Summary
- Recent Fallout games have not fully utilized the potential for a challenging and immersive survival experience in the post-apocalyptic setting.
- Fallout 76's approach to survival mechanics is questionable, with limited options and trade-offs that prevent character progression.
- Future Fallout games should consider including a survival difficulty mode at launch and take inspiration from Starfield's mechanics to improve the franchise's approach to survival.
Given the Fallout franchise’s unique post-apocalyptic setting, this franchise has a lot of potential to provide a challenging and immersive survival experience. However, recent games in the Fallout franchise haven’t quite tapped into the full potential of this.
Especially after Fallout 76’s questionable approach to its survival mechanics, future Fallout games can’t make this same mistake. Not only do future Fallout games need a survival difficulty mode at launch, but the franchise could also stand to take this feature to the next level.
Is Fallout 76 Worth Playing in 2024?
Gamers may want to consider playing Fallout 76 in 2024 and even beyond, given how far the game and its community have come since 2018.
The Fallout Franchise’s Current Approach To Survival Mechanics Is Cause For Concern
While Fallout 76’s Adventure mode doesn’t include many hardcore survival mechanics, Fallout Worlds and Custom Worlds offer certain survival-oriented mechanics. However, playing in these game modes will prevent players from gaining any character progression, including level-ups and inventory changes. This is quite a steep tradeoff just to have access to survival mechanics.
Since the game modifiers in Fallout 76’s Fallout Worlds game mode frequently rotate, survival-oriented mechanics aren’t always available. Players can change the game modifiers at will in the Custom Worlds game mode, but this game mode requires a Fallout 1st premium subscription to access.
There used to be a dedicated Survival game mode in Fallout 76 that allowed players to play with survival elements enabled while still earning character progression. This game mode has since been removed though, apparently due to a lack of player support. If this is truly the reason why Survival mode was removed, then it’s unlikely to ever return. However, it could still be worthwhile for Fallout 76 to bring this game mode back, given the current state of the game’s community. Specifically, player counts for Fallout 76 have recently reached record-high numbers, so among these newer players, there could potentially be enough support for Survival mode to return for good.
Meanwhile, in Fallout 76’s Adventure mode, the franchise’s survival mechanics have reached a strange turning point. For example, having radiation and Mutations is surprisingly an integral part of Fallout 76’s meta-build, instead of being something to avoid. Even things like addictions and diseases have beneficial side effects in Fallout 76. Not to mention, neglecting to eat food and drink water in Adventure mode isn’t fatal, so many players prefer to avoid these mechanics out of convenience.
While Fallout 76’s relaxed approach to survival mechanics may have been at the request of the majority of the game’s community, this decision has left players who would prefer a survival experience in an unfortunate situation. Consequently, future Fallout games should strongly consider featuring a survival mode difficulty, even if it’s optional. This way, future Fallout games can have the best of both worlds without players having to rely on community mods to have a proper Fallout survival game.
The Fallout and Elder Scrolls Franchises Are Two Sides of the Same Coin
Not only should Fallout 5 and future Fallout games offer a survival mode difficulty, but they should arguably have a more hardcore approach to this type of experience. Generally speaking, the recent Fallout franchise games have a fairly identical approach to survival mechanics as The Elder Scrolls, which seems rather inappropriate. Especially considering how Fallout’s post-apocalyptic setting drastically differs from The Elder Scrolls’ fantasy setting, these two franchises having similar survival mechanics doesn’t feel justified.
How Fallout 5 Could Expand the Franchise’s Survival Mechanics
The expanded diseases and afflictions system in Starfield is a great progression of the Fallout franchise’s survival mechanics, despite there currently being no dedicated survival mode in Starfield outside of community mods. Consequently, Fallout 5 should consider blending Starfield’s existing survival mechanics with the Fallout franchise’s existing survival mechanics. From this point, the Fallout franchise’s post-apocalyptic setting still has a little room to inspire a few more survival mechanics, but this foundation would already arguably be a big improvement for the franchise.
Fallout 76
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 54 /100 Critics Rec: 9%
