Bethesda announced Fallout 76’s premium subscription service, Fallout 1st, earlier this week, and the reception was predictable - fans really don’t like it, and it’s even cashing in on Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas to try to entice fans into picking up what is transparently a cash grab. Fallout 76 is the multiplayer iteration of the franchise that Bethesda launched last year to a slew of issues, both technically and from a design standpoint, and the game has struggled to gain much traction ever since.
Initially, fans were turned off by the fact that Fallout 76 eschewed so much of what made previous games in the franchise so good - meaningful dialogue, diverse characters, a deep story, and incredible player customization. While the latter is certainly present, it’s also somewhat hindered by the online set up, which needs to have failsafes in place to prevent broken character builds. Then, there was the PR disaster that was the Fallout 76 canvas bags scandal, which was rectified only after fan outrage and months of waiting. When Fallout 76 became a key part of Bethesda’s E3 2019 presentation, it was hard for fans not to groan audibly - but then Todd Howard, director of Bethesda Game Studios, took the stage, almost apologized for the state of the game, and unveiled a huge number of changes that were coming in the Wastelanders update, which looked almost too good to be true.
Now, though, the Wastelanders update is delayed and Bethesda is still trying to promote a Fallout 76 premium subscription service in the wake of that. It’s got to be difficult for even the most fervent supporters of the Fallout 76 experience to defend Fallout 1st, and that’s before realizing that a major selling point of the service isn’t even something that Bethesda made itself. The new premium subscription will offer what’s described as the “iconic” Fallout Ranger Armor Outfit, which first made its appearance in Fallout: New Vegas - a game developed by Obsidian, a studio that coincidentally is on the brink of releasing a game in The Outer Worlds that many critics are describing as the best Fallout-style experience in years.
There’s nothing explicitly wrong with Bethesda doing this, of course, but it’s the type of move that feels weird and off-putting. Using armor that another company designed and made famous to shill for a premium subscription service that’s tied to a game that hasn’t even been fixed yet isn’t great - and neither is removing the NCR designation from the Ranger armor, which stands for New California Republic and is the tie-in to New Vegas that establishes it as part of that game’s lore.
Ultimately, how Bethesda chooses to market its game’s premium subscription service is up to it, and it owns the rights to everything its using. Still, it just feels like more evidence that the people who understand Fallout the best aren’t currently making the games, and until Fallout 76 releases its human NPC Wastelanders update and attempts to fix the laundry list of issues long-time fans had with the game, asking fans to pay even more to access some minor improvements seems like a pretty awful thing to do.
Next: Bethesda Is Saving Fallout 76 By Making It An Actual Fallout Game
Source: Official Fallout Website
