finally realise the need for their mainline games to be, you know, professionally made (may have too much hope with this). At the very least the microcosm of problems (it being an MP game, people generally have rather strict opinions, ignoring fanboys) with the game that may have ultimately been a poor design choice (probably for corporate reasons), that they won't continue to fail on the same point(s) again.

It's just all a bit lame really, they're clearly able to excel, and either choose not to or there's an inefficient culture at the company...
 
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I'm still in two minds about it. It's obviously a bad idea badly implemented by people who don't know what they're doing and/or didn't have the time to do it. Worthabuy says that if he didn't know beforehand he would have assumed this was a mod for FO4 made by a couple of people in their bedrooms in their spare time. I think that's unfair - FO4 mods are generally of much higher quality than FO76 is.

I noticed in his review that I was right about something - Bethesda are charging real money (and lots of it) for settlement building objects. $3 fior a crap door, for example. Just one crap door. $3. That's not surprising, given the extremes Bethesda go to in order to insult their customers. What is surprising is that having done that they made settlement building in FO76 much worse than settlement building in vanilla FO4. That's an achievement of sorts - I thought vanilla FO4 settlement building was such obviously cobbled together crap that barely worked and had a terrible UI because it was a rush job tacked on at the end by a few person-hours of work. But years later, here's FO76 with something far worse. Despite Bethesda knowing how popular the numerous settlement building mods have been, especially Place Everywhere (which is almost a requirement for settlement building in FO4). I think Bethesda must have intended building in FO76 as a deliberate insult to players. I find it hard to believe they really could be so incompetent to do that by mistake, especially as they're intending building as a means to extracting ludicrous amounts of money from customers in exchange for minimal work. $3 per sucker for a crap door that is at most a small amount of retexturing work and probably has already been done for the game itself anyway.

But despite Bethesda blatantly insulting their own customers and spewing out a bug-laden bad implementation of a bad idea that goes even further to insult anyone who plays on PC and despite the fact that the game can't even be finished solo (that hasn't been mentioned much) I am still in two minds about buying it because buried in the crap is an adequate game. I do want to buy it, but I'm balking at given money to a company that has gone to such lengths to insult me. They can't possibly be doing it by accident. They can't be that incompetent.
 
Despite the tirade of abuse this game has got I am still somewhat drawn to it due to how much I love any kind of fallout world.

Its a shame Beth have played on that and apparently made minimal efforts in some ways with the game.

I'm hoping after it's reception things get better and well if it doesn't I'm only £30 down and I still have a somewhat interesting game to play with
 
Mack must be a Fallout fanboy lol. His gripes are exactly the same as mine from what I have seen on various streams. Hopefully they do a 'no mans sky' and add in a ton of content and make the game what it should have been. That coupled with a price drop in the future and mod support might tempt me.
 
I'm not defending Bethesda at all they have dropped the ball here clearly :(

But there is still an enjoyable time to be had from the game in its current state just playing solo exploring & levelling up to get the required perks to complete the higher level missions. Some of the existing mission are quite lengthy in nature they just tell the story via text, holotapes & robots.

Judging by how few players there are online I would not be surprised if it goes free to play in a few months. There are so few players online now compared to the beta sessions you can easily get a server with only 2 or 3 other players. Its not a concern meeting other players anymore as so few are playing you would be lucky to find anyone in hours :eek:
 
Was looking forward another Fallout but then heard it was online and thought ok I’ll hold of but still hoped it would be good.

I really can’t see what they were going for with this
 
Glad I didn’t touch this pile lol.

It looked promising but how can you have no npcs in the game. Ok you grind 40 hours but to what end? Doesn’t look like there’s a reason for any of it. If you’re ok with than then more power to you!
 
Angilion said:
I've seen some people saying that there aren't any stories in FO76. That particular criticism is invalid. In addition to the main story and the faction stories (yes, there are factions - all dead of course, but factions none the less) there are numerous side stories and they're fitting for Fallout, i.e. mostly very grim. Here's one story from one location in the game, told in various holotapes and notes and some environmental storytelling:

There's a lot that's wrong with FO76, but storytelling isn't one of the things that's wrong with it. It's not just fetch quests that are for long dead people and thus completely pointless even in the context of the game.
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Isn't the criticism that the story is nearly entirely told through holotapes. That is lazy as hell storytelling. Not having actual character you interact with throughout the game makes it, painful. Every single game I've played that uses holotapes or similar has them to add additional lore and information. It's like the optional excess story that gives background but isn't required in any way to complete the game but the main story is told through actual people in the game, people who have motivations, who manipulate, or help you, etc.

A game filled with 'old' additional/optional story that is not a game filled with a main storyline and lots of complexity. Also a faction that is all dead... is basically not a faction if you can't ally and work with one against the other.

I haven't watched an awful lot about it because I generally avoid spoilers incase I want to play but there was so much negativity I watched a few. The impression I got was there is basically no normal real characters telling you the story, it's one holotape sending you to the next holotape, etc.

I would personal say it's entirely valid to say there is no storyline in the game, having additional 'lore' throughout the game isn't a replacement for a normal interactive, changing storyline within a game.
 
I've been loving this since I started. I didn't play beta so have nothing to compare release to but for someone who was hoping for an immersive, story led survival game in the Fallout universe it ticks all the boxes.

Some personal opinions on what it is getting slated for:

Performance: So far for me as smooth as butter on my rig but I am currently playing on a 144hz 1080p monitor. They are implementing a FOV and ultrawide support so will move over to my other monitor then. I should point out I used a new ini file that got rid of the horrible blur in the background and smoothed out my mouse and did some other alchemy. Textures can be pretty plain but I love the art style and overall it's an immersive world to be in.

Questing/Story: The logs, notes and terminals telling the story I have no issue with but you are just following the story and there is no option to effect the outcome. It has all happened and you know when you reach an NPC they will be dead and you are just reading about or listening to the outcome. I can see that if you want to have an impact on the story this is a big problem, and generally it is one big element of an RPG, but I've had fun so far reading and listening to the story.

Combat and VATS: Fallout combat, especially shooting, was never great anyway and it's not amazing in this. There are some perk cards that make VATS a lot more interesting but if you don't use those it is essentially auto aim. I'm playing mostly melee and that is a lot of fun so far and works the best with VATS imo.

I love the perk and character building system. Spending a lot of time looking at builds.

I have done some PVP and it's odd. You both have to initiate it and it can be as mess, especially as to who gets the first big hit in. I think it would be better to just have PVP only and PVE servers.

The world is huge, dense and wonderful to explore. You really never know what you will find. Lot's of storytelling everywhere at every location.

Some negatives:

The multiplayer is very odd. I was doing some really immersive quest a couple of days ago. Reading a terminal about someone, soaking up the twilight atmosphere, when all of a sudden I hear a racket and Phearlord1337 comes crashing through shooting up the place. Took me out of it completely and made plain the juxtaposition of the two playstyles they are mashing together. Just weird although I have enjoyed some duo play with me son.

They never seem to get this right but the rate at which you have to eat and drink and repair items. There are perk cards to negate these issues but until you get them you spend more time than necessary trying to survive.

Overall so far it's been an immersive (almost always) experience exploring a detailed world with what seems to be hundreds of hours of great sites to explore with a story running through it, albeit one that has already happened. Even the odd stuff like the tacked on multiplayer works more often than not. I hope they keep adding lots of new content to it.
 
B1gbeard said:
I've been loving this since I started. I didn't play beta so have nothing to compare release to but for someone who was hoping for an immersive, story led survival game in the Fallout universe it ticks all the boxes.

Some personal opinions on what it is getting slated for:

Performance: So far for me as smooth as butter on my rig but I am currently playing on a 144hz 1080p monitor. They are implementing a FOV and ultrawide support so will move over to my other monitor then. I should point out I used a new ini file that got rid of the horrible blur in the background and smoothed out my mouse and did some other alchemy. Textures can be pretty plain but I love the art style and overall it's an immersive world to be in.

Questing/Story: The logs, notes and terminals telling the story I have no issue with but you are just following the story and there is no option to effect the outcome. It has all happened and you know when you reach an NPC they will be dead and you are just reading about or listening to the outcome. I can see that if you want to have an impact on the story this is a big problem, and generally it is one big element of an RPG, but I've had fun so far reading and listening to the story.

Combat and VATS: Fallout combat, especially shooting, was never great anyway and it's not amazing in this. There are some perk cards that make VATS a lot more interesting but if you don't use those it is essentially auto aim. I'm playing mostly melee and that is a lot of fun so far and works the best with VATS imo.

I love the perk and character building system. Spending a lot of time looking at builds.

I have done some PVP and it's odd. You both have to initiate it and it can be as mess, especially as to who gets the first big hit in. I think it would be better to just have PVP only and PVE servers.

The world is huge, dense and wonderful to explore. You really never know what you will find. Lot's of storytelling everywhere at every location.

Some negatives:

The multiplayer is very odd. I was doing some really immersive quest a couple of days ago. Reading a terminal about someone, soaking up the twilight atmosphere, when all of a sudden I hear a racket and Phearlord1337 comes crashing through shooting up the place. Took me out of it completely and made plain the juxtaposition of the two playstyles they are mashing together. Just weird although I have enjoyed some duo play with me son.

They never seem to get this right but the rate at which you have to eat and drink and repair items. There are perk cards to negate these issues but until you get them you spend more time than necessary trying to survive.

Overall so far it's been an immersive (almost always) experience exploring a detailed world with what seems to be hundreds of hours of great sites to explore with a story running through it, albeit one that has already happened. Even the odd stuff like the tacked on multiplayer works more often than not. I hope they keep adding lots of new content to it.
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Add me on Beth net and can find time probably. Tuesday Wednesday to play some multi Nbktom
 
Angilion said:
I'm still in two minds about it. It's obviously a bad idea badly implemented by people who don't know what they're doing and/or didn't have the time to do it. Worthabuy says that if he didn't know beforehand he would have assumed this was a mod for FO4 made by a couple of people in their bedrooms in their spare time. I think that's unfair - FO4 mods are generally of much higher quality than FO76 is.

I noticed in his review that I was right about something - Bethesda are charging real money (and lots of it) for settlement building objects. $3 fior a crap door, for example. Just one crap door. $3. That's not surprising, given the extremes Bethesda go to in order to insult their customers. What is surprising is that having done that they made settlement building in FO76 much worse than settlement building in vanilla FO4. That's an achievement of sorts - I thought vanilla FO4 settlement building was such obviously cobbled together crap that barely worked and had a terrible UI because it was a rush job tacked on at the end by a few person-hours of work. But years later, here's FO76 with something far worse. Despite Bethesda knowing how popular the numerous settlement building mods have been, especially Place Everywhere (which is almost a requirement for settlement building in FO4). I think Bethesda must have intended building in FO76 as a deliberate insult to players. I find it hard to believe they really could be so incompetent to do that by mistake, especially as they're intending building as a means to extracting ludicrous amounts of money from customers in exchange for minimal work. $3 per sucker for a crap door that is at most a small amount of retexturing work and probably has already been done for the game itself anyway.

But despite Bethesda blatantly insulting their own customers and spewing out a bug-laden bad implementation of a bad idea that goes even further to insult anyone who plays on PC and despite the fact that the game can't even be finished solo (that hasn't been mentioned much) I am still in two minds about buying it because buried in the crap is an adequate game. I do want to buy it, but I'm balking at given money to a company that has gone to such lengths to insult me. They can't possibly be doing it by accident. They can't be that incompetent.
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I think someone at Bethesda really, really hates that they had Obsidian do a game for them, which provided the community with a comparable experience of an actual story progression system that made sense in the kind of world Fallout or even Elder Scrolls could be and they only had a single year to do it with, it must really ******* grate them.

The proof of it is in the fact that FO76 has bugs fixed within weeks of release for FO4 by the community, they just hate giving people credit that isn't their own... it's probably Todd honestly, but i'm sure there are plenty of soi bois in the company nibbling his proverbial just because they get to work on their "favourite series", not providing anything other than being an extra set of hands to release Skyrim 3 - Simplified edition.

FO76 is fine if all you wanted was the abstract bare-bones components of what the industry thinks an RPG is, but it's just a continuation of corporate bile that started in the late 90s for Bethesda.
 
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