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 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Lone Cat wrote:

 Wyrmalla wrote:

Bethesda's representation of the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 3 was to have them be White Knights. They then swung around in 4 and turned them into Nazis. Neither of which really was accurate to how they appeared in Fallout 2 (a dying order being taken over by the NCR) or especially in Fallout: New Vegas. Similarly that the Enclave appeared at all in Fallout 3 was a bit daft. Going for a faction which had been decimated in Fallout 2, to somehow a regional power by Fallout 3 - ignoring Black Isle's intentions with the faction to have them - like the Brotherhood, die out after Fallout 2.
.

So this compels Obsidian team to to creates a band of six Navarro survivors called Enclave Remnants? (and how did they get goin' for almost 40 years without knowing that the Enclave had a new leader by 2077 and not relocated to the old DC? dunno if they recieved any orders or remain blacked out for some 40 years.?

Perhaps they were simply deserters who chose not to go East, or by the time rumours of a regrouped Enclave on the East Coast filtered back to the West Coast, these 6 were already pretty advanced in years or had settled down.

Arcade at least was written before Fallout 3 was ever conceived, so their plot line seems to exist in a world where the Enclave fell into ruin just as had originally been intended. Of course it could be said that the Enclave was in shambles, so people got left behind (I believe that their Vertibird can be found in game with a unique laser weapon beside it, and the missing rotor is used by a Companion). Ah, but for me to really enjoy New Vegas's plot its better to follow the original intent behind much of the plot from the Van Buren and pen and paper days, and just act like Fallout 3 never happened.

...Because having replayed many of Bethesda's games in the past few years since Fallout 4's came out, I can say with some conviction that their writing's not very good (and leave it at that).

Mostly Bethesda doesn't bother to have writing in a traditional sense, preferring their 'radiant quests' to fill in for content. You can take a 100 hours to peer into every corner, but the main quests of skyrim and the fallouts take about 10 or so. On the other hand, this is true of New Vegas as well- you don't need to do much to get to the pointless final boss bullet sponge.

I find it amusing that fallout 4 is probably the most personal their quest writing has ever gotten, but came at a cost of fixed content that squelched replay options.

I find the main quests in Bethesda games pretty insipid. I am in it to tell my own stories in their world - true roleplaying in that I take on a role and try to fulfill it.

The idea of being someone who gradually improves the wasteland through setting up defended settlements and trader routes really appeals to me and the kind of character I am playing, so I am just cracking on with that. The stuff about my son is really just a bit of jarring narrative dissonance I wish was not in the game. I hope they do not do this in future.

(I also modded out the voiced protagonist. I don't like my RPG characters having an accent that is so different to my own.)

I modded out that you were that kid's parent in Fallout 4. Instead just being some guy looking for a dead Vault Dweller's kid. The mod author went as far as removing every reference towards you being a Vault Dweller/ Shaun's parent.

I like being a Vault Dweller because it allows me to learn about the Wasteland at the same time as my character, but it really annoyed me that they wrote the protagonist as such a dumbass. He takes forever to begin to understand that time has passed since he was locked up in the vault and to realize that he was frozen a second time and therefore his baby might not be a baby any more.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
I modded out that you were that kid's parent in Fallout 4. Instead just being some guy looking for a dead Vault Dweller's kid. The mod author went as far as removing every reference towards you being a Vault Dweller/ Shaun's parent.

Man, that must have taken a lot of work to accomplish. But I don't get how anyone cared about the baby as you had all of 5 seconds of interaction with that creepy doll before its over, its like RL synths designed that part for Bethesda. "Here is baby, you love and protect baby because baby is yours. Engage emotional investment now!"


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
I like being a Vault Dweller because it allows me to learn about the Wasteland at the same time as my character, but it really annoyed me that they wrote the protagonist as such a dumbass. He takes forever to begin to understand that time has passed since he was locked up in the vault and to realize that he was frozen a second time and therefore his baby might not be a baby any more.

To be fair you get no frame of reference for the time that's passed since being frozen again and Kelogg still looks exactly the same plus the bit of Shaun being seen as still a little kid in Diamond City. The game is actively trying to convince even the player that little time has passed, as in some years. Its not hard to understand why the PC does not fully grasp it at the start.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Wyrmalla wrote:
I modded out that you were that kid's parent in Fallout 4. Instead just being some guy looking for a dead Vault Dweller's kid. The mod author went as far as removing every reference towards you being a Vault Dweller/ Shaun's parent.

Man, that must have taken a lot of work to accomplish. But I don't get how anyone cared about the baby as you had all of 5 seconds of interaction with that creepy doll before its over, its like RL synths designed that part for Bethesda. "Here is baby, you love and protect baby because baby is yours. Engage emotional investment now!"

I thought they did a way better job with Fallout 3. You get to live out episodes of you childhood. You get to shape your character's background and don't wake up in the Vault one day without any memory.

The pre-war stage of Fallout 4 is very limited by comparison.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
I like being a Vault Dweller because it allows me to learn about the Wasteland at the same time as my character, but it really annoyed me that they wrote the protagonist as such a dumbass. He takes forever to begin to understand that time has passed since he was locked up in the vault and to realize that he was frozen a second time and therefore his baby might not be a baby any more.

To be fair you get no frame of reference for the time that's passed since being frozen again and Kelogg still looks exactly the same plus the bit of Shaun being seen as still a little kid in Diamond City. The game is actively trying to convince even the player that little time has passed, as in some years. Its not hard to understand why the PC does not fully grasp it at the start.

It's a side effect of having a voiced protagonist/only ever playing Nate or Nora. Your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. doesn't matter, only what Bethesda envisioned for their characters. You can be as bright or as dim as you like, it has no effect on gameplay.

If Bethesda hadn't taken out S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and skills (or in Fallout 4's case, perks) affecting dialogue options, except very weirdly in one or two cases (which doesn't mesh with the rest of the game), there could have been a wider range of options for players.

But of course extra lines of voiced dialogue cost money...

 Geifer wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Wyrmalla wrote:
I modded out that you were that kid's parent in Fallout 4. Instead just being some guy looking for a dead Vault Dweller's kid. The mod author went as far as removing every reference towards you being a Vault Dweller/ Shaun's parent.

Man, that must have taken a lot of work to accomplish. But I don't get how anyone cared about the baby as you had all of 5 seconds of interaction with that creepy doll before its over, its like RL synths designed that part for Bethesda. "Here is baby, you love and protect baby because baby is yours. Engage emotional investment now!"

I thought they did a way better job with Fallout 3. You get to live out episodes of you childhood. You get to shape your character's background and don't wake up in the Vault one day without any memory.

The pre-war stage of Fallout 4 is very limited by comparison.

For all its flaws at least I feel F3 had a good arch. You could care less about the dad, but it had an underlying story about being able to improve everybody's lives by finding and helping him through the purifier.

F4 meanwhile crashes and burns when you find Shaun. You don't know the guy and his agents have tried to murder you, but lets team up and commit genocide because you're family? What? How is the PC even suitable except for being the guy's dad? At least F3 didn't have them crown you king because your genitals delivered a lord and saviour, being very much a cog in the greater machine.

 Geifer wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
I like being a Vault Dweller because it allows me to learn about the Wasteland at the same time as my character, but it really annoyed me that they wrote the protagonist as such a dumbass. He takes forever to begin to understand that time has passed since he was locked up in the vault and to realize that he was frozen a second time and therefore his baby might not be a baby any more.

To be fair you get no frame of reference for the time that's passed since being frozen again and Kelogg still looks exactly the same plus the bit of Shaun being seen as still a little kid in Diamond City. The game is actively trying to convince even the player that little time has passed, as in some years. Its not hard to understand why the PC does not fully grasp it at the start.

It's a side effect of having a voiced protagonist/only ever playing Nate or Nora. Your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. doesn't matter, only what Bethesda envisioned for their characters. You can be as bright or as dim as you like, it has no effect on gameplay.

If Bethesda hadn't taken out S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and skills (or in Fallout 4's case, perks) affecting dialogue options, except very weirdly in one or two cases (which doesn't mesh with the rest of the game), there could have been a wider range of options for players.

But of course extra lines of voiced dialogue cost money...

Yeah I have zero investment in Nate or Nora, it kind of ruins the experience to an extent that its voiced (they only part that helps is that Nora to an extent resembles my partner as far as a character model can do that, so they being married part and getting vengeance is less jarring if I just headcannon it). That S.P.E.C.I.A.L. doesn't matter is just terrible, it was always hilarious to see what kind of responses an intelligence 1 PC could come up with. It really takes out some of the soul together with the rigid part of you being Nate/Nora, no ifs ands or butts.

Hopefully they dump the PC voice acting and add more dialogue options, not going to hold my breath on this one though.

I really hope the voiced protagonist goes away, but Bethesda seem content to ignore sections of their fanbase to gain more mainstream appeal generally. Often, this results in a tight focus on the moment to moment play, which I think is to the good, but with stuff like voice acting, well, I have never liked it in roleplaying games. I stopped playing even JRPGs once voice acting became common. FFX was unbearable with the gurning dumbass as the main character, I just could not get into it.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
For all its flaws at least I feel F3 had a good arch. You could care less about the dad, but it had an underlying story about being able to improve everybody's lives by finding and helping him through the purifier.

F4 meanwhile crashes and burns when you find Shaun. You don't know the guy and his agents have tried to murder you, but lets team up and commit genocide because you're family? What? How is the PC even suitable except for being the guy's dad? At least F3 didn't have them crown you king because your genitals delivered a lord and saviour, being very much a cog in the greater machine.

Yeah, I think Fallout 3 was set up elegantly, leaving your response to Dad leaving pretty open (love him, hate him, look for him, do your own thing - all's fair) and then putting you in the conflict between the Brotherhood and the Enclave as little more than just another wastelander. If they had enabled you to side with the Enclave, I'd have precious little to criticize about the game's story. I actual tried to role play an Enclave friendly character in my second playthrough. It's not that hard, but there are a few key Enclave decisions that make it hard and, obviously, at some point you are left no choice but to fight them.

I opted for the Institute the first time I played Fallout 4. You can't let Institute agents trying to kill you get in the way of even greater dislike for the Brotherhood and Railroad.

But of course, as Nate or Nora it's hard to justify. I like that the option is there to join that faction, as opposed to Fallout 3 that gives you no choice. I think Bethesda did a good job of opening options for the player even while cutting down options elsewhere. But you certainly get the impression that the Institute is not the faction for Nate or Nora. I think canonically Bethesda wants to put Nate with the Brotherhood and Nora with the Minutemen, but that's just me.

The real issue with all this is again that the roleplay elements got taken out of the storyline. During the meeting of directors, one of them protests your appointment because you're not even a scientist. Hello? I have I 10. 4 ranks in science. 4 Ranks in chemist. 3 ranks in nuclear physicist. Yeah, not a scientist at all!

Although I will give Bethesda credit for mixing it up. You get to be the boss of the Minutemen and Institute, but not of the Railroad or Brotherhood. So it's not entirely about you becoming the savior of the wasteland.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Yeah I have zero investment in Nate or Nora, it kind of ruins the experience to an extent that its voiced (they only part that helps is that Nora to an extent resembles my partner as far as a character model can do that, so they being married part and getting vengeance is less jarring if I just headcannon it). That S.P.E.C.I.A.L. doesn't matter is just terrible, it was always hilarious to see what kind of responses an intelligence 1 PC could come up with. It really takes out some of the soul together with the rigid part of you being Nate/Nora, no ifs ands or butts.

Hopefully they dump the PC voice acting and add more dialogue options, not going to hold my breath on this one though.

I like Nora better than Nate. She's voiced with a little spirit, something I missed when playing a guy. As a result most of my characters ended up being female in Fallout 4.

I'm not entirely opposed to voiced characters, but I've learned to ignore what doesn't suit my character in video games. It obviously gets harder with voiced characters, but there's potential, too.

Everyone's a fan of I1 characters (sure, why not?), but I thought it was actually neat that if you're drunk and call for someone's attention, your character actually sounds drunk What I wouldn't give for every line of dialogue being voiced drunk.

For me the entire issue is the lack of options. The voiced character is just the likely explanation behind it, which makes it the problem.

 Da Boss wrote:
I really hope the voiced protagonist goes away, but Bethesda seem content to ignore sections of their fanbase to gain more mainstream appeal generally. Often, this results in a tight focus on the moment to moment play, which I think is to the good, but with stuff like voice acting, well, I have never liked it in roleplaying games. I stopped playing even JRPGs once voice acting became common. FFX was unbearable with the gurning dumbass as the main character, I just could not get into it.

Yeah, nothing like a voiced protagonist to take you out of an open world RPG imo. The whole premade character just adds another level on top of that, unmodded you really have to ignore it to have replay value.

 Geifer wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
For all its flaws at least I feel F3 had a good arch. You could care less about the dad, but it had an underlying story about being able to improve everybody's lives by finding and helping him through the purifier.

F4 meanwhile crashes and burns when you find Shaun. You don't know the guy and his agents have tried to murder you, but lets team up and commit genocide because you're family? What? How is the PC even suitable except for being the guy's dad? At least F3 didn't have them crown you king because your genitals delivered a lord and saviour, being very much a cog in the greater machine.

Yeah, I think Fallout 3 was set up elegantly, leaving your response to Dad leaving pretty open (love him, hate him, look for him, do your own thing - all's fair) and then putting you in the conflict between the Brotherhood and the Enclave as little more than just another wastelander. If they had enabled you to side with the Enclave, I'd have precious little to criticize about the game's story. I actual tried to role play an Enclave friendly character in my second playthrough. It's not that hard, but there are a few key Enclave decisions that make it hard and, obviously, at some point you are left no choice but to fight them.

I opted for the Institute the first time I played Fallout 4. You can't let Institute agents trying to kill you get in the way of even greater dislike for the Brotherhood and Railroad.

But of course, as Nate or Nora it's hard to justify. I like that the option is there to join that faction, as opposed to Fallout 3 that gives you no choice. I think Bethesda did a good job of opening options for the player even while cutting down options elsewhere. But you certainly get the impression that the Institute is not the faction for Nate or Nora. I think canonically Bethesda wants to put Nate with the Brotherhood and Nora with the Minutemen, but that's just me.

The real issue with all this is again that the roleplay elements got taken out of the storyline. During the meeting of directors, one of them protests your appointment because you're not even a scientist. Hello? I have I 10. 4 ranks in science. 4 Ranks in chemist. 3 ranks in nuclear physicist. Yeah, not a scientist at all!

Although I will give Bethesda credit for mixing it up. You get to be the boss of the Minutemen and Institute, but not of the Railroad or Brotherhood. So it's not entirely about you becoming the savior of the wasteland.

Its a little sad that F3 had a slim story, not much choice and it made the overall world feel a little hollow when it came to organized communities.

I think most jarring about the Brotherhood and Institute options is that its been weeks at most since you woke up. So a pre war human once society gives way just signs up to either commit genocide or team up with the people casually doing horrific human experiments? Are Nate and Nora just psychopaths that hid it well before the bombs fell? They go about it pretty casually (as well as relationships, "my wife/husband died two weeks ago, lets feth!").

True about the faction part. Nate's whole background seems to railroad him into the Brotherhood. Afaik they are really the only ones who even bring up his background.

As for meeting the director part, this coincides with removing S.P.E.C.I.A.L. options. It doesn't matter what you do, as the premade character is already on rails for a good part of their responses and events, its incredibly boring. You could be an absolute combat monster and they will still say, wow you beat a courser(?)! Yeah I mean its one special synth, meanwhile you already wiped out the Gunners HQ with two fingers up your nose... There is no sense of progression.

 Geifer wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Yeah I have zero investment in Nate or Nora, it kind of ruins the experience to an extent that its voiced (they only part that helps is that Nora to an extent resembles my partner as far as a character model can do that, so they being married part and getting vengeance is less jarring if I just headcannon it). That S.P.E.C.I.A.L. doesn't matter is just terrible, it was always hilarious to see what kind of responses an intelligence 1 PC could come up with. It really takes out some of the soul together with the rigid part of you being Nate/Nora, no ifs ands or butts.

Hopefully they dump the PC voice acting and add more dialogue options, not going to hold my breath on this one though.

I like Nora better than Nate. She's voiced with a little spirit, something I missed when playing a guy. As a result most of my characters ended up being female in Fallout 4.

I'm not entirely opposed to voiced characters, but I've learned to ignore what doesn't suit my character in video games. It obviously gets harder with voiced characters, but there's potential, too.

Everyone's a fan of I1 characters (sure, why not?), but I thought it was actually neat that if you're drunk and call for someone's attention, your character actually sounds drunk What I wouldn't give for every line of dialogue being voiced drunk.

For me the entire issue is the lack of options. The voiced character is just the likely explanation behind it, which makes it the problem.

True, Nate feels a bit phoned in, but I played both. Sure, you can ignore it, but say compared to Skyrim its really noticable, could you have imagined Bethesda putting it in there? It would make it a completely different game.

I1 characters had some of the funniest lines in the game, sadly because of the voice acting and the premade backstory they couldn't possibly convey I1 so it just gets cut. I feel like voice acting is one part and the filled out backstory the other, which makes it feel forced down a particular road.

FO4 had way to many misses overall with everything.

I never played as Nora, but does it explain how she knows how to use power armor? I understand Nate because he was a war vet.

I really think 76 is going to be cool for about a week and then just get tossed to the wayside. There is no way just Radiant quests can make the game fun. I'm going to get it just because it's Fallout, which isn't a good excuse.

A random question but why did Bethesda remove Tactics from Canon?

I assume it removed tactics from cannon because the implication is some sort of rainbow holding hands BoS superpower coalition at the end. It doesn't really mesh with how they want to portray the BoS I guess.

It used to have a more modern look too, but Bethesda brought elements of that into F3. Didn't it have semi modern weapons too? Plus the talking deathclaws and weird supermutants. It was just a bit of a clusterfeth when it came to BoS lore as well. Still, its not that much worse than some of the stuff Bethesda came up with.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
I assume it removed tactics from cannon because the implication is some sort of rainbow holding hands BoS superpower coalition at the end. It doesn't really mesh with how they want to portray the BoS I guess.

It used to have a more modern look too, but Bethesda brought elements of that into F3. Didn't it have semi modern weapons too? Plus the talking deathclaws and weird supermutants. It was just a bit of a clusterfeth when it came to BoS lore as well. Still, its not that much worse than some of the stuff Bethesda came up with.

The talking Death Claws were introduced in Fallout 2. And that's still canon. I didn't reach the Super Mutants in Tactics. So I can't comment on those.

If I had to guess, then -

1.) The background for Tactics involves Brotherhood of Steel background that doesn't fit with what Bethesda wants to do now, and
2.) The idea of Vault Zero doesn't fit with Bethesda's new (and stupid, imo) lore about the purpose of the Vaults - i.e. laboratories to study humans under long-term conditions.

(That begs the question - it's 200 years after a devastating nuclear war wiped out most of civilization as we know it; who exactly from the Vault-Tec Corporation is still around to collect this data, and what exactly are they doing with it?)

Eumerin wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
I assume it removed tactics from cannon because the implication is some sort of rainbow holding hands BoS superpower coalition at the end. It doesn't really mesh with how they want to portray the BoS I guess.

It used to have a more modern look too, but Bethesda brought elements of that into F3. Didn't it have semi modern weapons too? Plus the talking deathclaws and weird supermutants. It was just a bit of a clusterfeth when it came to BoS lore as well. Still, its not that much worse than some of the stuff Bethesda came up with.

The talking Death Claws were introduced in Fallout 2. And that's still canon. I didn't reach the Super Mutants in Tactics. So I can't comment on those.

If I had to guess, then -

1.) The background for Tactics involves Brotherhood of Steel background that doesn't fit with what Bethesda wants to do now, and
2.) The idea of Vault Zero doesn't fit with Bethesda's new (and stupid, imo) lore about the purpose of the Vaults - i.e. laboratories to study humans under long-term conditions.

(That begs the question - it's 200 years after a devastating nuclear war wiped out most of civilization as we know it; who exactly from the Vault-Tec Corporation is still around to collect this data, and what exactly are they doing with it?)

The talking Death Claws were also killed off in F2 though, which is why they don't make sense in tactics. As they clearly state in game themselves that their race ends with them, having been engineered as talking ones by the Enclave. Unless Tactics wants to go for the Bethesda Super Mutant approach that people find super original! (Seriously F76 )

Also how is the study of humans in Vaults new lore? Bakersfield and Vault 15 (or 17?) were both in F1 and they clearly were meant as experiments. Even the no longer canon Fallout Bible already references the experiments.

Wasn't the Vault-Tec experiment that is still ongoing more about the futility of overseers still conducting experiments because they don't know Vault-Tec was gone? I believe they originally wanted the Enclave to be the monitors, but that got scrapped.

The fact, though, is that whether the FO2 deathclaws survive is irrelevant. Even if the Enclave is destroyed quickly enough to keep the deathclaws from being killed, there's no way that it's the same group in Tactics. The geographical distance is too great. But if one group independently evolved to the point where they could talk, then another group in the region where Tactics takes place could do the same.

That's the point though, their ability to talk is specifically because the Enclave engineered them to be smarter, not a natural evolution, that group went to vault 13. So them being in Tactics, like a lot of other things from Tactics makes little sense. Fallout Tactics was made by a different developer, it even directly contradicts the origin story of the BoS by saying they came from a military vault, which even in F1 (the preceding game) was already wrong.

Even though the Fallout Bible is also no longer canon according to Bethesda, Avellone wrote this:

BTW, the talking deathclaws were destroyed at the end of Fallout 2. Xarn and Goris did not go on to create a new species. They are gone. Kaput. Icon sic Goodbye. In fact, any mutant animal that talks can safely be assumed to have died at the end at the exact minute that Fallout 2 was over.
Any last words, talking animals?
I thought not.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_Bible_6

So they've announced the beta date: October, just about a month before release. Preorders only, and set times for each platform, xbox first.


This sounds like server tests for their infrastructure. They did much the same for Elder scrolls online. Don't expect changes to gameplay to result, there isn't enough time.

Voss wrote:
So they've announced the beta date: October, just about a month before release. Preorders only, and set times for each platform, xbox first.


This sounds like server tests for their infrastructure. They did much the same for Elder scrolls online. Don't expect changes to gameplay to result, there isn't enough time.

Really pre-order only? They must smell a dumpster fire in the making because at least the Elder Scrolls Online had a free beta (which heavily turned me off ESO because of the mechanics). The more I hear the less appealing it sounds, maybe they can turn it around? I would love a multiplayer Fallout, not a soft MMO with Fallout bolted on like ESO did for the Elder Scrolls.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

Voss wrote:
So they've announced the beta date: October, just about a month before release. Preorders only, and set times for each platform, xbox first.


This sounds like server tests for their infrastructure. They did much the same for Elder scrolls online. Don't expect changes to gameplay to result, there isn't enough time.

Really pre-order only? They must smell a dumpster fire in the making because at least the Elder Scrolls Online had a free beta (which heavily turned me off ESO because of the mechanics). The more I hear the less appealing it sounds, maybe they can turn it around? I would love a multiplayer Fallout, not a soft MMO with Fallout bolted on like ESO did for the Elder Scrolls.

Beta access has been tied to pre-orders from the beginning. This is no change.

Six weeks of beta testing at most seems a bit short for a Bethesda game, though.

I'd say six months would be optimistic, personally!

It does make me wonder whether they're concerned about the reception - I've only got this thread and my own opinions to go by, but it seems that a fair few people (myself included, I admit) don't think this game will be any good. I wonder if the overall response has been better or worse around the wider internet?

I think they may have already gotten all the major backlash they can expect. I wouldn't go so far as to say everyone criticizing the game thinks it won't be any good, just that it won't be what the core fan base of Fallout would like to play. Which, for a lot of people, makes it a bad entry in the franchise

I doubt the response was better on the wider Internet than it was here. Reception has been pretty mixed wherever I looked (disclaimer: not based on a representative sample).

 Geifer wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

Voss wrote:
So they've announced the beta date: October, just about a month before release. Preorders only, and set times for each platform, xbox first.


This sounds like server tests for their infrastructure. They did much the same for Elder scrolls online. Don't expect changes to gameplay to result, there isn't enough time.

Really pre-order only? They must smell a dumpster fire in the making because at least the Elder Scrolls Online had a free beta (which heavily turned me off ESO because of the mechanics). The more I hear the less appealing it sounds, maybe they can turn it around? I would love a multiplayer Fallout, not a soft MMO with Fallout bolted on like ESO did for the Elder Scrolls.

Beta access has been tied to pre-orders from the beginning. This is no change.

Six weeks of beta testing at most seems a bit short for a Bethesda game, though.

I just hadn't heard before that it was pre-order only, didn't think they changed it. I feel like betas in exchange for pre-orders are just traps anyway.

6 weeks of beta is more than ESO got, but most Bethesda releases tend to fall on glorified betas on release, as Voss said, this is likely just a server test in everything but name.

I remember when ESO came out, the US servers were down for a week an a half. I ended up joining a Europe server instead.

I dont think a month will cut it. The game is going to have a rocky start.

Pete Hines did say on reddit I think that people that did pre order it have a chance to be small batch beta testers, but its more like a lottery.

I wish they would answer the communities questions rather than giving vague garbage answers. Sounds like a repeat of No Man's Sky lol. Having flash backs. I would like to see some more gameplay footage, even if it is scripted. Like the PGarvy guy getting killed and whiffing 2 missile shots.

Well following up on what Geifer said with the mixed reception it might be that because of that they just want to offload as many copies before the full story comes out and more people go "meh", a pre-order 'beta' fits into that. I don't think it will be deceit and failure on the level of No Man's Sky (no one remotely competent should be able to make a game that boring after 5 min), it will be a by the numbers survival/building fps with a very dissapointing Fallout theme.

To be honest, a "by-the-numbers survival-building fps with a very disappointing Fallout theme" sounds like Fallout 4 to me, and to be entirely honest, I probably would have still bought the new game if it had been "FO4 but set right after the bombs dropped". In fact, that sounds like more fun than FO4!

What really puts me off is the whole online multiplayer thing. I'm aware that's really just one of my own hangups but I really hate playing online, especially if I'm playing console and therefore paying to do so. It annoys me a bit that it seems like a lot of games I would otherwise love to play are pushing the multiplayer side of their game, at the expense of the quality (or even presence of) the singleplayer game. But YMMV, that's just me, etc, etc.

I feel bad for wanting this game to fail, but I'm almost hoping it does, in the hope that Bethesda doesn't end up turning it's back on producing single-player RPGs in favour of MMORPGs.

I don't think there's any risk of Bethesda abandoning single-player games any time soon. Their next two big releases (Starfield and TES:VI) are both set to be the kind of games they've made a name doing, and as a publisher they're continuing to back smaller single-player games like Prey, Dishonored, Wolfenstein ect.

FO76 is simply an experiment based on a lot of preexisting work done in making FO4, not a whole new direction for the series. ESO has been out for years now and while it gets regular support, it hardly seems to be inspiring a whole new style for the studio.

 Dark Apostle 666 wrote:
To be honest, a "by-the-numbers survival-building fps with a very disappointing Fallout theme" sounds like Fallout 4 to me, and to be entirely honest, I probably would have still bought the new game if it had been "FO4 but set right after the bombs dropped". In fact, that sounds like more fun than FO4!

What really puts me off is the whole online multiplayer thing. I'm aware that's really just one of my own hangups but I really hate playing online, especially if I'm playing console and therefore paying to do so. It annoys me a bit that it seems like a lot of games I would otherwise love to play are pushing the multiplayer side of their game, at the expense of the quality (or even presence of) the singleplayer game. But YMMV, that's just me, etc, etc.

I feel bad for wanting this game to fail, but I'm almost hoping it does, in the hope that Bethesda doesn't end up turning it's back on producing single-player RPGs in favour of MMORPGs.

I guess you have a point there. But then F4 had more features and the possibility for heavy modding which made it much better. The way F76 is set up there is little chance you can improve on the increased number of features stripped out.

I think I would have bought it if it even was only a rehash of F4 with only optional multiplayer and the ability to run your own server you could mod. This is what made Ark for me, my own place running on anothet PC in the house, with my own mods and with my own friends. But yes, I share the sentiment that crowbarring in multiplayer is seriously hurting the single player elements. If it had been added on top I would have had no issue.

I kinda feel the same way, I hope its decent (which it doesn't look like so far), but not more succesful than F4, because that would mean the end for Fallout as an RPG (even though mods really made F4). I think the Elder Scrolls dodged a bullet in that regard with ESO getting such a mediocre reaction that they decided to make 6 as well.

Word is moddable private servers will be coming at some point after launch, I believe. I've seen that mentioned in a few places.