Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tested on: Xbox One
Fallout 76: Wastelanders DLC – Review
When Fallout 76 came out as the first-ever online Fallout game, many people had a lot of expectations, but for it being the first online game for this franchise, it was bound to disappoint a lot of people. One of the biggest issues people had with Fallout 76, aside from the many bugs, was that the world was empty, with no NPCs to be found anywhere in the game, except for some robots. While this was pretty logical due to the game’s background, many players expected an experience like Fallout New Vegas or Fallout 4. Now after 1,5 years, the Wastelanders DLC has finally been released to bring back some liveliness to Appalachia.
Story
After you, and many others, have scoured around the godforsaken area of Appalachia, The Overseer has finally returned to this place to help you re-inhabit Appalachia. In the meantime, by completing the available quests, you have found a cure for the Scorched Plague, a disease that erases the self-consciousnesses of victims and links them to a primitive hive mind. This will keep on spreading if people don’t take the inoculation that provides them with the cure.
The Overseer gives you a quest to mass-produce the inoculation against the Scorched Plague to prevent it from spreading more. Meanwhile, you will meet the two new factions that have arrived in Appalachia, the Settlers, and the Raiders. Both factions have settled in two locations that have been upgraded to give them the proper settlement look. The Settlers are settled in The Foundation, one of the big buildings in the southern region of the map. The Raiders have settled in the Crater, a place that holds a crashed space station that resembles the one from the series, The 100. After giving both factions the inoculation, a new quest will start to find out where a hidden treasure lies.
With the Overseer, you will explore the Vault-Tec University where a hidden room tells you about Vault 79 and the treasure that is hidden there. After finding out about this vault, you’ll need to get the help of one of the factions to break into this Vault and get hold of its treasures. This will follow a series of quests on both sides to get ready to break into this vault. Aside from the factions, a few smaller questlines have also been added for even more exploration and more human contact.
Graphics
This expansion brings no changes to the game in terms of its graphical prowess, aside from some new C.A.M.P. items to place in your camp. The game’s graphics can mostly be compared to those of Fallout 4. These were a huge improvement compared to Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but nothing overly special. This expansion does bring some new weapons, more designs for weapons and clothing, and there are more decorations, skins, and other fun items added to the Atomic Shop every week.
Sound
Well, the sound of Fallout 76 is relatively unchanged due to this DLC. The music on the radio stations is still the same and the music played on these stations is still fantastic and is just what you’re used to from the previous games. With the arrival of humans to Appalachia, the radio stations are now accompanied by radio DJs. The stations won’t only play music from now on as, sometimes, the DJ will have some words about the happenings in Appalachia.
Gameplay
Fallout 76 is the first online post-nuclear RPG game of Bethesda’s hit game series and has now finally gotten its Wastelanders DLC. The game launched in October of 2018 and received a lot of criticism along the way. There were a lot of performance issues with servers, a lot of lag, and many players had complaints about multiple things. In the past 1,5 years, Bethesda has upgraded the game with a lot of patches, fixes and has added quite some things along the way. The addition of the Wastelanders DLC is the biggest until now and has added quite some story content while also adding some extra gameplay features.
With the addition of the factions, a new reputation system has been added to the game that will let you earn a reputation with both factions. Building up your reputation with both factions will offer some rewards along the line including some new craftable items and more. After you’re done with the main quest lines, you can boost your reputation with both factions by doing their daily quests.
Since the game was released, the game has gotten a lot of updates that have stabilized the game a lot, improving the servers to avoid crashes while playing. A big issue with many players was that your stash was very limited. Luckily, they have quadrupled the amount of weight you could put in your stash. A subscription service has also been added to the game for the hardcore players that want to make the best of their experience which is called Fallout 1st. Fallout 1st enables you to make a private server, the ability to store unlimited storage for scrap, and gives you a monthly amount of 1650 Atoms. A membership for Fallout 1st costs € 14,99 and the number of atoms alone is enough to cover the cost of this. The subscription isn’t all that bad, but it still is a cheap way of making more money on a game by providing you with some advantages that the single-player games already offer, like the unlimited storage amount.
Conclusion
The addition of the Wastelanders DLC is the best thing since the game released. It offers a lot of new content and has made the world very much more alive, as in the past, you would only encounter human bodies, and the only living things you would meet were mutated enemy creatures. The questlines that have been added to the game are amusing to go through and they made the respectable choice of switching back to the old way of communication that was found in Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, by adding NPCs. This DLC is a great addition to the game and has made the game better than before and it’s also a free update for those who are still on the fence of getting this game, or trying it again. As it currently is, this title has become really worthwhile to play.
Fallout 76: Wastelanders DLC - Review,
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