After Fallout 76 and Starfield, I have little faith remaining in Bethesda
this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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While its disastrous launch is legendary, I believe Fallout 76 has finally outgrown its bad reputation. I purchased it on sale a few years ago and ultimately sank hundreds of surprisingly enjoyable hours into Appalachia.
It reminds me of No Man's Sky - a testament to a development team that listened, worked tirelessly, and transformed a broken foundation into a stable, polished, and content-rich experience. I don't recall ever spending an additional penny on the game either, so for the price of a coffee, it stands as one of my best value-for-money gaming purchases.
I want to add that this is my experience as well. You can ignore the microtransactions and still have a great time. Is it prefect? Absolutely not, it has a lot of quirks being online, but overall it was still fun
I'm gonna trust you and buy the base game now.
I hope you have as many enjoyable hours in it as I did. Best of luck out there!
Don't, get one of the old ones instead. In particular the first one, it's easy to run, you can play offline and it's actually a good game, unlike 76.
If you want a really good game and want to have co-op and building (which 76 barely achieves) get Valheim. It's a better game than 76 in all aspects but graphical fidelity.
Also, here's a tale from steam reviews to show you how UNLIKE NMS Fallout76 and bethesda are!
"Here's a tale for the 21st century.
Bethesda launches a game called Fallout 76, forces you to play it through their crappy launcher during the era of mindless corporate zeal for advertising in-house IPs to a captive audience
Bethesda's crap launcher, being useless and annoying, is later abandoned
Bethesda tells all those who bought the game that they can no longer use the launcher to play; instead, you have to migrate the game to Steam (where it should have been released in the first place)
Bethesda then tells you that, sorry, some of that content you bought for the game? We can't migrate that. So you have to choose: either you get the game (which you bought) for 'free' on Steam, and give up the extra content you paid for, or you repurchase the game on Steam (and give up the content you paid for)
After repeated attempts to explain to Bethesda that this is their fault; that they insisted gamers use their launcher, which everyone knew was useless and anti-consumer; after pointing out that they never explained that you might some day have to choose between purchases made for the game and the game itself; and that you're willing to accept the migration if they just refund the purchases they can't carry over, even using in-game currency... you are told, repeatedly, about 7-8 times, the same generic, canned, ape-like, zero-accountability response. Not a response that in any way addresses any point made (especially that *they created this entire situation*), but which simply repeats ad nauseum their drone-like requirement that you give up paid content for the migration to happen. You are pretty convinced that you are not dealing with people, but bots.
All attempts to contact higher-ups, the 'thinkers' at Bethesda (i.e. anyone with basic comprehension and customer service skills, like a supervisor) end in failure. The conversation goes nowhere. You are now cooked. You've lost everything you paid for over a few years. They really don't give a crap.
This company does not respect its audience.
This company does not think ahead.
This company does not admit its mistakes.
This company does not value Quality.
This company continues to charge full price for a 7 year old port of a 10 year old game's system/assets, which even at release in 2015 wasn't great to look at and was prone to crashes and performance issues.
But they've got time to linger on the development of a sci-fi game that drains all the fun out of sci-fi, because Todd Howard can't understand the distinction between actually going to the moon as a contemporary human, and running across procedurally generated blandness as a gamer.
Now we have to wait 7+ more years for another decent Fallout game. And what's going to happen then?
You suck, Bethesda."
I mean, it doesn't feel great giving my money to Bethesda, but at 3.99 for the base game, I'm gonna risk it. I have all of the previous games (well, maybe not Fallout Tactics? Not sure.) and will take a look at 76. If I absolutely hate it, I can probably get my four moneys back from Steam.
Also, about Valheim: I will look at the game and may purchase a copy, but it seems to be entirely different from Fallout. I'm not choosing my games by gameplay mechanics (I don't know if they're similar), but setting and world. That's where Fallout is pretty special.
If you don't have brotherhood of steel, you don't need it, for real!
I still never understood how people rated vanilla f3 or skyrim above 'meh'. Their last genuinely good game made in house was oblivion.
Are people forgetting fallout 4 or...
RIP Fallout got MCUed, can't enjoy it unless you spend all your waking hours consooming
Huh?
It's a few games and one season of a show (yes I know the second one started, but we're only one episode in). It's nowhere near the amount of bullshittery that is the MCU or Disney Star Wars.
That's fair. I just don't really like my media to be based off TV shows I don't watch. Probably not as bad as the MCU situation though to be fair.
I mean the Fallout show is honestly giving great. Imo you should at least give it a chance. Especially if you're even a tiny bit of a fan of the games.
It's all still based on a video game though. Fallout was never a show first so it's not "based off a TV show"
TV show isn't on any different trajectory than Fallout has been since Fallout 2. Ya it's still a big jump in goofiness from 2 to Bethesda 3. But fallout 4 to TV show, that's not huge leap into over reliance on 50s commercial aesthetic and goofiness and snark. I'd be more worried about elder scrolls 6. Skyrim didn't dump out weird lore like oblivion which also had less weird lore than morrowind. Still solid though. Post Fallout 4, 76, Starfield, Fallout TV - I can see the next elder scrolls being a big up in goofiness for entertainment over weird lore that's entertaining. Like lots of "until I took an arrow to the knee" attempts at meme-able characters
All they really need to do for ES6 is bring Michael Kirkbride back and let him run wild with the lore.
"Alright Michael, we're going to leave you alone to write in peace. There's food and drinks in the fridge, and a small mountain of psychedelics in the cupboard."
Man.......talk about a dream job......sigh
Unless Bethesda manages to speed up production massively, I am not even fully convinced Fallout 5 will see the light of day while Todd has anything to do with it still.
Do folks enjoy Starfield these days?
Or 76?
I've been playing BGS since Oblivion, and my experience was:
-
76 was boring, even with coop. That's saying something. The world was interesting, but the main and side (fetch) quests were the dullest, buggiest things that kept trying to sell us some anti grind stuff; and this was well after launch.
-
Starfield was... well, even more boring. It felt like Fallout 3 with all the jank, 10X the production budget, 100X the graphics requirements (as smooth as a cactus on my 3090), yet somehow, none of the charm. I only played for a bit, but I don't remember a single character name. Whereas I can still recall little side quests from Oblivion and FO3. Quirks persisted all the way from Oblivion, yet all the fun bugs were patched out. Basically, ME: Andromeda was better in every way.
But, you know, whatever floats peoples boats. I'm curious if these games have grown a following over whatever I was missing.
76 seems to be pretty popular nowadays. Starfield not so much.
I tried playing fallout 76 when it launched. I care about story or having fun with friends, and it failed on both fronts spectacularly.
It didn't offer any of the interactive story that I was expecting from (having watched) the previous entries because you were forced to play on a server, but it also didn't commit to co-op content because you might not have friends.
What a waste.
I recently picked up Fallout 4. My first Bethesda game, I'm a seasoned gamer, and just got a new PC. It honestly was the most unpleasant gaming experience I can remember. Surely, if this is my fourth time dying trying to leave this area that I got stuck in surrounded by high unkillable monsters, my loading screen will take less than a minute, right? My computer can run Control at 144fps, but can't load all of Fallout 4's shades of brown before I get bored.
I remember there being mods for it. The loading screens are somehow tied to the capped framerate (yeah, really), which you can remove.
To be blunt: were you holding it wrong? Was the game on an HDD? Did you tweak the inis in a dangerous way?
It’s been ages since I played FO4. It was janky for sure. But it seemed to run okay, and load fast, on a toaster compared to what I have now. And I never had a loading screen last close to a minute.
Starfield was a whole nother level, though. It felt like a game trying to look like 2077, but with the engine “feel” of something from 2006.
I think the HD texture pack was a major source of the issue, not to say it looked particularly good with it, but it would have probably looked worse without it.
I only ever watched people playing 76. I watch almost every update it's getting out of curiosity, and it just looks like the most boring and bland experience i can imagine.
Why?
Because 76 got a boost after the first season came out and they’d like to keep that cross promotion going
Why not?
Seriously, when we want shows/movies to connect to games, why do people get mad when it's reciprocal?
Idk I kind of wanted a clean slate since its been so long. I'd rather the writers of the main medium be free creatively and tie in properties can worry about tying in. I do get what you are saying though. And to add to that, I wouldn't mind seeing like The Ghouls hat somewhere. But I can't say I'd be excited if the show characters themselves were also featured and voiced in the game. I wouldnt write it off for that but it wouldnt excite me.
He didn't say anything about reusing characters from the show at all. The article merely imparted that the show is part of the game universe and will see the same treatment that past Fallout games have gotten. IE, the events of the game happened (with canon choices) and will probably be referenced in future games.
Except the show fucks up our choices in New Vegas and doesnt leave it up to us anymore.
Does it really bother people that there's a Canon ending to a game with multiple choices? Certainly doesn't bother me. Of course they're going to have to pick a cannon ending eventually if they want to keep making more games.
They dont have to. They could make these games take place anywhere in the world far away from the strip. But as another user replied to me, they want the money because an exec thinks Fallout show popular so we'll say its around that.
It's like getting upset over the free choice in Knights of The Old Republic. It's a story that technically by movie POV, should have already happened exactly as it did in the history books, yet in-game we can do whatever the hell we want, up to killing pretty much whoever we want and just running purely dark side. Technically, we shouldn't be able to make our own choices and it should be a very linear game; but that's not what the developers wanted to do.
Same thing with Fallout.
Fallout New Vegas canonized choices in Fallout 2. Fallout 2 canonized choices in Fallout 1. This is how all the games have gone. Should New Vegas not exist because it isn't New Reno or Vault City as factions instead of the NCR. Should they not have made Fallout 2 since it invalidates certain choices in Fallout 1?
I don't like the show doing away with the NCR but that is the choices made by the people in charge of the story and I liked the show despite it basically going against 3 games worth of build up and choices I made. At the end of the day, not everything is about me.
Idk I kind of wanted a clean slate since its been so long
So you want the new Fallout game...
To not be a fallout game?
How many have you even played? They've all referenced each other, and even FO1 referenced Wasteland.
The series has quite literally never in its entire existence been a "clean slate"
Yeah you know thats not what I meant at all. I'm disengaging.
So...
You didn't learn anything at all, and are gonna stay ignorant and upset.
Weird choice, but you do you I guess.
Listen, fallout always has winks to other fallout games. Sometimes a character from an old game has a side quest in the new one. Sometimes you are the descendant of your original character. The fucking shit I was saying was the setting needs to be fresh, and any inclusions of other fallout games should be kept to the traditional minimum and not be the focus. Thats what the fuck I meant. You intentionally missing my point so you can be angry is on you. But I already said I'm disengaging so I'm gonna follow my instance rules and not respond since you dont want to have a good faith discussion you want to hurl insults.
Thats what the fuck I meant
You should have done that I guess...
I’m gonna follow my instance rules and not respond
They said... In their response...
you want to hurl insults
No one did that, you might have replied to the wrong person
The show is so much better written than the Bethesda games that this can only be a positive for them.
I found New Vegas, F3 and F4 to be perfectly fine writing. In fact I have enjoyed all the references to the previous games, F1 and 2 included.
Fallout died a long time ago.
ew
Setting criticism of BGS aside, Fallout isn't as "hard" with its lore as some. There are little inconsistencies between the games and other media that are basically written off as "gameplay mechanics things" or simple oversights.
...Hence there will probably be conflicts with the TV show. But that's fine. It's nothing earth shattering for the IP.
I won't care if the game is bad: Don't fuck this up Todd!