[Claptrap]

So I am a massive fallout fan, sinking hundreds upon thousands of hours into the franchise and making multiple characters with multiple different builds and endings and companions etc and I did have 76 pre-ordered. However, I couldn't get access to the beta which kind of irked me a little, like the only stipulation for it was to have pre-ordered the game, and I ordered one of the non-standard editions that included some swanky merch. I had to settle instead for watching other people's reviews and play throughs on youtube. Now I know that obviously taste is a massive thing when it comes to games like these, and while I'm not typically an online gamer I thought it wouldn't be too bad because I enjoyed ESO to some extent, so this would just be the post apocalyptic version right? Well no, I wasn't really getting that vibe from the videos that I was watching. Now I didn't just watch ones from youtubers I liked but I picked a wide variety both with positive and negative spins just so I could try and get an unbiased look at what I could expect. I also know that beta is not the final game, so things like graphical blurps and rendering issues didn't really bother me, it was more the mechanics and the quests and exploration I was interested in. I wasn't feeling any of these things from the videos I watched. I didn't like that a lot of the loot you could find you had to be a certain level to use, especially if you go off the beaten rack and explore somewhere you weren't "meant" to be yet (which in my opinion is how these games are meant to be played, right?). I didn't like the no human NPC thing, because you can quite easily differentiate an NPC from another player, so not including this just seemed a little lazy to me. The random events seemed interesting, but on the flip side I can see them being pretty tiresome after a while. The world looked gorgeous, but I just don't feel like I'd have the same immersion in it as I would your standard Fallout game. Also the day one patch is already 50gb apparently?

Long story short I wasn't impressed and cancelled my pre-order and got Red Dead 2 instead haha! I'll probably still try 76 at some point because I am curious, but I'm not willing to sink that kind of money into a game that feels somewhat empty and unfinished. I'll give it a go when it goes down in price or Bethesda release a patch that basically overhauls the current game (which I doubt).

Though if I remember rightly ESO was a mess on release too, so 76 isn't necessarily doomed from the get go~