At this point, the B.E.T.A. is over, and I’ve had time to
sink more than a couple hours into the game, over multiple sessions. Because I have things like a family, and
responsibilities (so my wife informs me!), and a real job, I haven’t been able
to spend as many hours on the game as strictly possible. However, I did have
time to get a bit of a feel for the game, and spent enough time with it to
report back on most of its features. Tech notes: I pre-ordered the
Tricentennial edition for Xbox 1, and that’s what I played the B.E.T.A.
on. (Not the 1-x, or 1-s, or whatever
the super-duper Xbox is now. I’ve had
this machine for a few years now, and while it’s not exactly top-of-the-line,
it works just fine. I also have the
Kinect, which worked fine for chat once I figured out the settings. More on that below.)
First and foremost, for anyone distressed or distracted by
all the flame posts about how the B.E.T.A. was a disappointment, or that the
game sucks, don’t worry: the game is great, and the B.E.T.A. was exactly what
it was designed to be. All the haters
out there seem to boil down into one of three camps: Nitpicking over certain
details in the game and using them as a reason to say it sucks, bitching about
how they didn’t get to play as much as they wanted to during the B.E.T.A., and
trolls out there looking for some kind of clickbait. There’s always going to be someone who says “THIS
isn’t Fallout! Fallout is [insert whatever they want Fallout to be]!” Of course
this isn’t the Fallout you’ve played before.
The franchise has been around for over 20 years. Of course it’s different! For comparison, I
recently downloaded a 20th anniversary edition of Duke Nukem 3d.
Man, that game is still fun, but it hasn’t exactly aged well. I can understand
people not being happy that they were restricted to limited hours during the
B.E.T.A., but it wasn’t an early release, it was a specifically planned and
designed test of the various systems of the game, and an opportunity to find
out what the community cared about regarding the game, its mechanics, and its
performance. Besides, the game comes out
in three more days. Chill.
I noticed, watching gameplay videos, that most of the
channels I follow all had the same basic plan: whip through as much of the plot
as possible, digging deep into the lore, or the gameplay, or the story,
whichever their particular channel happens to focus on, and, especially given
the limited-time nature of the B.E.T.A., I can understand their approach. Their channels depend on their being able to
deliver content that other people aren’t, so unless they can offer more than
the others, they are essentially putting themselves in a hole. (For the record, the channels I mainly follow
are Oxhorn, who specializes in lore, Many A True Nerd (MATN), who specializes
in gameplay and exploration, and JV2017, who does gameplay and Tips and Tricks.
They’re all great, and you should definitely check out their YouTube channels
if you’re interested. I also recommend FudgeMuppet, who are great for character
builds, complete with in-depth back stories, for people who want role-playing
ideas or build guides.) For myself, I wanted to immerse myself in the
experience, even though I knew that I didn’t have a whole lot of time to do so,
so I basically just played the game the way I would if I had the full release and
I had all the time in the world. How better to find out how it would play when
the full release comes out and I really do have an (essentially) unlimited
amount of time to play?
So what did I find? In short, as I said above, the game is a
lot of fun. I played almost exclusively solo,
aside from some brief team-ups with random other players for local events. I didn’t
get too far plot-wise, because I spent (probably too much) time playing with
the crafting and building features, and although I ran into some snags, I
expect that most of that was me not understanding the system, and less to do
with the game itself being screwed up. I was able to venture out and explore
with very little in the way of foreknowledge of the game itself, and while I
didn’t feel overpowered, ever, I did feel like I was in a good place, in terms
of my ability to defend myself and the level of threat provided by the
creatures in the environment. My
apologies to Dan, Phil, and Zach, with whom I shared my B.E.T.A. friends codes,
and with whom I was unable to play. I
was really hoping to get to do some intentional team exploration, and it just
didn’t work out. Hopefully, once the
game comes out, we can meet up and go adventuring together.
Speaking of adventuring together, there are four basic chat
settings: Off, Local, Team, and Auto. When
I first tried the game, I didn’t actually know what my chat settings were, but
I believe they were in Auto. I tried
talking to some of the other players around me, but nothing seemed to
happen. I think I really upset the one
player, because I could hear him talking to me, but I couldn’t get my chat
settings right to talk back. He got
pretty huffy and shot me then took off. However, on my next turn at the game, after
I found the chat settings and switched them to Local, I ran into another player
with whom I did talk. I’d had time to
get a handle on the game a little by then, and we talked about how some of the
game mechanics work, including PvP and the crafting system. I noticed that when he was talking, I could
see a little speaker symbol over his head, and when the mic was picking up my
voice, there was a little speaker over my avatar’s head. Pretty
straightforward. I didn’t have anyone in my party aside from the local events
in which I participated, so I never got the chance to test out the Team chat
function, but from what I understand, it’s set up so that only the other
players on your team can hear you. I’m not sure how much of this was my
figuring out the controls, and how much was the patch progress within the
B.E.T.A. itself, but it definitely worked.
I’m not going to dive too deeply into the story, in part
because I didn’t get THAT far into the main plot, but I’ve heard some
complaints about the lack of living NPC’s, which I do want to address. While it’s true that there’s no Piper or
Marie to travel along with you throughout the Wasteland and develop some deep
emotional connection, there’s also no Preston to constantly irritate you with
another settlement that’s under attack. I’ll admit, not having Dogmeat around
was disappointing, but aside from being a good boy, and a good pack mule, the
thought of trying to balance a couple dozen players kitting out a variety of
companions with different-level weapons would be a nightmare, and grossly
unfair to characters of lower levels. As far as the lack of NPC’s in the
overworld, it actually turns out to be a major part of the plot. And while it
would be cool to finish the main plot by finding a way to reverse the effects
of whatever decimated the native population of Appalachia, and begin
repopulating the area, it would also not mesh with the persistent world, and it
would be another nightmare to incorporate new players (or old players with new
characters) into this story without making major revisions to the entire
structure of the game. The essentially static design of Appalachia both
facilitates this story telling process, and provides an existentially
depressing atmosphere of futility that fits well with the player’s experience
of encountering stories and histories that all, ultimately, end in failure.
As far as those stories go, they can be downright heartbreaking. From the tale of a boy who survives the nuclear
holocaust, blaming himself for the destruction, to grow into a provider and
protector of children, to the heroes and hard workers who attempted to
reestablish some sort of network for helping others, the player knows, going
into the game, that they are all dead. It’s almost worse to read about the
stories of success knowing that somehow, ultimately, they will end in
failure. Yet the Fallout series’
trademark pitch-black humor shines all the brighter in this gloomy landscape.
This isn’t a one-note story of failure, piled upon defeat, compounded with loss,
but rather inspiration shining through even the worst of conditions. It shows people pushed to their limit, with
some rising above to risk their lives in the service of others. If that’s not a message of hope in hopeless
times, I don’t know what is.
The crafting system is deep, complex, and absolutely
fascinating. I can easily imagine that
almost all my future builds will include a focus on Intelligence and crafting
perks. Intelligence appears to affect
the quality of the items you craft. You learn new mods for weapons and armor by
breaking down existing pieces, and I believe (but can’t confirm) that Intelligence
may also have an effect on the chance to learn a new mod every time you break
down an item. One frustrating thing was
that I was learning at level seven mods that required a much higher level to
install. While it gave me something to
look forward to and plan for, it also was frustrating because I’m so used to
the crafting system in Fallout 4, which lets you strip advanced parts off
weapons (even if you don’t have the pre-requisites to craft them yourself), and
install them on other weapons, as long as they’re the right type of weapon, etc…
On the other hand, I like that, if you have the plans and the perks for it, you
can craft entire weapons from scratch.
This is a feature that I always wanted in Fallout 4, and now, in 76, it’s
part of the system.
Base building is done through the C.A.M.P. (Construction And
Mobile assembly Platform), and it doesn’t take much progress in the plot before
you have all or most of the basic crafting stations available to build in your
own C.A.M.P.. Assembling your base itself is pretty straightforward and easy,
although moving it and finding a suitable space into which to move it can be a
challenge. I’m not sure what happened
with my first base, but after having built and decorated it to my liking, and
having been able to move it more than once, at some point I simply couldn’t
find a suitable place to build it.
Either there was an object intersecting the base, or part of it was
floating. In the end, I tried to just tear it down, deleting the blueprint I
had created and starting over, but that didn’t work either. Again, I’m not sure
how much of that was my lack of familiarity with the game, how much was some
kind of clipping/assembly bug, or what, but it was definitely frustrating, and
I wasted a lot of time just trying to reassemble a base of some kind.
As for the rest of the gameplay, I found it to be a lot of
fun. I grew more accustomed to the
selector wheel for the weapons and emotes, but I’m still not a fan. Using Fallout 4 as a comparison, both allow
you to pre-map twelve items to the hot keys.
However, the setup on 4 allows you to choose where each item goes on
those hot keys, while 76 apparently just assigns them for you, so you have to
find out where each item is every time you select it for the Favorite wheel.
Secondly, with 4, each direction on the D-pad had three spots. It was very easy
to switch between items without having to take your eyes off the action, which
wasn’t even necessary, since going into the menu would automatically pause the
game anyways, giving you all the time in the world to switch between weapons,
change your armor kit, and eat a dozen Mirelurk Steaks. With the selector
wheel, you have to stop looking at the action long enough to make sure you
selected the weapon you wanted, which may not even be where you wanted it to be
in the first place. In a game that
cannot be paused, this can be a fatal delay.
There is a pre-mapped one-touch weapon swap, but it only allows you to
swap between the current weapon and the previously used one. I found myself as a matter of habit going
through and selecting the two weapons I wanted closest to hand before going
into an area. 10mm pistol or sniper
rifle? Serrated machete or combat shotgun? Being able to quickly and accurately
switch between weapons is a big deal.
(If I’m wrong on selecting the hotkey positions in 76,
someone please tell me in the comments so that I can A: correct this part, and
B: know for myself so I don’t go tearing out what little hair I have left!)
Also, I highly recommend investing a few points into
Strength, and either Gladiator (one-handed melee weapons) or Slugger
(two-handed melee weapons). Ammo isn’t
precisely scarce, but neither will you find yourself in the position of having
more than you know what to do with.
Particularly as someone who enjoys FPS games, but isn’t exactly very
good at them, trying to track and shoot some of the smaller, faster attackers
was challenging, but I found that swinging a melee weapon in their general
direction did wonders both for my ammo efficiency and my survival rate. I also fell in love with my machete,
particularly once I unlocked the Serrated mod.
That bleed damage is awesome, and I liked the balance between attack
speed and damage. I think the combat
knife is technically better for DPS, but I liked being able to mostly one- or
two-shot most lower-level enemies. Even when
I was at higher levels, the machete was very useful, and it allowed me to hack
through most lower-levelled enemies and conserve my ammo for bigger baddies. VATS
also has the hidden benefit of giving you a bit of a burst towards targets in
melee combat, allowing you to hit from further away than strictly possible in
normal combat (out of VATS). While not quite as powerful as the (admittedly somewhat
broken) Blitz from Fallout 4, it is a very satisfactory way to play.
Anyone who plans on using a gun should definitely invest in
the Concentrated Fire perk early and often.
In the Perception tree, this perk allows you to target specific body
parts, and each successive attack (whether or not it hits) has a higher hit
percentage and does more damage. Even pipe pistols become weapons of mass
destruction after a few shots in a row.
Of course, in order to make the best use of that combat style, make sure
to invest in Endurance and Agility, for more Action Points, and faster AP recovery.
There are further perks (especially Action Boy/Girl), which allow you to
further boost this gain, and a whole slew of weapon-related perk cards to
increase damage.
Combat, on the whole, was entertaining, and balanced well
enough that even with the whole weapon selection thing being less than ideal, I
had a good time with it. Similarly, crafting was rewarding, if less than a
perfect system. By the time I hit level 10, I had maxed out my base’s weight
capacity, and I was running into the moving and placement issues I mentioned
before. I do think that while the system
is not exactly complicated, the first and most popular Wiki sites will be where
to find certain weapons and power armor, and how the heck to make crafting
work. In general, while the game doesn’t do much hand-holding in terms of intrusive,
built-in tutorials, it does provide (through the main story line) access to
crafting and combat instruction, explanation of the basic survival mechanics,
and a good variety of weapons and armor.
There are a number of issues that have been raised by the community,
chief among them the limit to personal storage within your base, which is
accessed by means of a storage chest you can build. I tried to double my
storage by building a second chest, but sadly, that didn’t work. One of the launch-day patches has been
announced to be an increase to storage, but honestly, even the 400 lbs of the
original limit was pretty generous. It wasn’t
that difficult to find ways to scrap items and reduce weight, craft weapons and
armor for XP, and, if necessary, either scrap those or sell them to a vendor
for caps. Another complaint has been
having to spend caps to fast travel, but again, I felt it to be a pretty
well-balanced system. 14 caps took me
almost halfway across the map, and while I don’t know precisely how it scales,
there are a few spots to which you can always fast travel for free, including your
C.A.M.P., anyone on your team, and Vault 76, so it should be possible to
manipulate the system so you can get at least part way towards your goal
without having to spend the full amount. Even if you do take the direct route,
the cost is just enough to make you think about whether or not to walk, without
being so much that it’s prohibitive. For
comparison, Borderlands takes a straight percentage of your money every time
you respawn, and I sure respawn a lot (You know… cuz I die a lot in that game…
yeah), but I’ve never heard anyone complaining about that particular mechanic.
Final grade on Fallout 76 based on my time in the B.E.T.A.:
A-
The game delivers pretty much exactly what it promised, with
varied combat, deep and moving stories to experience, and the deepest and most
complex crafting system yet. The game’s
flaws are well within what I expect from a massive, open-world Bethesda game,
and many are a matter of interpretation or preference rather than failures of
implementation or planning. I may have a very different grade after launch,
when I can devote more than eight or ten hours to a game designed to
accommodate hundreds, and the difference between B.E.T.A. glitches and actual
gameplay problems is more precisely delineated. For now, however, I’ll leave it
with this: I can’t wait to play this game again, and in creating that desire,
Bethesda has created a good game.
