Tell GR is a weekly Game Revolution community feature in which we ask you a question, and you answer it in the comments section below. Read the GR editorial team’s opinions before sharing your own responses!
The Fallout 76: Wastelanders‘ update has been released, with Bethesda looking to right the wrongs of the game’s launch by providing it with the most substantial fresh batch of content yet. Adding NPCs, a new main story, factions, allies, and more, Wastelanders looks to lure back those who gave up on the multiplayer survival game.
So does the Wastelanders update make you want to play Fallout 76? Or are you uninterested in returning to post-apocalyptic West Virginia? The Game Revolution team have shared their thoughts, and we want to hear from you in the comments section below.
Jason Faulkner, senior editor: I don’t see adding NPCs doing much to make Fallout 76 more appealing. At the end of the day, the game at its core is an inferior version of Fallout 4. Even when Fallout 4 released in 2015, it felt clunky, and the writing was subpar compared to Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and Fallout 76 is just the same thing shoehorned into an MMO.
ALSO: Fallout 76: Wastelanders earns enthusiastic approval from its community
When there are so many games that do the Fallout feel better than Fallout 76, there’s just no reason to pick it back up. I could play The Outer Worlds for the quirky dystopian story, or Metro Exodus if I wanted some post-apocalyptic action. Bethesda has really fallen behind the curve in pretty much every way, and there are just too many games that do what Fallout 76 is trying to do better.
I commend Bethesda on sticking by the game, even though it seems like the company has just made a series of increasingly terrible decisions. I was pretty much over it when the Fallout 1st premium memberships went live. I think it’s time to let this game die and for Bethesda to realize that Fallout is best as a single-player experience, not some odd game as a service.
Mack Ashworth, lead editor: I’ll certainly be giving Fallout 76 another shot following the substantial new update. I’ve played plenty of games that launched in a poor state, only to be reinvigorated by a massive patch many months, or even years, down the line.
I played Fallout 76 at launch and quickly grew bored of the quest structure and poor interactions with other players. It was a very weird experience and felt almost like a test build used before launch, where many features hadn’t yet been implemented.
Here’s hoping the new patch, which includes NPCs with dialogue choices, as well as a new main quest, will make the game feel more alive.
Paul Tamburro, executive editor: Not a chance. There are far too many great games out there to go back and retry something that flubbed its launch so monumentally. At least with No Man’s Sky, Hello Games went all-in with providing free updates to bring the game up to expectations. Bethesda rolling out the Fallout 1st subscription and the game still priced as high as it is despite all its problems doesn’t compel me to support it, even on the off-chance that Wastelanders is a transformative update.
A game that misses the mark as much as Fallout 76 at launch really needs to make itself a more inviting proposition to return to. I played enough of it at launch just trying to find something about it to enjoy, and I don’t need to remind myself of that experience again. Fallout 3 is one of my favorite games ever, but FO76 highlighted all the worst qualities of the series to the point where it even significantly reduced my interest in playing a Fallout 5. That’s how much I disliked it — it lessened my excitement for a game that doesn’t even exist yet.
Michael Leri, lead writer: Unless Bethesda makes the shooting and writing better, puts it in space, and takes out “Fallout” and “76”‘ from the title and replaces those words with “The,” “Outer,” and “Worlds,” I’m probably not going play this Fallout 76, update or not. It’s good that Bethesda stuck with this game after botching up the launch, but it’s just not the kind of experience I am drawn to.
Bethesda RPGs never quite did it for me but they have also not aged well over the years. While innovative in the last generation, the team hasn’t moved into the modern era with the grace, especially when combined with the ever-increasing technical problems that have grown less cute.
So while this Wastelanders update adds NPCs into the world, it remains to be seen if that’s truly what players want or if it’s what they think they want. It may help save the flailing Fallout 76 and works within the context of this game, but Bethesda is going to have to do a lot more in its future titles to grab players like me and keep its formula from stagnating.
