With high expectations, promises from Bethesda’s development team and a history of classic award-winning games, I wanted to like Fallout 76.
Unfortunately, the launch in November 2018 was plagued by bug-infested servers, broken promises and scandals surrounding Bethesda.
Not even a 50Gb day one patch could solve all the games issues.
This tarnished my beloved franchise and made Fallout 76 the video game I hate the most.
Over the past four years, Bethesda has improved the game through DLCs and patches that fixed significant game-breaking bugs, but the initial release left such a bad taste in my mouth that I never had the urge to go back to it.
Lack of Story
Bethesda is known for making games filled with dialogue choices and exciting storytelling.
The world of Fallout 76 felt empty. Bethesda promised the ultimate open-world experience. They delivered with a map of vast scale, but it lacked substance.
Paired with the over-reliance on multiplayer interaction to make the game fun, playing Fallout 76 without your friends was just plain boring, well…except for the hilarious bugs.
Bugs, bugs everywhere
The Fallout titles are infamous for their bugs, but Fallout 76 was on a different level. From 20 T-posed ghouls storming you out of thin air to people unlocking immortality, infinite ammo and infinite inventory space. The game was broken.
Players who used glitches to their advantage were overpowered gods and ruined the multiplayer.
There’s a full-blown three hour YouTube deep-dive detailing glitches titled “The 1001 Glitches of Fallout 76.” It should be considered a documentary.
Bethesda’s willingness to “fix bugs later” and leave servers to crash whilst blindly continuing to produce merchandise seemed disingenuous to their fan base.
Money Grab
Since its launch, Fallout 76 has been no stranger to scandal.
In late November 2018, Bethesda’s refund strategy resulted in a class-action lawsuit where the failure to return players money within the refund period was questioned.
Bethesda made low-quality merchandise, including bags that were not the same quality that was advertised.
They even made an $80/R1200 bottle of rum which, according to reviewers, if you got your hands on it after a three-month shipping delay, was pretty atrocious.
Placing funds towards merch instead of fixing an obviously broken game showed me that they were putting profits ahead of players.
I just wanted a good game that improved on past issues and built on Fallout 3, New Vegas and Fallout 4. But Fallout 76 was a step in the wrong direction.
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Read: The video game I like the most
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