Fallout 76 review series#

Fallout 76 review series#

Having said all that, I can comfortably state that if conversing with NPCs and a focus on story and lore were major reasons for your enjoyment of the series historically, Fallout 76 is not for you. The world certainly feels a bit lonelier without them, but given that Fallout is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, loneliness fits the setting rather well.

Though I must say I was surprised to learn about the complete absence of human NPCs and all of the systems that go with them in F76, I can honestly say that for the most part, I didn’t really miss them. I even went as far as to say that Bethesda would be better off paring down these aspects if they didn’t significantly improve them. A deeply flawed dialogue wheel, painfully dated animations, generally uninspired writing and flat voice acting, as well as some very buggy pathfinding with NPC companions made interacting with them my least favorite part. However, from my perspective at least, I always found interactions with NPCs to be some of the worst parts of these games, especially in Fallout 4 as outlined in my review of that game. This might sound like a pretty big indictment right off the bat, since the Fallout series has traditionally been branded primarily as role-playing games, and choosing different dialogue options and making the odd story or quest-altering decision played a pretty big part of that. Though there are still a few friendly robots to interact with, the only humans you will encounter out in the world will be other players. Conversing with, travelling with and fighting human non-player characters comprised a substantial chunk of all previous main-line Fallout games, and this seemingly crucial component of the formula has been entirely removed. The fact that you are going out into an uninhabited wasteland provides narrative context for what might be the biggest change from previous Fallout games: a complete absence of human NPCs. Fallout 76 takes place before all other games in the series, with you and other players taking the role of the first humans to emerge from a vault on Reclamation day, years after the bombs stopped falling.