Fallout 76 - B.E.T.A

 I was given a B.E.T.A code by someone in a FB group I am in. I sadly missed the weekend B.E.T.A since I was at ThyGeekdom Con but I did get to play for 2 hours the day before and then I got to play for about 3 hours today. In that 5 hours I learned enough about the game, and fell in love with it enough that I am going to buy the game.

So let's start with this because I see this a lot...FALLOUT 76 IS NOT LIKE FALLOUT 4. It's a MMO with a main story line and side quests as well as events and looks like daily quests as well. It's still just as much fun as Fallout 4, Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas but with a twist. Again, this is a MMO and it doesn't have just single offline player (or so it seems). If you're looking for a game like Fallout 4 that has a main story line, not MMO, and single player...please move on.

I'm going to be walking through the game as I have played it so far. I think I made it to level 9 before the final moment and the server shut down. So I will walk through what has happened thus far and my experience.

Beginning of the game you create the character with a Identification Card

So at the beginning once you start the game after the main menu, you are still greeted with a cut scene talking about the Vault, the bombs, and so on. You enter your character creation and then get to take a picture for your Identification Card (I guess it's like a player card, I don't know). You walk around Vault 76 while listening to the Overseer talk, and you go through this little walk through and grab some necessities before exiting the vault, including your C.A.M.P (which I didn't get to play with a lot sadly nor did I get to grab screenshots of it). Once you exit the vault, you meet your first enemy, a Liberator? I think that was what it was. That was also the first glitch I encountered. I punched a few, ran to find a gun, turned to punch another one and up it flew. Never figured out what happened to it, but I didn't stay around to find out either.

Landview Lighthouse Sign

Wavy Willards Park

I bounced around with the quests honestly but I did stay on the main overseer quest at first because it's sort of like a introduction and tutorial to what you have to do in the game. I ended up getting sidetracked by some random question in the middle of it all and then ended up just running around the world. Exploring different things. Looking at the site of West Virginia. I've never been so no idea if that is what it looks like but we can go with it. One thing that really bothered me and my girlfriend the most was how the Overseer says "Appalachia." That was annoying.

Outside Mothman Museum

Inside Mothman Museum

If you know anything about legends of West Virginia then you know about the Mothman Prophecy. There is a museum there, but sadly I didn't realize I had to learn how to lock pick even in the slightest and thus...I had no knowledge in that or even a bobby pin to begin with. So I just looked in the window and went from there. Once I actually purchase the game, I'll work more on getting in that museum as I have studied the legend of the Mothman and done research on it. Plus I want to actually go looking for him in the game. Why not?

Perks System

How you level up and gain perks is more like a trading card system, and I haven't really understood it yet, maybe because I just blow through those things and I was really wanting to play more of the game than worrying about leveling up at the moment, especially since I wasn't getting the game right at its release (or maybe I will, I don't know) and not sure if my data can transfer over. Even if not, I want to start the game over so I can actually play without rushing to play the game in a certain time period. So for now, I wasn't really fond of that. I am iffy on the map and how it looks, at some points it's really fun and at the same time it's hard to locate places because of how it's set up.

Fast traveling seems to cost you Caps, at least to some areas, and then it varies on how much it costs to travel from one area to the other. Like at times I paid 25-27 Caps and there were times it was like 7 Caps. A few events I tried to travel to cost me about 40 Caps. So it ranges some, expect that and if you want to fast travel, make sure you don't want to buy anything. Which brings me to the vendors. I had a very hard time finding someone to buy my junk, and when I did, it wasn't much. Some things I know in Fallout 4 would cost more than in Fallout 76. Am I comparing the two games right now? No. What I'm doing is making it KNOWN that these games are VERY different. Now could all this change when the game actually releases? Who knows. The only place I could find with a vendor that I came across was the first town you come to which starts a First Responder quest, which almost reminds me of Garvey but not as annoying, at least now what I did.

The VATS is crap to me. If you're expecting a big Fallout 4 slow down time thing, you're wrong. I only used VATS twice in Fallout 76 and just stuck without it after I realized why everyone was complaining about VATS in Fallout 76.

My character playing on the guitar

One thing I did find interesting is that there is instruments in the game and when you play them long enough you get a bonus effect! I played the guitar long enough that it gave me a "Well Tuned" effect. Speaking of effects, if you take a lot of Rads, you get a mutation and it does different things. I ended up turning carnivore.

Dead Scorched glitched standing up, no way around him

There are still a lot of glitches and bugs in the game, and Bethesda has a lot to do before the release on the 14th. Will that stop me from purchasing the game? Absolutely not.






I didn't have any issues with PvP or asshole people who wanted to just up and kill you for whatever reason. I had two run ins that I thought for sure I was going to get killed in. Some random player came out of no where during one of my missions and started to hit me with his gun. I hit him a few times back but then he waved at me and then left me alone. Second run in was during a wave of Scorched at a workshop I was trying to claim, a player came with a bounty over his head. Apparently it's a thing, did I mention that? Anyways, he aimed his gun at me as I had my gun drawn and I thought for sure he was going to shoot me but instead, he shot past me and killed the enemy behind me. We both gave a thumbs up, and fought off the enemy together before he ran off and did whatever. I accidentally hit a player while attacking some scorched and he just looked at me and waved, so I waved back. Sorry for whoever I hit, I wasn't trying to attack you. Thank you for not killing me though.

Child's bike next to an adult bike

Memorial

In Fallout 4 I came across a few things that made the game feel deep. I actually had turned to my girlfriend in one point and said, "I know this is a game, but think about it. These people had a life before the bombs dropped and Bethesda added some deep feels with some of this stuff." That was when I came across a moment in Fallout 76 that was some real deep feels that actually made me a little sad. The two pictures to the left of this shows what I stumbled across and what made it a little hard to do much in this particular house. I took just about everything that I could in this house except I left this alone. The house was haunting to begin with and some of the stuff in there showed that whatever happened, was awful. If there isn't a quest for this, there should be, because I would love to have a quest to figure out what happened to this family and help them. But that's just me.





I know I may have missed a lot in this review, I tried to go back through my mind and think about it all but I'm not sure if I missed anything or not.

Any questions about the game that you think I might have missed, feel free to ask and I will let you know if I know about it or not!

All the pictures on this post are screenshots that I took within the game, I don't own any rights to them. Below are some more screenshots from in game.