We've been playing the Fallout 76 beta on PlayStation 4, and to be frank, it's not looking particularly good. Being a multiplayer adaptation of Bethesda's beloved franchise, the game's no stranger to scrutiny even at this early stage, but after spending around eight or so hours with the beta, that scrutiny is, unfortunately, starting to seem warranted.
But first, let's at least go over what we like about Fallout 76 so far. For as graphically ugly as it can look, the game's open world retains that trademark Bethesda intricacy. It feels like each environment has been meticulously crafted and curated, and there are little secrets everywhere. It doesn't seem quite as densely populated as Fallout 4's post-apocalyptic Boston, but there's an openness to West Virginia that's surprisingly liberating. General exploration has been the high point of the beta.
Bethesda's creations have always been a joy to explore alone, but we're sure many of you have thought about what it would be like to travel around one of these open worlds with a friend or two. Obviously Fallout 76 makes this a reality, allowing you to easily team up with your pals or total strangers who just happen to cross your path. Having another player by your side in a Fallout game undeniably feels weird at first, but as with any multiplayer title, adventuring as a group can add a lot of flavour to the experience.
Taking down hordes of ghouls or teaming up to tackle a public event that sees you fend off waves of enemies is fun, and there's just something strangely refreshing about not having to brave the nuclear wasteland alone. That said, the tone of Fallout 76 is completely different to the tone of past Fallout games. There's a beauty to the desolation that's found in Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Fallout 4 -- a feeling of hopelessness that Fallout 76 fails to capture. It's partly down to the fact that you've got other players running around punching each other for laughs, but there's something about the bright colour palette and lush vegetation of Fallout 76 that makes it feel very un-Fallout.
To be brutally honest, Fallout 76 too often feels like a mod for Fallout 4. There's a tackiness to it that's hard to properly explain, but the bottom line is that it certainly doesn't live up to the billing of a brand new Fallout game -- especially one that's releasing in 2018, three whole years after Fallout 4.
And this is where the problems really start adding up. On a fundamental level, Fallout 76 has barely moved on from Fallout 4. The shooting perhaps feels a tiny bit tighter, but it's still clunky at the best of times, resulting in combat that feels seriously dated. Character movement and animations are still wonky, enemies still have dodgy hitboxes, and the artificial intelligence remains as stupid as ever. All of this was passable in 2015, when it was all embedded in an expansive, engaging single player experience complete with role-playing and an addictive gameplay loop, but in 2018, it's the core of a multiplayer, shared world title, and it's so, so far behind the curve.
Even V.A.T.S., the slow motion aiming system from previous games, can't save the clunky combat. Since Fallout 76 is a multiplayer title, you obviously can't have V.A.T.S. stop-starting the action, and so it works like a real-time auto aim mechanic. That sounds fine on paper, but in practice it's horribly unwieldy. Erratic enemies like ghouls, which duck and dive as they charge towards your position, make your hit percentage fluctuate to extreme degrees, to the point where you're better off just aiming manually. It's borderline broken, and it's even worse when you're trying to hit opposing players.
Speaking of opposing players, the player-versus-player system in Fallout 76 is unconvincing. If someone wants to start a fight they'll just keep shooting at you until you lose your cool and fire back, resulting in a mess of twitchy movement and unreliable hit detection. An established first person shooter this ain't, and it really shows.
We didn't get into as many scraps with other players as we'd have liked to, however. For as much concern as there is about players purposefully trying to ruin the experience for others, the map's so large that you'll be lucky -- or perhaps unlucky -- to find another of the 20-odd vault dwellers currently occupying the same server. One of the only times we actually ran into another person was when we visited a specific location as part of a main quest.
The quests aren't up to scratch either, by the way. Fallout 76 doesn't have any non-playable characters to talk to -- every human that you meet is another player -- so the stories that we came across were all told through letters, notes, and voice recordings. Sadly, it's just as boring as it sounds. Some of these recordings drone on and on and on about past events, but without an actual character to interact with, it's so easy to just blank out and follow the objective markers.
Maybe things get more in-depth as the game goes on -- we can't possibly say based on the beta -- but what we do know is that the finished product absolutely must step up its technical performance. While the beta isn't as game-breakingly bad as we thought it might be on PS4, it still runs pretty poorly. The frame rate suffers regular dips and drops hard during big fights in crowded areas. When entering a new location or a new region of the map, the beta has a tendency to freeze for a second or so as if it's loading. For a game that looks this dated, and in a year when we've seen the open world genre push forward with titles like Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Red Dead Redemption 2, this level of technical performance is embarrassing.
Now, we know that a multiplayer game is totally new territory for Bethesda, but let's face it, when has even a single player Bethesda game ever ran smoothly? The Fallout 4 engine feels like it's on the brink of falling to bits to begin with, and now Bethesda's added multiplayer functionality on top of it? We've always said that it's a recipe for disaster.
Based on our time with the Fallout 76 beta, Bethesda has a lot of work to do. While there is fun to be found here in exploring what looks to be another memorable post-apocalyptic setting, there are just too many issues to ignore. The moment-to-moment gameplay feels almost no different to what Fallout 4 offered three years ago, and technical problems are a near constant annoyance. The finished game really has to be better than this, but is there even time to improve things ahead of launch? We'll have to wait and see, but we're not holding our breath.
Have you tried the Fallout 76 beta on PS4? What do you think of it? Are you looking forward to the full release? Take aim at some mutants in the comments section below.
Comments 58
do I smell a delay? doubt it lol..
I might buy this in a year for about 50p and wander around alone, convincing myself it's a single-player game.
I'm glad it's terrible and I hope it fails.
Stick to what you're good at, Bethesda. There are precious few publishers churning out AAA single player releases as it is. Don't go chasing that live service dollar.
Remember the hashtag #SavePlayer1 by Bethesda at last year's Game Awards? They should have listened better to themselves I guess.
From reading this hands-on, it's become painfully obvious why Bethesda needed to put out that 'help us' letter last month.
I played it on the 30th for a couple of hours and it just weird, the world will still be good to explore but having no NPCs will kill it, reckon itll be half the launch price in the new year
Didn’t Bethesda threaten Sony if they didn’t allow cross platform play? Now I’m reading reports about PC players getting a speed hack by simply modifying the code to unlock framerates? No thanks.
I love Fallout, but when they said multiplayer in the original reveal, I was out. Then when I saw the initial gameplay footage coming out, I couldn't believe how dated everything looked. The game seriously looks like a late-gen PS3/Xbox 360 game. Then all the framerate issues made Fallout 4 look like a technical marvel in comparison. At the end of the day though, graphical fidelity is less important to me than overall gameplay. The VATS changes and lack of NPCs totally kills it for me. I really hope I wind up being wrong though.
This is pretty much a summing up of my own thoughts, especially the pointlessness of VATs and the way the games story is fed to you. One of the main things I felt though was an immense sense of loneliness. I mean I know that Fallout is based in a wasteland and that there are other players, but the lack of any NPCs or notable story made the beta feel so incredibly empty. During my relatively small amount of time spent with the beta it seemed so impersonal and devoid of life or purpose.
Being multiplayer is enough to keep me away.
That said:
1) media folk always exaggerate things in my opinion
2) PushSquare is silly-picky when it comes to games ... again, in my opinion
I do agree that, visually, it looks like Fallout 4 but with multiplayer in it. We've been spoiled by the prettyness of several games since then. However, it is still in Beta, I'm sure they are focusing on the nuts and bolts before making it look nice.
im sure the money grab will more than make up for its shortcomings
Good luck Bethesda, I think people are over your bug-ridden games at this point. Sure, most of the die-hards will buy this, but everything I've read points to this release flopping big time.
Pretty much everything I expected. Pass... It's a shame because I love Fallout.
I’ve been playing the BETA on Xbox for over a week and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. Yea it’s not technically impressive by any means but it’s just fun being back in the Fallout universe. Exploring is fun. Coming across special weapons and items is fun, and stumbling upon other players and helping them with the hoard of ghouls attacking them is awesome. Setting up a camp is time consuming but pretty fun. I’ll be putting a lot of time into this game
Bethesda RPGs are only tolerable on mid-range to powerful PCs, and even there they're not terribly well-optimized.
And, of course, it's multiplayer focused, so it can jump down a well to begin with.
Sounds like it's better to save those caps.
Just delay it to be a next gen launch title and actually put enjoyable content in it and up the ante in the graphics and gameplay department. The way it’s sounding currently, I’m not buying this EVER.
I have a feeling this is gonna do some damage to their reputation. Hopefully enough that they actually build a good engine for Starfield to redeem themselves after this happens.
Really baffles me that there's no npc's in this.... Surly that would make the game more inviting...
Just give this franchise back to Obsidian, its wasted in the hands of Bethesda
"...so the stories that we came across were all told through letters, notes, and voice recordings. "
Ah yes, everyone's favorite way to tell stories in a game,
and they're all twice as long AND there are twice as many!
Oh dear. The idea of a multiplayer Fallout was off-putting to me from the get-go, but I've tried to give Bethesda the benefit of the doubt here. It just looks like a janky, sorry mess and it's a shame that it sounds so far removed from what I love about the previous entries.
mulitplayer no way for me glad i canceled my copy
@ShogunRok I do have one question that I've been meaning to ask for a while, and this article seems the most relevant in which to do so.
You say that this game looks "graphically ugly" right above an official, watermarked screenshot that looks really quite pretty (the abandoned street with the sunlight coming through the trees). Wouldn't it be a more effective demonstration of your experiences, and your criticism of the graphics, if you'd taken your own screenshots whilst playing and added them to the article? They say a picture says a thousand words, after all, and it'd match your narrative a little better.
This really isn't a criticism of how you guys choose to present your stories or your website. I just sometimes find that there's a juxtaposition between what you're trying to tell us, and what you're showing us. Of course, if there's some kind of rule that says you must use pre-approved official screenshots, or some other kind of answer you can't disclose, I apologise for asking and please just ignore me. Just curious, s'all.
Some People wanted Some MP/coop in the elder scrolls and fallout Well you have it with TES ONLINE and fallout 76,now leave the future elder scrolls and fallout games SP only.
ESO is seriously brilliant now but this just doesn't excite me at all.
Cancelled my order way back when they bribed all the 'influencers' at a swanky event, looked total crap. Still want the collectors edition helmet though, ugh.
I was worried before the beta.
Hopefully consumers will hit bethesda where it hurts this time and they will learn that releasing games in this state is simply unacceptable in 2018.
Bethesda keep releasing games using ps3 era engines. Utterly bug ridden and pretty ugly to look at. They really need to take a step back and start from the ground up. Fallout 4 was passable but no way deserving of the hype it got and this.. Well it sounds truly awful.
They could and should have done it like eso with a fallout skin and it would have been good if dated looking but this just seems dated looking and cobbled together to make some cash based on the Fallout name.
@RogerRoger That's fair, I totally get where you're coming from. It's a weird one because on one hand we want our articles to look nice, while on the other, we realise the screenshots may not be an accurate representation of the game in question. The former maybe sounds a bit "well, duh", but it's the simple truth.
It's also purely a matter of effort and time. While taking screenshots of our own and adding them to our articles isn't exactly difficult, it's not strictly something that we want to be spending our time doing when we could be working on something else. Not an excuse, just a factor.
I think in the case of Fallout 76 it's also just unfortunate that it happens to be a negative preview. But yeah, we can certainly look into providing our own screenshots if it's something people would rather see.
All of my interest in this game has long gone after Bethesda themselves basically said it wouldn't work properly at launch. Also why are there no npc's? Plenty of these types of games have them in
The gamebro engine is dead and should have been put behind the gaming barn and (bang) put to sleep forever. The amount of money they have made in the last 10 years with the multiple versions of Skyrim alone, they should have had enough cash and time to build a new engine for this game. Obviously Fallout 5 and the next Elder Scrolls are PS5 bound but if they don't upgrade the engine soon then sorry I won't buy any more games from them.
Go on YouTube and look for a guy called SkillUp he's just done a brief review of the Beta, and he even states that his mega 1080Ti PC could t even let him play at ultra at 1080p
Even though earlier Bethesda games have been visually OK in regards to open world design and detail, their character control and movement has always been and felt a generation behind. They really need to change or update their game engine, as after so many games and years, every game of theirs is starting to look and play exactly the same. I enjoyed Skyrim back when it was released but unfortunately that was their pinnacle.
My god we got a dislike button this is the real news I can finally dislike the stupid stuff all of us spew all the time.
Having never played a Fallout game before I tried the beta with an open mind. But man this game is ROUGH! I get that it's a beta but imo it looks and plays awfully. Definitely not a resounding way yo sell your game a week before it launches.
As opposed to how worried you weren't when it was announced. It is going to suck and they'll spend forever trying to No Mans Sky it into greatness before admitting defeat. Save your pounds, euros, yen or dollars.
@LegendOfStewart VATs is really strange when an enemy just keeps attacking redenders it premuch pointless
@Bad-MuthaAdebisi
Keep the stuff sell the game. 😁
I never liked Bethesda their games run terrible, have massive bugs which stay in the game even with different consoles and remasters plus they act all high and mighty. Maybe they should start fixing their games its so bad the community fixes the trainwrecks they call games on PC.
Where was all the talk of seriously dated combat in the Red Dead review? (Seriously Rockstar, what is this, 2003?)
@ShogunRok "Have you tried the Fallout 4 beta on PS4? What do you think of it? Are you looking forward to the full release? Take aim at some mutants in the comments section below."
Intentional or not this basically tells you how similar the games are lol
Bethesda has never made a good game, didn't expect that to change here.
Fallout broken at release - why is anyone surprised by this? Leave it a couple of years and it might come good. Honestly, I loved Fallout 3, disappointed with New Vegas and wasn't fussed by Fallout 4.
Think I'll play ESO for a little while longer.
I love it. To me it still has what makes Fallout so much fun and that is that you can do all sorts of weird poopoo and get a unique story at the end of it. For example last night I put on a tatty overcoat, construction hat and gas mask, ran up to other players and asked them to follow. Most were rightly scared silly and said no or ran away but anyone that did follow was met with a fully decked out camp of crafting tables and I gave them a bunch of goodies. I think the potential for great player made stories is still there and that's the thing I value most.
I've played about 8 or so hours of the beta also. Here's my honest and experienced review.
So I have the pc version beta, I've been playing on the highest graphic setting on an i7 quad core gtx 960 gpu so it runs at a smooth and speedy framerate. The problem firstly is that even with only 9 or so people in the server the lag and jitteriness make the game almost unplayable at times. The graphics aren't any better than fallout 4, they have just improved the shadows and occlusion a fraction I'd say..
The mission system is poor and as the review said the lack of npcs and other human enemies, characters etc it does lack that human element. When you first leave the Vault you are confronted by small robots shaped like nuka cola bottles and creatures called scorched, which are like crispy fried humanoids with guns and weapons. Not dissimilar to ghouls but with the cognitive ability to shoot at you and make odd noises. You get missions in the form of holotapes, computer messages and notes. You are expected to find people who turn up dead in some manner, you get some drivel about their story and then off you go across the open world. I barely saw another actual person in my server and when I did they tried to trade with me, then shoot me, but as they were only lvl 5 and I was lvl 9 I dispatched them quickly.
The shooting and vats is worse than fallout 4, as they've tried to improve the realism of the mechanisms and weapons, it's detracted from the physics. Unfortunately it seems Bethesda have tried to jump on the ESO style game, even the music sounds the same as skyrim or ESO. It seems rushed and clunky, the only semi improvement is the clothing and armour use, as you can put armor and clothes over one another. The building and home making part is lame though, you can't scrap everything and you have to fight other players to secure a workshop or choose to invite others to run the place with you.
When fighting large groups of enemies the whole thing almost stops entirely. Although this is a beta it's unlikely the improvements will happen before the 14th. They should of given us another new Vegas quality game instead it's like stolen ideas from gta, ESO and PUBG but done mediocre. Sad times.
@ShogunRok Thank you for such an honest answer to one of my random wonderingments.
You're right, you folks are primarily writers and fiddling around with screencaps could detract from that; perhaps it should be something you only consider if you're specifically calling out an issue with a game's visuals, as was the case here? Usually for previews or even reviews, it isn't an issue because "the game runs well and looks great" is more common than not nowadays.
Far be it from me to tell you how to do your jobs, mind, and sorry for not putting this in a private contact us / feedback message which I only realised I perhaps should've done when it was too late (always the way).
From the couple of hours I was watching last night the game seemed decent enough. Getting a group together will be a lot of fun. Being mulit-player as well it has a lot more mileage than single player games.
@Salt_AU Damn, your name is on point, eh?
@SKC_Diamond Whoops! I've fixed that now.
@RogerRoger Yeah I'd like to think this article is an outlier. I don't really like being negative about a game before it's released but you've gotta be honest!
@ShogunRok Well, that's everything I love about Push Square in one comment, right there. "We give anything and everything a chance, but we ultimately tell the truth."
Just reinforces how tragic Fallout 76 seems right now. Yikes.
I can overlook a lot of the issues you mentioned, but the one that stuck with me was the quests. There is no urgency or call to action to really drive the quests. I like exploring/scavenging but I can imagine that is only going to last so long without a real goal.
I remember when Bugtester Notworks blamed the poor performance of PS3's Fallout 3 on the memory configuration of the system. I wonder what their excuse is now that they have the same issues with 8GB of GDDR5?
In my opinion, instead of working on this crap, they should invest resources and time in creating a new, modern, engine for they rpg games.
I am not an expert, but why they couldn’t adapt the amazing Doom engine to an rpg open world game?
"The Elder Scroll VI will not be like Kingdom Hearts III". Yes, it will need another 3 months of patching after launch to function properly...
@SlabManly As per the community rules
Do not use profanity; Use of unsavoury language including profanity and swearing is not acceptable, please remember that this website has users of all ages.
So let's watch the language please.
Thanks for understanding
Fallout's Creation Engine is just a Subaru Impreza, It looks Okay and drives okay. The gear box has been modified for Fallout 4 and they put new Rimless Wheels on it and a new Exhaust. The Interior has been glossed up and it got a spray painting. But do you know what? It still just a souped up Subaru Impreza, and dose not cut it in 2018. There are new engines out there like the Ferrari 458 (unreal engine 4) which could be modified to suit the fallout universe. Just think what your greatest asset the Modding community could do with that engine, Bethesda? They saved most of your games and many were completely unplayable before the Modders fixed almost everything. I only played Fallout 4 in the summer because the graphics were so appalling, but that was fixed by Vivid Fallout all in one Mod by Hein84. Skyrim was also unplayable on the PC before it was heavily modified by the brilliant Modding Community on Nexus. It just looks like you finally killed the Goose that lays the golden egg. There is no way back for Bethesda. Do you really think you would get away with releasing The Elder Scrolls 6 on this sorry mess of an Engine. It will go down like a led Zepplin. The writing has been on the wall for quite some time, The top modder's were pointing this out to your company many years ago.
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