E3 2018: Fallout 76 - 7 Reasons Why It's A Huge Mistake

Have Bethesda forgotten what made Fallout so great?

by Ewan Paterson
Bethesda

Todd Howard might be wonderful, but Fallout 76 sounds way too experimental for its own good. Boasting an always online platform that drew compliments and gasps in equal measure, it's looking as though this Fallout is going to be a divisive one - even if fans personally can't wait to hop back into the post-apocalypse once more.

Billed as a prequel to the main Fallout series, 76 will see players emerge from the titular vault for the first time tasked with bringing civilisation to the irradiated wasteland. It's a neat premise - that much is true - and fans of both The Elder Scrolls and Fallout have been asking about the feasibility of a co-op mode for a while now, but the logistics of such a shift are already beginning to bring their own issues.

Just how Fallout is 76? Well, the classic customisation, gunplay and dialogue is still there - as is the charm that has endeared the series to so many fans across the globe. It still feels like Fallout, but in shifting to an online format, is it a case of one step forward, two steps back?

Only time will tell, but with the series' fourth entry already having been criticised for divesting from so many genre tropes, could a backlash be lying in wait?

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.