Since its first video game in 1997, Fallout has made its name an actual brand, creating a whole geek culture around the game, not just by its charming pet: Vault-Boy,but also with its many references to post-apocalyptic movie classics and all these similarities to the golden age of the United States of America and the “Cold War” , and a somewhat satirical perspective of humanity’s war culture.

The franchise has changed a lot through the decades, to the point that nowadays, it doesn’t look like anything it used to be, turning from a mandatory 3rd person view RPG to a first-person shooter RPG in Fallout 3 and New Vegas with elements of survival, exploration and stealth, to the same in Fallout 4 but with a base defence system to what now is Fallout 76, that is all of these things but being multiplayer and with just a hint of RPG.

Now that we already (kind of) know what Fallout 76 is about we can conclude that Fallout is a unique franchise because Bethesda understood that the taste of it comes from its plot structure and not just by mechanics.

So here the question would be, why do we say this last release is not a shiny gold coin? Why its fan base, being honest, didn’t really like it? Is it gamers who don’t like change? Or maybe it’s Bethesda’s error by making so many mistakes? Well, the answer to this is not black nor white, since it is probably both’s fault.

What happens when games get stuck at the same mechanic? They get boring, and a good example is Assassin’s Creed or Call of Duty, where you have been doing the same thing for decades! People tend to get tired of that.

So then, this means that its gamers fault, right? They’re the ones who want changes but yell when those changes show up, not really, Bethesda has always had troubles with bugs but never with their games’ quality, except for this time, has the game sometimes felt like a beta, it’s swarming in bugs, and that is not a wordplay, also on hackers and aside from that, it feels empty, like it lacks something.

This emptiness might probably be the fact that there are no NPCs, not a single one, there’s no story, it’s just you roaming around, like it’s usually done in Fallout, but without a clear objective, just exploring, fighting and encountering people, it has lore, but not a story for the game itself, merely that could be the problem.

It could also be that there was too much hype to it, people expected too much and got way less than their expectations, but how not, the media campaign of the game was insanely huge, you would read and hear everywhere about the game.

And how do we know the game is not being the success it is supposed to be? Well, not just because of the critics, but a game that has about a week or two released getting a 50% or so on Black Friday is not a good sign.
Still, the game might be what some people expected, the Fallout style on a multiplayer game, some others could’ve just been too greedy expecting some Co-op RPG, but still, the game has a lot of flaws, and that is something to call out, so our recommendation? Inform yourself about the game before buying so there are no unpleasant surprises.

 

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