Oh Fallout 76. I have a lot I could say about this game and a lot of it would not be positive. This game has a spotty past to say the least even without moldy helmets an subpar canvas bags. As a day one buyer who had tempered expectations I was still left disappointed. I wasn’t expecting them to knock it out of the park day one to be clear. Elders Scrolls Online wasn’t anything to write home about in the early days, why would this? Even with that understanding the lack of NPCs, the horrible server crashes and the lack of any clear direction had me dropping this game pretty fast.
Since then I’ve gone back here and there for major updates. For every step in the right direction like “Wastelanders” it seemed like Fallout 76 would drop something like “The Pitt” which I thought was boring attempt to cash in on the success of The Pitt DLC from Fallout 3. This last year or so I’ve actually enjoyed all the content drops so far and I’m happy to say that Skyline Valley has been extremely enjoyable. Let’s get into what exactly is going on in the new content.
A Quick Story Summary
Skyline Valley is going to start you out as many Fallout 76 quests do with a new radio signal. When you follow this signal you will be led to Allyisa and the vault door to Vault 63 lying on the ground like it dropped from the sky. After this you go on a bit of an exploration to a new part of the map in the south called Skyline Valley(didn’t see that coming did you?)
Once there you will be greeted by mutated frogs, oversized Turkeys (I call them Turkey Raptors, you’ll know them as Thrasher) and above all else a newish enemy called The Lost. I say newish cause to me mechanically there not that different from the Scorched, you’ll know if you’ve played the game before.
When you finally get to Vault 76 you’ll be greeted by a “man” named Hugo Stolz. First thing you’ll noticed is he looks a lot like The Lost that have been giving you hell until this point. Relax and don’t shoot, he will explain.
Get used to seeing his ugly face cause this content drop is going to revolve around him. He’s going to send you to his head of security and both his daughters who you’re going to find out don’t always agree with his calls. Through helping them you’re going to uncover some secrets that are going to end in quite an interesting build to a conflict and choice at the end of this content drop. I like to keep my reviews as spoiler free as possible but I’ll say my choice got a major character killed.
The Good
I think this content drop can be added to a list of content drops that goes a long way make this feel like a more traditional Fallout experience. It adds to the list of interesting NPC’s, fun quests, and cool enemies that I’ve enjoyed in a lot of the more recent content drop. Add to that an actual major choice at the end of the content and you have a great experience. Having a new piece of the map to explore has been great as well. It’s been a driving force that kept me going after the mission content dried up. A major plus for any Bethesda game for me is exploration. Anything that adds to that and does it well will always get high marks from me.
As I mentioned earlier there’s 3 major content drops for Fallout 76 I’ve loved. The Wastelanders, The Atlantic City stuff (2 drops I know but one story so I’m lumping them together) and the new Skyline Valley stuff. Each has gone a long way to make this game feel more like a Bethesda game I want to play.
The Bad
I don’t have a lot to say here thankfully. I will have two main points. One to do with the content and the other we will get to in the performance section. I am a big fan of choice and consequences in my RPGs. Bethesda have always been good at this. I gave them props for have one major choice but apart from that there isn’t any. A couple of major choices in a content drop isn’t too much to ask in my opinion and it’s something they easily could have done. I can think of at least two instances right now where major choices could have effected the story path. As an RPG guy I had to bring this up.
Performance
For years I played this game on Xbox before I switched to PC. I didn’t notice anything I wouldn’t get from the average Bethesda game. The picture below is the game at idle with nothing really going on. No enemies. No NPC’s to speak of. Nothing.
You’ll notice the FPS counter at 54. I’d agree if you said that’s not bad. My issue is this is the only way I’ve gotten anywhere near that 60fps cap. The game usually hovers around 40 to 45 with dips in the mid 30’s. Playing around with settings didn’t seem to make this any better. I’m not Digital Foundry so I can’t say what the issue is. With my current set up Starfield and Fallout 4 are often in the plus 80FPS range. After some digging it appears this has been an issue with the PC port since launch. I’m bringing it up because at any point Bethesda could fix it. Either while dropping new content or just a stand alone patch.
Normally I’d talk about the Steam Deck here. Unfortunately I can’t. I own and play the game on the Microsoft PC store. As it stand today, playing anything natively off this store isn’t possible on Steam Deck. Supposedly Microsoft is working on this. This isn’t going to effect my score for the Skyline Valley. I just thought because I talk about the Deck a lot it’s worth mentioning.
Conclusion
At launch Fallout 76 felt lost, like it didn’t know what it wanted to be. A Swiss Army knife that tried a lot, but didn’t do anything well. Bethesda games are built around PVE content. It had it at launch but it never felt like enough and the PVE content it did have was boring and forgettable. I’m happy to again say this new Skyline Valley content makes the game feel like Fallout. It also makes me hopefully for new content drops to come.
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