Bethesda made the attempt to wade into live-service, online multiplayer gaming seven years ago with Fallout 76. The Fallout franchise had primarily been made of RPGs up until that point, with the last three titles being of the open world variety. This was a huge shift for the franchise.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a good one. While Fallout 76 has improved since launch, it hasn’t reached the heights it needed to. It didn’t get a Cyberpunk 2077-esque revival. The game was initially criticized for bugs, a lack of content, and the aforementioned shift away from what had made a Fallout game a Fallout game.
The former issues are one thing, but the latter didn’t have to be an issue. In fact, it’s why it was initially a noble attempt on Bethesda’s part. The premise of Fallout 76, which is that players can all live, survive, and do missions in the Fallout universe, is utterly brilliant. It’s a shame the actual execution hasn’t been.
Fallout 76 Should Have Been So Much More
The core idea of Fallout 76 is excellent. This is a vast, sprawling universe with endless possibilities, one that gamers everywhere would surely love to spend time in. Instead of being limited to a single character’s storyline in a game, this would give players ample freedom within the Fallout universe. They could play as themselves or some created character in the world they know and love. The possibilities are endless, and that is why Bethesda was not wrong for giving it a shot.
Sadly, Bethesda just missed the mark and has been unable to really get things going since. The game is better now on a technical level, but the gameplay is still lacking, and it just hasn’t caught on. For a franchise that has now gone a decade since its last story-driven game, it’s really sad there’s not something better right now.
This also speaks to Bethesda’s overall lack of quality lately. DOOM: The Dark Ages and the Oblivion remaster might showcase that Bethesda is somewhat back to form, but Fallout 4 wasn’t without detractors, and Starfield was a huge misfire.
On GG, which is a sort of Letterboxd for video games, it was one of the five most-abandoned games in 2024. Hopefully, they’ve moved past it, but the inability to get Fallout 76 to a better state today remains a black mark on their resume.
It is similar to Red Dead Online, which was basically Rockstar’s attempt at the same thing. Being able to live in the universe of a beloved game series as your own character is so brilliant, but neither Rockstar nor Bethesda has been able to pull it off. GTA Online was handled better, but it’s still a massive drop in quality from the main Grand Theft Auto titles.
On Bethesda’s part, some of the wounds might be self-inflicted. They put the game together with really bad graphics and very little content. Players complained about the lack of a narrative, but a multiplayer game of this nature can’t really have one. It should be about leveling up and completing missions, but even that wasn’t handled very well.
It is unlikely that there’s anything that can be done to fix Fallout 76. At this point, all these years later, the game is what it is. Bethesda had their chance to come back from the dead, but didn’t, so don’t expect anything to change. At some point, Fallout 5 is coming, and Bethesda will probably stick to single-player narratives for the rest of time after this failure.
That’s particularly disappointing because it means there will probably never be an honest attempt a Fallout 76-style game again. Bethesda tried and failed, and there’s no way a big developer can afford to fail again. Fallout is a wildly rich world full of lore, but players will really only be able to have high-quality experiences within it in the mainline games.
Someday, some developer will be able to take the impressive world they’ve created and allow players to inhabit it all together at once, progressing as they want and doing what they like at any point. Unfortunately, that really hasn’t happened just yet, and that’s the real shame of Fallout 76: what it could’ve been.
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