Fallout 76 - First Impressions #6 - Combat & V.A.T.S.

Channel:

Thyworm

Subscribers:

8,660

Published on November 11, 2018 7:36:04 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aotRKwhjLvQ

Game:

Fallout 76 (2018)

Category:

First Impressions

Duration: 4:53

59 views

1

Hey Everyone, this is Thyworm with some initial thought on Bethesda's latest masterpiece. Or, is it?
We're continuing the Fallout76 first impressions series with the next topic: Combat and VATS.

I will mostly be focusing on combat here and not too much on VATS, for 2 reasons:
1. I never used VATS much in the single player games, because it felt like cheating. Mostly mirelurks were victim of my rediculous VATS aim, but apart from that I mostly killed manually.
2. VATS in Fallout is a very wonky system, and I haven't used it much either.

The main issue with VATS is that this is a real time multiplayer game, so you can't pause the game of course. Instead of just scrapping VATS from the game, which is what BEthesda should have done really, they chose to change it. Whats left of VATS is the percentages that you would normally see in the original games. You can activate VATS, press the trigger, and you might hit the enemy, based on the percentages. The weird thing here is, you don't even have to aim at the enemy, only the percentages matter. It is just super weird and I ended up not using it at all.

Combat also suffers from the transition from singleplayer to multiplayer. Combat was arguably the worst part of Skyrim and Fallout, but that was okay, at least for me. The game was more about exploring, you could clear locations at your own pace and there was VATS to help out in case of Fallout. Combat always felt a little weird, even with mods.Never was there a real feeling of you hitting someone. Strikes would always go through enemies, always using the same motions, and slowly you would see their healthbars go down. Bow and arrow and magic certainly felt more impactful, to be sure. Also guns in Fallout were okay, but there my main issue was aiming and the gunplay in general. The previous games simply weren't shooters, and never much attention went into that.

But now imagine this entire combat system in a multiplayer game.

The combat is just as clunky, because it's idenitical, but now you can't use VATS anymore. Some enemies are so fast that it's impossible to hit them, until they're right in front of you and then you can melee them down. After you've cleared a location and you're looting, reading terminals and just finishing up there, a new bunch of enemies has respawned in the world. Before you know it, they're brutally interrupting your reading sessions by shooting at you.

All of these things make that combat in general can feel a little weird, unpolished and overall just off. Combine this with bad performance and it can be a real struggle.

There's definitely different playstyles possible, regardless of my previous remarks. What I found was working really well, was the sneaky build. Invest in agility and perception at early levels, sneak through locations and take some enemies from afar. Sneak attack do double damage, which is relevant if you're holding a hunting rifle which takes 3 seconds to reload after every shot.

Also a Strength / endurance build is viable, as long as you keep investing in armor and upgrading your melee weapons. Mostly though, I found a mix of the two was good. Melee for smaller enemies, and faster ones, like ghouls and scorched. Super mutants however, you wanna take down from a distance, because running melee into a camp of those green bastards is a death wish for sure, unless you've picked up power armor maybe.


Another thing I noticed is that swapping items is really slow. If you have your machete bound to hotkey 1, and you want to swap because of an inbound ghoul, you need to wait before the gun animations finish, because before that, the game won't let you equip another wepon.
It's kind of annoying actually, and really can hurt you. Swapping was much faster in previous games and I hope sthis gets fixed in this one.

One final not is the AI, which is once again not great. Enemies are rather clueless, even after killing their friends in front of them. Not sure this will ever change, because it never has so far, but if you were hoping for smarter enemies, its not happening. At least, not yet.

I hope you've learned a thing or two again. 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 Surviving the Wasteland.

Thanks for watching everyone,
bye bye

Other Statistics