Fallout. It's a game series based in a fictional post-apocalyptic world in which history diverges from ours after Japan surrenders to the US post-World War II. In it, nuclear power is embraced and developed far in advance of anything we have now, up until resources become so scarce that the United Nations is disbanded and global wars break out. Europe attacks the Middle East and China invades Alaska, all leading to global nuclear armageddon. Game play has changed greatly from its inception, and while I have played the original Fallout, I find the mechanics and advances in Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 more enjoyable. What hasn't changed from game to game, however, is the lore upon which the world is built.
That is, until Bethesda decided to nuke their own creation by retconning large portions of Fallout lore in order to promote the dumpster fire of a game they called Fallout 76.
I had been cautiously optimistic about Fallout 76 when it was announced. I am not really a fan of live-service games or MMOs with a player-versus-player focus. To be honest, I hate PVP. I don't play games as a means of proving personal superiority or skill level, and I certainly don't play so that I can one-up random strangers on the internet. I play so I can relax, have fun, and enjoy a brief fantasy that is completely disconnected from my everyday life. I have enjoyed the Fallout games previously, finding fascination in the story and interest in the unique weapons, factions, and various enemies the game's world introduced. Trying to figure out what a Deathclaw was before it became a giant, irradiated killing machine is a long-standing question that I could never find an answer to.
Still, when I picked up Fallout 76, it was with the expectation that this would be Fallout with friends, something I could enthusiastically get behind. Fallout had long been a solo-only game, and the possibility of sharing the insane things that can happen in it with others was a hook I was willing to swallow.
Instead, what I got was a buggy, lagging, crashing mess that was barely playable at best and boring beyond belief at worst. I didn't get the chance to "play with friends" because the game was so lackluster no one ever wanted to play it. Even when going through the game on my own, the annoyance increased. Instead of being able to enjoy what little story it presented as a solo player, I had the dubious honor of getting ambushed by jerks wanting to participate in PVP. Trying to sneak through a Super-Mutant-infested town is much more difficult when you have some jerk in power armor taking potshots at you, or getting in your face with a bat.
The story was mostly an afterthought, with pre-recorded tapes to guide you from one "main" quest to another and most of the game taken up with grinding and trying to avoid getting mobbed by ambushes in places already cleared of enemies. Getting weapons and power armor is a competition instead of a reward, as the good stuff only appears in certain places and you have to fight other players to get there first, and hope you don't die or end up overburdened on the way. Bethesda tried to facilitate a feeling of newness by adding nuke codes and the ability to actually bomb the map itself. This creates a fascinating irradiated wonderland of overpowered enemies and rare materials. Unfortunately, launching multiple nukes at once would crash the game. On top of that, there was no guarantee the area being nuked by whoever was launching the thing would be one you could a) get to in time to collect the resources before others; and b) survive in anyway.
Even worse, Fallout 76 committed the cardinal sin of not having any non-player characters. None. Oh, it had robots galore and audio-tapes to tell you what other human beings might have been doing before you wandered along, but the pull was supposed to be that every single person you encountered would be an actual, living, breathing human being. While ambitious in concept, in execution it made for a snooze-fest. It was dull, uninteresting, and had nothing to draw you into the game. No characters makes for a very lackluster story.
And I'm not even going to get in to how many scandals the game had surrounding it. If you are only now hearing about Fallout 76 being mired in controversy, then I admit to being jealous.
Now Fallout 76 is in the news again, and yet again, it's for eye-rolling controversial reasons. Numerous gaming news outlets are talking about Bethesda's launch of Fallout 1st, a subscription service that compliments last year's "live service" game Fallout 76. It includes private servers where you can host up to seven friends, a tent that serves as a mobile fast-travel point, a scrapbox with unlimited storage for all the garbage you pick up along the way, some exclusive cosmetics, and "free" currency to spend on further cosmetics. And all of this is available to players for the low, low price of...
$13 a month or $100 a year.
Yes, you read that right. Bethesda is marketing a subscription for things they should have included in the original game for $100 a year. It adds insult to injury, particularly for those who purchased the game at full price when it launched. This just shows that Bethesda has lost its mind when it comes to the Fallout series. Instead of the games we've grown to love, we're getting subscription services to train wrecks with the Fallout label on them. Will I be buying it?
Obviously not. And neither should anyone else.