 Hey everybody, we're gonna do something a little different today I don't get enough comments to really ever react to something people say and because my channel is so small I tend to not get anyone calling me out in the comments section anyway Now some of you all disagree and sometimes you even convince me I'm wrong But you guys tend to do that politely and logically and you always make good arguments now for some reason my Fallout 76 beta video Got a few people quite upset. I try and really think about things before I go popping off And when someone calls out things I've said I try to honestly consider their viewpoint and examine my position to see if I was wrong But as I played and eventually abandoned Fallout 76 I kept thinking about those comments Two comments in particular that chided me for hating on Bethesda because they tried to reimagine the game So as I played I really thought on that was I unfairly criticizing the game because it was different than previous games Was I faulting them for having the guts to reimagine fallout? Well, here's the thing I realized as I got to around 30 hours and decided I simply couldn't keep playing this game I don't fault them for trying to reimagine the game I fault them for failing to reimagine the game today We're going to really quickly look at two Bethesda's NMX releases from 2018 and point out how they are similar and different and ultimately Demonstrates fallout 76 is terrible failure at everything, but especially at value and imagination As always if you like what I have to say or how I sound saying it do us both a favor like comment Yada, and if you find yourself getting angry that I don't like fallout 76 Well, what can I tell you man? The game just isn't good enough after the logo It might seem like pre moon crash and fallout 76 are only tangentially related at first blush I'm sure many of you are thinking why would you compare these games? They have nothing to do with each other beyond having the same publisher and at first glance that might be true But if we take a moment to look a little closer, I hope you'll see the similarities too prey was one of the best games of last year It was a deep interactive space horror sim system shock meets Deus Ex Its sales were ultimately disappointing But that was less about the game and more about the failure of Xenomax Bethesda to properly market a new release That was highly confusing a sequel to the old prey that was completely new IP from a totally different developer with nothing Whatsoever to do with the beloved 2006 game? It's not even in the same genre on top of that This is one title that Bethesda shitty policy of no early review copies really hurt This game needed reviewers playing slowly and soaking in everything that made it great Prey was a slow burn and by forcing reviewers to turn the difficulty down to easy and blast through it As fast as possible to get their copy out they ensured that those reviewers would have the worst possible experience while playing Now over time it seems like prey continued to sell as word of mouth spread of its near brilliance and an interesting DLC and moon crash Got the game back into the spotlight briefly in 2018 Prey wasn't a perfect game It had pacing issues combat could feel a bit floaty Enemy design and the base game was fairly mediocre and the story was more very good and great But even so it was one of the best games of its release year fallout 4 was also a flawed game Its main story was Kind of stupid its factions were silly and offered almost no moral ambiguity His dialogue system was bad half baked and a significant step back from the previous two entries And its quest design was the worst of the new 3d titles But like prey despite all those problems fallout 4 was one of the best games of its release year It did enough other things great to overcome all the problems in the base game And the far harbor DLC was a fantastic fallout story good enough that it left me feeling like I'd gotten the experience I was expecting I plan to argue that for all intents and purposes Fallout 76 is much closer to being a DLC that offers a different map and mode than a whole new game And at its price point it is abysmal value to the customer Let's get back to those critiques of my critique vis-a-vis fallout 76 A couple of people were particularly galled that I said I wanted the game to fail They seem to be insulted that my response to what they called an honest attempt to move the series forward would be hoping for its demise But was it an honest attempt to move the series forward? Was it a lazy and cynical cash grab? Did Bethesda make a real effort to rebuild fallout from the ground up to facilitate a new and interesting way to play the game? Or they change as little as they possibly could reuse as much as they possibly could and ate the systems from a few survival games They were popular for 20 minutes right around the time fallout 76 was being conceived and developed as an aside People seem to be saying that fallout 76 was a response to the destiny and division market But when you look at the timing I think it's pretty clear that fallout 76 was being created right around the time that online survival games like Rust and eventually arc were generating a ton of buzz Fallout 76's changes are in additions. They are almost all subtractions Dialogue wasn't changed to fit a multiplayer narrative Reimagining how players can interact with a story in an online environment Almost every multiplayer game struggles with this and it's been such a consistent issue with online games that it's actually right For someone to come along innovate and address the genre shortcomings Which is something that Anthem claims to have solved by having the narrative delivered in a solo instance hub city Did Bethesda do this? Did they reimagine how dialogue and story interacts with multiple players? No, they just eliminated dialogue didn't they because figuring out how to have an interesting narrative that allows players to have a real Impact on the game world while having dozens of players is hard But just cutting out dialogue that's easy and cheaper too If you aren't gonna have dialogue trees is there really any point in having NPCs or if there is how do you keep the player? Invested in the story like in previous games good question So did they push the envelope and figure out a way to deliver a rich complex narrative experience in a multiplayer environment without having dialogue or NPCs? No, they just cut NPCs out It was easier and certainly cheaper and the loss of those two things literally makes the game feel like a mod Except there are mods to Skyrim with NPCs and voice acting meaning it makes the game a mediocre mod Fallout's FPS combat has always been somewhere between hilariously bad and Functional but worse than almost any other shooter on the market The games that have been hits in the online shooter market have a few things in common and one of those things is rock solid shooting Destiny of course has a litany of issues though It's pretty damn good now, but it's always been a top-tier shooter When everything else was a wreck the moment-to-moment gameplay in combat has always been exceptional And that's because the combat has been meticulously designed and laser focused around feeling good and being fun So everything is in service to that animations Aim assist sound design art design enemy and encounter design level design all of these and more Interact to create an environment where combat is fun and exciting in an online game with no NPCs No dialogue and no actual story with meaningful choices and ways for players to change the world did Bethesda hunkered down Reimagine its combat system and figure out a new and exciting way for players to interact with it Or at the very very least did they massively improve the actual gunplay and give players dozens of new to the series weapons? No The enemy design and AI hasn't been changed at all the vast majority of fallout enemies have terrible AI and frustratingly janky animations They simply run directly at you twitching and flailing and lunging making them downright annoying to target This AI and enemy behavior was designed for a game with vats a brilliant creation that made fallouts combat unique if still wonky Stopping or greatly slowing time is a very powerful tool So if it was too easy to hit enemies without vats the combat would have been too simple and it's clear Bethesda realized this and balanced combat around having the vats system Enemies in fallout games have both high levels of health and are ridiculously twitchy and fast the vast majority of them Charge directly at the player and fall down or circle around their feet. They block your view They back you into corners and they appear in huge numbers when vats stopped time This felt like a balanced and fair enemy behavior vats was always the core of the combat But after Bethesda decided that the game was going to be online Did they go and reimagined vats to make it a new and interesting and fun take on the percentage-based combat of the previous games? No, did they create new combat systems to replace vats giving the players new mechanics to learn and use? No, did they totally reimagine enemy design AI and health levels? No vats is literally unchanged. It just interacts with online play in a terrible and pointless way They didn't change any of the enemy AI. They didn't change the animations associated with enemies. They didn't change enemy health They didn't reimagine how combat would work in a game where combat is suddenly even more of the experience It's just the exact same combat system and enemy behavior But broken because one of the players most fun and powerful tools has been rendered useless by Bethesda's failure to reimagine the system at all Fallout 76 fails because it doesn't change enough If that was going to be removed It needed to be replaced with something more fun that changed how we interact with fallouts combat or Combat needed to be expanded so that the combat became something an entire game could be hung upon With survival PVP and co-op supposedly the focus of this game. Did they move those gameplay elements forward? Did they offer a unique and never-before-seen take on it? Did they balance the survival elements to make the game actually feel like survival mattered? No, it's just Fallout 4 survival mechanics except tone down so much It's nothing more than annoying busy work. Did they create a dynamic and exciting PVP experience? This might actually be the very worst PVP implementation I have ever seen in a game and I mean that absolutely Honestly, it is so so badly. I don't want to say imagine because again There's no imagination here the most badly designed PVP system. I have ever seen Instead of simply having a pacifist flag like warcraft or PVP and PvE servers It's a horrible and pointless mishmash of shitty compromises There's no reason to actually PVP because the gunplay is terrible and includes a literal aim bot Bethesda would have needed to take risks to make PVP something players wanted to do and that means a reward system The reward for PVP is literally a bag of junk But there's so much fucking junk everywhere that I cannot even carry the shit I need much less stuff that drops from a player would have been difficult to design a compelling PVP reward system and death penalty That felt fun and fair. Yes, but ambition means doing things that are difficult. That's what ambition is Did they lean heavy into new ways for players to engage with missions and quests by reimagining what missions would be like in a fallout game? Did they try and create compelling co-op quests that made playing together a new and different experience? No, they just threw the same old fallout quests and missions in except shittier because there's no actual overarching narrative attached to any of it and all of your actions are totally meaningless in a world where everyone is already Dead. Did they lean into the multiplayer aspects by giving players the freedom a sandbox requires to be fun? Can you build towns play as a trader or a raider or super mutants? No, nothing that imaginative is here Destiny gets a ton of shit, but here's something interesting Destiny was the most ambitious co-op experience in the history of first-person shooters and probably consoles Destiny's raids are a reimagining of what console and FPS co-op play could be a Mechanically complex mix of platforming puzzle solving mixed with intense horde shooting and boss mechanics There's quite literally nothing else like them anywhere in the FPS market and even in gaming at large outside of MMO raids Is there anything like that here a bold or interesting new way to play fallout? No, you just have the option to do boring pointless quests with someone else rather than alone Nothing in the game actually utilizes co-op functionality Some missions or events are too hard to do alone not because the mechanics are interesting and require cooperation But rather because Bethesda just throws 300 ghouls at you or a boss with a million hit points in a game That has no narrative and no actual long-term player goals beyond looting and crafting Did Bethesda devote all the time and effort necessary to make sure that those systems were interesting and solid enough to carry an entire game? Did they really think hard about inventory space and the over-encumbered mechanic in light of the fact that the game is now Completely in real-time and can't be paused to sort your inventory Does the over-encumbered mechanic lead to meaningful player decisions? Does it offer a compelling gameplay loop? And if it doesn't why is it in the game? I don't know my problem with fallout 76 Isn't that it changed too much? My problem is that it changes almost nothing If Bethesda had really spent time and effort leaning into making fallout 76 a perfection of the online survival genre or taking it in an Exciting new direction. I'd be a lot more forgiving of it even if it wasn't my cup of tea and this is present Everywhere in the game fallout menus and UI have always been just terrible But now that the game is always online and can't be paused Did they add a useful sorting system? Did they make it easy to eat food without going through four menus? Did they re-imagine and redesign the UI? Nope, it's the same menus as bad as they've always been except now it's crystal clear just how Unacceptably bad they've always been Story is only told through text and audio logs Did they make the text easier to read with better fonts or options to change the text size? No, did they make the audio logs play at a reasonable volume or at least finally give them their own slider in the audio section No, and that's been a problem that's existed right from fallout 3 There isn't even any listing of which volume slider affects audio log volume. You'd assume voice, right? Well, no, obviously it's radio then because it comes from your pit boy, right? No It's tied to effects like it always has been which means you either have to crank the volume when a holotape plays or deal with an Unacceptably shitty volume mix for the entire game and again in the other games This was shitty and lazy But you could deal with it because you were playing audio logs in a paused menu or all other sounds stopped But now you are playing them live Which means turning effects all the way up also turns up the sound of people's feet or gunshots or monsters or whatever It is Unacceptably bullshit broken garbage the kind of stuff that I refuse to believe wasn't noticed during development or play testing And if it actually wasn't noticed well, that is even worse Because it's online one would assume Bethesda would have fixed and reworked the ridiculously long Animation that plays when you interact with a workbench or terminal, right? You'd think they'd give you an option to immediately and quickly back all the way out of a terminal workbench or menu Considering you can now be attacked and killed while using them, right? No, in fact, they are longer now because the performance is still dreadful Sleeping to heal did they reimagine how that would work? I mean they wouldn't just make us watch our character sleep for 30 seconds Would they? How about tension between wanting to go slow and respawning enemies? This is actually pretty crucial and a perfect example of how poorly conceived and executed this game really is Because there's narrative, but zero actual story It makes sense that you'd want to take your time to soak up all the fallouts excellent lore Audio text logs and environmental storytelling, but you can't Because the game also needs to make sure that if noob slayer 69 comes along to quest or explore that there will be enemies for him to fight So mobs respawn ridiculously fast quite often They will respawn directly next to you like if you're doing a quest and a location and stop for even a moment to read something or do the required Inventory management bullshit mini game that this title forces on you it's a guarantee that all the enemies will respawn and Maybe that wouldn't be a problem in most games But this game is all about collecting resources and fixing and building weapons is expensive So fighting is just an annoying resource strain It's just system after system after system that doesn't work because seemingly zero thought or Imagination was put into how to actually make this something unique instead of just a broken buggy shell of a game with a rammed-in online Requirement all of these things are so insanely lazy leaving aside the completely Unacceptable buggy-ness and performance issues massive design failures are everywhere They didn't fix any of the obvious issues that would arise from making fallout for Unpausable and always online. They just said fuck it and pushed it out the door One or two of these little issues might have been acceptable But every single one of these issues that become immediately apparent are problems that have been left completely Unaddressed they didn't reimagine or change or fix any of the systems that would have needed to be changed to make this work Especially around combat enemy design UI Inventory and story it is basically a rust or arc and fallout mod or perhaps It's more accurate to say they took fought for and its assets and changed as little as they possibly could and still get a Way of selling it as a new game Every solution to the problems that arise from making fallout online were solved by either cutting that aspect of the game away or Lazily slightly altering a mechanic with no attention paid to whether that mechanic is actually fun or not or more often Simply ignoring the problem and porting it directly over to this My problem isn't that they tried to reimagine fallout my problem is that this fallout has zero Imagination the combat is actually worse than the last game because rather than put in the needed effort to refine and perfect a system That is suddenly the main focus of the game in the absence of a story It's just the same shitty combat with crucial parts of it cut out and before anyone says there's tons of story But now it's told through text and audio logs. Listen here man fallout already had audio and text logs Those weren't added into replace NPCs or dialogue or an actual story They are simply the remnants of fallout storytelling there. What's left of the story Nothing here was reimagined No gameplay systems were properly altered to account for the major changes that were made Every change is one that saved Bethesda effort and time and before I finish up this section There's something that has been bothering me, but I haven't seen anyone else talk about I am 100% convinced that the card pack system was absolutely Originally intended to be a microtransaction progression system. This game was in development before Star Wars Battlefront 2 and the star card disaster It is completely impossible to believe that these weren't meant to be sold The packs are clearly loot boxes complete with a catchy pack opening animation Duplicates different rarities and leveling up cards by combining dupes The similarities to the star card system or a hearthstone pack are actually quite striking The game was developed during the year of the loot box and this is the company that has brought us paid mods Twice and while the perk cards end up being a pretty fun progression system because they allow for more flexibility It's absolutely clear that this game was conceived and created not because Bethesda wanted to reimagine what fallout is It was built to be a fallout entry into the online loot box marketplace It is lazy and cynical and you know what else it is It's 60 fucking dollars for a very poor steam early access survival game It is rust or arc again, but those games were upfront and admitted that they were in early access They sold for significantly less and were built from the ground up and imagined around their online survival mechanics Those are the games that reimagined what an online survival game is 76 is a quick cash grab that end up coming out three years too late to capitalize on the online survival genre and 11 months too late to capitalize on the random loot box craze pray reimagined Now let's briefly look at a different Bethesda's NMX release from this year one that also Reused most of its art assets one that also removed NPCs in dialogue and has you questing for dead people One that changed genres and added survival elements into the mix while focusing much more on crafting and looting in its core gameplay loot Now that's remarkably similar, isn't it? I mean aside from the part where moon crash is one-third the cost of 76 while giving me three times as many hours of enjoyment But here's the amazing thing pray moon crash. It actually did ambitiously Reimagined what it meant to be pray After removing those core gameplay elements It didn't simply cobble together the remnants and use its assets to make a new map and release a bland empty playground That's only fun if you're with friends. No arcane studio took those assets Simplified some systems and removed much of its traditional storytelling while trading it for a fresh and new gameplay experience It made it feel less like an empty cash grab and more like a bold Reimagining of the base game and the only reason this section will be brief is because a I already did a long video about it And be it is so fucking excellent that I'd have to run down every perfectly implemented system to talk about it If you haven't played it you could check out my video or even better yet buy it It's easily one of the best games of the year because it actually did reimagine its gameplay systems Pray moon crash took me over 31 hours to beat for the first time and I liked it so much I played it again for a total of over 50 hours and Those 50 hours remain true to the feel tone and core gameplay experience of prey while Simultaneously adding to that experience with a fresh and exciting take on it Full at 76 is just another online survival game, but pray moon crash isn't just another rogue light Everything was rebalanced Reimagined and changed to make it a totally unique game if it had been done like 76 arcane would have simply released a new map for Pray with no NPCs no story, but made it permadeath with survival elements But the beauty of moon crash is that it feels Necessary the reimagining of several of the core systems the change to the way the story is told and the way the prey gameplay loop Interacts with subtle tweaks to existing systems makes moon crash an entirely new way to play the game There was looting and crafting in the pray base game, but it wasn't the core of the experience It was just another system that helped the player progress through a story-based interactive sim But strikingly similar to fallout 76 moon crash took those mechanics and made them the core of the gameplay experience And because there was actual effort put into them They didn't simply port them over unchanged the looting and crafting system were expanded upon Survival elements were ramped up to give the player important and meaningful choices loot and item durability Aren't used as simple time sinks Fallout 76 is item durability that is clearly only designed so that your items will constantly break pushing you to compulsively Go get more resources to repair them so that they can break again to push you to get more resources to repair them praise item durability was Reimagined and ramped up to make players think hard about whether combat was the correct or viable choice in a given situation Item durability functioned as a sort of secondary timer that put a limit on how many enemies you could fight on your way to an objective The system interacts with the permadeath mechanics to create highly tense and exciting gameplay moments The game removed NPCs and focused its release around gameplay rather than narrative while leaving the audio and text logs in for lore But the gameplay elements are so insanely well crafted that creating your own story actually means something Unlike in the base game death matters in moon crash because dying means you lose and have to try again while still retaining some progress This allows for intense moments of frantic problem solving It means finding valuable loot is a powerful reward that incentivizes exploration Fallout 76 is an always online game with PvP where death is utterly meaningless The penalty is an annoying walk back to your bag of literal junk The item durability doesn't add intense gameplay moments because Bethesda didn't think hard enough about its death and reward systems I shied away from combat in 76 not because death mattered I did it because combat was absurdly unrewarding and expensive And I didn't want to have to go through the hassle of finding aluminum to repair my shitty rifle for the 90th time Pray moon crash completely reimagined how the player would interact with the game From weapons in combat to his progression system to its death mechanics They added new enemies and changed how those enemies behaved and damaged you They added new healing and buffing items in response to those changes They changed the way that players level up making an actual meaningful decision They gave players new goals systems in a different way to tell and interact with the story Every system was clearly and carefully examined to make sure that it propped up the drastic imaginative changes to the core gameplay loop It is exceedingly well-designed and it cost 20 dollars, which frankly felt like I'd gotten over on arcane studios Moon crash is absolutely worth 60 dollars on its own Pray moon crash delivered a ton of value because with entirely different game and every change was clearly Carefully designed around perfecting a new and different experience from what the player was expecting Bethesda tried to totally change fallout without changing a thing It is so ridiculously lazy and buggy and unfinished that they had no right selling this to consumers at all and at 60 dollars It is just grotesquely overpriced Fallout 76 is a $19 DLC It's nothing more than a huge empty map scattered with existing assets and shallow meaningless fetch quests My review of moon crash was called pray perfected and in the description and video I actually used the sentence pray reimagined as a roguelite pray moon crash was ambitious and imaginative and $20 fallout 76 is one of the least ambitious games. I have played in the last two years The recent call of duty is Significantly more ambitious in this game Acy Odyssey which is only a decent game feels light years more ambitious in this game I actually think that red dead redemption 2's gameplay holds it back from greatness, but that is an ambitious game Fallout 76 seems to have no idea what it wants to be. It just knows it wants to be $60 From its from its half-assed pvp implementation to its half-ass survival systems The game failed to commit to anything and so instead it is a steaming pile of bad compromises Pray moon crash knew exactly what it wanted to be and I actually held off on buying it Because the idea of a permadeath roguelite pray sounded too different to appeal to me But arcane had real ambition for that game and fully committed to its vision and its imagination Calling Fallout 76 a reimagining of the fallout series is just a ridiculous assertion Not only has nothing actually been reimagined. There is almost no imagination at all All of its changes are cribbed from other better games or simply systems that have been lazily cut or copy-pasted from fallout 4 And if we make a little graph of fallout titles based upon depth complexity and imagination It looks like this So yeah, I stand by my statement that I hope it fails and it looks like for once I might actually get what I want All right, I'll be doing something on Red Dead Redemption 2 and why I think it's maybe less amazing than everyone else on earth seems to think I'll be reviewing Destiny 2's black armory DLC thing I think I'm gonna review Hollow Knight because I'm replaying in the console and I'm probably gonna check out Darksiders 3 I've never played a Darksiders game All right. See you next time. Bye