Hey there anonymous readers! My name’s Zander, and this is my first review post in relation to my experience participating in the Fallout 76 B.E.T.A.

So far, I’ve only participated in two of the multiple sessions Bethesda has held for the world, and I’ve come to an honest conclusion thus far: I love this game. Anyone who’s thinking about picking up a copy, do it. Here’s a little story about my experience from day one, now to day two.

Loading up the game for the first time, you feel a rush of curiosity and excitement as you finally press the ‘play’ button. Finally! It’s now your turn to wake up in Vault 76, to the voice of the Overseer. After listening to a line or two of the Overseer’s words and watching yourself finally get up out of bed, the character customization prompt comes up, where you may create and name your character. This felt exactly as a Fallout game should– until I heard an out-of-place “H-Hello?” All of a sudden, I feel as though I’m in a Discord call with a community I’ve never met before. Plugging in my own microphone, I respond with a friendly “Hello!” My immersion was restored once we eventually began to develop our characters with something of a light roleplay.

This continued for a short while until we joined a team together and left Vault 76 together, ready to take on the wasteland as new friends. We exited the Vault, shot at some communist robots, ventured through the rolling hills of West Virginia, and found ourselves at an abandoned cabin, where my new teammate chose to end his session. I was alone, and this was the first major issue I had encountered: I felt alone. The world is so big, there’s so much to do, but something about listening to the local radio station in a big world with an overwhelming amount of things to do that got to me. Oh well, I suppose I’ll continue without my friend! I’ll go to the nearest town, right after I go by the Overseer’s camp. This is where I met two other players, whom more or less didn’t care about my presence. They simply did their business, and left without returning a single ‘Hello!’ emote.

The first town came along, and this is where things finally began to become interesting again: The rich lore and story of the Responders–the portion you can easily find, at least. It felt just like Fallout 4, digging through ruins for notes, holotapes, resources, and more. The only real annoyance during this entire situation was how thirsty I kept getting (in-game). I scavenged materials, listened to holotapes, and made myself a new weapon at a workbench (reporting a small graphical bug I had encountered), and that’s when I met my second teammate. He approached me, excited to see another player! We had fun conversations through the voice chat, completing a few missions together until both of us had to log off for the day. Not going to lie, that was a great experience. I was excited for Saturday to come along…

Today, Saturday, November 3, 2018, I logged into the beta as soon as it started. I walked around for a small bit, happy. I had found a military base, where some sergeant Mr. Handy wanted me to put on a military garment. This was a quest I wanted to do later. I left, went back to the previous town I had discovered with the Responders, wandered around for a bit, had a staring contest with another player, then I went in my own aimless direction. I was lost, I didn’t know what to do! This was a major issue for me, I was getting sort of close to simply logging off for the day due to boredom. As soon as I turned around with the motive of “Okay, this area is too difficult to fight alone, and I’m sort of left without much to do,” I made it back (once again) to the town of Flatwoods, where I found two new players. We teamed up, but this time none of us used our microphones. We communicated through the emote system, and let me tell you: Though it has its limitations, you can easily get the point across. We did a quest or two together, proving that this game is so much better when a team can work together to achieve a common goal. Eventually, one person did choose to leave the session, and I was left with one teammate. We went back to that military base I had found yesterday, and this is where things got interesting.

We entered the building, looking around and getting quest objectives from this sergeant robot. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a random player began cussing my teammate and myself out. Immersion broken. Next, he shot at me! He initiated PvP, and I wasn’t about to let off an opportunity to get this idiot to shut his mouth. I pretended to be a pacifist for a short while until he was caught not paying attention. I returned fire, effectively killing this man and taking his junk. I emoted to my teammate that we needed to get the f*ck out of there before the guy shows up again– Only to hear a distant “Where the f*ck is your friend, huh?” My friend was on the ground, dying. I came to his aide, effectively baited and killed. I respawned, catching my new enemy tabbed out and talking nonsense (I think he was talking to his girlfriend or something, it was picked up by the microphone). I quickly shot him dead, grabbed as much junk as I could carry, told my friend to hurry and follow, and we left. Look, this was such an adrenaline-filled experience that I almost find it difficult to call this a bad system. This perfectly exhibited the competetive nature of PvP in this game, while also showing how the anti-grief system worked. The game asked me if I wanted revenge, offering to give me 6 caps as a bounty. All of this, and who would have thought it could have been missed out on by ignoring the player. I’m sure I have a bounty on my head now, but I think that was an experience that was worth the risk. I can’t wait until this game is further polished, when there will be stronger rivalries. I have yet to encounter anyone firing off any ICBM’s in my playthrough.. I wonder what an in-game cold war would look like…