Mitten Squad | Change is Scary - Fallout 76 Beta Impressions @MittenSquad | Uploaded October 2018 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
The first day of Fallout 76’s Break-it Early Test Application is now behind us. I played the game for almost 4 hours which means now I can tell you about my thoughts on the game. And oh boy, do I have some thoughts. This is… Fallout 76 First Impressions (Beta).
Equipment I use (and other affiliate links):
Buy Fallout 76: amzn.to/2Sh4AtW
Elgato HD60 S Capture Card: amzn.to/2EK8R6w
Focusrite Scarlett Solo Audio Interface: amzn.to/2q9gKbF
Audio-Technica AT2020 XLR Microphone: amzn.to/2EIkSt7
Apple iMac: amzn.to/2CEwHy3
Western Digital 4TB My Passport: amzn.to/2O4nFwc
Samsung T5 500GB Portable SSD: amzn.to/2EI7xB7
Tribesigns L-Shaped Corner Desk: amzn.to/2EGodZG
If you enjoyed this Fallout video, check out some of my other Fallout videos:
Can You Beat Fallout 3 As A Baby?: youtube.com/watch?v=6HLHqINNuM8
Can You Beat Fallout New Vegas as a Giant?: youtube.com/watch?v=JZF_rl-rlbw
Can You Beat Fallout New Vegas Without Attacking Anything?: youtube.com/watch?v=3X6KP3xq9fw
Can You Beat Fallout new Vegas By Only Moving Backwards?: youtube.com/watch?v=PkZHINdnjAk
Every Fallout Vault: youtube.com/watch?v=HTXKL85lG4w
5 Happiest Fallout Vaults: youtube.com/watch?v=PhJ_veoNxR8
6 Most Fucked-Up Fallout Vaults: youtube.com/watch?v=KZXEXLyTD2w
Support me on Patreon!, or don’t: patreon.com/mittensquad
SUBSCRIBE! bit.ly/MittenSquad
Twitter: bit.ly/MittenSquadTwitter
Change is Scary - Fallout 76 Beta Impressions (in text form)
Fallout 76 is… weird. And to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure if I mean that in a good or bad way yet. During my first hour or so with Fallout 76, I was what you might call “sarcastically skeptical optimism”. I wasn’t really feeling the whole “Fallout with Friends” thing. But, by the time the server shutdown counter came on, I was wishing I had another 2, 4, or 6 hours to keep playing.
Perhaps my biggest complaint is the most obvious one, the lack of NPCs. Don’t worry, there are no spoilies here. A quest I got shortly after leaving Vault 76 had a woman on a holotape telling me to find her at a certain location. However, knowing that there are no NPCs in the game, I knew what the options were, which really took away from the entire experience. I knew she’d either be dead or there’d be a holotape telling me to track her down to another location. That’s not to say that the stories told through the holotapes are bad, because they’re not. Quite the opposite, actually. There are tons of holotapes, and a solid portion of them had me invested in their stories, even if they were just one-offs with nothing more than a corpse accompanying them. This leads into another flaw with Fallout 76, everything is real-time. I found myself wanting to pause the game to listen to recordings, but I couldn’t. Sure, it was easy to find a quiet corner to sit in when you’re in an empty field or abandoned building.. It’s not so easy when you’re being chased by half a dozen feral ghouls and you wasted your only molotov cocktail by throwing it off a lighthouse atop a mountain because you wanted to see how far it would go.
Speaking of ghouls and being chased, the combat is, uh, alright. As someone who spent a lot of time playing Fallout 4 on an Xbox One, the dropped frames weren’t exactly welcomed, but they were expected. That said, there were several times where the game just flat out froze. I’m talking several seconds of a static image. In a game where the world continues to move regardless of what you do, this is not acceptable. As far as gunplay and melee goes, it felt a bit off. Like there was a split second delay between when I shot and when my bullet connected. Not in a “realistic bullet drop” sort of way, more so in a waiting for the game to register that I fired at a ghoul sort of way. I had a similar issue with the looting. More than anything else, this was what made me realize I was in an online-only game. When you go to loot a container -a corpse, a box, a chest, whatever- the odds are good that you’ll see a loading icon for maybe a quarter second while the game generates the loot. This made me feel like I wasn’t exploring an actual world. Which sucks, because the world itself is phenomenal. Like, I love the Mojave Wasteland, but Appalachia may be, from the time I spent on it, the best world Bethesda has ever made. Turning off the ambient music and wandering through the woods felt almost magical. There were even times when I felt as if I was in a modded version of Skyrim because of the flora, lighting, and sounds of birds or other creatures in the distance. And then I turned off my HUD and ventured north, into the Toxic Valley.
...
Oh, hey. Didn't think anyone would be down here.
The first day of Fallout 76’s Break-it Early Test Application is now behind us. I played the game for almost 4 hours which means now I can tell you about my thoughts on the game. And oh boy, do I have some thoughts. This is… Fallout 76 First Impressions (Beta).
Equipment I use (and other affiliate links):
Buy Fallout 76: amzn.to/2Sh4AtW
Elgato HD60 S Capture Card: amzn.to/2EK8R6w
Focusrite Scarlett Solo Audio Interface: amzn.to/2q9gKbF
Audio-Technica AT2020 XLR Microphone: amzn.to/2EIkSt7
Apple iMac: amzn.to/2CEwHy3
Western Digital 4TB My Passport: amzn.to/2O4nFwc
Samsung T5 500GB Portable SSD: amzn.to/2EI7xB7
Tribesigns L-Shaped Corner Desk: amzn.to/2EGodZG
If you enjoyed this Fallout video, check out some of my other Fallout videos:
Can You Beat Fallout 3 As A Baby?: youtube.com/watch?v=6HLHqINNuM8
Can You Beat Fallout New Vegas as a Giant?: youtube.com/watch?v=JZF_rl-rlbw
Can You Beat Fallout New Vegas Without Attacking Anything?: youtube.com/watch?v=3X6KP3xq9fw
Can You Beat Fallout new Vegas By Only Moving Backwards?: youtube.com/watch?v=PkZHINdnjAk
Every Fallout Vault: youtube.com/watch?v=HTXKL85lG4w
5 Happiest Fallout Vaults: youtube.com/watch?v=PhJ_veoNxR8
6 Most Fucked-Up Fallout Vaults: youtube.com/watch?v=KZXEXLyTD2w
Support me on Patreon!, or don’t: patreon.com/mittensquad
SUBSCRIBE! bit.ly/MittenSquad
Twitter: bit.ly/MittenSquadTwitter
Change is Scary - Fallout 76 Beta Impressions (in text form)
Fallout 76 is… weird. And to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure if I mean that in a good or bad way yet. During my first hour or so with Fallout 76, I was what you might call “sarcastically skeptical optimism”. I wasn’t really feeling the whole “Fallout with Friends” thing. But, by the time the server shutdown counter came on, I was wishing I had another 2, 4, or 6 hours to keep playing.
Perhaps my biggest complaint is the most obvious one, the lack of NPCs. Don’t worry, there are no spoilies here. A quest I got shortly after leaving Vault 76 had a woman on a holotape telling me to find her at a certain location. However, knowing that there are no NPCs in the game, I knew what the options were, which really took away from the entire experience. I knew she’d either be dead or there’d be a holotape telling me to track her down to another location. That’s not to say that the stories told through the holotapes are bad, because they’re not. Quite the opposite, actually. There are tons of holotapes, and a solid portion of them had me invested in their stories, even if they were just one-offs with nothing more than a corpse accompanying them. This leads into another flaw with Fallout 76, everything is real-time. I found myself wanting to pause the game to listen to recordings, but I couldn’t. Sure, it was easy to find a quiet corner to sit in when you’re in an empty field or abandoned building.. It’s not so easy when you’re being chased by half a dozen feral ghouls and you wasted your only molotov cocktail by throwing it off a lighthouse atop a mountain because you wanted to see how far it would go.
Speaking of ghouls and being chased, the combat is, uh, alright. As someone who spent a lot of time playing Fallout 4 on an Xbox One, the dropped frames weren’t exactly welcomed, but they were expected. That said, there were several times where the game just flat out froze. I’m talking several seconds of a static image. In a game where the world continues to move regardless of what you do, this is not acceptable. As far as gunplay and melee goes, it felt a bit off. Like there was a split second delay between when I shot and when my bullet connected. Not in a “realistic bullet drop” sort of way, more so in a waiting for the game to register that I fired at a ghoul sort of way. I had a similar issue with the looting. More than anything else, this was what made me realize I was in an online-only game. When you go to loot a container -a corpse, a box, a chest, whatever- the odds are good that you’ll see a loading icon for maybe a quarter second while the game generates the loot. This made me feel like I wasn’t exploring an actual world. Which sucks, because the world itself is phenomenal. Like, I love the Mojave Wasteland, but Appalachia may be, from the time I spent on it, the best world Bethesda has ever made. Turning off the ambient music and wandering through the woods felt almost magical. There were even times when I felt as if I was in a modded version of Skyrim because of the flora, lighting, and sounds of birds or other creatures in the distance. And then I turned off my HUD and ventured north, into the Toxic Valley.
...
Oh, hey. Didn't think anyone would be down here.
