20 Disastrous Gaming Launches Everyone Saw Coming

Though there was much excitement about the prospect of a multiplayer-focused Fallout game, there was also a healthy amount of pre-release skepticism about Bethesda's ability to deliver the goods.

After all, for as acclaimed as the developer is, this would be their first major foray into the multiplayer arena, and considering the ludicrously creaky nature of the game's dated Creation Engine, many doubted its ability to support such an ambitious project.

It didn't help that Bethesda confirmed the game would be always-online and launch with no NPCs, prompting the usual concerns about server issues and also the prospect that the game world could end up feeling incredibly barren.

Bethesda didn't really make much effort to assuage players of their concerns that Fallout 76 was shaping up to be a big ol', aimless mess, which is precisely what it was upon launch.

Even excusing the abundance of bugs, Fallout 76 was just a thunderous bore in its early days - the world didn't feel alive, largely due to the absent NPCs and thread-bare story.

Bethesda did at least stick at it and whip the game into shape with updates which added NPCs and a more fleshed out storyline, but it's painfully clear that Fallout 76 was taken out of the oven a good while before it was done cooking, just as so many predicted.