Yes, as of today, I cancelled my pre-order for Fallout 76.
Mind you, there are a lot of reasons why I wanted to pre-order it to begin with.
- I'm a native West Virginian living in Colorado and the game is set practically in my home town.
- I love West Virginia, but I don't like how it's stereotyped as the dumbest (read: hillbilly, redneck, backwards) state in the nation. West Virginians are proud people -- and unfortunately, right now, any type of boost to the state would help it.
- West Virginia has a very high drug abuse and overdose problem right now. My home town of Huntington is the heroin overdose capital of the United States. Maybe the positive outlook that Fallout 76 would bring to the state would bring back a bit of respect that the state (and its people) have lost.
I loved Fallout 4. Now, I hear you, people who loved Fallout 3 and hated Fallout 4... sure, it was a different game and game styles change. I understand that and I hope you would too.
This game has a lot of things going for it -- and a lot of things going against it.
First of all, the publisher, Bethesda, is keeping mum on a great deal of things about the game.
We know it's about the first vault to open after the nuclear blast and what the first vault dwellers find. We know it's going to have nuclear weapons in it. We also know those nuclear weapons are going to be a part of the story. But we are also learning that there are going to be no NPCs in the game. No dialogue options. No way for the player to influence the story (as in previous Fallouts).
Second, we know it's going to be multiplayer and that's not really something that bothers me too much. I don't like that it's going to be multiplayer only. There's too much that can go wrong in that situation. Servers can go down, be offline, or have too many people logged in at the same time.
What has Bethesda decided to do with regards to the idea that, if you do come across someone and they're more powerful than you, they'll be able to take all your stuff?
It's going to be multiplayer but there's going to be a slim chance of you running into other players because there's going to be about 24 people to a server. What's the point in it being multiplayer only if you're not really supposed to run into someone else?
I don't like being forced into playing a multiplayer game as a solo player. And I don't often have friends who want to play the same game at the same time as I do. So what happens then?
For now, I'm more content to sit back and wait -- let others take the chance and, once some reviews come out and we hear more about what the game is actually like, maybe then I'll take a chance on the game.
Plus everything is discounted eventually.