Andrew Ventura 19’

“Fallout 76” is a prequel to all of the previous Fallout games. Exciting at first glance, the game fails to deliver an intriguing story. Set in 2102, the player is an inhabitant of Vault 76. The vaults were built as shelter from nuclear conflict. The player emerges from the shelter 25 years after the bombs fell on America. The task is simple: explore what remains of post-apocalyptic America and rebuild civilization

West Virginia-based Vault 76 was occupied by 500 of America’s great minds. Vault 76 was a controlled vault intended to be opened 20 years after a nuclear war. If the Vault was supposed to open 20 years after the bombs fell, why have 25 years gone by? Players will find out while journeying through West Virginia.

Bethesda Game Studios are known for making quality role-playing games such as “Skyrim,” “Fallout 3,” etc. They have a reputation of creating engaging and deep stories by altering American history. The Great War (WW1) started and ended on Saturday, October 23, 2077, when nuclear weapons were launched by all the nuclear-capable nations; mainly from the United States, China and the USSR. The Vault-Tec Corporation was a company contracted by the United States government before the Great War to design and produce a vast network of complex bomb and research shelters. The company was owned in private hands, but because of its strong affiliation with the American government, the principal personnel of Vault-Tec – its executives, top scientists, engineers, and so on – conducted the tests. In with the midst of this research, they would use the vault dwellers like lab rats for their research.

The gameplay is drastically different from its predecessors. Traditionally, Fallout has been a single-player, narrative-focused role-playing game that puts an emphasis on the player’s actions and choices having an impact on the game’s plot. With other human players around, this element has been mostly lost. There is a vague narrative, in the sense that the player’s have story quests. The dialogue choices and wealth of non-player characters (NPC’s) that littered past Fallout games are entirely gone. Bethesda is headed in a new direction because “Fallout 76” is filled all real people. In game combat and interactions with other players is laggy because “Fallout 76” runs on the creation game engine, the same engine used by “Fallout 4.” Since they are multiple players on the same server, the game gets noticeably slow. This gets annoying when the player is focusing on surviving.

Without NPC’s, the emotional connection that makes all that survival worthwhile is seriously lacking. Every main storyline quest the player will have to pick up is a foregone conclusion. Whether that’s the Brotherhood of Steel, the Responders, the Free State, or even the Raiders, it always comes down to you helping to rebuild or find out what happened to the group. Even though they are awesome folklore in West Virginia to find, it gets bland quick.

No NPC development for an interesting story and a buggy multiplayer experience makes “Fallout 76” difficult to enjoy. This game roughly fulfill expectations, because no more will the player control the actions around their world as they explore the vast post-apocalyptic West Virginia with millions of other players online.

Grade: C+