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Fallout 76 is at its best when you play it slowlyOpting out
Opting out
I’m still enjoyingFallout 76partly because it makes it much easier to ignore the things I usually gripe about in MMOs. That’s not to say it isn’t naggy (and the recently added public teams pop up a notification with a noise that startles me almost every time I’m creeping up on something), nor immune to the usual MMO diseases.
But I can largely do my own thing. Like when I inadvertantly ended up far from my camp in an unfamiliar spot and walked all the way home. I doubtless walked past a dozen ‘quest’ bits, and could have run off to do some events, or looked up an achievement or challenge or whatever to make some numbers go up. But instead, I figured I’d take the opportunity to explore and get to know the land better.
I’m not saying it’s theonlyway to enjoy the game. But it’s certainly a good one. If you go at your own pace,Fallout 76has a lot of extra fun to uncover.
I feel similarly about a lot of other MMOs, but Fallout 76 has really brought it home, probably because its online bits are built onto the same broad structure asFallout 3and The Elder Scrolls. It’s an easy land to wander in, and despite its survival elements, endless guns, and free-roaming players, it’s unusually easy to go unmolested too.
Well now I just feel bad for shooting anyone.
Naturally, I inferred that this meant it would work like the other Bethesda Fallouts: tracking some dork you’ve been told to care about around the entire game map, repeatedly finding out whenever you arrive anywhere that you just missed them, but hmm, hey, I heard him say he had a friend in Little Hydrojazzton. So I ignored it, and did the morally correct thing of walking off into the woods and never once looking back.
I don’t expect everyone, or even many people, to play like I do. And I’ll hit a wall at some point, I’m sure. Once you reach those high levels and get to the powerful, big stuff, it’s a lot harder to go back. Not just because the mathematics of RPGs, especially MMOs, balance fights on the assumption that you’re playing in particular ways, but because, well, it’s fun. I get it. I’m not here to say people are wrong to look for constant excitement and big showstopper set pieces to play through.
IS ANYONE IN HERE PLAYING IT WRONG?
Ironically, it’s also how I accidentally stumbled into the Overseer, and as far as I’m concerned, this means I’ve completed the story.
Stranded far from my camp, I decided to walk home along a railway track for a few hours. Along the way I hunted some deer. I intervened in a gunfight too late to save a scavenger from gangsters. I admonished a junkie. I had a tense momentary standoff with another player in a creepy animal mask (part of the same long journey where I metFun Cop). If I worried about XP and damage per second, I would have sprinted past most of that, or fast travelled and missed it entirely.
Not a fan of the mask, but I must admit, the duster/rifle/mask combo is killing it.
Yeah, I tried it. Of course I tried it.
“Oh thank god you’re here,” she says, “I almost… it’s just good to see you”. Almost what, boss? Almost went looking for me? Almost sent a messenger? Almost lifted a finger? Almost spent a synaptic impulse on looking away from your tv for a second? She goes on, insisting that I should meet someone downstairs. This is an obvious trap but when she walks downstairs there’s no way to bar her in and torch the mansion, and she does tell me to make myself at home. So I head over to the piano, jam out some tunes for a while, and then leave. Good luck with your whatever, former boss. I have roses to smell.
She’s even still wearing the corporate outfit underneath, god what a SUIT
I’ve kept playing Fallout 76 of course, since my business with the Overseer is done. I found her, she’s fine, she’s up to some nonsense or other. Good for her. I’ve got berries to pick, and rum to brew, and perhaps I’ll head West tomorrow and see what’s behind the mountain. Maybe I’ll have another cool little shootout in that factory. Maybe I’ll start delivering rum to other players and see what happens. There’s no rush. The levels will come when they come.
“This is a little number I call ‘How And Why Has Nobody Written Any New Music For 150 Years’.”
