Just a couple of days after announcement and a few days before E3 when I write this about Bethesda Game Studio's newest effort in the Fallout franchise: Fallout 76
From the leaks we hear it will be a mixed single player and online multiplayer game which is a deviation from the franchise being single player only. This is the 'new direction' of the franchise for BGS and it is significant, just as the broken dialogue system of Fallout 4 is, but perhaps for different reasons. I do not play multiplayer games, save in a way that has me as a single player. Call me a misanthrope, but my early experiences with multiplayer games back in the '90s have left an impression and not a good one, thus I veered away from gaming for a good 15 years and only rejoined a few years ago. That is my bias, of course, and millions of people enjoy multiplayer games, and I recognize this as a fact, and as such there is a lot of money in the multiplayer community, if you can entice players to a new game. With the current scandals of monetization, microtransactions and loot boxes, there may be a greater scrutiny placed on new entrants to the field than has happened in the past where large AAA game companies felt they could hold back features, put in low payout randomization for paid goods, and generally restrict experience for characters to force players to purchase better weapons and equipment to 'stay competitive'. There is a lot of money to be taken in siphoning money from players for low rewards, high pay-in services in game worlds, and that is now starting to get backlash.
This is worrying as Fallout 76 comes on the heels of Bethesda's drive for Creation Club, which are essentially paid mods for new equipment, weapons, armor, skins, animals and the such like to 'enhance' single player games. Developers get paid for the content and then Bethesda reaps the profits. There has been backlash on this as single-player games from BGS already have a modding community working for free on their beloved games, and they do so for free (or ask for donations via other channels). It must be remembered that it is this community that works to fix BGS games so that they run smoothly, have bugs removed from them, and then sanitize the overall game experience with large scale unofficial patches as seen in the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4. To date no BGS game from its flagship franchises of the Elder Scrolls or Fallout has shipped relatively bug free, though it has worked very hard to make the Creation Engine more stable than its predecessors.
What this does do is bring up a question about Creation Club. If such content is offered for Fallout 76, then how does multiplayer mode handle it? It is to be remembered that these are assets purchased by an individual and not all individuals may have purchased the same assets. So are they frozen out of multiplayer mode, making it a more generic game mode for multiple players? Or are the allowed but only if all players have the purchased items? The former would be a good way to go so that everyone gets a level playing field in multiplayer mode (whatever form it takes). The latter, however, could be seen as a monetization scheme to try and get early adoption of useful (or even cut content) 'free' downloads for the first few weeks and then jack up the price of them once the game gets established. But beyond monetization, such a system (in either case) will not deal with an unofficial patch to the game well, if at all. Thus to have multiplayer mode may require freezing out 3rd party mods, entirely, and praying that BGS actually fixes the inevitable bugs that will crop up and continue to crop up over time. This is not a realm that BGS has ever been in, and after an initial large player base and play base dies down over a couple of years, most other game studios stop fixing problems in the games they shipped.
This is worrying due to the amount of intellectual work that has gone into past BGS games and the creation of new ideas, features, weapons and equipment by the modding community that later see those ideas woven into later games. Mods to put down settlements and take back the wasteland for Fallout: New Vegas can be seen as the beginning of the settlement system of Fallout 4. The integration of supply caches have precursors in the storage systems including cloud storage for both Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim. While Fallout: New Vegas did feature a form of survival mode it in no way compares to the multiple types of survival modes seen in Skyrim that were developed by modders. Unfortunately BGS didn't decide to extend the dialogue system, add in new modes of dialogue based on additional character features or abilities or even extend the types of weapons that would be canon in the Fallout universe to those that modders have created. Eliminating skills entirely and turning them into mere perks removes a level of customization and player agency where character builds were centered on skills to obtain perks, which also included ones that could allow base stats to be improved but all in the end to aiding the skills involved. Thus the opportunity for new skills with their own perks was eliminated in favor of the genericized perk tree. The concept of 'immersion' is broken at the start of Fallout 4 where the pre-war Sole Survivor has NO skills from the pre-war world that translate into the post-war world. Yet these are clearly individuals with experience and pre-war lives that must have such skills, or even just have some skills and abilities that are not available in the post-war world. By shelving skill trees the ability to make that pre-war experience a part of game play is also shelved.
Onto the minimal lore around Vault 76.
The game map for Fallout 3 was, by all accounts, something that started out as a much larger design space than what was shipped. The game play area was supposed to be nearly four times the size as what was shipped, which would lead to doubling the base size of the generally rectangular area on each side of it. Thus something like the Point Lookout DLC might have been just on the edge of the eastern game map if it extended that far into Maryland. Similarly Vault 76 might have been included if the game play area remained centered on the downtown DC area, meaning that the northwestern corner of the map would start to clip into West Virginia. When playing Fallout 3 there is a feeling that along the eastern, northern and western sides that a lot of places, marked and unmarked, are clustered together, while the northwestern corner feels somewhat desolate for all of it being pretty far away from major target zones for the great war.
This is part of Vault 76 being listed as under the purview of the DC regional zone for Vault-Tec at its national headquarters. It is possible to find all the other Vaults listed for the region except for Vault 76. If placed into a corner of the originally conceived Fallout 3 in the northwest, the lack of content there might be due to scrapping plans for exploring Vault 76. The listing indicates that it would be something that wasn't impossible to get to from the pre-war DC region during working hours, which would place it on a drive no longer than 4 hours long. That would easily include the eastern counties of West Virginia and even some small towns in the Shenandoah and Blue Ridge regions, as well as bordering both Maryland and Virginia. Those are not even a long drive from downtown DC, and further eastern counties along the WV and VA border could easily be included into the DC range of Vault-Tec.
While the location is interesting it is also problematical for Fallout 3, in that the Brotherhood of Steel had to come overland from the west to get to the DC region and their zone of marching, patrolling and scouting would easily cover this region, as well. Having relatively sophisticated technology for the post-war world, the BoS would have been liable, in fact likely, to run across any community started by Vault 76. That was the purpose of the Control Vaults, that is Vaults that have no experiments going on inside and are run normally with a scheduled opening time of 20 years after any major war.
Vault 3 kept its door closed due to the wishes of the Vault Dwellers and when they did open them it was to trade with the outside world for parts that were getting in short supply. The Vault Dwellers were killed by drug addicted raiders who then moved into the Vault which was suffering from flooding problems. It does not appear that a Garden of Eden Creation Kit was in Vault 3, although as a Control Vault it should have had some resources to help rebuild after the war. Yet those are not seen or talked about in Fallout: New Vegas. In fact no Vault in the Las Vegas region had a GECK, though that may be due more to the wishes of Mr. House than anything else.
Vault 8 opened its door after 10 years, used its GECK to remove the radiation from the surface and groundwater, and then formed the successful community of Vault City.
This brings up the question of the GECK and if Vault 76 had one. With a GECK as seen with Vault 8 and expanded upon in Fallout 3, the GECK has the ability to remove radioactive materials from a rather large area, purify water even down to deep ground water sources, and generally remove it from the environment. How, exactly, it operates is not known and chalked up to the super-science of the Fallout universe. Having one gives a massive leg up to Vault Dwellers looking to repopulate the nearby wasteland. Thus two game play situations for creating a game arise from this: one with a GECK and another without one. Yet the relative isolation from major target zones for WV may mean that the wasteland of Fallout 76 is not as heavily irradiated as in other regions of the Fallout franchise.
What can be said is that the BoS have no records in the Capital Wasteland of running across Vault 76 nor interacting with any major communities in that area in Fallout 3. Thus it is likely that Vault 76 did not succeed in its mission of rebuilding as it has no major or even minor influences on the BoS or even communities in Fallout 3. It is mentioned by no trading caravans although a successful community would surely be included on the routes of a few of them. Even relatively small and isolated communities that have a couple of families doing more than homesteading tends to get traders as such communities have demonstrated an ability to survive in the wasteland.
Super Mutants from Vault 87 make no mention of places outside the immediate Capital Wasteland and while they are very hardy for surviving in the post-nuclear world the geographic trek overland on foot to the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah regions might be just a bit too far for raiding parties to go. It must be remembered that these Super Mutants have no controlling factor behind them like The Master, and the concentration ability of eastern Super Mutants is quite limited. By the time Fallout 3 starts they have run out of FEV and are no longer able to make more of their kind out of humans or even abominations out of multiple creatures. With their numbers being limited early on in Vault 87 and the absolute need of new people to be put into FEV to make more of their kind, the Vault 87 Super Mutants would have remembered if there was a large and relatively healthy human population nearby, yet there is nothing like that in Fallout 3. This does not mean that can't show up in Fallout 76, but if they do their numbers will be small and limited, not vast and constantly repopulating.
Could Vault 76 be set so far into WV that it would be out of the range of the BoS patrols as they came across the country? Geographically that is problematical due to the DC Vault-Tec oversight of the Vault as part of its territory. Go too far away and it would fall into another district, possibly one in the Mid-West, so that eliminates the far western side of WV and much of the northwestern arm of the state.
The other organization that makes no mention of it in the records is The Enclave. The pre-war shadow government that featured the best, brightest, most wealthy and most well connected individuals who would go to designated points of safety to ride out the Great War, they must have had someplace other than Raven Rock in the DC region. In fact the US government had created a its own shelter for the US government in WV at the Greenbrier Hotel near Greenbrier, WV. This was made as a refuge for Congress, family and staff during the Cold War and was constructed in secret. In the Fallout universe it can be assumed that a similar facility may have been made and that it could be a refuge for The Enclave. What is to be remembered is The Enclave of Fallout 3 is the one that was defeated in Fallout 2 with its oil refinery platform destroyed by the Chosen One. The Enclave fled across the country and established themselves at Andrews AFB and Raven Rock. It is unknown how much in the way of pre-war records they took with them, considering that this organization is just a remnant of that former group, but having records of the area around their destination would be important. Yet none are found in Fallout 3 about other installations in the region.
Could The Enclave return in Fallout 76? Yes and they would be based out of either the Greenbrier complex or similar installation made by the government for safeguarding personnel. Without them being present in Fallout 3, it can be said they have no reach left and may not even exist at that point in time. It is to be remembered that only Enclave members who could reach the west coast and get to the oil platform did so, and that airlift capability was limited to Vertibird range. Anyone outside of the Greater Los Angeles or San Francisco region would have been stuck and it is unlikely The Enclave intended to have a single rally point on a distant oil platform. What can be said is that by the time of Fallout 3 there is no Enclave organization that rode out the Great War near the Capital Wasteland and it is unlikely that the western remnant would not have known about a DC region rallying point. Also due to geography, if the Greenbrier was still active as an Enclave base, the BoS would have certainly run across on their eastern trek as it is nearly west of the Capital Wasteland.
After that groups and sources run out. No ghouls reference Vault 76, Mr. House does not make any mention of it, nor does The Institute or the people in control of The Pitt. No major community that rebuilt based on Vault 76 is mentioned elsewhere in the Fallout franchise. Proximity would have made it more important than The Pitt if it was even a minor trading hub as it would be easier to get to. From all that we, as players, have seen, there is nothing really done by Vault 76 that others take note of in the franchise.
Is Vault 76 a failure, then? That is the most likely scenario. Even Control Vaults can screw up. A GECK would have helped greatly in rebuilding, but even without that and no major targets near Vault 76 (and remember that actual fallout would tend to go west to east due to wind direction) their region may have even escaped the major amounts of radiation from other targets like Chicago, Indianapolis and St. Louis. A bomb or cluster of them may have been further south to cover places like Ft. Knox, and if the Chinese knew about Greenbrier then it would have received at least a bomb or two. While there would still be fallout on the eastern side of the Appalachian Mountains, it would not be the kind with large particles falling to the ground but with much finer material carrying a lower radiation load with it. The larger particles would have been deposited on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains due to wind current changes on the western approaches. In the lee side of that would be a shadow zone with little to no fallout present and then only the slow drift of light particles descending after that. Thus the environment of West Virginia, in general, might actually be in good condition and not the hellish landscape of the Mojave, Capital Wasteland or the The Commonwealth of Fallout 4. Geography seems to have placed Vault 76 in a relatively light fallout zone that would be a prime place to reconstruct communities.
Why it didn't happen may be the central story to Fallout 76.
I wouldn't count on it as BGS rarely has a strong central storyline, preferring a weak one that allows players to explore the game world and not feel compelled to do great things if they don't want to. The main story doesn't even have to make a lick of sense and they will go with it, hoping that the open world will draw in players. Even the factions don't have to make sense. Sadly, without a good narrative and rich set of side material that changes outcomes, players feel they lack agency and then get busy work, instead.
We shall see what Fallout 76 will bring.
I am not going to be a day 1 purchaser, however.
BGS has lost my trust with Fallout 4 and their moves since then have done nothing to bolster it. They didn't create Fallout: New Vegas and don't even seem capable of creating a rich and somewhat immersive game world any more. The early DNA of BGS of the 1990's has too much AAA gaming in it to take a risk to try and craft a rich, evocative and compelling game world that makes sense and offers wide player agency and massive consequences for the choices made during the game. I'll pass for now and wait to see if BGS can actually make a good RPG. Not a shooter, base-building game with a bit of dialogue and meaningless quests handed out frequently as busy work. Building bases is busy work, and can be enjoyable as a past-time, but it is not to be mistaken for actual role playing.
