Starfield can learn some important lessons from one of Bethesda’s worst reviewed RPGs

Is Fallout 76 good now? That’s the question on the lips of anyone who’s been a Vault Dweller for at least a few hours in their lifetime. Back when the game first landed on PS4, Xbox One and PC in 2018, the world stood still. Not because it was amazing – no, not at all. But because the janky MMO was so… different… from the sort of jank Bethesda has been known for.

The world was sterile, lifeless, populated by only player characters that were hostile and as pissed off as you, for the most part. At launch, Fallout 76 was regarded as the worst RPG in the series, the radioactive water-logged nadir of a 20-year-old series that had – until this point – been the suspiciously glowing crown jewel in the crown of Western RPGs. Critics were mean, but fair. “A pointless walk in the post-apocalypse” wrote one reviewer. “A bizarre, boring, broken mess,” said another. To this day, Fallout 76 sits at a miserable 52 on MetaCritic (and the user score is somehow even worse).

The consensus was that Fallout 76 may have looked, acted, and even smelled like its series stablemates, but it was rotting from within – that energy and soul and vivaciousness that made Fallout games tick like an overactive Geiger Counter was dead inside, and the husk around it was inert. It doesn’t really inspire confidence in Bethesda’s next big RPG experiment, Starfield, does it?