Thanksgiving Leftovers: Fallout 76
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- Опубликовано: 10 сен 2024
- You don't need me to tell you that Fallout 76 is a mess; there are plenty of angry internet people out there doing that already. So instead I'm gonna hypothesize about the game that could have been, and then do my soapbox thing about game dev transparency. I'm nothing if not predictable, and my box of tricks is extremely limited.
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It increasingly feels to me like Bethesda is thinking less in terms of games, worlds, or narratives, and more in terms of brands and properties. From the start, this reeked to me of "hey, we should explore the 'games as service' space as a revenue concept" and then handed it off to people who said "Fallout? That's the one with nukes, right?" Like, this could have just as easily been set in the Elder Scrolls universe, but they already have an Elder Scrolls MMO. At no point did anyone's comments about how they were going to handle griefing fill me with confidence, and the idea of setting off a nuke as an endgame activity in a series historically about the _horrors of nuclear war_ seemed...like maybe they had missed a big point somewhere along the way.
It's funny, though, because to me an empty world plays to Bethesda's storytelling strengths. I think their most compelling narratives - at least in the Fallout universe - are told in documents and tableaux, the NPCs and main storylines are generally pretty forgettable. And empty worlds can definitely tell stories, if you look at games like Gone Home or Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, or even Vault 11, from that modern Fallout game that Bethesda didn't make. As a single-player game, I think it would have been audacious. This just seems cynical. And I think Bethesda is discovering the hard way what the makers of Destiny, Sea of Thieves, and the Division learned (and what Bioware is going to learn with Anthem) the hard way - that games with a big social component are very hard to develop, because how the developers think people are going to play the game can be very, very different from how people actually play it.
You are absolutely on point there. Now that I've read this the dissonance between the Overseer's mission to secure the launch codes to ensure they are never launched again and the players nuking the heck out of the game world becomes even more vivid.
I have no interest in playing the game, but I feel that even a game that totally missed what fallout is about could have been worthwhile with a decent execution.
Imagine a timeline where Bethesda is introspective and listens to the community to a degree. Imagine an alternative sales pitch:
We have to innovate. Our engine is hindering that.
Let's begin development of a new engine from scratch. It must support fluid action gameplay for our future power fantasy games, good physics, and incorporate some of that combinatory "chemistry" from the last zelda, and lean into the minecraft inspired settlements from fallout 4.
And let's make a modest project to give it a test run. we will make it multiplayer: it's the perfect stress test. we will see tons of emergent gameplay from players. We will throw strong resources into our engine development, and allow (a?) small team(s?) of newcomers to express themselves and innovate
Maybe we'll get a game with buildable and destructible settlements at the mercy of the elements, elements that visibly interact with players, weapons, all systems. We'll gradually incorporate new biomes, with their own elements, status effects and wacky weapons. The richness of these interactions , besides showing off our new tech, will compensate the lack of single player content by generating entertaining scenarios, like a nuclear tornado throwing a deathclaw bowling into a settlement.
That type of things will prove precious for the next elder scrolls, where we'll come back in force lore and story wise, but with strong gameplay thanks to the lessons from our action shooter title.
I don't think "listening to the community" is really that good of a metric, because communities are generally the least informed about the practicalities of game development and tend to encourage scope creep.
@@cliffevans2315 In practice I imagine it'd tend to look closer to D&D Next's "build by committee" approach. Where ideas were presented with isolated democratic suggestions picks but some attention payed to high scoring outliers. Overall 5e D&D doesn't manage to be great because of that though, but at least manages to not be the absolute toxic garbage that 4th edition D&D was (although more of that still creeped in than I would have allowed). At this point I think people would eat bland as opposed to a series continually set on murdering, or running to death in Bethesda's case, all of a franchise's sacred cows/brahmin.
And really that's where F76 failed. When you create an open world like this, even if it's not a survival game? IMO, you shouldn't be creating a game. You're making a setting, and need to be providing all the tools needed to let the construction of a game happen, server set up for "game masters", and the tools to empower that building. Something closer to Divinity II than Rust.
@@ryanjones_rheios I dunno. I see your point, but my hunch (read: highly uneducated guess) is that input on tabletop design may not have quite as many moving parts as video game design, especially design for shared-world, socially-focused games. A DM can change mechanics on the fly, implement house rules, etc., relatively easily in tabletop compared to a finished assembly of code, where pulling on one parameter threatens to break others. I think some studios are better at being able to juggle community demands and what data suggest than others, and until now, Bethesda hasn't had to do that. Right now, they're pretty much stepping on one rake after another.
The idea of recolonizing america is hard to combine with the picturesque landscape they really went in for with this game. I mean look at California from Fallout 1. That place was scorched entirely dry and irradiated. A toxic, dead wasteland. And even there, there were survivors who didn't come from the vaults, who populated the place before vault dwellers showed up. It's striking how far away from that original visual design Fallout 76 is. It's even kinda hard to call it "post-apocalyptic", at least in the same sense. Just looking at a forest-city area with barely any desolation, you kinda just wanna kick the US in the leg and say "quit faking, we can all see you're still alive".
It makes sense to a degree as in a real nuclear war only the detonation sites would be obliterated like in Fallout 1-3. Everything else should look more like Chernobyl.
@@Crispman_777 I think in lore bombs were dropped like rain all over the place, but on the flipside when we see megaton get nuked in 3, the explosion doesn't do much beyond the city's walls, and at least one NPC even survives. Sometimes the nukes of Fallout seem hardly more than big bags of TNT and mutagen and I really don't know what to make of it all.
i loved point lookout though. there was trees, but it was a radiating, eldritch quagmire. you are right about the feel in 76. never articulated it like that before, but that indian summer backdrops really lack that world-wants-you-dead-vibe of the former games
@@GlowingOrangeOoze Also it's true that there is some mad science-cartoon logic applied to nukes in Fallout. The impact they had from the great war is a very exagerated idea of nuclear fallout, drawing from like cold war-era cartoons and propaganda.
@@vallraffs @GlowingOrangeOoze
They definitely have taken creative liberties with the nukes, although they've never hidden that.
"I didn't really have a hot take on this game."
Proceed to offer the most realistic take on how Fallout 76 might be pitched, and highlight its major design shortcoming (social aspect) that most reviewers didn't talk about.
TL;DR
"I didn't have hot take."
Deliver very hot take.
I mean, hot take means a reaction put forward quickly, usually with little to no thought to the details. Calling this not a hot take makes sense to me.
@@173sme Takes are a dish best served cold.
Def a cold ass take.
@@173sme Yeah. You're right. I just find it funny that he is so modest about his opinion when his perspective is very insightful.
hakamhak Well, as he wrote the first paragraph before the others, his initial take was perhaps cold, or lukewarm. Then, the take heated up as the review went on.
The notion of an entirely player-driven economy, player's as quest givers etc might seem enticing, but anyone with a cursory knowledge of MMO history will recognize, that it has been THE DREAM since day one (circa Ultima Online in 1997) and no one managed to fullfill it to any meaningfull degree. The fact that doing an in-game job seems to get boring quickly gets in the way.
Well EVE has the economy side mostly down, but even there the quest system is NPC driven.
It has been done before. Star Wars Galaxies and Eve both managed it. The trick is that the economy was what both of those games were built around rather than something added later in the process
I believe one of the best attempts we've yet made is Civcraft.
www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/a0k0zc/civclassic_the_worldbuilders_mmo/
> circa Ultima Online in 1997
Shit, MUDs were around even before that.
It looks to me that the "every person you meet is a real player" line came first and the rest of the game was constructed to satisfy this one overall design goal.
If they were just going for a "reclaiming the wasteland" theme, they could have easily added an NPC-filled, struggling, settlement right outside the Vault entrance to serve as the quest hub.
Or NPCs from th Vault itself. You could essentially build Vault City.
I feel like we should comically compare Fallout 76 to Homeless Simulator (Available on Steam this year).
that final line is so great
They built an empire off that trope
As you mentioned in the video, if not for The Quiet Man this would make for the best postmortem analysis. However, we'll never get that because they don't ever allow for such a thing. Even Danny O'Dwyer's half an hour interview series on Fallout 76 never really dug too deep into creative intentions because they of course kept a lot of that close to their chest outside of 76 being the multiplayer conception for 4 during that development.
God though, I would absolutely love to see what all happened during development, what was cut or saved for later updates. I'm just so interested in finding out one day.
I felt similarly about Mass Effect Andromeda. AMAZING concept, Mass Effect without the big deadline, just exploring a galaxy and shenanigans?! Awesome! But the execution is absolutely abysmal. I'm so sad.
MEA, for all its faults, at least didn't flip ME3 assets. And its gunplay was quite exciting. None of that was enough to redeem its lack of any fresh sci-fi ideas, puddle-deep worldbuilding and the majority of the content being six DAI's Hinterlands stapled back-to-back, but those are design missteps, not a lack of effort. Fallout 76 tried to sell us Fallout-4-but-worse-and-with-less-stuff, which just seems... work-shy. Like, what was the production cycle for this, 10 months?
Andromeda was a huge deception. But it was also a waaaaay better game that this.
The gameplay was cool (although their insistence on an open world didn't mesh well with it in term of level design), the characters weren't as good but decent (Sara Ryder in particular as a scientist is refreshing, I like how they made analogies to Jesus not through the MC's OP-power as they usually go with the Superman route - although the protagonist is OP which is kind of a problem - but through tech skills and AI fusion, there were a few interestings thematic bits here and there that sadly got no pay-off cause the game focused on the wrong things), the final action bit definitely learned from ME3 and is pretty awesome (and the choices you made have small consequences that resonates through that final bit).
The biggest issue is that they tried to make a spiritual successor to ME1 and failed horribly in that regard with a shit story and antagonist that had nothing to do here, and that it was a bug-ridden mess and still is now. Still a 6-7/10 game, a shame from this franchise's perspective but not horrible by any stretch and not remotely comparable to 76.
Andromeda was such a good idea it made me look back at ME1 in frustration. I don't mean to tell developers what to do with their game but getting to meet Garrus, Tali, Wrex, and all the others in a galactic wild west far away from an apocalypse... I can't be the only one who thinks that would have made for a better game than what we got.
I can agree that part of the gameplay was enjoyable, which honestly just makes it more frustrating that the final product was such an unpolished and thoughtless affair. Someone pick up the torch of when BioWare knew what they were doing
Took me a hot second before I started to laugh about the final line for this video.
Good grief... you are right. I just got it, too. :-)
So I guess no one's gonna say what it's supposed to reference, huh?
@@headphonic8 What is it referencing?
@@frocco7125 It's in reference to the review itself. F76 is the scene with all the skeletons and props and the reviewer is the person wandering into the room, trying to piece together the probable story of what happened before something went wrong.
“Lean into the colonial imagery we love to thoughtlessly repurpose” ... I was thinking about that the other day. Fallout 3 and 4 are full to the brim with call backs to the mythical american past, to the colonial, independence and civil war eras. The quests reclaiming the Declaration, president Eden’s speeches, the Minutemen, Railroad, the confederate hats and references to the pilgrims in Point Lookout, USS Constitution, etc. Kitsch as fuck
"If you squint, you can see the elevator pitch" - such a good line. I am going to use it if you don't mind.
I generally like to believe that most games have, or at least begin with good intentions and I think that remains true for Fallout 76. However, something obviously went wrong at some point and then the business factors kicked in, which probably involved Bethesda not wanting to have wasted their investment and/or them needing a big fall title for this year.
It's definitely them wanting to avoid not having a big release in 2018. I think a lot of the things missing (human NPCs for example) were cost cutting measures to make this multiplayer experiment low risk financially as well. Not needing 100,000 lines of dialogue recorded would be a fair savings.
It's entirely possible its a case of sunken cost fallacy. Maybe they didn't quite know what to do going forward, or more likely ran into the serious limitations of their engine, but instead of scratching it and either starting anew or moving on completely, management wanted a return on their investment.
Whatever the case, they knew it was this bad. No one with eyes thought could have thought this was in any way shape or form good. Someone at Bethesda green lit selling a broken, unfinished game on purpose to leech off of their customer base. That is unforgivable, and they deserve every bit of the flack they're getting.
It wouldn't surprise me if they also struggled to think of a way to implement social mechanics which fit the theme of Fallout. After all, Fallout is built from the same rugged-lone-survivor tropes which encompass most post-apocalyptic media; it would be difficult to make mechanics which facilitate teamwork without screwing over some part of that vision. For instance:
* Fallout has never had a class system for a reason: The heroes are supposed to be self-sufficient Renaissance men. Making everyone dependent on other people would ruin that archetype.
* What kind of missions could players go on? That requires, at minimum, stuff off-map (or in a distant corner of the same map) that the characters can plausibly gain information about in the middle of "the story," which is worth going and getting but has some unusual resistance present. Aside from segmenting the map far more than Fallout has ever done, this clashes with the idea of an abandoned wasteland...and could easily open up questions of why they don't just move to this bandit fortress or whatever now that they've cleared it out.
* If players are supposed to be able to be bandits, you need to be careful not to let players ban each other _just_ because they act like bandits.
Switching from the Fallout 76 footage to Destiny felt like switching between games a full generation apart.
And arguably not in favour of Fallout. Destiny isn't the best looking game ever made from a technical standpoint, but I find it a lot more visually appealing than 76 from an art design stand point.
*whispers*
Do that video on Fallout's thematics...
Ikr someone has to, "watered down" RPG mechanics and "lore retcons" aside, the real reason I dislike Bethesda's Fallouts is because they don't understand the series themes and values on a fundamental level. And, with a couple of exceptions, most people who criticize Bethesda's games don't seem to understand Fallout either
Not my observation, but Vault Boy in the originals was a parody of soulless smiling generic corporate advertising. In the Bethesda era, he just is the mascot of the series, used in the advertising, and emblematic of Bethesda, thus fulfilling the parody. It's the perfect symbol of deeper change.
Kotaku leaked the entire intro script of the game, several characters, conversations, and factions, not just the basic setting
1:34
tes6 really is just going to be skyrim 1.5 isn't it
No of course not. It is gonna have multiplayer you see. Completely different. Original, one might call it.
Every Bethesda open world game after Morrowind has basically been Oblivion with new graphics and slightly better gameplay systems bolted on, no reason to think they'd change it up now.
@@theundeadgentleman4998 I strongly disagree the gameplay systems have improved. They've just become more 'fp-action game' and less 'rpg'. Which makes them a failure if you go by their classification.
@@ryanjones_rheios To be clear I'm talking about the combat, something that has pretty objectively gotten better in every game.
@@theundeadgentleman4998 It's not objective at all, given that there a large number of people who prefer the dice-based combat to the new system.
Omg... He mentioned "The Quiet Man". Will that be next Thanksgiving Leftovers? I would be interesting to hear if you can piece together what they were trying for there, because they were clearly trying to have some kind of statement and make some kind of art. I have tried but have a hard time getting almost any of the design decisions in the game however (haven't actually seen the version they released with voices).
Keeping it just under 10 minutes, so I know every second of this video I'll be watching will be worth it. Salute this hero.
9:25 That's not ironic Chris, it's fitting.
I've purchased it at a much reduced price and oh my, it seems like such a wasted opportunity. There are times when I genuinely enjoy the exploration and the immersion and the indirect story telling that the developers are so good at. It's out there, though a rare find indeed. Yet at so many other times I'm just downright frustrated by the bugs, the crashes and the shallow game play. Who knows what this could have been with one more year of full development, rather than the emergency patches we see now. It'll be fine in half a year for, let's say, 20$. I look at it as an early access Fallout 4 dlc that does a total-conversion to a survival game.
same, I got it for a reduced price. Well worth it for that price, zero complaints. Having more fun than I've had in years
a lot of the critisism is based on its original 60$ price tag. it would be a decent 15$ game. i mean people don't even care that much about microtransactions, so they jumped the gun even on that one. nobody will deny that you can have a blast with a couple of friends or lucky encounters....but as a single player title (and the went that way, they said it doesnt matter if you play it alone or in a group) it becomes stale very quickly. i am for exploration my self, but the total lack of characters, story (yeah, i refuse to accept audiologs as main narrative devices) and incentives to level up and play beyond lvl 20+ all seem to be valid pain points for the majority of players. not even beginning with the technical issues. yeah, its bethesda, yeah they can be fixed, yeah other games suck too. still...sad.
Even at a reduced price I still can't stomach the game. It's more about the time wasteage than just money, the game bogs you down with mundane tasks and boring combat so much that you have to look for ways to amuse yourself outside of the basic gameplay loop. While the exploration can have it's moments, it's useless from the gameplay perspective. Overall it's too much busywork and money just for some virtual tourism, even at the reduced price.
Really wonderful short video about this game. Thanks for making it! I really wish the social aspects were there. Wish we knew what happened too and why. I wonder if it was just that fear about still keeping the game single player for the core fans, that kept them from going full hog into the multiplayer aspects which is what made the games premise stand out in the first place. I really do see that glimmer of something really neat, or just dumb fun with friends just under the surface. I wonder if over time the game could change enough to embrace the social aspects, or if the core design is too flawed to ever really implement them fully?
Hey Chris! Since you get a kick out of deeply analyzing Looking Glass-like projects, and oddball catastrophes, you'll probably want to take a look at Underworld Ascendant.
I kickstarted it myself - and man, it's a mess. Basically, they made the major mistake of basing gameplay on a physics system... which made saved games impossible to restore those physics objects... which means they RESTART THE ENTIRE LEVEL (except oddly inventory) on restoring any save. The decision to base so much gameplay so much on physics had all kinds of other nasty effects too. There's some reasons those generalized game physics systems are usually only used sparingly or for the sake of transitory appearance - they're not designed to carry too much weight, so to speak.
Again - a total mess, but one you might want to check out, if just for the team legacy and game design ideas.
I swear to god if they fuck up TES6 the next time I see Todd it's ON SIGHT
I'd love for you to do a video on the implications of F76's nukes! I feel like not enough people are talking about it!
It's a shame but I'm more worried about The Elder Scrolls VI and Starfield.
@@Axisok
Is that game actually happening? It is more forgivable when the game is actually good like Skyrim.
Don't worry about The Elder Scrolls it'll be as buggy and broken as every main entry. Blind fans will forgive and modders will fix. It's the default business model.
@@Axisok
I saw a video that said it's not actually because the engine is bad. It's because the devs don't do the legwork needed to make things stable. They just build upon the wonky foundations that they built for themselves.
@@Axisok
Here's the video that I saw: ruclips.net/video/jqymg_prARI/видео.html
I'm getting outerworlds instead
Trash does not belong with leftovers.
Nah I've watched a couple of videos on 76 and I'd say you brought something new to the table with this one.
The interesting thing is there was a NoClip video about this game before release. Yet there really wasn't too much meat in there as to why the game turned out this way past "well we have no idea if this will be good but we've made good stuff before so this will probably be good."
Fallout 76 looks less apocalyptic than the real life West Virginia.
hye ES! could you make a video on a tale in the desert? i just looked it up and there aren't any videos on youtube summarising it nicely...
A Tale in the Desert is one of the greatest games ever made from a design standpoint. I played it for about 20 hours back in 2005, so I'm not up to date by any means, but it's Wikipedia page shows that it hasn't changed a whole lot.
There's no combat. You collect resources, craft and build things, undergo tests (like quests), research and pass laws. It's an incredibly social game, since there's no combat distractions and you often have to wait for research or a construction project to finish.
@@briankoontz1 it sounds suuuper interesting! Once I have a bit more free time I'm definately gonna check it out. btw how much did the monthly subscription cost for you? wikipedia mentions it but the official website doesn't...
I love you. You're my favorite person on RUclips. I love this video. It summed up my thoughts on why I disliked Fallout, but far more eloquently... that, and it's on a video, so it's easy to share. :D
I truly appreciate your reviews because while nearly every other reviewer out there gets their review out as soon as possible to deliver a timely "Should you buy it?" yea or nay review, you always give a fantastic "What does it mean/Where do we go from here" summary of the situation. In all honesty, both types of reviews are important, but yours is far more futureproof. I mean seriously, who else is making video reviews about Fallout 76 pointing this out about its core design? No one.
What does "modal"? mean at 5:00. I'm familiar with modal dialogs in computer science but I don't know if they're related. The best I can presume in this context is how expressive each character is.
I think he meant 'modular.' Shortening module to 'modal' when searching for an adjective is very a common mistake
1:40 I feel a more transparent dev process would probably CREATE a more toxic fanbase. "And then some guy from corporate said we should charge $5 to put hats on the character, and the shareholders all agreed that they would like more money, so we had to cram microtransactions in at the last minute."
Also the UI is a nightmare. Leveling on completing a quest with rewards, especially early game, is like having a seizure and I have to look away from the screen. There are moving text/images in the top center, direct middle, top right, top left, and bottom center of the screen ALL IN DIFFERENT FONT, it's shockingly awful, and worse if you have subtitles because those are hidden under the barrage of messages.
Excellent video, as always. I dont know if you are already planning to do it but i heavily recommend you check out The Return of the Obra Dinn, a game by the creator of Papers, Please. It goes to the next level as far as narration goes, and, even if it stales a bit at the end, is still one of the most engaging videogames ive ever played. Love your channel!
I’m prepared to die on that hill with you. My arthritic wrists cannot comprehend any possible value of the Pip Boy.
Now I want to see your video about the thematic issues of nukes in 76.
One large aspect to remember about F76 is that this game is going to be around for awhile. It's pretty obvious that Bethesda wants this game to exist in the same capacity as ESO; a way to continually create Fallout content by a secondary studio so they can move onto a different title. This way the IP is still being serviced for fans with fresh content meanwhile the main team can work on something else.
So far this is the best review I've seen of F76. Missed opportunities and jumbled mechanics describe the game extremely well. But that also describe ESO on release. We'll see if Bethesda is up to the task to fix F76 and turn it into an online game that people want to enjoy and play. But honestly I don't know WHAT that even is since this is such an atypical game. But I feel reviews like this, that point out some of the base...strangeness of the game can help the Bethesda Devs to really nail the core development problems so they can work to make the game something unique and fun. Afterall, if Destiny can have two mega "comment" expansion that seemingly fix all of their problems, I bet other games can do it as well. I mean, NMS is a good game now and that released in a way worst state than F76.
BTW, loving the more frequent videos. Would really like to see more frequent content from you, Campster! And would also love to see more insights into big releases, even if they are months after the release.
Everything I hear about this game seems an awful lot like the game isn't finished. It reminds me a lot of when I would get invited into closed beta for EverQuest expansions, specifically the first week of hopping into the beta servers. Mob levels were too high or too low for their relative difficulty. Loot was randomly distributed instead of following any meaningful pattern. Quest NPCs were either not present or semi-broken. It honestly looks like they stopped right there at that point. As if they thought that's all it takes to produce the idea of Fallout 79 while completely ignoring that those steps take a game from a random mix of ideas into a coherent structure.
Different take on lack of NPCs: "we need memory overhead to fit the multiplayer and the associated vanity gear that they are going to want to show off, so we'll have to cut something to make it work on consoles."
It didn't read to me as a thematic choice, otherwise there wouldn't be umpteen missions involving 'go to the exact place where an NPC would be, and interact with the body or tape, if we hadn't yanked the NPC'
Based on the start of the game I played during the beta, and the lack of NPCs, the mission structure, the general UI bugs, and the behavior of the PVP in relation to the multiplayer experience; the game feels like a start of a standard Fallout title, single-player and exploratory. But then there was a stereotypical low-lit smokey big-wig strokey-beard meeting and amongst the scoffing, bibbles, and jowl-flapping, someone mumbled "bulti-blayer". And lo, it was...
Another really good video. I always thought that Fallout 76 had a strong concept but fell apart in the execution, and vaguely hope that someday 76 will look closer to that original "intent," assuming it ever existed.
Also, is it bad that I knew instantly that you got your Destiny 2 footage from some point within the last week?
I absolutely agree that it is very ambitious and I really enjoy it. I guess a lot of folks don't understand what reclamation day really is about. But you do. Thank you.
That last analogy is savage ! 😅
This video perfectly articulated so much that I've been feeling about the game, and I really haven't heard others voice the same thoughts yet. People are too busy yelling about the bugs and whatnot. Even if all the bugs were never an issue, what you brought up would still be the core problem, like you said.
Just one question: Does Fallout 76 have windows yes or no?
The existence of Fallout 76 didn't come from an elevator pitch, a Fallout online game has been a contractual promise for at least 4 years. I can't remember the specific details but we've known for a few years some form of Fallout MMO was happening and I personally knew it would suck and be a waste of development time. Does anybody remember exactly what acquisition solidified the eventual existence of this game and when it was? I remember reading about it in 2013.
What happened? Similarly to TESO, it was built with decades old ideas. TESO supposedly improved over time but I don’t expect much innovation from Bethesda.
Few things sting quite as painfully as wasted potential. That's why this game hurts more than most.
It certainly doesn't help that the "open beta" was only available to people who had already pre-ordered the game.
Right, because keeping out anybody who isn't such a raving fanboy that they paid you the money for the game months in advance is certainly a great way to get fair, unbiased feedback.
I was in the beta. Pre ordered the game from amazon, got the code, played the beta and just cancelled my order.
Game companies hardly ever use betas for feedback, nowadays they exist primarily as a limited-time demo to drum up hype before release. Making beta access a preorder bonus creates both an incentive to preorder as well as more positive coverage since fans are usually going to be more forgiving of flaws than the average Joe.
You've given Bethesda way too much credit here.
Here's how the actual pitch went:
"The board members want Fallout 4, but multiplayer. Maaaaybe change the scenery a bit. You have six months."
I'm LEGITIMATELY impressed you called it Skyrim instead of The Elder Scrolls 6
that final line, oof!!!!
Lol... that pitch... that was already done in a broad sense, it was Ultima Online
You really hit the nail with this one.
How cool it would have been to create civilization from the ground up. Have you not only building towns and settlements but making them into your own vision of what you want your civilization to be. Letting you shape the area to reflect a brutal tribal society similar to the great Khans or the legion or to truly recreate west Virginia to the pre-war American vision of the Enclave. Instead we got a single player stripped to it's bare bones that happens to be multiplayer.
Sad, really sad. Interesting analogy with the other dog's breakfast games of recent years.
.......................I know this is off-topic, but I finally figured out who this guy's voice reminds me of.
He kinda sounds like Big Medic/Venom Snake/Kiefer Sutherland in Ground Zeroes. Lmao.
That ending sentence. Perfect
My best understanding of the actual story behind Fallout 76, at least piecing together a few public comments from the staff, is that it was a technical challenge they were messing around with to see if it was possible as one of their internal "game jams". It seemed promising so the upper management people approved it as an actual project.
I don't think that's ever explicitly been said, but that's the impression I got reading between the lines on comments people have made in interviews, etc. I could be completely wrong, but honestly it seems to fit. There's a lot about the game that says to me they kept asking themselves if they could do it, instead of asking whether they should. The technical details coming first and being followed by the design elements later.
I'd like to see stuff like the enemy variety, card system, and nukes to a single player Fallout
Really enjoying these short videos just as much as the long ones. Still waiting for the Observer Video btw. Also hoping you'll do a Scorn Video or a Mechwarrior one at some point in the future. I really appreciate your insights.
Have you seen NoClip's documentary on F76? It may fill in some blanks for you, though not the blanks that may have more contentious explanations.
Kotaku being blacklisted for five years is pretty funny in the context that I've been banned from Kotaku's comments section for over a decade because they posted a jokey "Halo on GBA prototype!" hoax I made (it's a long story as to why I made it) as if it was the real deal, and I was like "Hey guys, I totally made that, good work. You didn't notice some of those sprites are from Mega Man X3?"
Not long after that (I want to say a period of weeks) they found a flimsy reason to ban me, and it's a ban that still apparently stands to this day. Even after I've changed states, changed ISPs, changed emails, and three complete operating system re-installs, any attempt to leave a comment on a Kotaku article either fails or is eternally trapped in a "pending approval" state.
Not that I'm out there constantly trying to leave comments or anything, but, you know, once every couple years or so I give it a shot and it's always the same result.
Databases can connect you with any piece of information they have on you. If you changed isp/ip address but kept the email, tried to comment once, and then later changed email, they will rather easily have connected the changes together. System reinstalls won't really do anything. There is no hardware/OS information that websites can leech off of you, other than broad stuff like "Windows 10" or "screen resolution" (But clearing cache on your browser is a good idea. There could be some permanent cookies laying around)
lol. made my day.
mysteriously crashes alway in the same spot.
ruclips.net/video/p4AXEb8Xux4/видео.html
Yo dawg, everybody gets pending approval when they comment for the first time. You're not banned, it's probably just that nobody is starring your comments.
I assume it has to be cookies, yeah, because I've migrated some of my Firefox profile across systems.
lmao what do you think is wrong with the destiny footage? that text is more distracting than any visual quality discrepancy could ever be.
In my head a Multiplayer Fallout would, as I think you said, allow the real life people to build up environments similar to those you've met in previous Fallout games. Me? I'd be one of those wandering traders with a couple of mercenary guards. Exploring the lands, trading what I have for profit and survival. But, as you mentioned in the video, Fallout 76 kinda removes the point of trading which was one of the main features of previous games.
So I agree with you. On paper "Multiplayer Fallout where the players populate the fallout landscape" is a GREAT idea. But with the end result you can't BUILD Diamond City or Megaton or anything close.
The issue is that you need more than the ability to create such a world, you need an incentive to create the systems that make people want to take on the role of a trader or a guard and have them be feasible positions as well as giving them motivation to keep logging in and keep the game world alive. That's not necessarily an impossible task, as seen in a game like Eve, but Eve was built with those ideas in mind, turning Fallout into such a game would require such fundamental changes that it wouldn't really be Fallout anymore.
I know you've mentioned that you don't want to delve much into the business end of things because of the opaqueness, but can you think of what could possibly happen when developers know their game will flop critically, but upper management requires it to get released? Would there be a conversation between company departments to tell Marketing to lean back and Community Management to reduce hype in case of a possible delay? Or do you think the actual quality of the game be written off by management as "the devs' fault", a bunch of people get laid off and the whole cycle starts again? It would be fascinating as you said to know whether this game came as a pitch from development's side to explore new mechanical possibilities, or if it was a boardroom decision to get a Fallout title on shelves in 2018.
And at the end of the day, do incidents like this suggest that creative game development and big business are mutually exclusive spheres, tending towards collapse?
Bethesda was never going to let a modern Fallout game have the mechanical depth required to incentivize players into taking on the role of would-be NPCs. That's why Elder Scrolls is so shit now. Bethesda has been so used to ripping out all the mechanical depth out of their "RPGs" in favor of leaning into their garbage, railroady "find your dipshit family member" narratives that when they tried to do a game that required the removal of most of that "authored" "content," it resulted in the worst fucking Fallout game ever made.
Please do a video on the nukes!
They should just remaster & reboot Fallout 1 & Fallout 2.
Actually, they should let someone else do it (like Obsidian, obviously).
i looooooved 4 so much. Sank so many hours into the game. I'm struggling with 76. I want to like it, but this video nicely sums up the major problems.
I think devs need a closer look at typical multiplayer behaviour. Yes you _could_ theoretically have huge, player-built cities and factions and quests but more likely you'll have a bunch of twats running around tea-bagging each other and building giant cock and balls statues. And player-directed nukes certainly aren't going to help change that.
When you look at how FOnline did a lot of those things Fo76 hints at, you need to ask yourself how Beth managed to outjank a game that's more or less glued together with angry Russians in powerarmor and a economy based on shoveling shit.
You guys ever view the bethesda/fo76 social media platforms, and just scroll through the comments of people going "THANKS BETHESDA, GREAT GAME, DNO WHY PEOPLE ARE COMPLAINING IM JUST HAPPY ANOTHER FALLOUT CAME OUT!" and just wonder wtf is going through this guys head?
THERE IS NO FEKEN FOV SLIDER!
I loved the idea of 76. It felt like an honest attempt to use the Fallout license in a genre that was built for it. Survival games are a niche market and have never seen a true AAA effort. I mean the last we got was Metal Gear Survive. But even if this was the well executed game they hoped for I don't think it will last, things like hunger and thirst don't exactly have a good reputation among gamers because it doesn't fit into the cookie cutter power fantasy that everyone wants. It was doomed to fail no matter what. Fallout has attracted a whole new crowd ever since Fallout 3 and has rebuilt itself as Elder Scrolls with guns, where exploring this open world is more important than living in it. I mean just look at Fallout 4. It is the poster boy for the open world RPG that has no role playing and there are a lot of people that liked it. So a new take on Fallout was always interesting, just seeing mechanics like hunger in Fallout 76 was already a great plus to me because of how afraid AAA publishers are to have mechanics that may frustrate the player.
But they seemed to have not fully commit to this idea. Yes the social interaction is not there, no clans or guilds whatever. But even more sinful is their approach to griefing. Killing people shouldn't be easy but you should at least have reason to do so. Why, in a post apocalyptic setting where people fight for resources, do you put up as many hurdles to fighting other people for resources? And yes I know gamers can be dicks and just kill for the sake of it but you're telling me that no one in the Fallout universe kills for fun? It feels like they had a great idea going like invasions in Dark Souls but felt that being forced into mechanics like that would be too alienating for players who want to play the game as a single player game. And honestly if your online only, multiplayer game can be played as a solo player, then you have failed. Imagine how much more social the game would be if PvP wasn't such a safe space. Players would talk about forming parties or joining clans. Dark Souls implemented mechanics where players can be helped if they are being invaded. It would create such a great sense of community when we see a player being attacked and he could call for help from his clan. Or have griefers be blacklisted by a clan. Or have clans declare war on each other. Or have settlements pop up with a mutual understanding within the community that it should be a safe zone and have the community punish people who open fire within it. Fallout 76 could have been this relatively unique MMO experience in a world where most MMOs follow WoW. It was the first attempt to move Fallout beyond Elder Scrolls with guns, which I felt has never worked with the setting as it is more fit to have been a survival game.
Great thoughts on the f76 i remember MrBtounge did a great video about WoW ruining "MMOs" which had a similar conclusion that more online games could try to go outside the WoW mold.
You said "Skyrim" instead of "Elder Scrolls 6", that's a pretty funny freudian slip.
I wouldn't call some edgy teenagers running around saying "Queer down" as harassment. But I understand that some people will think that, so why can't you just mute people? If they want to reduce toxicity why don't they allow you to quickly and easily mute anyone?
Really good video! I'll just quickly point out that apparently faction PvP is something that is coming at a later date, according to the release day open letter Bethesda published (bethesda.net/en/article/2WjxCxOyFG2AYWSMComy4W/fallout-76-launch-and-beyond), though I don't think it's part of the December patches they've outlined recently.
So, whether it was cut pre-release and it's being re-implemented now or they added that stuff in the game with the thought of building on it later, it does seem like Bethesda wants to expand on the factions present in the game.
So you're saying that they wanted to make it like Eve Online?
This game you describe is excellent. I hope the actual game grows into it, given I've paid for it. I don't hate it at the moment, but I don't love it either and am enjoying Hitman 2 loads more. Maybe when i've finished Hitman it'll have improved.
is the game unfixable? or is this something that bethesda could overhaul (not saying they will)?
You may be giving them too much credit. This game could have just been Bethesda's paid for test of adding multiplayer into single player games for the future. Then they monetized it because some video game fans will buy anything.
Please make that video about the thematic aberrations in Bethesda's recent use of Fallout. It was really bad in F4 but pretty egregious in 76. Who ever thought that vault dwellers throwing nukes at each other made any sense?
Making it more as an Eve Online where the systems make for player driven stuff then it would have been fantastic.
That was probably the most level headed thrashing i've heard of the game. It's such a negative echo chamber meme right now to just go full balls to the wall "I'm going to SUE Bethesda" and everyone is in on it. It just seems like a game that had a pretty good premise around it that didn't pan out. Its like AAA No Man's Sky.
Enjoying these leftovers tbh
"and Skyrim"
Skyrim 2 confirmed?
You know, hearing you and others describe this...it kinda sounds like Ayncrad or however you spell it. The fictional game in the first half of season on of Sword Art Online. Weirdly poetic in a way, considering how badly made that game was too, and oddly foreshadowed by the finale of Sword Art Online Abridged(Kyaba attributes the game's crap coding to bethesda)
The game looks deeply flawed. However, playing devil's advocate for a second, I can see why Bethesda would be so wary of the press, given the way certain outlets have shafted them by reporting on work-in-progress as if it were the final release.
Oooh, is that ending a lead into Return of the Obra Dinn? (Also nice "A Tale in the Desert" shout out. I loved what that game was doing. I often use it as an example of alternate reality MMO mission design.)
the video game industry treats its consumer base like lucrative suckers similar to casinos and gamblers.
I've missed you, mate.
1:22: I don't know if I'd agree that a less toxic fanbase would facilitate more transparency. That's kind of a chicken or the egg thing. Did developer guardedness come about as a RESULT of fan toxicity, or is it kind of a CAUSE of the same...? I'd actually err on the side of the latter, and that one of the only ways to actually help ratchet down fan toxicity IS development transparency.
I was honestly hoping for this game to prove me wrong and be a GOTY contender but every bone in my body was saying otherwise and according to everything I've seen and read my gut feeling was unfortunately right. Here's hoping for better from Bethesda.
Do a video about the Quiet Man
gonna hafta borrow "squint" and "hot glue'd" from ya, mr.signal. ill bring em back next week.
This is why “idea guys” are so frowned upon in the game development industry. Talk is cheap, execution is everything.
anlumo1 Yep, and there are some games whose elevator pitch would sound TERRIBLE, but became absolutely beloved.
Try selling Papers Please to a AAA studio...or to anybody really. Same with Cuphead...okay, that one is slightly easier, but the idea would seem too strange until you saw it in action.
5:55 So your take here is that "They seemingly want to have a multiplayer game, without actually going through the trouble implement a functioning multiplayer system". Yeah, angry nerds still say that too, in between laughing at the newest cavalcade of bugs and just taunting this to go F2P. Because all we've really seen is that they have only cared about having a working market place for players to pay real money for emotes and skins.
Great video. This game could have been amazing. I'm hoping it will yet be in a year or so. But hanging onto my cash unless/until I hear things are how they should be with the game.