Fallout 76 2024 - Before You Buy

- [Falcon] Welcome back to another episode

of "Before You Buy,"

the show where we give you some straight up gameplay

and our first impressions of the latest games releasing.

So "Fallout 76," huh?

People hated this game back when it came out,

and I was one of them.

In fact, I kind of hated it for a long time.

To Bethesda's credit, they didn't abandon it though.

They stuck with it.

And with the surprisingly good "Fallout" TV show

driving interest to the franchise again,

more people have been trying the game

than they have in years.

And what better time than now

for us to finally dive back into the game

and see how much it's improved.

Like, to be completely honest here,

I gave up on "Fallout 76"

basically immediately after launch.

I turned it off, I uninstalled it,

and I actively ignored the game for a long time.

Whenever it was brought up or mentioned,

I made fun of it because it was bad.

But in the interim of me not playing the game,

Bethesda continued working on it.

There's been 18 major updates,

number 19 is releasing in June,

and they aren't just basic additions.

They've pretty much overhauled entire segments of the game.

The Wastelands update from April 14th, 2020

added actual NPCs and a new main story quest, which is huge.

Keep in mind, the original game had no NPCs at all

other than some robots and a super mutant,

which, if you understand how NPCs are in these games,

those are not NPCs, despite them technically being NPCs.

In 2022, they added expeditions,

which are more linear challenges in far-off locations

you can take on with a team or by yourself.

And now in 2024, they fully expanded that system

by giving you a new city to explore with its own quests

and side quests in Atlantic City.

If you're only experience with "Fallout 76"

was playing it back when it came out,

then what we're looking at today

is basically an entirely new game.

Almost everything about it has been rebalanced,

expanded and improved.

In 2024, it is a much better game than it once was.

Is it enough to elevate it to actually being a good game?

Well, that's kind of what we're here to find out.

The important thing to keep in mind about "Fallout 76"

is that even with the new bells and whistles,

at its core, this is still the same game,

and it still has a lot of the same problems

it had at launch.

Enemies are still dumb as hell.

Many areas can look butt ugly,

even with your settings set up to max,

and the server-based nature of the gameplay

leads to a lot of compromises

that would not be there if you were playing "Fallout 4."

Also, it's a live-service game,

so there's tons of microtransactions.

And I'm not saying this lightly,

there are so many microtransactions (laughs) in this game.

But the overall experience is so much better now

than it was when it first came out.

The weight of a lot of stuff has been cut down,

so you can actually carry some things with you.

Ammos more plentiful.

There are storage chests all over the place.

And while it still costs caps to fast-travel,

there's a lot of places

where you can fast-travel to for free.

So that's not really a problem anymore.

Having actual quests and NPCs

makes the world feel a lot more vibrant too.

I know they added in all this stuff

for the first time like four years ago,

but it's pretty new to me.

I didn't play this game four years ago,

I played it at launch, and that's it.

The actual quests don't have the depth

of something from "Fallout: New Vegas," per se,

but you can make dialogue choices,

and what you say depends on your special stats.

There's actually some choices to make.

It almost feels like a proper "Fallout" game.

The new area of Atlantic City isn't particularly big,

it's mostly just split between three smallish areas.

But the new quest they've added recently are fun to explore

even if they're, like I said, a little railroaded

and basic compared to this sort of thing

in other "Fallout" games.

It's just kind of tricky getting to this place too.

To access Atlantic City,

you have to unlock expeditions first,

which requires you to go to the Whitespring Refuge

and help out with Responders faction.

And, I mean, they're relatively simple,

but there's a few side quests you gotta do.

Even here, some of the flaws of "Fallout 76"

still shine through.

Like there's a person who wants you to donate

50 pieces of molded plastic.

So I check my inventory, I've got five pieces

of that specific item.

But, oh, wait, they say molded plastic,

but they actually just mean plastic.

So why didn't they just say plastic?

'Cause this is pretty simple.

I mean, that's a needlessly confusing thing,

especially for all of us who have been kind of conditioned

to the specificity of "Fallout" stuff,

and that's kind of "Fallout 76" overall.

It's still a little sloppy,

even with all the updates it's gotten.

Oddly enough, almost none of the quests in Atlantic City

actually start there.

The main line quest begins in Appalachia,

and not even in the Whitespring refuge.

So if you actually want to experience the main story

of this place, you need to look around a little.

It's sort of a pain to actually start up,

but the quests in Atlantic City are worth doing,

even if it's not quite as intriguing as I'd hoped.

The game doesn't allow for a lot of the more complex

simulations of previous games,

so you get weird situations like this part

where enemies go hostile on you in a scripted event,

but nobody else in the area reacts.

You can kill the boss of a faction,

and other than the guys that are programmed to attack you,

all the other guys who are enemies kind of just don't care.

"Fallout 76" just isn't as immersive an RPG

as previous "Fallouts."

Like, it lets you do dumb stuff

like re-spawn in the same room

and plink away at the boss until they're dead,

just running away and automatically getting a reward.

Like, it's video gamey in a way

that other entries in the series aren't.

And a lot of that comes down to the compromises

they have to make by having "Fallout 76" be a shared world.

That's the issue with the game that just, it can't be fixed.

You don't get the basic unique enemy compositions

of other games, instead, "Fallout 76"

just randomly spawns enemies that have two basic states,

they try to attack you up close

or they stand in place and shoot you.

That's about it.

The actual exploration can be pretty satisfying,

you know, just because of the excellent world design.

But the way enemies work is just never gonna not feel

artificial and distracting to me.

The actual stories here aren't anything

to write home about either.

There's none of the nuance of "Fallout: New Vegas"

with these Atlantic City gangsters.

They're pretty much exactly what they appear to be,

and the writing came off kind of flat honestly.

The locations and scenarios, they're interesting,

but the characters and dialogue don't make it pop

like the best "Fallout" quests.

Atlantic City looks and sounds great

for a new area in "Fallout 76," at least.

It's got a jazzy soundtrack,

it's got moody, dense locations.

There's some pretty great spots

to just stop and explore this place,

like the Aquarium of the Atlantic.

It's just a great looking place.

"Fallout 76" is clearly showing its age these days,

but the game still has some

of the best ambient storytelling in the entire franchise.

Some of the new enemies though

are really like extremely annoying, like this swamp thing

that automatically restores its health at random.

If you have fire, it's fine.

If you don't, it sucks.

It's great to have actual MPCs and quests

and dialogue and everything.

So the Atlantic City expansion

is a great free addition of the game,

but the real strength of "Fallout 76"

lies in the open world,

and that's why the 19th expansion of the game,

the titled Skyline Valley's,

probably the most exciting addition to me.

This update is coming to the full game in June,

but you could play it on the public test server now.

They put it up on the 18th.

It adds an entire new region to the game,

bringing the total number to seven.

The game's added new locations before,

but this is the first time they've added an entire region.

And there is a lot here, including an entirely new vault,

which is always fun to explore in these games.

There's more than 30 points of interest in this area,

which is, I mean, really, really good.

This is what I'm here for in these games.

Just wandering around and finding interesting stuff,

that's what this update's about.

I'm digging the atmosphere of this place too.

The red lighting in the distance

really gives it a kind of final area type vibe.

It looks dangerous, and while I haven't gotten a chance

to spend a lot of time here,

I'm really liking everything I'm seeing so far.

There's a lot about "Fallout 76"

I've really grown to appreciate.

But if there's one thing that hit me

like a bucket of cold water when I started it up,

it's the live-service stuff.

Right when you load up the game,

you're really getting bombarded with ads for "Fallout."

First, the subscription service,

the new stuff you could buy at the Atomic Store.

All this, it all takes me right out of the gameplay,

and it never goes away.

At least the game gives you lots of ways to earn atoms.

Like players that focus on doing daily missions

get showered in them,

but it all feels really out of place in a "Fallout" game.

That sense of lonely exploration is ruined

when you get a reminder on the screen about new events

and other crap like that.

And yeah, you can turn a lot of this UI stuff off

in the options, but it's a design that it feels

fundamentally incompatible with "Fallout."

That's my biggest problem with the game,

and something a bunch of content updates

can never truly fix.

As a live-service game, I would call it above average.

Like, it's better than most live service games.

Like, if you're going into this thing with no expectations

and aren't deliberately comparing it

to other "Fallout" games,

there's not a whole lot to complain about.

I mean, not stuff that you're not gonna see

in another game anyway.

But once you do compare it to "Fallout: New Vegas"

or "Fallout 3," or even "Fallout 4,"

it's missing a lot of that "Fallout" special sauce.

I mean, we've been talking about this for a while now.

It's obviously not all bad.

There's a lot of good here.

This is easily one of the best, if not the best open worlds

the "Fallout" series has ever seen.

Like, there's just a ton of points of interests

and unique little things, details, elements.

Like the school announcements.

- [Announcer] Hello, students.

Watoga High School is here for you.

- [Falcon] They go that extra mile

to make every location feel unique.

Like, all that effort though, and you're still just fighting

completely brainless zombies most of the time

who just spawn out of nowhere

and glitch out when they die.

That's the problem.

The quests and MPCs are huge,

and obviously make the game a lot better,

but their implementation feels kind of half-baked at times.

And the Quest design is more limited

than what you'd see in other games, obviously.

Choices are mostly relegated to obvious binary choices,

and they're lacking in nuance,

and that's kind of what "Fallout" is known for.

There's also weird stuff.

The expeditions are weird.

Getting to Atlantic City

feels like a vestigial system of some kind.

You have to go into the Expeditions menu and select a zone,

but now there's a dropdown menu

that you can explore instead of doing the expedition.

It's weird, awkward,

and a lot of the post game additions

are awkward in this same way.

As free updates to a 6-year-old game,

it's hard to complain about too much of this stuff

because it overall does make the experience a lot better.

If you're like me, bought the game back at release,

I would even say even with all of the complaining,

I'd recommend jumping back in,

especially in June with the Skyline update.

There's just so much stuff in the game now.

The actual experience of playing

is a lot smoother than it was.

Even with all of the problems,

I'm a lot more positive about "Fallout 76" overall in 2024.

It's not a perfect "Fallout" game, obviously.

It's compromised in a lot of ways,

but the parts that work, like the exploration,

they really work.

And seeing the setting of Appalachia, it's great.

It can occasionally look quite beautiful.

I don't know that I'd recommend

buying the game at full price.

There's too many microtransactions

and live-service crap to justify that.

But at a discount, I think there's more than enough here

to keep a "Fallout" fan entertained for quite a while.

All it took was, you know, six years of continuous updating,

and now "Fallout 76" is a good game.

Don't think it's a great game,

but if you accept what this game is and what it isn't,

I do think they've ultimately turned this one around.

That's all for today.

Leave us a comment, let us know what you think.

If you liked this video, click like.

If you're not subscribed, now is a great time to do so.

We upload brand new videos every day of the week.

Best way to see them first is, of course, a subscription,

so click subscribe.

Don't forget to enable notifications.

And as always, we thank you very much

for watching this video.

I'm Falcon, you can follow me on Twitter @FalconTheHero.

We'll see you next time right here on "Gameranx."

(tense uptempo music)