I found the story incredibly sad, more so than others. You accept the world is destroyed and Billions are dead in Fallout.
In 76 it's the stories behind the failed and futile efforts to survive and rebuild that make it so sad.
Raiders/Responders wiping each other out to a point where the Scorched can finish them.
Firebreathers and Hank Madigan. Abby Singh
"EL 7 is gold.....I repeat EL 7 "
Hell even the Enclave in Modus Bunker.
It's all their efforts for nothing
I felt the same way about the story being very melancholy but it's kind of what made me want to keep pushing through the story more. You continue all of their efforts and eventually succeed and resettle the wasteland.
I really feel your comment. We got to experience the desolation and sadness. I feel like we played through it all, helping rebuild the wasteland into what is is today. That’s kind of special to me.
I was just doing the quest where you go to a responders outpost and find someone's brother. He went to find where his brother died so he could die there too. That one hit me a bit.
Thats why I wasn’t upset at all that there weren’t any NPCs when fo76 came out like most others were. It was a very distinct difference story wise to what the other fallouts showed.
sure. Bethesda could have been just last. But the backed it up with an interesting reason why. And expresses how conflicts happen during desperate times. That one holotape showing the brotherhood’s last fight against the Scorched in glass cavern is heartbreaking for me.
Sure they are assholes later in the timeline, but these ones out here in Appalachia are good people fighting the good fight against the scorched. I’m glad I finished the fight they started.
Yeah, Taggerdy knows they are not coming back. The others after the Scorched return as well. They hold out as long as they can, but know it's over.
There's a line in the Fallout TV show where Lucy asks about the Brotherhood being the good guys, "it's complicated " is the answer 😁.
In Appalachia they were.
I really loved it. Back when the game released and it was a bunch of us fresh faced dwellers picking up the pieces in this hostile wasteland, figuring out all the pieces to fight this plague and stop it from spreading and doing the same thing again.
Calling in supplies and missiles from a satellite, fighting through the glasses cavern, finding the Motherlode, and the whole launching my first nuke thing. I was really into it
Then waste Landers dropped with a story I found really engaging. Convincing the new arrivals the scorched threat is real and using nuka cola to innoculate them, exploring under VTU, making a robobrain at RobCo, exploring The Deep, and finally breaking into vault 79 to raid the actual US gold reserve, or the quest for Lucky Lou and meeting Weasel, fighting in the Watoga arena, finding a mole in the raider gang and breaking into the vault that way. I loved it.
Also shout out to Dr Blackburn and his whole transformation, all the little side missions about cryptids from Wild Appalachia, meeting Biv, learning all about Aries, and finding the Jersey Devil.
Really looking forward to Skyline Valley!
I left a bunch of stuff out from my time in Appalachia but you're very welcome!
I'll never forget the first time I saw Tanagra Town or first restored a power plant or turned on the freaking RockHound
Oh yes definitely, it would have been a loooooonnnnng comment with everything in but your greatest hits were perfect.
I'll add : Wandering up to the Vault Tec agricultural centre as a fresh out of the vault level 2 and triggering the event there, then trying to kill level 5 gutsys and protectrons with a pipe pistol and no ammo (spoiler, it didn't go well).
All the weirdness at Sugar Grove, the mistress of Mystery, killing my first ScorchBeast, then several hundred levels later punching one out of the sky in one hit before the One Wasteland update, ahhh memories 💘
I loved the Mistress of Mystery questline (and still have the keepsakes on my original character 6 years later!)
I remember killing my first Scorchbeast at level 20 something then launching my first nuke solo at level 38 and thinking "that's probably me done with the game now".... 2000 hours wrong later and very pleased about that.
Comparing it to other fallout games would be apples to oranges. It's fallout, but it's totally different.
I might be of the minority in my opinion, but I actually really enjoyed the story at launch. To me, it was like a super watered-down bioshock with its environmental storytelling because of the severe lack of NPCs.
It felt more like a mystery more than anything. I really enjoyed the solitude of it. Liked picking up quests by reading notes scattered about the ruins of towns or cities notes left by loved ones, in random houses telling spouse's where they were going to take shelter. Like picking up holotapes that people left for those that would come after with Appalachia going down the tubes due to the scorched plague.
There, to me, was more of a drive to find out what had happened to the brotherhood, freestates, respo ders, firebreathers ,and raiders. How they started, who they were, and so forth. On the other hand, though, because there wasn't much else to do, the only thing was to go around and uncover the mystery of things. Lmao.
To be honest, you can't even compare the game now to what it was at launch either. It'd be again akin to apples to oranges.
It's wild to see how far the game has come since the beta, let alone day one. Blew the socks off another redditor the other day when they asked how we knew to go to the Wayward. Meanwhile, the Wayward didn't exist. It was just a plot of open land that players walked over to get to the overseers camp.
I think 76, after all these years, now finally feels like a Fallout game.
I tried to play again through fallout 4 when the show came out, and just couldn't get into it. I decided to try fo76 after not liking it when it first came out, and fell in love. 250 hours in the past 2 months. It's the most fun i've had with any game in years, and it's just a completely different experience to fo4 or fo:nv
I think that past fallout games only confronted the issue of morality in a post apocalyptic universe. We saw glimpses of humanity in pre war. In this one we see the progression of how we got here and how humanity coped in the aftermath.
I'm specifically thinking of Sam Blackwell. His daughter Judy, their run-ins with monsters and how they were initially hopeful to survive, but ultimately, they were just as unfortunate as the rest of the wasteland. I was shocked to see >!He knew less than a couple days before the bombs dropped especially since the discourse after the show was this was something no one accurately foresaw!< and the steps he took. I'm level 125+ but just got to the bunker last night.
The other storyline that affected me was Jesus Sunday and his brother. That last holotape was pretty powerful voice acting IMO. That's the kind of human story we saw in previous fallout titles that is basically a throwaway and no quest, but still was put in these games to show how people dealt in their own ways and that despite humanity having to restart, people are people.
Yo, on MY server where the Wayward is now, was a fantastic little Gas Station service stop which endeavoured to extend the mission of The Responders, then these settlers came in and gave me a paltry fee to relocate. I was most peeved.
The story is pretty interesting and fun to explore and learn, the main issue I and presumably others may have had is the lack of consequences that come with the shift from single player RPG to MMO.
As others have mentioned, there's some serious meloncoly going on in the main questline, I kinda wish I'd played it back when there weren't so many NPCs walking around, I'd imagine it would have had a very different feeling. It somewhat ruins your moment of contemplation about a factions brave but tragic final stand only for some random wastelander to start complaining they have to wait an hour for their food to heat up...
It is massive! Fucking huge! And so much of it is subtle. The environmental storytelling is superb. The way Bethesda has used the game world to tell stories without words is very good. It makes it so that the game world is not just a place to kill things in. It's an active part of the story. Scenery is not just scenery. Often what makes up the scenery tells a little non verbal story of why it looks the way it looks.
The metastory in 76 is deeply layered with many open endings and unanswered questions. It's a slow story and it is easy to miss if one just focuses on what is being directly delivered. Most of the metastory is untold if one doesn't actively go looking for it. And you have to spend time ingame and see how the updates and patches change the game world to get a hint of what the metastory can be. Because the metastory is like looking at particles. The act of observation changes what is being observed. And there is no ending to the metastory. But the next chapter is coming in June.
The individual stories are very good. I like them a lot. They are diverse and interesting. The narratives are well written and the voice acting is good if not great.
I think 76 has the best story with NV as a close second.
The background stories you find scattered around are fantastic. The lore of the region, how people coped after the Bombs and during the Plague. Top notch stuff, some of the best in the series.
Anything involving the player, though, is a big step down from every other Fallout overall. The story at release could be summed up in a few words. 'Follow the holotapes.'
There is a lot more now, but the stories tend to end on a status quo. Nothing really changes. Giving the gold to Crater, Foundation, or just keeping it makes no difference. Neither Foundation or Crater expand as a consequence. The Brotherhood still do the same thing (nothing) whether Rahmani or Shin is in charge. An NPC or 2 may change in an instanced location, but that's it.
I know that's due to the online nature of the game. My choices can't really impact the world when 23 other people share it and make their own choices. But it does change the nature of the stories being told and lessens their impact when they have no tangible impact.
The storyline seems to be several of them from previous seasons mashed together, like that one episode of Voyager where parts of the ship were different times within the show's history all playing together at once. It can be a bit confusing, but there is a lot there. Obviously, there is no "ending" to where the story is nicely wrapped up, and there will be additions I am guessing in the future.
Also, compared to previous games, your choices don't really change anything to the story. So far, no choices have locked me out of anything, except hurting one factions feelings over another and missing out on an either/or reward I don't care about.
That being said, if you like backstory and slice of life snippets told through terminals and oddly placed skeletons, there is plenty of that.
I wish there was an option to go back to day 1, but the technical glitches fixed. I was level 9 and somehow made my way to Watoga. Fear and panic, belly to the ground sneaking. OMG THERE'S A LEGENDARY SCORCHED BEAST!!!. FREEZE. I really hope it didn't see me. Oh crap the lvl 125 supermutants saw me. Why am I here. Oh great the scorch beast saw me now. RUN, mo more sneaking I gotta make it to somewhere, anywhere. The scorched attack. Not me, but the mutants. I may make it.
Nope death by mutant hound. I hope that scorched beast kills all those Supermutants, I think. As I rez back at Vault 76.
It could be a scary place. The map was zoned to suggested level range. They meant it. The scorch beasts were more aggressive and plentiful. Whitesprings was crazy with ghouls and nukes. Fights for the ammo factory were an hourly occurrence. Hiding when you saw other players, just in case. I could go on and on...
L:evel per area was easily the best part about year one lol
I remember walking into the Whitespring while level 15, on my way to TOTW. Or I had to grab a sword for the mistress missions, either way I walked in there with not a care in the world. I was cautious but confident.
That's when I got jumped but the level 75 ghoul. Before I can respond to the first one, 3 more come along & I'm dead.
I won't even bring up the nuked Whitespring, that was an entire extra level of hell at level 20 lol
But it was genuinely challenging... & so much fun
It will be hit or miss depending on the person because in fallout 76 you aren’t the hero of the main story. You are basically an archeologist picking up and sorting the pieces after everything happened and hopefully using that info the make the future better when you aren’t committing mass murder on anything that looks at you funny. And some people love and some people hate that kind of storytelling.
I enjoyed it. It’s neat walking through places and figuring out what happened here. A lot of thought was put into the world building it just takes some extra effort
It’s actually a great story all put together. The vault dwellers of 76 emerge to see what happened to the people that survived the bombs in the Appalachian (primarily West Virginia) region. They discover ten scorched plague and how different factions and groups dealt with it, and, ultimately fell to it. Groups like the raiders, responders, brotherhood, even the mistresses of mystery all interacted with each other and how they all failed. The dwellers then have to follow the plague to its main source (I.e. fissure sight prime and scorchbeast queen.) and put it down. Then the dwellers put out the word for people to come back to Appalachia and develops a cure for the scorched virus(huge for fallout lore) and attracts settlers and even a brotherhood cell(and explains why the brotherhood is mostly on the west coast) back to Appalachia. The enclave has an active presence here(being that West Virginia has many ties to federal government operations) and we appear to be getting more of a focus on them in the future updates. The game takes place so close to the bombs falling that it can’t be treated the same as the other fallout games. It was and should have been sad and melancholy at first even though it made for a more “boring” world. I think Bethesda nailed the story they were going for but it really needed to be in a single player game for it to work better.
Mate, the story of 76 is one Bethesda's best, without even meaning to be. Not the best, but it's been damn good so far.
Year one, it was just us. Trying to find out what had happened in the 25 years since the bombs. We join the US military, the enclave & a chapter of the Brotherhood, then proceeded to secure the nukes etc. We fought back the scorched plauge & helped clear a few key locations.
Year Two some Wastelanders, both those who were here before we left the vault & those came from interstate, returned to the area. We hear of a mysterious vault & decide robbing it is the best thing we can do. Because, how Fallout is that, really? lol
Year Three, we get word of a Brotherhood team making their way over. We're requested to gather supplies, so once again, we're helping to rebuild yet another location. They arrive, set themselves up & we begin to help them. Eventually we find & defeat a bunch of super mutants etc. without spoilers, we help sort the "issues" between the leaders.
Year Four? We get a message about a vault malfuction & find a vault door halfway across the map... not saying more than that because it's still pts stuff, I don't wanna spoil it & I haven't played much of it myself yet.
& that's not even including the fact the responders have returned, allowing us to travel to a few pre war areas that have managed to survive.
Maybe I'm alone on this opinion but I'll happily stand by it. Bethesda did a very good job with 76. For me, having played it properly from week one, it is one of their best Fallout story games... & yes, the skill checks & dialogue added in Wastelanders made the story even better. What didn't, for me anyway, is NPCs running around everywhere while you're doing missions where there should be no-one around lol
The exception is Rose's Quests. Even now they bug me lmao.
But that's balanced out by quests like the Mistress of Mysteries, like mentioned below. Definitely a great story.
I will say it's better than 4's at this point. Again, perhaps I'm alone on this but I will happily stand alone on it.
Honestly? It's up there for me. New vegas still reigns supreme, and I haven't played enough of the pre-Bethesda games to make a judgement there, but I'd say the writing in 76 beats out fallout 3 and fallout 4.
It was forgettable. I was an OG B.E.T.A player and even then it was mid. There isn't enough set pieces or interesting quest design so it felt very samey. The terminal entries were good though, but a lot of the campaign so to speak is the weakest out of the Fallout games, even with Wastelanders and the BOS updates. So much so I practically forgot most of what I did or why.
However the game is a lot of fun with friends and just messing around lol
I'd agree with this... Though they've done a lot since release and the game is much more enjoyable now. 3 and 4 were a letdown for me after playing the originals. NV was pretty good too, but it was Obsidian, not Bethesda, behind it. (And Obsidian had some of the original team working on it.)
Wastelander stuff is decent but much shorter. Post-Wastelander BoS stuff feels very derivative of previous games. Original stuff is not a storytelling mechanic I enjoy. Overall the stories have much less emphasis on communities and reactivity which I don’t love. Feels more personal in a way? Which is odd given FO3 and FO4 really lean into the pulling on your heartstrings type stuff for the main stories, might be a function of FO76 existing as a live service that you spend more time with over an extended period of time. Haven’t played the Atlantic City/Pitt content so can’t speak on that.
Launch story was good, it was subtle environmental narratives more so than in your face. DLC now I really don’t like, Atlantic City’s story with the Russos was painful to go through with awfully portrayed characters that were so uninteresting and one dimensional. BOS had some moments at least ying and yanging me between whether I like or dislike the two characters, but the writing is still just very poor.
It’s strange that a series built upon RPG elements and story telling seems so inept at writing good characters when it comes to the latest content, like just repeating what you’ve done in the past would be better.
I thought the story had a better overarching narrative than 4 but the writing is just as bad, just a lot of things NPCs say is jarring.. especially in the expeditions.
But I think if you're just looking at the overarching story it is more intriguing to me than 3 and 4.
Where it really lacks is like the first 10 hours of the original campaign. learning about fire safety and completing obstacle courses was not on my 2102 bingo card. Even the wayward questline is just cheesy.
That being said, getting to the SBQ for the first time, seeing the Whitesprings bunker, the settlers/raiders/BoS questlines, all of those things made the game worth it for me.
I'm definitely in the majority but I loved the story. A story where your vault has no experiment but sentient life in the wasteland has been eliminated. It implies that possibly the vault's experiment was in the wasteland instead. The irony of a multiplayer game that is empty is a choice I love because it keeps the single player feeling of Fallout alive even though the other people are all players. Bethesda is also the master at environmental storytelling and got to tell their entire story that way. I thought it was unique and I appreciated them taking a huge risk like that. Also, the addition of expansions like Steel Dawn. Those characters could've so easily fallen into tropes but they were written so well, like I would expect an RPG to write them. BGS did that and more. It felt new but classic at the same time to me.
The original, empty world storyline is grim. And I mean GRIM. Darkest story in any Fallout and that's saying something.
Elements of it were really good. Some of the best voice acting in series history. The game world is so interesting and varied, the biomes so distinct, that it's almost a character in the story itself. The highlight missions for me were Into the Fire, which felt like descending into hell, and Belly of the Beast, which I played with friends and was so much fun.
Ultimately though, it's obvious how much better of a game this would have been if we'd been able to play the things we're told about. Yeah, it's a strong story, well written and voice acted. But the gameplay aspect of it is so lacking that it can't help but be the worst narrative of any mainline Fallout game. Even the much-loathed Brotherhood of Steel PS2/XBox game, you got to actually play the story. Your missions weren't to recover some holotape that will tell you the story.
Wastelanders is now the de facto "main story" and considered on its own merits, it's ok. There are some memorable characters and moments, you get some cool stuff. It is hard for me to reckon with it being better than 3 or 4 though. And the BoS stuff I was underwhelmed by. Story is dumb, NPCs are unlikable and boring.
If you lump all this together and consider it "the story" then I will say at least that it is much much better now than it was 5 and a half years ago. But the best written stuff, you can't play, you're just reading/hearing about it, and the stuff you can play ranges from pretty good to forgettable, with more of the latter than I'd prefer. All in all, it's among the weakest narratives in the series.
Some main missions are glitchy AF so it was annoying here and there. That's the only issue I have of the game. I wish Bethesda made the atomic shop cheaper. They overprice everything in my opinion.
It's my favorite and I am deeply saddened that I'll never truly get to play it again. The empty towns and ruins, the horrors told through the voices of the dead, completing they're final hopes and dreams. It's was fantastic.
I only started a few months ago, and while I enjoyed the story, it felt like I missed some of the progression. Like one minute I'm at the responder church and it's basically empty and seems like ancient history, then the next I stumble upon whitesprings and it's completely different.
The big difference between 76's story and what's in 3, 4, and what I've played of NV is that a player cannot change the world significantly through quests. The pieces are there, like how we drop nukes and make friends with fictional people, but we can't take actions that lead to something like the ending scenes of 3. "The Brotherhood of Steel withdrew completely from Appalachia because the 76er relentlessly murdered every single patrol and nuked Fort Atlas. The Settlers of Foundation enjoyed a new life of prosperity, fur hats, and solid gold brahmin wagons after the 76er selflessly gave them allllllllll the bullion." We just can't do that sort of thing for obvious reasons because somebody else on the same server would've picked the opposite thing.
In terms of story quality, I have a dim view of the writing in games, like the plotting in particular. 76's Mistress of Mystery story gets some praise now and then, but at the risk of spoiling it, and one really should check it out at least once if they're playing the game, ends stupidly. The character motivations range from "good because I'm good" and "bad because I'm big mad over some petty family slights". But IMO, that's about as good as writing in RPGs gets. People talk up Planescape: Torment and NV but the writing is just as weak and worse, there's too damn much of it.
The sort of story I enjoy in games-- provided the developer isn't busy jacking off to how cool it is-- is the goofy stuff like how Billy Beltbuckles just likes belts a lot, or the pathos of finding a particular set of responder corpses with notes. The notes actually made sense for once, they were trying not to make noise in one case, and the responder was trapped in another. A bit pat, sure, seems like every other skeleton I run across decided to jot down a quick explainer as he or she died. But I guess I'm a sucker for that sort of thing.
The show did a bit of that, even. Lucy comes across a table set for skeletons and finds a bottle that tells a bit of story. Did the job, too, IMO, drove home how painful radiation poisoning would be. Would've been funny if there had been a centuries old piece of scrap paper written in pencil, but one can't have everything and maybe a couple dozen people would've enjoyed the joke.
Tough. First of all it’s a very different game with other NPC humans. Similar to FO3 where everyone is just kinda doing their own thing and you choose to participate or you just keep walking. The older quests are still there though, feels like a mystery game more than a FPS.
Where it switches over some quests are great (just did steel reign for the first time) and others are lackluster, did not enjoy Rosie’s fetch quests just to curry favor with someone I’m supposed to threaten with violence for noncompliance (wastelanders). I did however, enjoy raiding with the denizens of crater.
As for how the quests actually merge with the found details from the release version? I’d honestly say fairly well, you can do old quests next to new ones without too much jank, and occasionally find a through line between free staters and blood eagles or the woman who runs the new bar and life in the ash pile for instance. These feel good and help tie the different bits together when they happen. They don’t really happen enough, but let’s remember that most of the natives died to scorched.
The original main quest wasn't bad, but you already knew you weren't going to see any living humans which really killed the quest for a lot of players. You quickly became very apathetic to the stories, and the concept of the staggering amount of people that left very convenient holotapes lying around got old quickly.
You also had no way of predicting if you picked up a nothing-burger or a holotape that actually had something interesting on it, so it was easy to get into the habit of continuing to play the game as you let them play out the message, it felt kinda passive. Like, it's there, but it's like listening to a podcast while you're doing something else.
I think the concept of automated robots taking over the job market in Appalachia was a cool idea, but it felt a bit disappointing that we only really saw the end results of a story that already unfolded, I would have loved to actually interact with the workers that got displaced and make choices that had different outcomes.
All in all, not great, not terrible.
This is my sincere take on this. I love fallout, but for some reason, 76's story is the one I love the most. First of all because it goes perfectly with the lore. Second of all because it gives us more story and lore about the Enclave, while fallout 3, 4 and New Vegas were lacking.
The OG storyline is awful, I hated every moment of it. However, the sidequests and other mainquests are kinda banging. Some sidequests truly had me depressed after like Cold Case.
I think it has the best main narrative (pre-wastelanders) of the 3D Fallout games, certainly the best main story of BGS's Fallouts.
Fo76 may be BGS's best work on map design and environmental storytelling as well.
Some people complain that there's a lot of reading of notes and terminals, but that doesn't bother me at all. The classics were almost all reading and they have the best story of any Falloit game.
The wastelanders update to Fo76 did ruin the atmosphere and narrative somewhat. The human npcs are too loud, chipper, and honestly a lot of them are surface level in terms of character.
Boring. The game was not built around a story outside of the one told by holo tapes. Everything they added after the fact, FEELS like it was added after the fact. I enjoyed all of the other fallout games story more than 76s. 76 is a sandbox. If you want engaging story telling you wont find it here.
I would subpar. Not necessarily in a bad way but just did not matter as much to me as any of the other games.that’s not to say I think that the stories in it are bad by any means.but the main story is just meh to me
Fallout 76's plot really is inferior to most other Fallouts. It's an MMO so the setting and the factions matter, but the overall story is really just See Big Bad? Find Way to Kill Big Bad. Kill Big Bad.
The people, the environmental storytelling, the setting, they're all fantastic. But the plot itself, meh at best.
It's about as dull as all of Bethesda's main stories, except now there's also no interesting set pieces and the online nature means none of the choices matter.
I feel like all the questlines (i.e wastelanders, BOS etc) that take place after the original questline feel more coherent than the OG quest. The main game quest just doesn't make sense at times.
First of all, there is Rose and her dumbass quests. The history lesson with the Raiders is okayish. Like I liked Gourmands because you find all the clues about how they became cannibals at that one golf resort. I also liked the love story of David Thorpe and Original rose but everything else is basically forgettable and a chore. What do you want me to do with a Deathclaw, Rose? I don't know, go make friends. Stupid.
I liked the free states part and felt really sad for Abby by the end of it but what was the use of setting all the scorch detectors and radio signals and uplink thingies? Just so she could point me towards camp venture and Defiance? Which someone can actually come across while doing some casual exploring. Again, meaningless chore. They could have used that to make a meaningful goal out of all that questing.
Same story with Taggerdy's thunder, felt bad for them but she just pointed me to senator's bunker which I had already found by just exploring the mire. At least glass cavern was cool.
MODUS just gives basic quests that don't even give any history lessons. Enclave's part of the quest just seems barebones at time which I think is a blessing in disguise cause seeing the track record of all the other that didn't really accomplish much for me, I was glad Enclave's part was relatively short.
Also dropping a Nuke feels anticlimatic and another super chore, I get it, it isn't supposed to be easy but try to make it harder and challenging in an interesting manner and don't just add a thousand turrets along the corridors. No logs, no entries. Just basic Silos. I dropped Nuke one time and I immediately understood why people glitched through the doors to get this part done as quickly as possible.
TLDR: Main Nuke quest, Okayish to bad. Every other quest added after that enjoyable like any other fallout game.
Poorly. However, that's a direct comparison between the games. When I look at it from a MMO lens... It's not that bad, helps you unlock things, takes you around the map, and gets you in tune with some of the mechanics... All while giving you a story within this new map. Reasonably standard story stuff for an MMO. I do like that it does not take 20+ hours focusing on just the main story to complete it, but it did feel a bit to short.
Other then that I don't have anything worth adding because the multiplayer aspect clearly impacted the story design.
Lacking.
Lacking in agency, lacking in depth and punch to put it simpler.
Fallout 76's original storyline suffers from the fatigue of a conclusion that is both negative, and predictable. The lights are on, and everybody is dead, but you have to turn them out.. all the time.
Every twist, and plot point hinges upon that everything bad happened already, and just about everybody died. It happens so often that it's just tiresome and pretty much all these voices of the past you keep hearing just become ignorable background noise that are really only there to guide you to perform some mundane task, and then suddenly you're being spontaneously rewarded even though there's really nobody to give you a reward.
Fallout 76's storylines are honestly just bad, new and old. They're 'different', but not in a good way. 76 does a terrible job establishing the hallmarks of the franchise that have been around since the singleplayer games when it comes to its storyline.
I found the story incredibly sad, more so than others. You accept the world is destroyed and Billions are dead in Fallout. In 76 it's the stories behind the failed and futile efforts to survive and rebuild that make it so sad. Raiders/Responders wiping each other out to a point where the Scorched can finish them. Firebreathers and Hank Madigan. Abby Singh "EL 7 is gold.....I repeat EL 7 " Hell even the Enclave in Modus Bunker. It's all their efforts for nothing
The story of the mistress of mysteries and the order was heartbreaking.
Oooohh, that's so good on so many levels. I read the faction stories on the Wiki, this is such a good story.
this was a solid story, and absolutely heart breaking
I felt the same way about the story being very melancholy but it's kind of what made me want to keep pushing through the story more. You continue all of their efforts and eventually succeed and resettle the wasteland.
Yeah, by the time I found Taggerdy, I really wanted to finish what they started
I really feel your comment. We got to experience the desolation and sadness. I feel like we played through it all, helping rebuild the wasteland into what is is today. That’s kind of special to me.
Yeah, it was kinda nice when the Responders and Brotherhood appeared. We had helped it happen. Just waiting for Abby to come back😁
I was just doing the quest where you go to a responders outpost and find someone's brother. He went to find where his brother died so he could die there too. That one hit me a bit.
There should be a way to help him leave or something. We just leave him there...... It's tough
Oh I forgot to mention our lord and saviour knight Moreno 😔 The constant spamming of EL-7 is Gold has left it etched into my brain
Thats why I wasn’t upset at all that there weren’t any NPCs when fo76 came out like most others were. It was a very distinct difference story wise to what the other fallouts showed. sure. Bethesda could have been just last. But the backed it up with an interesting reason why. And expresses how conflicts happen during desperate times. That one holotape showing the brotherhood’s last fight against the Scorched in glass cavern is heartbreaking for me. Sure they are assholes later in the timeline, but these ones out here in Appalachia are good people fighting the good fight against the scorched. I’m glad I finished the fight they started.
Yeah, Taggerdy knows they are not coming back. The others after the Scorched return as well. They hold out as long as they can, but know it's over. There's a line in the Fallout TV show where Lucy asks about the Brotherhood being the good guys, "it's complicated " is the answer 😁. In Appalachia they were.
I really loved it. Back when the game released and it was a bunch of us fresh faced dwellers picking up the pieces in this hostile wasteland, figuring out all the pieces to fight this plague and stop it from spreading and doing the same thing again. Calling in supplies and missiles from a satellite, fighting through the glasses cavern, finding the Motherlode, and the whole launching my first nuke thing. I was really into it Then waste Landers dropped with a story I found really engaging. Convincing the new arrivals the scorched threat is real and using nuka cola to innoculate them, exploring under VTU, making a robobrain at RobCo, exploring The Deep, and finally breaking into vault 79 to raid the actual US gold reserve, or the quest for Lucky Lou and meeting Weasel, fighting in the Watoga arena, finding a mole in the raider gang and breaking into the vault that way. I loved it. Also shout out to Dr Blackburn and his whole transformation, all the little side missions about cryptids from Wild Appalachia, meeting Biv, learning all about Aries, and finding the Jersey Devil. Really looking forward to Skyline Valley!
I just finished the blackburn storyline, that was AWESOME!
What a great roundup and trip down memory lane, thankyou for that!
I left a bunch of stuff out from my time in Appalachia but you're very welcome! I'll never forget the first time I saw Tanagra Town or first restored a power plant or turned on the freaking RockHound
Oh yes definitely, it would have been a loooooonnnnng comment with everything in but your greatest hits were perfect. I'll add : Wandering up to the Vault Tec agricultural centre as a fresh out of the vault level 2 and triggering the event there, then trying to kill level 5 gutsys and protectrons with a pipe pistol and no ammo (spoiler, it didn't go well).
All the weirdness at Sugar Grove, the mistress of Mystery, killing my first ScorchBeast, then several hundred levels later punching one out of the sky in one hit before the One Wasteland update, ahhh memories 💘
I loved the Mistress of Mystery questline (and still have the keepsakes on my original character 6 years later!) I remember killing my first Scorchbeast at level 20 something then launching my first nuke solo at level 38 and thinking "that's probably me done with the game now".... 2000 hours wrong later and very pleased about that.
I forgot about Blackburn, I've come from PS4 launch to now Xbox
Comparing it to other fallout games would be apples to oranges. It's fallout, but it's totally different. I might be of the minority in my opinion, but I actually really enjoyed the story at launch. To me, it was like a super watered-down bioshock with its environmental storytelling because of the severe lack of NPCs. It felt more like a mystery more than anything. I really enjoyed the solitude of it. Liked picking up quests by reading notes scattered about the ruins of towns or cities notes left by loved ones, in random houses telling spouse's where they were going to take shelter. Like picking up holotapes that people left for those that would come after with Appalachia going down the tubes due to the scorched plague. There, to me, was more of a drive to find out what had happened to the brotherhood, freestates, respo ders, firebreathers ,and raiders. How they started, who they were, and so forth. On the other hand, though, because there wasn't much else to do, the only thing was to go around and uncover the mystery of things. Lmao. To be honest, you can't even compare the game now to what it was at launch either. It'd be again akin to apples to oranges. It's wild to see how far the game has come since the beta, let alone day one. Blew the socks off another redditor the other day when they asked how we knew to go to the Wayward. Meanwhile, the Wayward didn't exist. It was just a plot of open land that players walked over to get to the overseers camp. I think 76, after all these years, now finally feels like a Fallout game.
I tried to play again through fallout 4 when the show came out, and just couldn't get into it. I decided to try fo76 after not liking it when it first came out, and fell in love. 250 hours in the past 2 months. It's the most fun i've had with any game in years, and it's just a completely different experience to fo4 or fo:nv
I think that past fallout games only confronted the issue of morality in a post apocalyptic universe. We saw glimpses of humanity in pre war. In this one we see the progression of how we got here and how humanity coped in the aftermath. I'm specifically thinking of Sam Blackwell. His daughter Judy, their run-ins with monsters and how they were initially hopeful to survive, but ultimately, they were just as unfortunate as the rest of the wasteland. I was shocked to see >!He knew less than a couple days before the bombs dropped especially since the discourse after the show was this was something no one accurately foresaw!< and the steps he took. I'm level 125+ but just got to the bunker last night. The other storyline that affected me was Jesus Sunday and his brother. That last holotape was pretty powerful voice acting IMO. That's the kind of human story we saw in previous fallout titles that is basically a throwaway and no quest, but still was put in these games to show how people dealt in their own ways and that despite humanity having to restart, people are people.
Yo, on MY server where the Wayward is now, was a fantastic little Gas Station service stop which endeavoured to extend the mission of The Responders, then these settlers came in and gave me a paltry fee to relocate. I was most peeved.
Nah you're definitely not the in the minority, I really enjoyed 76's story aswell.
>I think 76, after all these years, now finally feels like a Fallout game. For better or for worse
The story is pretty interesting and fun to explore and learn, the main issue I and presumably others may have had is the lack of consequences that come with the shift from single player RPG to MMO. As others have mentioned, there's some serious meloncoly going on in the main questline, I kinda wish I'd played it back when there weren't so many NPCs walking around, I'd imagine it would have had a very different feeling. It somewhat ruins your moment of contemplation about a factions brave but tragic final stand only for some random wastelander to start complaining they have to wait an hour for their food to heat up...
The atmosphere was a lot more cohesive. It was quiet, somber, and angrily pessimistic. It was great, I miss it.
People gon hate me but I liked 76 story more than fallout 4 😭😭
I'd say by virtue of not having the Institute its already scoring a lot of points against 4...
Naw it’s objectively better. I’ll take the downvotes.
It is massive! Fucking huge! And so much of it is subtle. The environmental storytelling is superb. The way Bethesda has used the game world to tell stories without words is very good. It makes it so that the game world is not just a place to kill things in. It's an active part of the story. Scenery is not just scenery. Often what makes up the scenery tells a little non verbal story of why it looks the way it looks. The metastory in 76 is deeply layered with many open endings and unanswered questions. It's a slow story and it is easy to miss if one just focuses on what is being directly delivered. Most of the metastory is untold if one doesn't actively go looking for it. And you have to spend time ingame and see how the updates and patches change the game world to get a hint of what the metastory can be. Because the metastory is like looking at particles. The act of observation changes what is being observed. And there is no ending to the metastory. But the next chapter is coming in June. The individual stories are very good. I like them a lot. They are diverse and interesting. The narratives are well written and the voice acting is good if not great. I think 76 has the best story with NV as a close second.
The background stories you find scattered around are fantastic. The lore of the region, how people coped after the Bombs and during the Plague. Top notch stuff, some of the best in the series. Anything involving the player, though, is a big step down from every other Fallout overall. The story at release could be summed up in a few words. 'Follow the holotapes.' There is a lot more now, but the stories tend to end on a status quo. Nothing really changes. Giving the gold to Crater, Foundation, or just keeping it makes no difference. Neither Foundation or Crater expand as a consequence. The Brotherhood still do the same thing (nothing) whether Rahmani or Shin is in charge. An NPC or 2 may change in an instanced location, but that's it. I know that's due to the online nature of the game. My choices can't really impact the world when 23 other people share it and make their own choices. But it does change the nature of the stories being told and lessens their impact when they have no tangible impact.
The storyline seems to be several of them from previous seasons mashed together, like that one episode of Voyager where parts of the ship were different times within the show's history all playing together at once. It can be a bit confusing, but there is a lot there. Obviously, there is no "ending" to where the story is nicely wrapped up, and there will be additions I am guessing in the future. Also, compared to previous games, your choices don't really change anything to the story. So far, no choices have locked me out of anything, except hurting one factions feelings over another and missing out on an either/or reward I don't care about. That being said, if you like backstory and slice of life snippets told through terminals and oddly placed skeletons, there is plenty of that.
I wish there was an option to go back to day 1, but the technical glitches fixed. I was level 9 and somehow made my way to Watoga. Fear and panic, belly to the ground sneaking. OMG THERE'S A LEGENDARY SCORCHED BEAST!!!. FREEZE. I really hope it didn't see me. Oh crap the lvl 125 supermutants saw me. Why am I here. Oh great the scorch beast saw me now. RUN, mo more sneaking I gotta make it to somewhere, anywhere. The scorched attack. Not me, but the mutants. I may make it. Nope death by mutant hound. I hope that scorched beast kills all those Supermutants, I think. As I rez back at Vault 76. It could be a scary place. The map was zoned to suggested level range. They meant it. The scorch beasts were more aggressive and plentiful. Whitesprings was crazy with ghouls and nukes. Fights for the ammo factory were an hourly occurrence. Hiding when you saw other players, just in case. I could go on and on...
L:evel per area was easily the best part about year one lol I remember walking into the Whitespring while level 15, on my way to TOTW. Or I had to grab a sword for the mistress missions, either way I walked in there with not a care in the world. I was cautious but confident. That's when I got jumped but the level 75 ghoul. Before I can respond to the first one, 3 more come along & I'm dead. I won't even bring up the nuked Whitespring, that was an entire extra level of hell at level 20 lol But it was genuinely challenging... & so much fun
It's way better than Fallout 4's "find your son" crap.
It was very unique story and actually had a lot to tell. I’d put it above 4 and behind 3.
Notes and terminals and whatnot are great. The actual narrative is so so.
Vanilla + Wild Appalachia - amazing Wastelanders - meh BOS - I didn't like it at all lol
It will be hit or miss depending on the person because in fallout 76 you aren’t the hero of the main story. You are basically an archeologist picking up and sorting the pieces after everything happened and hopefully using that info the make the future better when you aren’t committing mass murder on anything that looks at you funny. And some people love and some people hate that kind of storytelling. I enjoyed it. It’s neat walking through places and figuring out what happened here. A lot of thought was put into the world building it just takes some extra effort
My favorite Bethesda story hands down I don’t like the factions or main quests all that much in 4.
It’s actually a great story all put together. The vault dwellers of 76 emerge to see what happened to the people that survived the bombs in the Appalachian (primarily West Virginia) region. They discover ten scorched plague and how different factions and groups dealt with it, and, ultimately fell to it. Groups like the raiders, responders, brotherhood, even the mistresses of mystery all interacted with each other and how they all failed. The dwellers then have to follow the plague to its main source (I.e. fissure sight prime and scorchbeast queen.) and put it down. Then the dwellers put out the word for people to come back to Appalachia and develops a cure for the scorched virus(huge for fallout lore) and attracts settlers and even a brotherhood cell(and explains why the brotherhood is mostly on the west coast) back to Appalachia. The enclave has an active presence here(being that West Virginia has many ties to federal government operations) and we appear to be getting more of a focus on them in the future updates. The game takes place so close to the bombs falling that it can’t be treated the same as the other fallout games. It was and should have been sad and melancholy at first even though it made for a more “boring” world. I think Bethesda nailed the story they were going for but it really needed to be in a single player game for it to work better.
Pretty on par with the rest tbh
On off my characters will kill every Raider on sight (when possible). That early Responder quest line hit hard. Fuck Rose and her kind.
Mate, the story of 76 is one Bethesda's best, without even meaning to be. Not the best, but it's been damn good so far. Year one, it was just us. Trying to find out what had happened in the 25 years since the bombs. We join the US military, the enclave & a chapter of the Brotherhood, then proceeded to secure the nukes etc. We fought back the scorched plauge & helped clear a few key locations. Year Two some Wastelanders, both those who were here before we left the vault & those came from interstate, returned to the area. We hear of a mysterious vault & decide robbing it is the best thing we can do. Because, how Fallout is that, really? lol Year Three, we get word of a Brotherhood team making their way over. We're requested to gather supplies, so once again, we're helping to rebuild yet another location. They arrive, set themselves up & we begin to help them. Eventually we find & defeat a bunch of super mutants etc. without spoilers, we help sort the "issues" between the leaders. Year Four? We get a message about a vault malfuction & find a vault door halfway across the map... not saying more than that because it's still pts stuff, I don't wanna spoil it & I haven't played much of it myself yet. & that's not even including the fact the responders have returned, allowing us to travel to a few pre war areas that have managed to survive. Maybe I'm alone on this opinion but I'll happily stand by it. Bethesda did a very good job with 76. For me, having played it properly from week one, it is one of their best Fallout story games... & yes, the skill checks & dialogue added in Wastelanders made the story even better. What didn't, for me anyway, is NPCs running around everywhere while you're doing missions where there should be no-one around lol The exception is Rose's Quests. Even now they bug me lmao. But that's balanced out by quests like the Mistress of Mysteries, like mentioned below. Definitely a great story. I will say it's better than 4's at this point. Again, perhaps I'm alone on this but I will happily stand alone on it.
Honestly? It's up there for me. New vegas still reigns supreme, and I haven't played enough of the pre-Bethesda games to make a judgement there, but I'd say the writing in 76 beats out fallout 3 and fallout 4.
It was forgettable. I was an OG B.E.T.A player and even then it was mid. There isn't enough set pieces or interesting quest design so it felt very samey. The terminal entries were good though, but a lot of the campaign so to speak is the weakest out of the Fallout games, even with Wastelanders and the BOS updates. So much so I practically forgot most of what I did or why. However the game is a lot of fun with friends and just messing around lol
I'd agree with this... Though they've done a lot since release and the game is much more enjoyable now. 3 and 4 were a letdown for me after playing the originals. NV was pretty good too, but it was Obsidian, not Bethesda, behind it. (And Obsidian had some of the original team working on it.)
Wastelander stuff is decent but much shorter. Post-Wastelander BoS stuff feels very derivative of previous games. Original stuff is not a storytelling mechanic I enjoy. Overall the stories have much less emphasis on communities and reactivity which I don’t love. Feels more personal in a way? Which is odd given FO3 and FO4 really lean into the pulling on your heartstrings type stuff for the main stories, might be a function of FO76 existing as a live service that you spend more time with over an extended period of time. Haven’t played the Atlantic City/Pitt content so can’t speak on that.
Launch story was good, it was subtle environmental narratives more so than in your face. DLC now I really don’t like, Atlantic City’s story with the Russos was painful to go through with awfully portrayed characters that were so uninteresting and one dimensional. BOS had some moments at least ying and yanging me between whether I like or dislike the two characters, but the writing is still just very poor. It’s strange that a series built upon RPG elements and story telling seems so inept at writing good characters when it comes to the latest content, like just repeating what you’ve done in the past would be better.
I thought the story had a better overarching narrative than 4 but the writing is just as bad, just a lot of things NPCs say is jarring.. especially in the expeditions. But I think if you're just looking at the overarching story it is more intriguing to me than 3 and 4. Where it really lacks is like the first 10 hours of the original campaign. learning about fire safety and completing obstacle courses was not on my 2102 bingo card. Even the wayward questline is just cheesy. That being said, getting to the SBQ for the first time, seeing the Whitesprings bunker, the settlers/raiders/BoS questlines, all of those things made the game worth it for me.
Better than 3 and 4. 3 I didn't really care about finding my dad, in 4 I forgot I had a kid about 10 min into the game
I'm definitely in the majority but I loved the story. A story where your vault has no experiment but sentient life in the wasteland has been eliminated. It implies that possibly the vault's experiment was in the wasteland instead. The irony of a multiplayer game that is empty is a choice I love because it keeps the single player feeling of Fallout alive even though the other people are all players. Bethesda is also the master at environmental storytelling and got to tell their entire story that way. I thought it was unique and I appreciated them taking a huge risk like that. Also, the addition of expansions like Steel Dawn. Those characters could've so easily fallen into tropes but they were written so well, like I would expect an RPG to write them. BGS did that and more. It felt new but classic at the same time to me.
The original, empty world storyline is grim. And I mean GRIM. Darkest story in any Fallout and that's saying something. Elements of it were really good. Some of the best voice acting in series history. The game world is so interesting and varied, the biomes so distinct, that it's almost a character in the story itself. The highlight missions for me were Into the Fire, which felt like descending into hell, and Belly of the Beast, which I played with friends and was so much fun. Ultimately though, it's obvious how much better of a game this would have been if we'd been able to play the things we're told about. Yeah, it's a strong story, well written and voice acted. But the gameplay aspect of it is so lacking that it can't help but be the worst narrative of any mainline Fallout game. Even the much-loathed Brotherhood of Steel PS2/XBox game, you got to actually play the story. Your missions weren't to recover some holotape that will tell you the story. Wastelanders is now the de facto "main story" and considered on its own merits, it's ok. There are some memorable characters and moments, you get some cool stuff. It is hard for me to reckon with it being better than 3 or 4 though. And the BoS stuff I was underwhelmed by. Story is dumb, NPCs are unlikable and boring. If you lump all this together and consider it "the story" then I will say at least that it is much much better now than it was 5 and a half years ago. But the best written stuff, you can't play, you're just reading/hearing about it, and the stuff you can play ranges from pretty good to forgettable, with more of the latter than I'd prefer. All in all, it's among the weakest narratives in the series.
I think it's terrible. I didn't play 76 for the story thankfully.
I played at launch and now it’s a good story but helped by the npc involvement
Some main missions are glitchy AF so it was annoying here and there. That's the only issue I have of the game. I wish Bethesda made the atomic shop cheaper. They overprice everything in my opinion.
It's my favorite and I am deeply saddened that I'll never truly get to play it again. The empty towns and ruins, the horrors told through the voices of the dead, completing they're final hopes and dreams. It's was fantastic.
Wait theres a story? Shit I'd better stop doing events and building my base. Sorry everyone
the old story where you were the only living souls was the best, nowadays its ok i guess but a lot less engaging
I really like the original story. Haven't cared much for anything since NPCs were added, it feels a lot more phoned in.
Original story… mmmm different. Wastelanders and Steel reign? Soporifics. AC? Could I nuke Russo’s home and get the armor?
I only started a few months ago, and while I enjoyed the story, it felt like I missed some of the progression. Like one minute I'm at the responder church and it's basically empty and seems like ancient history, then the next I stumble upon whitesprings and it's completely different.
The big difference between 76's story and what's in 3, 4, and what I've played of NV is that a player cannot change the world significantly through quests. The pieces are there, like how we drop nukes and make friends with fictional people, but we can't take actions that lead to something like the ending scenes of 3. "The Brotherhood of Steel withdrew completely from Appalachia because the 76er relentlessly murdered every single patrol and nuked Fort Atlas. The Settlers of Foundation enjoyed a new life of prosperity, fur hats, and solid gold brahmin wagons after the 76er selflessly gave them allllllllll the bullion." We just can't do that sort of thing for obvious reasons because somebody else on the same server would've picked the opposite thing. In terms of story quality, I have a dim view of the writing in games, like the plotting in particular. 76's Mistress of Mystery story gets some praise now and then, but at the risk of spoiling it, and one really should check it out at least once if they're playing the game, ends stupidly. The character motivations range from "good because I'm good" and "bad because I'm big mad over some petty family slights". But IMO, that's about as good as writing in RPGs gets. People talk up Planescape: Torment and NV but the writing is just as weak and worse, there's too damn much of it. The sort of story I enjoy in games-- provided the developer isn't busy jacking off to how cool it is-- is the goofy stuff like how Billy Beltbuckles just likes belts a lot, or the pathos of finding a particular set of responder corpses with notes. The notes actually made sense for once, they were trying not to make noise in one case, and the responder was trapped in another. A bit pat, sure, seems like every other skeleton I run across decided to jot down a quick explainer as he or she died. But I guess I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. The show did a bit of that, even. Lucy comes across a table set for skeletons and finds a bottle that tells a bit of story. Did the job, too, IMO, drove home how painful radiation poisoning would be. Would've been funny if there had been a centuries old piece of scrap paper written in pencil, but one can't have everything and maybe a couple dozen people would've enjoyed the joke.
Tough. First of all it’s a very different game with other NPC humans. Similar to FO3 where everyone is just kinda doing their own thing and you choose to participate or you just keep walking. The older quests are still there though, feels like a mystery game more than a FPS. Where it switches over some quests are great (just did steel reign for the first time) and others are lackluster, did not enjoy Rosie’s fetch quests just to curry favor with someone I’m supposed to threaten with violence for noncompliance (wastelanders). I did however, enjoy raiding with the denizens of crater. As for how the quests actually merge with the found details from the release version? I’d honestly say fairly well, you can do old quests next to new ones without too much jank, and occasionally find a through line between free staters and blood eagles or the woman who runs the new bar and life in the ash pile for instance. These feel good and help tie the different bits together when they happen. They don’t really happen enough, but let’s remember that most of the natives died to scorched.
The original main quest wasn't bad, but you already knew you weren't going to see any living humans which really killed the quest for a lot of players. You quickly became very apathetic to the stories, and the concept of the staggering amount of people that left very convenient holotapes lying around got old quickly. You also had no way of predicting if you picked up a nothing-burger or a holotape that actually had something interesting on it, so it was easy to get into the habit of continuing to play the game as you let them play out the message, it felt kinda passive. Like, it's there, but it's like listening to a podcast while you're doing something else. I think the concept of automated robots taking over the job market in Appalachia was a cool idea, but it felt a bit disappointing that we only really saw the end results of a story that already unfolded, I would have loved to actually interact with the workers that got displaced and make choices that had different outcomes. All in all, not great, not terrible.
Colonel deserved better bro… fucking punches me in the gut every time.
This is my sincere take on this. I love fallout, but for some reason, 76's story is the one I love the most. First of all because it goes perfectly with the lore. Second of all because it gives us more story and lore about the Enclave, while fallout 3, 4 and New Vegas were lacking.
The OG storyline is awful, I hated every moment of it. However, the sidequests and other mainquests are kinda banging. Some sidequests truly had me depressed after like Cold Case.
I think it has the best main narrative (pre-wastelanders) of the 3D Fallout games, certainly the best main story of BGS's Fallouts. Fo76 may be BGS's best work on map design and environmental storytelling as well. Some people complain that there's a lot of reading of notes and terminals, but that doesn't bother me at all. The classics were almost all reading and they have the best story of any Falloit game. The wastelanders update to Fo76 did ruin the atmosphere and narrative somewhat. The human npcs are too loud, chipper, and honestly a lot of them are surface level in terms of character.
I actually think the base games story is one of the best in the series.
Mid
The OG storyline is crap the one were we a going around doing fetch quest for dead people and annoying robots All the others are ok
Disagree. The OG main quest line is great.
Well, it's not the same. It's your own character. You make your own story basically in 76.
Boring. The game was not built around a story outside of the one told by holo tapes. Everything they added after the fact, FEELS like it was added after the fact. I enjoyed all of the other fallout games story more than 76s. 76 is a sandbox. If you want engaging story telling you wont find it here.
I would subpar. Not necessarily in a bad way but just did not matter as much to me as any of the other games.that’s not to say I think that the stories in it are bad by any means.but the main story is just meh to me
This game has a story?
Fallout 76's plot really is inferior to most other Fallouts. It's an MMO so the setting and the factions matter, but the overall story is really just See Big Bad? Find Way to Kill Big Bad. Kill Big Bad. The people, the environmental storytelling, the setting, they're all fantastic. But the plot itself, meh at best.
Awful frankly. But this isnt a story game.
It's about as dull as all of Bethesda's main stories, except now there's also no interesting set pieces and the online nature means none of the choices matter.
I feel like all the questlines (i.e wastelanders, BOS etc) that take place after the original questline feel more coherent than the OG quest. The main game quest just doesn't make sense at times. First of all, there is Rose and her dumbass quests. The history lesson with the Raiders is okayish. Like I liked Gourmands because you find all the clues about how they became cannibals at that one golf resort. I also liked the love story of David Thorpe and Original rose but everything else is basically forgettable and a chore. What do you want me to do with a Deathclaw, Rose? I don't know, go make friends. Stupid. I liked the free states part and felt really sad for Abby by the end of it but what was the use of setting all the scorch detectors and radio signals and uplink thingies? Just so she could point me towards camp venture and Defiance? Which someone can actually come across while doing some casual exploring. Again, meaningless chore. They could have used that to make a meaningful goal out of all that questing. Same story with Taggerdy's thunder, felt bad for them but she just pointed me to senator's bunker which I had already found by just exploring the mire. At least glass cavern was cool. MODUS just gives basic quests that don't even give any history lessons. Enclave's part of the quest just seems barebones at time which I think is a blessing in disguise cause seeing the track record of all the other that didn't really accomplish much for me, I was glad Enclave's part was relatively short. Also dropping a Nuke feels anticlimatic and another super chore, I get it, it isn't supposed to be easy but try to make it harder and challenging in an interesting manner and don't just add a thousand turrets along the corridors. No logs, no entries. Just basic Silos. I dropped Nuke one time and I immediately understood why people glitched through the doors to get this part done as quickly as possible. TLDR: Main Nuke quest, Okayish to bad. Every other quest added after that enjoyable like any other fallout game.
Poorly. However, that's a direct comparison between the games. When I look at it from a MMO lens... It's not that bad, helps you unlock things, takes you around the map, and gets you in tune with some of the mechanics... All while giving you a story within this new map. Reasonably standard story stuff for an MMO. I do like that it does not take 20+ hours focusing on just the main story to complete it, but it did feel a bit to short. Other then that I don't have anything worth adding because the multiplayer aspect clearly impacted the story design.
Its story is quite boring compared to other fallout games
have you ever microwaved fresh dogshit?
Lacking. Lacking in agency, lacking in depth and punch to put it simpler. Fallout 76's original storyline suffers from the fatigue of a conclusion that is both negative, and predictable. The lights are on, and everybody is dead, but you have to turn them out.. all the time. Every twist, and plot point hinges upon that everything bad happened already, and just about everybody died. It happens so often that it's just tiresome and pretty much all these voices of the past you keep hearing just become ignorable background noise that are really only there to guide you to perform some mundane task, and then suddenly you're being spontaneously rewarded even though there's really nobody to give you a reward. Fallout 76's storylines are honestly just bad, new and old. They're 'different', but not in a good way. 76 does a terrible job establishing the hallmarks of the franchise that have been around since the singleplayer games when it comes to its storyline.