Fallout 76 - First Impressions #2 - Graphics, Sound & Performance

Channel:

Thyworm

Subscribers:

16,400

Published on November 9, 2018 11:47:06 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4mmyfFBVDg

Game:

Fallout 76 (2018)

Category:

First Impressions

Duration: 5:39

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4

We're continuing the Fallout76 first impressions series with the next topic: Graphics, Sound and Performance.

Let's start with the worst thing here: Performance.

You might have seen this already in some of the gameplay of the previous video. Or on the various YouTube channels out there. I mean, it's all over YouTube really, especially of course with the pessismts around us, but also the more fair reviewers complain about this a lot. I can tell you from my own experience, this thing runs like absolute crap. I don't have a top of the line PC or anything, but my GTX 1060 6GB shoud be able to run this smoothly on at least High Settings.

But it doesn't. It doesn't run well at all. And I'm sure at a later stage there will be tweaks again in ini-files, or patches from Bethesda, but I've never had a Bethesda game run this badly. Whenever I installed the vanilla version of any of the previous games, my game was automatically set to ultra and it ran super smooth. I had to fix the famous microstutter every now and then, but only after I modded the crap out of the game.

But now look at this, Fallout76, which by the way runs on the same engine as Fallout 4. I'm getting a ton of stutter and around 20 fps. And I'm not the only one, after looking at forums and youtube. Yes, I'm sure there's plenty of people who can run this game just fine, but the amount of people who have performance issues currently is really worrying. This game for me is basically unplayable when in combat for example, or while doing public events. So just a fair warning there, because this game is unpolished and not optimized well.

Graphics are up next:
Starting with the options, there's a few missing, you could say. for example, the field of view slider. Or something top turn off that annoying Depth of Field. Or the Motion Blur. These to me are pretty basic things for a PC game, but in our case, you'll have to either download a mod or tamper around in the .ini-files if you want to change any of these settings.

The Graphics themselves are a little hit n miss. Some things are quite detailed, while others look like you're playing a game on the Nintendo Wii. This has always been true with Bethesda games though, which is why we have texture mods, but still. It's clear though that Fallout76 is not really pushing any graphical limits here and it looks kinda meh. I like the look personally, because it's so familiar, but I would've expected Bethesda to deliver more detail with their latest installment of the franchise.

A lot of textures and meshes seem to have been recycled straight out of fallout 4. If you're a pessimist, you could say this game basically looks like a fallout 4 multiplayer game, but then without any high res texture improvements. Some have been saying that Fallout76 is a step up from Fallout 4, graphically, but I don't agree. To me, they look very similar.

In terms of level design, the game does exceed expectations. It's great to see the lush forests that aren't completely dead, like in other games. Also Fallout76 is more colorful than its predecessors. Walking through the woods, travelling the roads, searching through abandoned places and mines, all of the locations I've been at, have been very well designed and are a joy to explore.

Last but not least, Sound:
The sound is unbalanced and misplaced, quite often and by quite some margin. Footsteps are for some reason extremely loud, even after adjusting the settings. The direction of footsteps isn't clear. Based on where sound effects come from, you can't actually determine where the enemy is. Sound mixing and stereo or aurround effects have been implemented rather poorly, and especially when you're in a smaller area, trying to locate your enemy is just a guessing game. The same is true for gunshot sounds by the way. They're all over the place and making sense out of all of this is pretty tough, especially in a combat situation. Numerous times I've been attacked by someone who I though was in front of me, based on the footsteps, but he was behind me actually and is now there's this ghoul scraping flesh off the back of my skull. Not ideal, ladies and gentlemen.
I thought the quality of the sound effects was well done, with guns feeling powerful when you fire them, more so than in previous games. When firing a gun in a valley, there's this nice reverb on the shots, which really immerses you in the world. I loved that part.
Another great aspect of the game is the music, which is composed just so well, once again. I've mostly listened to the in-game music while I was playing, but for thoses who're interested, there's also a bunch of radio stations present.

If you think these video's are useful and helpful, consider subscribing! ask your questions in the comments, I'm happy to respond to them and I'll see you in the next episode of my first impressions for Fallout76. That one will be about Questing and Progression.

Thanks for watching everyone,
bye bye

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