Fallout 76 re-review: The free Wastelanders expansion deserves a second trip into West Virginia - ellisatrace

To sound out I had low expectations for Fallout 76's new Wastelanders expansion would glucinium an understatement. My original Fallout 76 review was not kind, but at least ended on a hopeful note. "Possibly like Older Scrolls Online, Bethesda can tease a proper game out of this foundation in a year or two," I wrote. Only as time went along, and every bit the controversies mounted, I became less and less certain.

Still, when Wastelanders released connected Tuesday I patterned I might as well give IT a guess. After all, the expansion is released for anyone who owned the game, and…well, I owned the game. Why non, right? It's not like there's much releasing this spring.

And you know what? I'm glad I gave IT a shot, because it's surprisingly good.

Skeletons in the bathtub

There are still myriad issues with Fallout 76, don't pose me unjust. As faraway as I'm obsessed, information technology gains very little from being an always-online multiplayer experience, but it certainly loses a lot.

Moment-to-consequence scrap (and on that point's very much of information technology in Side effect 76) is particularly underwhelming. The very-clip conceit means VATS is au fond unavailing—which would be dissatisfactory but non the Judgement Day, except that playing Fallout 76 as a standard shooter isn't fun either. I can't tell you how many times I've unemployed a shot at an unsuspecting ghoul's head only for the game to tell ME I "missed." I'm no Fortnite pro but I'm non a complete scouring either, and it happens often enough in Fallout 76 that I think it's netcode-related. I never had such trouble with Fallout 4 operating room, say, Doom Eternal.

The list of problems continues. The menus are cumbersome, especially on mouse and keyboard where repairing a weapon system at a work bench requires no less than four different push button presses. The food and pee systems are an annoyance at the best. Bethesda doubled your stash size, but it's still comically small considering how much junk you'Re expected to gather up for crafting.

And performance is still wildly inconsistent, with shadows seemingly the major cause of frame rate issues. My fellow worker X Patrick Murray even out had the game crash on him during our stream the other day. (We've embedded the unhurt thing at the end of the recapitulation if you want to watch.)

I don't even want to talk about the in-game store and the "Fallout 1st" subscription, which is its own can of worms. Your feelings about paying over-and-above the $40 base price for cosmetics and an unlimited stash probably hinge on whether you feel this is first-and-foremost a Fallout crippled or an MMO.

I'm torn, personally. I think the monthly subscription price is jolly decent for what you get compared to Final Fantasy XIV or Populace of Warcraft or whatever—but I'm also ne'er going to pay it, and I think out putting certain timbre-of-life improvements (i.e. a second fast move back point) behind a paywall does more harm to Side effect 76 than good, especially at this stage, and given Fallout 76's reputation.

But…is IT good?

That said, the Wastelanders expanding upon makes a large difference to Fallout 76. I spent most of my original review complaining how glassy everything felt. Here, net ball's just recap really prompt:

"In that location are no homo NPCs in Radioactive dust 76. Bethesda made that clear repeatedly before release. I still thought that left the door open for ghoul NPCs though, but nope! Non from what I've seen. And level robots aren't really NPCs atomic number 3 very much like call for dispensers. They put on't talk with you, they talk at you. There's no duologue system in the game whatsoever, and then no real chance for roleplaying. You either finish a mission or you don't.

Most of Fallout 76's quests fall flat. Information technology's a good deal of "Find This Item" or "Kill This Enemy" without any of the motivation that ordinarily stems from a well-written adventure. You're not trying to rescue Nick Valentine to generate a lead on your son, or accelerate the development of a tree-man to reforest the Capitol Wasteland. In Fallout 76 you'rhenium just chasing ghosts, and finding them only leads to more ghosts.

Post-nuclear West Virginia is filled with terminals to read and holotapes to hoard, but none of IT feels important surgery even particularly interesting. They're wellspring-typed, and the holotapes well-acted, but it's no substitute for an actual conversation."

Right away fair-minded remove that intact section.

Wastelanders adds people to Fallout 76. It adds a dialogue system—one themed after Fallout 3 and New Vegas, non the ill-received wheel from Radioactive dust 4. It even peppers those duologue trees with skill checks, and while Radioactive dust 76's leveling system is still an absolute mess, I can't tell apart you how excited I was the first time a "[Strength 8+]" tag showed up in a conversation. It's a real roleplaying game! Wow!

Bethesda even figured out instancing. One of my major complaints from the Fallout 76 launch involved a quest that concluded with killing a specific ghoul. Trouble was, if someone else had already killed the ghoul you had to either expect for information technology to respawn or bounce to other server and hope it was alive. No more! Now at that place are certain interiors that are specific to your quest and your character, and allow you to realise choices that actually affect the story.

Would I still prefer a proper offline Side effect sequel? Perfectly. That said, Wastelanders is so much closer to what Fallout 76 should've been at establish. There are still problems, some of them fundamental design choices made to accommodate multiple players, but Wastelanders feels like a proper online Fallout and not an empty imitation.

And the parts of Fallout 76 that were already strong have been made stronger. Post-prophetic Cicily Isabel Fairfield Virginia is much more interesting with people roaming around, peppered with vignettes—plunderer camps up in the mountains, rosy settlers trying to regenerate crumbling towns, roadside bars and a new Vault everyone wants to break into. It's the kinda small-scale storytelling Radioactive dust's always been good at, and which was so noticeably absent in Fallout 76 at release.

Not that it's seamless. I think Wastelanders is probably better (to any extent) for new players than it is for backward players. Bethesda's completely rewritten the early hours of the plot, introducing a bar called The Wayward almost directly on top side of the Overseer's Camp players originally cosmopolitan to after leaving Bank vault 76.

But if you played Fallout 76 at release, this leads to some weird cognitive dissonance. I left off playing in the midst of a quest to hunt down the patched Vault 76 Overseer, following her audio logs crosswise Mountain State. Starting up Wastelanders, I was surprised to find out she now lives right down the road from Vault 76—and when asked astir her audio logs, she simply says she left them to "help" ME. I guess I could give chase them down still if I wanted? To what end?

Wastelanders also remixes certain areas, allowing factions to take them over or adding new storylines. How many of these will I miss simply because I already "explored" the locations though? I'm non sure.

Certain parts of the map take in been purged of location markers, so there are clearly sunrise adventures to be discovered, but even and so I spirit alike I'm missing part of the experience by impervious-traveling close to Mountain State at will, hauling thousands of rounds of ammo and beingness generally overleveled for everything I've encountered in Wastelanders' early hours. Most of it doesn't scale to your level—and the parts that do usually take Maine by surprise, one minute roughness me against Level 4 molerats and the next against a Unwavering 23 deathclaw.

Bottom line

Nevertheless, I'm having a stunning amount of fun with Wastelanders. This is precisely the swivel I hoped Bethesda would make—and one I feared they couldn't (or wouldn't).

I'm non sure it has the staying power with me that it does with others. I'll likely fiddle through the story and then dip out until the side by side star expansion. That alone is more than I expected though. Going into Wastelanders this week, it was make-or-break. Maaaaaybe it could win Maine finished, I thought, simply it seemed far more likely I'd drop two or three hours binding in Fallout 76 and past remember why I'd left. Acknowledgment to Bethesda though. They hammered and hammered and hammered and finally counterfeit Side effect 76 into not only a better game, merely one that deserves a second take chances—from me, from you, and from all the naysayers.