Bethesda Thought It Was 'Infallible' Before Fallout 76 Launch, Says Former Design Director

nanoUFO@sh.itjust.worksmod to Games@sh.itjust.works – 194 points –
Bethesda Thought It Was 'Infallible' Before Fallout 76 Launch, Says Former Design Director - IGN
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Did they just ignore that Fallout 4 wasn't exactly universally praised at launch?

It also wasn't universally hated. It came out to a pretty decent reception. Mixed with the normal response to Bethesda bugs.

76 was universally panned. Super buggy, to pvp oriented, none of the story that people wanted from fall out, over filled with bad micro transactions. It was a hollow shell, and the shell wasn't all that good looking.

It wasn't hated, but faint praise for a main release of one of your biggest IPs is pretty far from infallible. Alarms should have been going off, but they were ignored.

Stop being so disingenuous. It has an 87 on metacritic. It came out to massive acclaim.

Yes it got a full media blitz. That doesn't mean it was well received by players. You can look at the breakdown by time on steam and see significant negative reviews at release. It improved over time.

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And at the start it has 0 NPC's. The story was told through notes and computers.

There was a good bit of story in 76, though? I quite liked the storyline where you take up the mantle of a radio drama heroine after finding out what happened to the previous holders of the title and breaking into their secret lair.

Or, I dunno, does it not count as story because most of the important events have already happened? Maybe it's "lore." I had a good time with it, anyway.

If I recall correctly, most of the story and lore was added post launch

There were no NPCs at launch. Maybe some talking robots that's it, no humans.

Wastelanders update did fix that and made it more interesting. Still has that shitty rng card based skill system.

it's RNG at first but after level 50 you can select new Perk cards and make your build whatever you want.

The problem with 76 isn't even the story to me, I thought it was decent, it's the lack of endgame content. I love the fallout world, and have around 1300 hours into 76, but I don't play anymore because there's nothing worth doing.

On the contrary, I think it was by far the most beautiful Fallout game. It wasn't just green and brown and had gorgeous scenery instead.

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Yep, it speaks to how out of touch they are in their bubble.

Maybe it came along at the right time in my life, but Fallout 4 has got to be in my top 2-3 games ever.

The atmosphere in 4 is unlike almost anything I’ve played before or since. The story is great fun and I loved the settlement-building - it gave the game a sort of second life as a fairly chill building game once the story was complete.

Fallout 76 was just poorly judged and clunky. The multiplayer aspect ruined it. Although with that said, I did enjoy the C.A.M.P. idea. That was a good mechanic.

People can argue whether it's as good as the previous fallout games, but it was in no way a failure. I quite enjoyed it too, and it being not as good as 3 or NV doesn't mean it's down in the gutter with 76.

I used to visit no mutants allowed so folks talking up fallout 3 to me is always strange.

Same thing for me. Fallout 4 must be the Bethesda game I spent the most time with.

I don’t love it like new vegas, but new vegas was above and beyond. 4 was its own thing and damn good

My problem with 4 was that I didn't identify with the protagonist much. The world was great but the main story arc was pretty cringe. There's a million ways to do a revenge arc and they tried to be like "oh millennials all have kids now so let's do that" and it just missed the mark.

I get the feeling that there is something like a "look at them laughing with us!" when really we are laughing at them, kinda situation... you know?

Like they think that so many mods being made is because we love their games, when a majority of mods are really the fans fixing shit that shouldn't be broken in the first place.

It sure comes from a place of love, perhaps, but it shouldn't be happening to such an extent in the first place! I shouldn't need a UI mod to play Bethesda games! Not should there ever be not one, but several Unnofficial Patches!

I still refuse to purchase or play it because it removed specific dialogue. The dialogue options were my favorite part of 1 and 2 and were huge parts of the world building and character progression in the world.

I get the move to 3D and real-time voicing makes that beyond prohibitive, but that was one of a few reasons I played through F2 over a hundred times and F3 twice. (NV three or four times)

I get it. I just think ultimately FO4 is its own thing and either it's for you or it isn't. Nothing wrong with not being interested!

It wasn't "universally praised" but it had generally positive reviews when it was released. Fallout 76 was panned.

Generally positive, but the negatives were pretty big things you had to look past.

I remember people bitching about skyrim in 2011 too.

Internets's gonna Internet.

FO4 got a little flack, but overall it was very well received. You can see the reviews for yourself. Most of them are pretty high.

It was on the lower end of favorable, lots of 8s about 10% of professionals being mixed. That's not well received. Steam was about 75% positive, that's not glowing reviews. It's a good, but not great game. That's great for a random indie title or a yearly release, but for once a decade franchise title, it's not good.

  • IGN: 9.5
  • PC Gamer: 88
  • Metacritic: 87 critical, 6.8 User (game was very divisive for the old fans in particular so that's not unusual IMO. You can see reviews swing wildly there with sub-5's and 9-10 both all over the place)
  • Steam: is not 75%. I am not sure where you're going that. It's 83% all time, 89% recent, which I find very interesting actually.

You're welcome to throw out all of the above if you don't like the sites for whatever reason, but if you could show 3-4 other examples from sites you'd consider valid if you take with issue the above I'd appreciate it. They were the top hits and all are major-known sites, that's about it. I just don't want to get bogged down in a source argument.

I mean, it kinda was. It had the biggest midnight launch of the entire franchise. Stellar reviews across the board. Insane online coverage.

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