That went well.

I didn’t get the game, not even with the generous discount offered like ten minutes after the game had been released. I expected the game to be vastly inferior to earlier titles, but even long before the release I gradually lost even the little excitement I initially might have had. Especially since I’m able to listen to the stellar soundtrack directly on my music service anyway. Might still get the game in the future, but quite possibly I won’t.

I did however, despite my disinterest in playing the game myself, follow the unfolding release story with great interest, starting way back with the teaser. And it was quite a ride, much drama as Bethesda had their reputation obliterated step by step. Probably more interesting than the stories within the game itself, and more tragic.

What had me most worried about the game right from the E3 show was the lack of human NPCs. Such a gap would of course mean a downgrade of NPC interaction in general, in favor of multiplayer, which seemed like a terrible decision for this series, and for my personal taste.

In the days following the E3 announcement I was trying to get this point across in various forums, but it fell on deaf ears. One guy even refused to believe me — “do you really think Bethesda would…” — and I had to point him to several sources where Todd made it clear that they indeed intended to.

Instead the main worry was the risk of griefing. I had some concern about that too, but Bethesda did say it was possible to play solo and that there would be anti-griefing measures in place, making it possible to play basically as a single-player game except for the occasional run-in with another player. Especially with relatively few players on each map.

But that wouldn’t cure the problem of having downgraded NPC interaction.

And it’s the kind of shared world that is bound to ruin the solo-player experience in certain other ways as well, including by not allowing any one person to have any lasting impact on the world that way you routinely have in single player games. When the state of the world changes, it’s for the most part just temporary, then it resets. That diminishes the sense of progression. Your character progresses, but not the world. Heck, even the impact of a nuke is reset after a few hours, I hear. Imagine how cheapening and ridiculous it would have been if Megaton and its residents would reset a few hours after nuking it. Nukes should be serious business, especially in a game like Fallout — war never changes — but Fallout 76 turns them into a joke. Watch the intro video to the first Fallout game to know what I mean by serious.

The game is more like an amusement park with a bunch of fun stuff to do with your buddies, where most things are of little consequence. Even the parts that are serious, the tragic and poignant stories you get to hear while listening to the holotapes, are kind of ruined if you go multiplayer, because most people just don’t want to spend five minutes listening to a tape while your friend is waiting. It’s like reading a book and socializing at the same time, it doesn’t mix well.

But anyway, then the beta arrived and all hell broke loose. What had been a speculative breeze of worry turned into a full blown storm of hate, as the emerging self-organized consensus was that this game just plain sucks. Turns out that a lot of players do agree that a Fallout game devoid of NPCs is indeed without a heart and soul, only they had to experience it first hand to realize it. But not only that, even the multiplayer was not what people had hoped for (though griefing specifically wasn’t a problem), and the game had an impressive amount of bugs, and so on.

A few brave souls remained hopeful that Bethesda would get their act together and patch the bugs before the release, and maybe even address some of the other concerns, but I think most understood that that wasn’t going to happen. Indeed, it didn’t. The game tanked among players and reviewers alike.

And then the disaster train just kept going, both in terms of the game itself, and the site (leaking information about certain customers), and products related to the game, such as the bag and the Nuka rum. It was a spectacular parade of fail, their first in many years (or ever?) [1].

On the positive side, with Fallout 76 as a yardstick and a point of reference, it shouldn’t be too hard to do better next time, right? Unless it’s a symptom of something seriously broken over at Bethesda HQ, but let’s not make too much out of this. Once isn’t a pattern, might be an exception and an honest mistake.

I would really like to have and have had an insider’s view of all of this, to hear what has been said at Bethesda HQ. Did they suspect ahead of time that the game was going to fail? Was the game, minus the bugs, as they had intended it, or did something go terribly wrong during development? What was the reaction to the, mildly put, negative reception? Have they learned anything, and what are their plans for the future?

I’ve been a big fan of the series from the very start, and I especially love New Vegas. I really enjoyed even Fallout 4 and I’ve defended it on occasion (old post available here, though that’s more of a criticism than a defense), so the whole Fallout 76 thing was a big disappointment. Maybe we can put it in the same category as the BoS console game and Tactics; it’s there but it didn’t really happen.

But it’s not like I don’t have enough games on my hands anyway, and maybe it’ll even be an object lesson of sorts for the gaming industry. Heck, maybe it’ll even be a lesson for players, those who have kept asking for a multiplayer Fallout for a long time (and no, even co-op is a bad idea). But I doubt it.

All in all I think my pre-beta post on the game holds up pretty well.

The easiest and safest way for Bethesda to redeem themselves is to remaster Fallout 3 and New Vegas. They did a good job with Skyrim (thanks), now do it with those two. Heck, why not go all in and remaster Fallout 1 and 2 while you’re at it. That might please even the Fallout purists, well some of them, if you do a good job.

1. Yes yes, Fallout 4 had a lot of detractors, but overall the game was still a smashing success and a pretty damn good game, despite the dialog system among other shortcomings. Angry Joe made long and detailed reviews of both Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, and the former got 8/10 and the latter 3/10. Fair assessments.