Why Fallout 76 Already Has the Hallmarks of a Future Comeback Story

Fallout 76 has been roasted on the Internet to a largely undeserved degree. In fact, here's why it already has the hallmarks of a future comeback story, as so many other online games in the past suffered from similar issues when they first launched.

[Imp0ssibl3]

People just like to jump on a bandwagon. Just look at the phenomenon of review bombing on Steam or Metacritic...Most of folks shitting on this game haven't played I'm sure

[Nyxus]

What about all the critics who hated it?

[KaiPow]

Critics changed their minds over No Man's Sky too, granted it took a year or two.

[HaveSumNuts]

Logic: Lets get hyped for how they are going to fix an unfinished and broken game that they officially released and are charging full price for it

[mkis007]

No mans sky wasn't created by a megapublisher...

[whothedog]

Edit: Also games like fallout76 and tomb raider got review bombed for slashing the price in half a month after it came out or sooner.

Side note, I think no mans sky looks very interesting now.

[Armaggedon]

Its also possible that quite a few critics were scared to oppose the massive hate wave going on. Not all, but there are some.

[Armaggedon]

No they dont deserve all the crap the are getting. Some of it, but not all of it.

[whothedog]

@armaggedon

Releasing a incomplete very buggy game where they sell it at $60 deserves the hate, they should of lowered the cost cause it is a early access game. And if I bought the early access game at $60 and less than a month later find out it goes on sale for half the price, of course I would be upset. Why preorder or support a game/company like that, its shady.

Edit: Talks of this "game" coming to steam which would be smart cause there wouldn't be this refund debacle but mainly you wouldn't need another client to play a game.

it can fix itself like No Mans Sky but right now there is no reason to support this mess

[PapaBop]

Pretty much my thoughts, GiantBomb's reasoning for not doing a review is far from them jumping on the hate bandwagon and you know something is up when IGN give a big release anything less than a 7

[UltraNova]

Havesumnuts,

Exactly, we are a sad species aren't we?

I would like to see these people who are defending practices like these how they would react of a car they've bought at full price was unable to go a mile without breaking down and be happy with the dealer's excuse of "we'll fix it at some point in the future"...

[Armaggedon]

Criticism is what it deserves, not hate. There is a difference.

[Sgt_Slaughter]

Just stop. You have no idea what you're talking about, since you think the game is on Steam (hint: It's been known for ages it would never be on that).

Pretty much everyone who's speaking negatively about the game have played it, and hate it for a multitude of reasons. Sorry that you can't accept reality.

[Armaggedon]

What is reality?

[whothedog]

There was a steamdb page that got quickly changed so I cannot prove it or even care that much but it was saying otherwise about fallout 76 coming to steam. Could of just been a hoax though so I can be wrong. Don't really care at the moment since it's a $60 early access game.

[Yi-Long]

Except most people already stated they had no interest in an Online Only MP Fallout experience, so even despite the buggy release, most of those folks already discarded it.

The folks now leaving negative reviews are the people who did give it a chance, and were disappointed with it.

True, Bethesda could fix those bugs and improve the game in the coming months/years.

There's still a huge group of Fallout fans who won't be bothering with this release. At all.

[rainslacker]

That's nice. But what about all the people who did play it and said it wasn't good?

@KaiPow

Critics changed their mind, but you don't see rereviews of the game, and it still gets a lot of hate whenever they release an update. NMS earned its come back by actually releasing content. We shouldn't start looking at come backs as a good thing. It should be more about not having to make a come back because it was successful in the first place.

[Orionsangel]

People also like to jump on the anti-wagon. Oh everyone hates it? Then i'll like it. I just wanna go against the grain.

[ccgr]

Well I hope they listen to feedback and refund to those unhappy with it

[LavaLampGoo]

I enjoyed Sea of Thieves when it first released, and No Mans Sky for that matter but they've both become much better with time, can't see why 76 wouldnt

[rainslacker]

Sure, but they should make a come back before we start thinking that it can make a come back in some optimistic hope that maybe one day it will be good. NMS and SoT, released content, and proved they were in it to be better. Bethesda doesn't have quite that kind of track record, and I don't believe on giving games credit for something that might happen in the future. If it makes a come back, that's fine, but its a sad day when gamers start saying, "it might be good one day". It's worse than thinking that it'll be fine in a month or two once they work out the bugs in an update.....something Bethesda often doesn't even do.

[Highlife]

Sorry but those games didn't need a whole new engine. The game is built on crap can't fix that.

[OhReginald]

People brining up no man's sky like if they believe it was fixed since launch. No man's sky is still very bad even after all its updates. fallout 76 will be no different. If you release a half-assed broken product then im over it. Will never be able to wash the bad taste of fallout 76 from my mouth even with future patches.

[thejigisup]

No man's sky has delivered on the expected vision. I can't say the same for sea if thieves though. You should check out NMS again and tell me what's missing bc the game now is very different, and significantly better than at launch. Fallout 76 is a disaster and you can't really patch the engine on this one so I get that def. Bethesda needs a different game plan for the next game altogether.

[EazyC]

In my opinion, Fallout 76 is irreparably bad. It's not like GT: Sport where the fundamentals were top-tier but it was a little barebones - - it's unfixably shit on almost every level.

[DrumBeat]

Exactly. Fallout 76 is broken on a fundamental level. The Foundation is broken. Everything is broken.

GT: Sport you could argue lacked content, but it played as it should, and it played like a fully-functional game. This game is broken at its base, foundation, core, etc.

[Armaggedon]

Is it really foundational? Or is it just incomplete?

[DrumBeat]

@ Armageddon

Both.

[Armaggedon]

How do you know its foundational? People who have been complaining about the engine have shown they have no idea what they are talking about. But, perhaps you are right. Perhaps it is foundational. Perhaps their games are just, I dont know, really hard to make by nature.

[Magumbo]

Fallout 76 deserves the criticism. I wish the pile on outrage would die though so Bethesda can't blame the games failings on trolls.

[Monkeycan8]

I hope so. Everyone should hope so.

[InTheZoneAC]

Sounds like an article from the #1 fanboy. You can't call anything a comeback when you intentionally release a pos game then try to fix it later.

[EazyC]

Wasn't NMS meant to be pretty damn good a year or so after? Then again, it wasn't 'broken' per se. You're right though, 'comeback' is a bit rich. That doesn't really seem to be a thing in modern gaming, certain series just fall into the abyss

[Nacho_Z]

I think it's fair to say that in theory the game could be improved to the point that it would be a worthy purchase for any RPG fan. I can't imagine them making it bug free but if they can work on crashes and freezing and add in quality content it'll be a good game. It's a big if but let's pretend.

On the other hand I am enjoying seeing them get a hard kick up the backside from their customers because a game I care about more than almost any others, ES6, is being worked on and if this backlash makes them rethink and make it a better game then long may it continue.

Fallout 76 isn't any more than a potentially entertaining cash grab but ES6 is a big deal and if F76 needs to get dragged through the mud to improve it then so be it.

[zodiac909]

So many people are suffering from severe "sunken cost fallacy," issues with this game.

[Armaggedon]

Maybe it's more like an investment. Perhaps those people are aware of and understanding of certain variables that others are not. It is very easy for consumers to sit back in our chairs sipping drinks and complaining about everything because we arent the ones trying to struggle to come up with a way to make this strange blend of a game work. Bethesda did utilize questionable tactics with this game, but many people are just as out of line in this scenario.

[MasterCornholio]

An investment?

Thats what crowdfunding is for or early access. But when you charge 60$ for a AAA multiplayer title at launch it should be functional and well developed. There's no excuse for Bethesda to release the game in the state that they did. The criticism is warranted because of that.

[Armaggedon]

Ideally it should be functional, but what is really going on? Are all of these developers/publishers just greedy? Or is their something else?

[MasterCornholio]

Greed has a lot to do with it because it does cost money to fix the issues that Fallout 76 has. I mean they would probably need to change the engine and give the developers extra development time to make the game a lot better and we know that costs money. Also the developers themselves could be incompetent as we never have seen a release from them that’s not filled with bugs.

But ignoring all the technical issues Fallout 76 is missing a lot of what makes a Bethesda game great in the first place. Like communities of NPCs and interesting quests for example. But of course that costs money to develop so I can see why Bethesda didn’t make an effort to include them in the game.

[Armaggedon]

Its easy to assume we know, but we only have an outside perspective. These are things to consider, and people should think on them.

[LordoftheCritics]

There are better games and more interesting new IP's to look forward to.

[ziggurcat]

Yeah, well... if you eat food that has gone bad, it comes back, too.

[rainslacker]

LOL. Most games do not make comebacks. They're actually exceptionally rare. And Bethesda can't even fix bugs in ports of games which are a decade old, so who really thinks they're going to make a comeback with FO76?

[Xaevi]

through patches any game can be changed drastically from what it was when initially released. the question is if Bethesda will find it worth keeping it alive a year from now. stop defending their shite, they're a big company and don't need to be defended by fanboys. if anything you should be demanding better from them

[zugdar]

When you go so far down the only way is to go up.

[AK91]

HAHAHAHAHAHA

[Playbey0nd]

Truth is, all previous Fallouts had some bugs and some that were even game breaking. There were never any patches that truly fixed the issues. I don’t see Bethesda recognizing that criticism and buckling down to finally fix the problem.

[mkis007]

That would require bethesda to patch bugs that were in fallout 4

[meike1982]

What about the millions of people who are playing it a lot?

[MasterCornholio]

If that’s what the fan base wants that’s what Bethesda will give them.

[The_DFO]

I've played Fallout 76 quite a lot, since release, and have had a reasonably good time doing so. My take: it's a pretty
good game, taken on it's own terms, but not (yet?) a great one.

-- mini-review, which you can skip if you want --

[Even in the absence of speaking human NPCs, the game is full of stories for those - like me - who have an interest in and the patience for storytelling that depends on environmental clues, scattered texts, and some deductive reasoning. Appalachia is not as story-rich as the Commonwealth or the Capitol Wasteland, perhaps, but there's plenty here to discover. I won't spoil anything, but the lore concerning the Scorched and the likely causes of the plague is very much in line with the social (that is, corporate) satire that has long been part of the Fallout universe; in light of that lore, the absence of other human survivors is significant, and casts a kind of melancholy over the proceedings that I find appealing, though others may not.

But, yeah, it's not a great game. The survival and crafting elements are just okay. The quests are plentiful, but can become a big, arbitrary game of Little Red Hen (you know, fetch this one McGuffin so you can get the other McGuffin you need to get . . . and so on.). The end-game is visually dramatic but . . . inconclusive. And perhaps biggest of all, there's the problem that player characters are supposed to be "the best and brightest" setting out to "rebuild America" . . . but then spend day upon in-game day running around individually or in small groups, doing our own thing.]

-- end of mini-review --

Based on what's actually in the game world, though, it seems to me that Bethesda has a number of things up their sleeves that make the "comeback-story-in-the-ma king" narrative plausible. There are, for example, other vaults on the map that are yet to open, and changes may be coming to multiplayer, as well.

(And, to their credit, the developers have fixed one of the most glaring flaws from Fallout 4: signs on old bookstores now advertise "stationery" rather than "stationary"!)

[metalgod88]

I'm all about great comeback stories and have hope they can turn it around, but this game is fundamentally broken on so many levels. If they want this game to succeed, they need to make some serious changes to the gameplay mechanics, and that my friend, takes a lot of time. The sad part is, there are so many bugs to fix, I'm not sure when the devs will get the chance to actually start working on the mechanics.