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Fallout 76 is not doing well, at least not during this pre-launch time. The /r/Fallout subreddit certainly isn’t happy. There are reports of physics being locked to the framerate, mods already being developed (generally not accepted in multiplayers), and a hastily put together game using an old engine and a bit of netcode with little polish a Fallout game deserves.

In this post-Witcher 3 world, Bethesda can no longer get away with half-hearted builds. Their bugs stopped being cute and quirky, and those Skyrim videos on top 5 silly glitches that make you laugh don’t cut it anymore. So here we are, FO76 being raked through the coals before launch.

But let’s dial back a bit, because I don’t have FO76 and I don’t plan on buying it. What I have is a massive backlog, of which Fallout 4 is a part of.

November 2015

Like a True Fan, I pre-ordered FO4. I even bought the Collector’s Edition that had the lifesize wearable Pip-Boy. I don’t regret my purchase, and my Pip-Boy is now sitting pretty in my game room’s bookshelf.

I was very excited for the game, and my friends knew me as a Fallout junkie so it wasn’t off-brand of me. I put in a good number of hours and had a great time. The kicker was I had a planned trip to Boston months prior to see a friend. I did my own Freedom Trail walk while I was in town, my friend was happy to give me a tour of locations that existed in-game, and it was all amazing. November 2015 was a hella good time.

I bought the season pass because I was a True Fan. I played Automatron, and then I happily waited for the next DLC. It was at this time that I got sucked back into World of Warcraft. I stopped caring about single-player games while still buying into hype, and my backlog grew and grew.

November 2018

And here we are, exactly three years later. My outlook on games has changed drastically since then. I no longer pre-order games, I rarely buy titles on launch, and all around I’m just a much more discerning consumer. I’m a much happier and less frustrated gamer for it.

By pure coincidence, I started playing FO4 again on its third anniversary. I had the entire game with all its DLCs in my Steam library, and as part of my backlog project, I decided to tackle the remaining content I missed out on.

Now here is what’s presumably the Controversial Point of this post: I like Fallout 4. I also like Fallout: New Vegas. In fact, FNV is my all-time favorite game. The intricate backstory I weaved for my Courier, the companions I grew attached to, the difficult moral choices I had to make that made me question everything I believed in, FNV had a huge impact on me. I mean, I wrote fanfic for it. (No, I’m not linking them.)

But you know, FO4, it’s ayt. I don’t find it as deep as FNV; in fact, I don’t think Bethesda is capable of offering the kind of expansive personal adventure that other studios can offer. That’s just a compromise of their design.

Bethesda’s strength is their open-world availability. You really can just go out into the map and completely ignore the story for your own high jinks. Yeah, your son is missing but he can wait. Your choices ultimately don’t matter either. Everything’s pretty low-stakes outside the main quest. They have to be to allow you to just traipse around collecting bobbleheads. But you know… it’s fun.

(Side note: if you’re interested in what I think are the general problems of Bethesda-developed Fallout games, check out this video: Fallout 3 is Garbage, and Here’s Why.)

But it’s not a good Fallout game

“It’s a good game but it’s just not a good Fallout game, ” so the meme goes.

What even is a Fallout game anyway? An isometric cRPG? An RPG-lite FPS? A West Coast post-post-Apocalypta with factions properly laid out, with respect to the original lore? Okay, you got me there.

My main issue with Beth!Fallout is how little it respects the original lore. For all intents and purposes, the Enclave and Brotherhood shouldn’t even be in the East Coast. FO3 is also quite derivative of the original Fallout’s plot line: a vault dweller who was eventually kicked out of their vault, tasked with providing clean water to the community. Not exactly in that order, and the finer details were changed up, but you get the idea.

It’s easier to cope with Bethesda’s handling of the lore if you choose to see it as a soft reboot. As much as it pains me to say it, west coast Fallout died with Black Isle. We are never getting an isometric cRPG Fallout for a good, long while. Coupled with Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Obsidian, it’s better to bury any expectations for a new game of that caliber. (Though I would love to be wrong!)

All we have now is a perpendicular branch of the franchise that vaguely resembles the original games. It’s all we’re gonna have because Bethesda as a company is still doing very well, and their IPs are not in danger of being auctioned off anytime soon.

And you know… that’s ayt. I’ve long accepted that this is how Fallout is gonna be from now on. It’s quite low on things I need to care about, especially in this political climate. I still had a lot of fun with what Bethesda had to offer, and I honestly can’t rag on them too much when FO3 was my gateway to the entire thing.

Is FO4 a good game at least?

Well then, is FO4 good at all? That’s debatable. I think it’s good enough. Sure, I don’t feel very invested in my Sole Survivor, much less the Commonwealth, but I’m having a great time and isn’t that what games are all about? If you had fun, it was worth it.

I think most people just have to temper their expectations of Bethesda. If you pick up one of their titles expecting a pen-and-paper style adventure, of course you would be disappointed. Can they do better? I’m sure they can, but at this point, it wouldn’t be on-brand.

It was that headspace that made me love FO4 again. For a while, I too was a bitter fan and thought that Bethesda was doing the franchise dirty. Now, I’ve just accepted it for the way it is.

Besides, after finishing Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, I needed something lighter. There were only so much difficult moral choices I could handle. As much as I love that kind of gameplay and I always will, sometimes I just need a game that doesn’t ask so much of me. Sometimes I just need to find a den of super mutants, shoot everything in sight, and not have it bite me from behind 30 hours later.

Bethesda’s Fallout has its purpose, and the world is wide enough for it.

Something on your mind?

You can send me a mention about this post to @raiscake@elekk.xyz.