Fallout 76: Wastelanders Review

Almost Heaven...

Okay, didn't take too long but I've finally managed to get myself through Wastelanders so you know what that means: I get to play Kingdom Hearts again! (Oh wait, I'm playing 'Chain of Memories' which means I have to remember all that card crap again. Nuts.) But for the immediate that means that I can write up a little 'this-is-whats-up' blog about everything that Wastelanders has to offer, whether I feel it's a success or a failure, and what I think this update means for the future of Fallout 76. But before I get into any of that I'll give you one thing for free; I played Fallout 76 long enough to experience all of that and was excited to do so, therefore they've already done something right. Although I'm not about to pat Bethesda on the back quite yet, there are some places to improve upon. (but I'm getting ahead of myself.)

Let me start by addressing the plotline of Wastelanders, which I was actually rather impressed by. (Although I think the team a little oversold with how much "your actions will have consequences." But then this is a Bethesda RPG, so what do you really expect?) Rather than double down on the strangely high stakes of the base game's narrative, (You are literally told that if you fail there could an 'extinction level event') this game takes a somewhat less personal story that feels more in line with something that Obsidian might come up with. (Although Obsidian probably would have added a few more dimensions.) Essentially, two main factions end up coming back to Appalachia after a mysterious transmission tells them about a secret treasure hiding in the hills. (No, you never learn who sent that transmission and it's never set up as a mystery to ponder on. So I guess is doesn't matter?)

The story itself makes some interesting additions to the Fallout lore; I mean there's nothing groundbreaking here but I feel there's a little bit of potential, and that's something worth commending. The only real thing I have a problem with, and this bugged me hard; it's the way that one of the 'post game' rewards is the right to buy the rights to, and then build, T-65 power armour. Ex'freakin'scuse me, Bethesda? T-65 is it? We've already established that T-45 PA was the one in use for the military before the war, and meanwhile T-51b was the height of active military equipment, with that being the armour which soldiers were sent into Anchorage wearing. In Fallout 4 they stretched that lore even more by introducing the T-60 armour which was literally designed and made months before the bombs fell, and somehow it only became widely distributed 200 years later. (Okay, I guess I'll buy that.) But now T-65 armour exists and my lore brain makes me want to die... but I digress.

Irregardless of the story, I have to put my hands together for the collection of just really fun missions that Bethesda managed to thread together for this game! One of the biggest issues with the base Fallout 76 package was the way in which every single mission amounted to little more than a fetch quest, and whilst there is still a little bit of that in Wastelanders (Which I find odd. You'd think they'd want to distance themselves from that design model altogether) they are inter-cut with actual levels where you go through dungeons and fight encounters, sometimes alongside other characters, who are useless, but actually have personalities. In fact, this whole expansion reminded me of the Automatron DLC from Fallout 4's main quest, only with several high level boss fights. Some of my personal standouts for the missions was Johnny's little prison-break con, Ra-Ra's vent adventure and the final vault raid. (Yeah, I can actually point out several really fun moments in this game, whereas before I most certainly could not.)

With the improved missions come improved characters (although considering you never actually conversed with anyone in the base game, I guess literally anything is an improvement in that department.) The Raiders in Crater clearly have the sweep for the more interesting crew, with each personality being instantly likeable and memorable, (even if Ra-Ra feels a little like BTEC Tiny Tina) but even the ostensibly boring settlers at foundation get some character to them if you stick around. Of course, I ended up siding with the Raiders to see how flexible the morality could be (and because I just liked those guys more) and ended up being pleasantly surprised when the game allowed me to sort of play to both sides at the end. It wasn't in a way that made my choice of faction feel irrelevant, and it allowed me to feel like my character had his own agency, which is something I haven't been able to say since New Vegas. (So good job there, Bethesda, you did it!)

Unfortunately the same praise cannot be extended to the new ally system that Bethesda created, as those guys are literally just fetch-quest factories. There are four available in Wastelanders, although only two have actual names and questlines (So I have no idea why the other two were even implemented.) Sofia and Beckett both have serviceable enough stories to go through but in terms of actual gameplay it whittles down to 'go here and pick up this McGuffin so that I can then point you towards the next McGuffin'. For Beckett I observed 13 fetch quest missions straight before a finale dungeon, and Sofia's mission's were all fetch quests. Even narrative-ly these tales aren't exactly blockbusters, with Beckett's posing possibly the most telegraphed twist ever put to script. Sofia's, on the otherhand, is full of expository dumps that are poorly handled which makes it hard to really get invested in what's happening. (And why weren't we introduced to Emerson properly when he first showed up? There's so many problems with the storytelling...)

To their credit, however, Bethesda did go so far as to write friendship arcs and even romance if you're so inclined. They are criminally poorly written to the extent where I seriously wonder if the writing staff put them together out of protest, but it's the thought that counts(?) Either way, I think this is a system that has potential room to grow down the line when Bethesda remember how to write personal conflict again, and maybe we'll even see addendums to the stories of the two allies we already know, that would be interesting! See, somehow I'm already back to the point where I'm ready and willing to give Bethesda the benefit of the doubt, so that should show you just how much they got right with Wastelanders.

Point-in-case, they actually listened to the community and delivered much needed nerfs to some of the endgame content, to make it actual endgame content and not... postgame exploit-only content. Yes, that means the Scorchbeast Queen is actually killable without having to load up on TSE guns or stacking a bloodied build. (They also nerfed TSE, so that's nice.) They input actual instancing infrastructure so in the rare moments where you bump into someone else they won't have cleared your mission objective for you, and they fixed the area levelling so that you'll almost always be fighting enemies that are a challenge to you. As an additional note, legendary spawns seemed to have fixed so that endgame folk will actually meet three-star legendary enemies outside of scripted spawns. (I literally never ran into a wild three-star before this update.)

Speaking of Endgame, Bethesda remembered to work one of those into the game as well, whilst piggybacking off of events from the update's main quest in order to make things more seamless. Essentially this is just a new currency that you can earn from doing events and dedicate towards buying super rare plans. (including those 'raid exclusives' from last year before Bethesda shut down those raids for being bad and buggy.) Now, this obviously isn't the perfect solution for an endgame (especially since the amount of this currency that you can receive is limited to daily limits) but again, it's a start. Who knows, maybe once Bethesda swallow their pride enough to actually look at what other similar games do (You know, like your own sister company who make ESO!) they'll even start to realise how group dungeons might be a good idea. (But let's not overload them with ideas just yet, let them come to terms with what they've made first.)

So with my time diving into the Wastelanders done I suppose there are two questions that should be asked; will I keep playing and is the game now worth buying. And to answer that first one; no, I don't think I will. Don't get me wrong, I jell with all the things that Bethesda were trying to do but honestly I've already run out of ideas and the daily grind limit is stifling for attempted fun. I think that the overly large map sucks up too much time in transit, and if Bethesda just pulled travel fees from train stations everything might be just a tad more fun and accessible for those times when I don't have a spare two hours to reach and complete a single event. That being said, I would say that the game is finally worth buying, but still at a discounted price. (I've suffered from at least 10 disconnects in the past week, there's still work to do on their part.) So in summary, Wastelanders is a game, which is more than could be said about Fallout 76 for the last year of it's life.