So last night I played Fallout 76 past midnight, checked socials... ok you know what we should talk about that a bit.
So the way in which I write these is thag around 8pm, I play a game with the aim to play it past midnight, when thats done I shut everything off, get into bed and use my phone to make notes and check socials for the news. After that I go to sleep and then tomorrow I check my notes and write the post for the day.
Its all to recreate a funny set of circumstances that created one of strangest coincidences i've ever seen. I played crime boss rockay city past midnight, trump got shot. I played fallout 76 past midnight, biden got covid. I played divinity original sin past midnight and biden stepped down with kamala harris now running. I recently played deathspank past midnight and now the us stock market crashed. All of this just to see what'll happen next and to give me something creative to build up for myself.
Thing is, im usually up at 2 or 3 am before I decide to say screw it and go to bed with nothing much to report for tomorrow. Atleast, nothing to report that isnt politics related, id rather Midnight Gaming not be too politically focused. So I ask you, anyone who is reading, would you rather I stick to this or would it be alright If leave checking the news to tomorrow instead of after midnight. Atleast that way I can have more of a selection on what to report for the news segment on these posts. Let me know in the comments whatd you perfer.
So Fallout 76, is it good? Ehhhh... is it playable? Yes. The game atm is playable and you may in fact get some enjoyment out of it. I just wouldnt call it good per se. Once you get outta the vault, the land of west virgina is available to you and to bethesda's credit, appalachia is one the better fallout locales to explore, the various zones from the verdant forest, the savage divide and the cranberry bog to name a few are distinct enough with their own look.
As you explore the world, your main focus is to level up so you can get perk cards and special stats to create a build. And there are a wide variety of weapons to utilise along with ways to build your character. You can go melee, go with sniper rifles or automatics. Go with explosives or use energy weapons. There is a variety to choose from and once you do, you'll want to equip the right perks to utilise them. It does start off running, but when you reach endgame, it does feel like you run outta steam.
The biggest dealbreaker for me when it comes to games is when im left with nothing to do or if what im doing feels too tedious to be worth it. I played warframe before, multiple times infact, on pc, on xbox and on switch. When I tried to get into warframe again, I linked all of my accounts into one and logged in only to hit a brick wall. I have all of my stuff, my warframes, my weapons, my mods. I have locales open and quests in my log. Im just sitting there on my orbiter asking myself "what do I do now?". I had no plan on what i wanted to do, on what i wanted to work on or even what I feel would be fun to do. Im just pacing up and down my ship feeling awkward and lost. Eventually I decided to just forget it and leave, uninstalled and did something else. I felt too awkward to do anything and as a result, it killed any momentum I had going into warframe, causing me to bounce right off.
I left warframe because I couldnt find something I wanted to do, feeling like I had forgotten how to swim and being dunked into the deep end, frantically trying to recall that knowledge. I would've perferred some way of easing myself back in so I dont feel too overwhelmed with everything. With fallout 76 i'm facing the other issue, I have all the gear, perks and weapons that I want that theres nothing left worthwhile to do. I've grinded for a union power armor set, i'm carrying 3 star heavy weapons that shred through most enemies, I have my build set up to allow me to do a lot of damage and resist a lot back. All i'm doing is bouncing between daily quests, daily ops and random events while gaining more levels to save up coins to level up legendary perks while rerolling my gear for more optimal loadouts.
I've done most of what I wanted to do that there isn't much else left to interest me, aside from maybe doing questlines for the stories but otherwise, I think im spent for the time being, no recent or upcoming update has been compelling enough for me to stay.
Fallout 76 is playable yes, the work has been done to improve on the intial launch, one that was buggy and unpalatable for many outside of those who wanted to just point and laugh, but if there was one thing about fallout 76 that was compelling, it was the original story involving you, the resident of vault 76 and the scorched threat.
You're a part of privileged few who got to avoid the horrors of the great war, living in the vault while training and being groomed for the ultimate task: reclamation. To venture back out into the ruined world and rebuild america. Shortly after the bombs fall, reclamation day arrives and you head out to find.. appalachia is fine, seemingly so. West Virginia isn't really a high priority target so its mostly untouched by nuclear devastation. You go into the nearest town to find plenty of evidence that people outside the vault have survived the end of the world and have already started on rebuilding their lives.... and yet no sign of life.. atleast... any that are living.
And then you find out why. A terrible plague that causes the affected to attack, infect and corrupt others, heralded by the winged scorchbeast that champions the sky, spreading its foul influence to assert its dominion on the land below. In your search to find a way to fight this threat, you uncover the ways in which many of the old factions fell, their distrust and unwillingness to cooperate with each other being their downfall, divided they were and conquered they became. Eventually you're led to the hidden nuclear silos, now having to use the very thing that destroyed the world you once knew, in order to save whats left of it.
Throughout appalachia you come across holotapes of your old overseer at various locales, detailing her journey across the new world. One of them seems to take place after the main story of 76, with her expressing complete and utter horror of the vault dwellers, of you, continuing to use the nuclear silos to wage small scale nuclear warfare on each other. She was given the secret task of securing the silos by herself, a near impossible task that forces her to ask her own people via holotape to help.
She wonders if that was in fact part of the plan, to get the reclaimers involved and aware of the silos. She mentions in one log of how she found out about the vaults being experiments but was convinced AND reassured that the experiments were necessary and that 76 would be a normal vault. Was that a half-truth, was it all just one big experiment to satiate some short-sighted curiosity. Were those selected for 76 chosen for being the best or for just being the most skilled and the most competitive. If you took your time and checked the computers in the vault, you can find they had to arrange small contests and awards to occupy the dwellers, one dweller even ended up losing a tooth in an act of spite from a sore loser. Was that foreshadowing of what would happen when the reclaimers gain access to nuclear arms? As she loses her faith in the company she served, she begs you the player to stop using the silos, to stop this madness, to stop bringing further destruction to appalachia.
The fallout series was a look into the cautionary tale of idolising and obsessing over the past. To be stuck recreating the glory days instead of moving forward. The 50's aesthetic that makes up the ruins of the post war america wasn't chosen for looks, but to serve the underlying message, that the jingoism and nationalist red scare was the enabling force of societys worst, most destructive flaws, culminating in total obliteration via atomic fire. That meaning does get lost as the ip becomes gentrified under bethesda. The dread of the cold war now just a bit for the brand, the blast of the atomic bomb not illiciting fear but joy as it could mean a unique boss is spawned to fight or unique crafting materials to collect. What was considered a morbid look into the damnation of humanity's foolhardiness, now just part of the marketing spiel with the phrase "war, war never changes".
But the original story of Fallout 76, before wastelanders brought the npcs back, it atleast had some promise. Of being alone in a post war appalachia with no other humans, with only the mutants, the self sustaining robots, the shadows burnt into the walls and the dying words of survivors as your only company. Of the lone holotape in a secluded shack, carrying the words of your overseer, pleading and begging you, the family she knew and survived armageddeon with.
To stop loving the bomb, and start worrying.
See you all tomorrow. Be sure to let me know what you want done regarding how I handle news. Feedback is appreciated, anons are currently on.