Hiya, I recently did a post about my favourite games that I played in the past year, where I briefly wrote about getting really into Fallout 76. I didn't want that to be too long, aiming for a summary paragraph per game, and said I would come back to make a post just about fo76. This is that :)
Getting back into it: I have played fo76 before a fair bit, I think it was about level 50-60 when I started again in early December last year, but I always felt kind of directionless. I had also hit a few walls like a damage ceiling with regards to long range sniping, and I was bored by the Raider section of the main questline. I saw there was an update adding a new region to the map, vaguely inspired by the TV show, and figured it might be a good time to give it another go as there would probably be more players and new stuff. Also just to note, I haven't actually watched the show, I'm sure it's fine but the thing I liked most about playing New Vegas years ago was the 40+ hour journey with hundreds of personal choices that shape your character and the world around you. I don't really think that personal vibe could be translated to a TV show, and even if it could I already 'lived' it by playing it, if that makes sense.
Anyway, I hopped back in and familiarized myself with the controls and game systems, but again felt like I was just meandering around. I went to the one bridge crossing into the new region to have a brief look, but was apprehensive to go much further as I hadn't even explored all of the base game areas. I saw in a random post online someone reccomending just powering through the main questline as it takes you through all the base game regions and it gets a lot better after the Raiders section, so I did that. Essentially the main questline follows what happened in Appalachia after the war and before you came out of your vault. This quest has zero human NPCs as the game launched without any, and this is the main storyline. You find out what happened through interections with a couple robots and mostly through holotapes (voice recordings) and reading notes or terminals, all from characters who have since died. You follow the area's former factions through increasingly dangerous regions; Responders (Forest), Raiders (Savage Divide), Free States (The Mire), Brotherhood of Steel Appalachia Chapter (Cranberry Bog), and The Enclave (all regions, but mostly the bog).
I always felt that the starter area (forest) was a bit overwhelming and disjointed, because you are working on the main Responders questline that is telling you 'everyone is dead' while there are human NPCs everywhere giving you different quests to follow. You're hearing about the Responders having all been wiped out, then down the street you can go to a Responders base with people in it. This is all to do with the updates to the game adding human NPCs and hundreds of side quests, layered on top of the NPCless launch of the game. This may have been easier to parse if you experienced it in real time (playing since launch) but if you're new it is so confusing. That reccomendation I mentioned of just powering through the main questline is what made it all make sense to me, and not I can more clearly identify what was base game/launch content, and why some of these factions have two contradictory stories (the ones with NPCs are like resurgent/neo versions of the old factions, continuing their missions/ideologies after the originals were wiped out). Anyway, is this paragraph nonsense? thats just how the game is until you figure all this out XD.
The Mire, The Bog, and the Main Story: As I came to understand the above, the game REALLY came into it's own, to the point where it feels like I am playing it properly for the first time ever. I don't care for the Raiders and the robot giving you quests was (well voice acted to be) annoying and self-serving, so I rushed to finish their story and move on. My first steps into the Mire were so intruiging, it's like a densely tree covered swamp region with a stark increase in deadly creatures. So many giant bugs and insects, mirelurks hiding in water, and gulpers dropping from trees. The strangler trees covering the Mire are hugely overgrown from radiation and provide a near constant canopy that blots out the sun and makes the nights pitch black. The Free States holotapes and other voice recordings were all well voice acted, and their story shows their attempts to survive pre-war altercations with the government, post-war dangers like radiation and the new flora/fauna around them, engagements with other factions, and their encounters with the scorched. They attempt to string together an early warning and trapping system for fighting the scorched, and warn the other factions about the imminent danger.
Near the southern end of the Mire, you encounter the local Brotherhood of Steel chapter (what's left behind by them anyway) which takes you into the Cranberry Bog region. You discover they are in sattelite contact with the original BoS group from California featured in Fallout 1, and receiving orders from there. It is interesting to see more of the story around their founding, you can better comprehend their ideology of 'securing advanced tech to prevent misuse' with all the potential dangers of idle tech immediately post-war. I am a certified Brotherhood hater, generally speaking, but am open to working with some of them in order to fight a greater threat like the Legion in FNV, or the scorched/scorchbeasts here. I had encountered scorchbeasts a couple times during my treks through the Divide and the Mire, and was thoroughly wiped out every time. They are typically higher than your level, they fly, and have a spammable high damage sonic attack. Needless to say I had developed a healthy fear of them, and the sound of their approaching wings, but during the Free States and BoS stories you learn that it is possible to lose them by hiding.
This culminated in a peak moment of the game for me as I first entered the Cranberry Bog, leaving the relative arborial protection of the Mire for the large open fields I saw ahead. While skulking around trying not to draw any creature's attention, I could hear the wings of a scorchbeast nearby and started to run. I quickly discovered that the Bog is scarred with natural trenches, as I kept falling into them, and they provided decent enough cover that I could get around safely. The eerie quiet of this desolate landscape broken by the sound of an aerial danger reminded me of accounts from the Somme or something. I was eventually spotted by a scorchbeast and being pursued, desperately stimpaking myself while trying to snipe back, and started to hear rocket fire. I had stumbled on one of the Brotherhood's austomatic surface to air missile sites dotted around the Bog specifically to fight scorchbeasts. It launched an in game 'event' where I had to keep repairing/defending the ASAM site while it helped me down my first scorchbeast. It was a genuinely thrilling bit of semi-emergent gameplay that really cemented me 'getting' the game.
Beyond that, the BoS story reveals some big info about the origin of the scorched, and you find where they held their last stands in an effort to prevent the scorched from spreading through Appalachia. You then get pulled into the Enclave story which was pretty meh in my opinion (the 'creepy government robot AI' feels a bit forced), but the gameplay was fun. It ends with you having the ability to drop nukes, to bring the main story to an end by defeating a scorchbeast queen, a fun event that usually brings in most players on the server. The process for deciphering launch codes is ludicrous and barely explained, better just searching online for a rundown (or the codes themselves, immediately scraped from game files every update XD). Now having completed the main story, I understood the game a lot more and moved on to some of the newer content.
Beyond the main story: The Wastelanders update added human NPCs for the first time. This is where stuff was confusing initially for me, you are getting told by a holotape that 'everyones dead', with a human standing a few metres away. You encounter the neo-Raiders, neo-Responders, a different Brotherhood chapter, all while being told in missions they are dead. You also run into your vault's Overseer in like the third town you come across, while following her holotapes with 'no idea where she is' XD. Anyway, wastelanders adds the Settlers and new Raiders factions and sends you down a storyline to do a heist on a national gold supply vault. You are meant to 'choose a side' and do the quest with one, but you can work through both to a certain point, and max out reputation with them by doing dailies afterward, so it honestly doesn't matter. In the end they each offer unique tradeables with gold being the currency. I found the Settlers to be kinda meh (except for Jen's section) and while I hate the Raiders, their characters were more interesting (especially Gail and Ra-Ra). I also really enjoyed Sofia's ally questline, the astronaut who fell from an experimental cryo-sleep test mission launched decades ago (the 'allies' are like companions from other games that can live at your base).
Further Thoughts: Coming from having gotten more into ESO the previous year, I really appreciate fo76's space for actual RPG roleplaying. ESO is very tailored toward 'just build your character for dungeons only, and do every mission in almost exactly the same way', which I felt made it difficult to play as a normal RPG. I usually like stealth/rogue gameplay and it is not catered for at all, you bypass a lot of XP by sneaking around/through missions in ESO. Every dungeon in ESO feels pretty much the same, you're always in a group that just wants to rush through for dailies, and the combat is just 'slap buttons while facing the enemy' so it may as well be automatic. I felt in FO76 you were far more able to play it like a normal 3D Fallout RPG, I was able to build up my stealth/sniper character and actually use it's benefits in missions and events/dungeons. Overall I think it's probably a slightly weaker story/game than the single player ones, but it's still really good, and not a totally different experience like ESO is to Skyrim/Oblivion.
I really liked the story as it is layed out in the main questline, and as I mentioned before the voice acting is good, adding a lot of emotion throughout. The idea of multiple factions that could go either way between helping each other or hurting each other, while there is a much bigger threat looming over them, was a bit reminiscent of New Vegas' story. It's not as open ended as FNV, you can't choose to join the scorched and enlist factions for them, as the scorched are an animalistic hive mind and not a faction. What would have been better is actually PLAYING that story, instead of just reading about and listening to it. It could have been very interesting if you had to work through uniting these, sometimes warring, factions in order to defeat the big bad in the scorched. And being forced as the player to work with groups you might oppose under normal circumstances could have achieved a similar conflicting emotional height that FNV does. In saying all of that, it's still not a bad story/game by any means.
There's other elements of the gameplay I could go on about but this post is already longer than I planned :P so I will rapid fire them. Base building/crafting = good, copy of fallout 4? Cash shop = whatever, seems more about buying convenience vs. buying power. Team system = annoying, often only advancing the leader's quest, but works well for 'expeditions' (dungeons). Expeditions = fun! Overall it has a production quality similar to ESO with regards to voice acting, score, and world design, but ESO uses a more far stable multiplayer focused engine that crashes WAY less (lmao). There's a fair bit of Bethesda jank™ with NPC pathfinding, visual glitching, and total crashes, but this can apparently differ depending on server region and platform.
That's about all I have to say, thanks for reading!