A reader discusses the launch of Fallout 76 and how its contributed to a year that may have killed off more major franchises than any other.
Well, this has been quite the week. After the beta I think we all realised that Fallout 76 wasnt going to be a classic, but I at least assumed that it would brute force its way to a halfway decent score because of the brand, Bethesdas reputation, and the fact that Fallout 4 was pretty buggy too but people enjoy that fine. But no, apparently the games even worse than imagined.
I havent played it myself, although if its price drops really low on Black Friday – which seems likely – I might well own it by the time you read this. Although the fact that a game that was released less than two weeks ago could already be almost half price is the sort of mind-boggling situation I wouldnt have believed possible even a month ago.
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But at least that means Bethesda are being punished for their failure, which is never a given in these situations. But as others have already pointed out theyre kind of stuck supporting Fallout 76 now because 1) itd be years before they could ever make Fallout 5 and 2) itd make them look even worse if they decide to just leave everyone that had bought it in the lurch.
Which means weve now got to endure weeks and months of stories about how Fallout 76 has received some magic patch that suddenly makes it the game it shouldve been. Except then we go and play it and find out it hasnt fixed anything, just added new features nobody asked for. I can already picture the less scrupulous parts of the Internet already writing their This is why you should play Fallout 76 articles ahead of time and just editing in a few details when it actually happens.
The only thing Im not sure about is whether this would happen before or after they run their, Fallout 76 isnt as bad as people thought features. Itll probably be them first though. In fact, Id be surprised if they dont start appearing before the end of the month.
The whole thing is a disaster and the worst thing is that the game just doesnt seem to deserve the attention in the first place. The only reason any of us are talking about it, and Im contemplating buying a game I know to be bad, is because its part of a famous franchise. If this was Ballout 77 from some no-name developer none of us would be giving it a second though, it probably wouldnt even have been reviewed by most sites.
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And yet here we are and were probably looking at months and moths of coverage on a game seemingly no-one likes and everyone agrees is badly broken.
One thing you can bet on is that next weeks chart is going to show that yet another major franchise is going to have seen a major drop in sales. And then everyone that likes the game will claim that its just because of digital downloads and then people that dont like it will be pointing to it as proof that its a complete failure.
Neither will be entirely true, but there does seem as if theres something odd going on with the majority of big franchises at the moment. Since everyone seemed to love Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 I expected Activision to immediately hit us with, fastest selling Call Of Duty ever stories or at least fastest selling since Call Of Duty 4. But all we got was some vague stuff about it being PSNs best digital download.
Battlefield V has obviously been a flop, Assassins Creed Odyssey seems to vary wildly by country, and even FIFA 19 was strangely quiet about how it had done. Hitman 2 seems to have killed the franchise more effectively than Square Enix ever could and I imagine weve seen the last of SoulCalibur and maybe even those indentikit Lego games.
And then you have Fallout 76 which may have been the final nail, destroying the illusion that franchises can go on for ever and are effectively critic-proof. If thats its legacy then it will have actually done more good for the games industry than most. Im pretty sure thats not what Bethesda were shooting for, but then if they were using V.A.T.S. its no wonder they missed…
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By reader Yardarm
The readers feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. As always, email [email protected] and follow us on Twitter.
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