The wait is over. Among the initial greatest bewilderment by players towards a title of the acclaimed brand Bethesda and the amount of content available on arrival, Fallout 76 it promptly arrived on the shelves. For the first time the game faces a completely online world, alive and without the possibility of approaching the proposed adventures offline. Although at the beginning the team's work seemed to be solely dedicated to adding various features dedicated to online, the fans had to deal immediately with unexpected "cuts", even where these shortcomings founded the basic part of the franchise. The Reclamation Day it has finally arrived, but the smell from afar is far too radioactive, and the flavor is anything but a rebirth.
Too tight? Not for long…
First impressions in Fallout 76 however, they were positive, and they made us look out not only in one of the most complete systems of personalization of the character's face in recent years in an RPG, but also in some small features that seemed destined to greatly enrich the game world. Unfortunately this is only a partial truth: Reclamation Day proved to be nothing more than a pretext to get out of Vault 76, with a mini tutorial that consists of wandering in a guided way inside the bomb shelter in West Virginia. Inside the structure we will have only a small taste of what awaits us, finally learning our main mission, which will start with the search for the superintendent of the structure who until that day hosted us, perhaps alternating everything with mini-games such as the "Nuka-Cola Tap" that you can find as a holotape at the beginning of the game. But the landscape that awaits us outside the Vault is very different from what was expected in the past, with the devastation of the atomic war looming in all directions, with robots and mutated creatures of all kinds to populate it. Expectations betrayed, a bit like, unfortunately, it also happened to us looking out at Fallout 76. Narratively speaking, there are very few points of interest, and very few of these are related to the main questline (dilated and confused). Fortunately, finding your way around this time will be much easier, thanks to a color map much more intuitive than the green pixels of the Pip Boy, and with the fast travel points (usable at the cost of resounding caps) much clearer.
The most interesting parts concern the constitution of the game world, with the classic terminals, holotapes and documents, to tell us the story of the survivors of the bombings, very often closely linked to the area of discovery. It is the stories that form the game world, as well as the structures and, of course, the enemies. Beyond this, however, we will find ourselves exploring very bare maps, with the sense of "emptiness" palpable everywhere. The difference between this and the previous titles lies precisely in the density of the places proposed: even if traditionally rustic, the state has been reproduced in an exaggeratedly enlarged way, which on the one hand justifies the desire to create an extremely explorable online title, but which on the other was not filled properly. Hines himself had already warned us that Fallout 76 would not be quite what players were fantasizing about, but we never thought we would find ourselves faced with a title where the same basic characteristics of Fallout have failed: no more important interactions with the NPCs - really cut to the bone - and no karmic choices of major importance that draw our personality and decide our fate.
Cutting-edge technologies in the past
In terms of implementation, perhaps also for its youth, Fallout 76 suffers a lot technically. There where we could postpone a realization of the menus and the still cumbersome handling of the Pip Boy and unintuitive, the worst is shown by a shaky superstructure, with excessive and frequent drops in frame rate, and even with some random disconnections from the server. The excellent care proposed by the creation of the character and their glance, contrasts with a realization of the settings worked with sufficiency, as well as the separation of polygons between the playing character and the mutated creatures is evident. Without infamy and without praise the general level design, which in the areas full of "life" manages in part to give genuine sensations, but which we do not dare to compare with the dungeons proposed for example by Fallout 3. The most palpable sensation of all is that much has been taken from scratch from Fallout 4 and repurposed with different settings, modifying textures and adding mutated creatures that until now had never appeared (such as frogs, possums, and many other abominations). The most serious problem that suffers, however, the title, where the size of the map cannot be a justification, is the huge amount of bugs that the game presents, somewhat clumsy and absurd: it is the order of the day to see ardent ones that "teleport" due to the connection to the server, or mole rats digging underground ... while they are on wooden stairs, but also many others more serious inherent to the game itself for which Bethesda is receiving reports on reports.
Another philosophy
Despite the rundown of flaws listed, it should be noted though that Fallout 76 was born with a very specific purpose, and calling it a failure could be too hasty a judgment: we are talking about a totally online game, with a role-playing destination very different from that proposed in single players that we have been used to playing. It goes without saying that many factors regarding the structure of the game had to be smoothed out, such as the system of character growth - who now uses a system of cards and talents at each level - and the SPAV which has been completely revisited, since it is not possible to “block the time” if in the company of real players. The growth of each character also becomes personal in the evolution, but not in the initial choice, since all the characteristics SPECIAL they will be at a basic level for everyone. Net of this, Bethesda has done a great job with regards to the transposition of the work into online sauce, responding to what had been the explicit request of the fans, and being an almost totally multiplayer game, it will take time to better define its personality, and it will have to be supported by the development team to correct all those features that make you turn up your nose.
Players have always clamored to be able to play with real people, and to do so the software house had to "cut" many of the components that were closely related to the "spiritual" growth of the character, typical of offline games. Where interactions with NPCs almost disappear, they arrive instead of the features dedicated to wandering in the team o slaughter other survivors in PvP (feature that will unlock upon reaching level 5). Collaboration is one of the key things in Fallout 76, with the merging of the crafting system and the CAMP that combined with team skills can create a small and own personal kingdom, also taking advantage of a decidedly more optimized construction mode than the previous iteration of the game. However, the real actions that will see us engaged with our companions concern only running around the map helping each other with the proposed quests, or challenging together large enemies otherwise complicated to take down. The game in its entirety can also be undertaken alone, but given the excessive lack of a high pace between clashes and travel, it is extremely advisable play as a team with your friends, or why not, with people met by chance online. Although raw and to be optimized, the feature of exchanging materials with players, both real and wandering or stationary NPCs, is also appreciable, who may have what we need at the right time.
