Just One Thing: Fallout 76
Welcome to the first installment of Just One Thing, a potentially ongoing series of articles in which, hopefully without whinging, I plan to talk about just one thing that I would love to change about a game I am playing. I came up with the oh-so-clever title several weeks ago, and then proceeded to completely neglect this blog while spending every available minute playing Diablo III: Eternal Collection and Red Dead Redemption 2. I could have come up with something I would change about either of those games for the purpose of writing about it if I had bothered, but the truth is that I was having far too much fun with the former and spending too much time trying to find the fun in the latter. So, Fallout 76.
True story: About a month ago I started writing a blog entry about why Fallout 76 was the first game in the post-apocalyptic series that I have not cared enough about to follow coverage of, much less preorder. The more I heard about it during the beta, the less interested I became, but then—during a moment of madness a day or two after its release—I decided that I wanted to see it for myself and bought the digital version. I am not sure what I expected to find when I emerged from Vault 76 for the first time, but I think it is fair to say that I have been pleasantly surprised.
The fine folks over at Bethesda deserve a lot of the credit, naturally, but most of the credit for the fun that I have been having goes to the small group of friends I have ended up playing and group-chatting with during every session. Emerging from the vault for the first time, still fumbling with the controls and trying to figure out what Fallout 76 is, I was immediately greeted by a RL friend of mine who gave me a few pointers, a bag full of ammo, and an outfit far more becoming than the standard Vault 76 jumpsuit. This is not intended to be a diary of my experiences in Fallout 76, so I will attempt to get back on track shortly, but suffice to say my friends have been incredibly helpful and I doubt that I would be enjoying the game nearly as much if I was playing solo, as I had assumed I would be.
Maybe a dozen or so hours into my Fallout 76 adventure, my focus has temporarily shifted from completing story quests and side missions to establishing a “camp” for myself. The system for building it is similar to that in Fallout 4 except that it is much more limiting. I could write about countless things that I would change about Fallout 76, touching almost every facet of the game, but right now the thing that really has me irked is the lack of an option to place “junk” objects in and around camps. I can build shelves, but it is impossible to put anything on them. I can build a basketball hoop, but there is no way to place a basketball nearby. I can collect a surprising variety of teddy bears and other stuffed animals in the wasteland, but my only options are to keep them in my inventory or to break them down into crafting items. You get the idea.
It is odd to me that player creativity is being stifled in this way when, for the first time in the series, their creations actually stand a good chance of being discovered by others in-game. I have already happened upon a handful of player camps that I found truly inspiring; houses and huts that really looked like they belonged in the locales where they were built and which, on occasion, had me questioning whether or not they were even player-created until I located the giveaway C.A.M.P. units located at each of them. I found a red farmhouse with an adjoining treehouse that was so masterfully assembled that I literally tore down my own camp about an hour later to start over. Imagine what players capable of creating camps like that could do if they were afforded access to the same kinds of tools that were in Fallout 4!
So I guess this is where I say it: If I could change just one thing about Fallout 76 it would be to give players the same camp creation tools that were already available in Fallout 4. I want to experiment with environmental storytelling and filling my house with crap so that my humble abode does not feel sterile compared to the rest of the structures in the game. If by some miracle you are reading this though Bethesda, do feel free to fix the numerous far more serious issues plaguing the game first. Cheers.
