I’m crouched down because I’m always crouched down because that is how you play Fallout games. (Right?) And this is now a Fallout game, or so they claim. The square brackets around Hidden are wobbling a bit, so something’s around. Even without the visual, I can hear something muttering nearby. Something insane. Subtitles tell me it’s called a Scorched Wanderer, and I’ll later learn that the disease it carries drives the victim violently mad.

The voicework is perfect: scary and gruff. For the first time, I wonder if exploring this bombed-out corpse of a barn is worth whatever trinkets and junk I might find. Resources are tight. I’m low on food, low on water, low on ammo. I realize I’m scared for my character. She’s only level 3, and stepping out of the vault to be accosted by four deceptively tiny, sky-blue-and-deadly-cute robots is still fresh in my memory.

If those little suckers almost did her in, then what is a Scorched going to do to her? She hasn’t died yet. I don’t want her to die now. Oh my god… what happens if she dies? They don’t go over that in the tutorial. Oh, wait, there is no tutorial.

And then it’s too late. The brackets turn angry red around the word Caution… and then Danger… and then they’re on me. There are three of them, and they hit hard. Red crescents on the screen show that I’m getting hit from all sides – they were busy flanking me while I was distracted by the voice acting. Clever girls.

I back up against a wall as best I can and start emptying my shoddy little pipe pistol (it’s the only gun I have) at them. One down. I am half health. I jam one of my five stimpacks into my leg and feel better about how this is going to go. Two down. Half health again? Oh boy. Stimpack two. Three down. I’m okay, I mean she’s okay, my character is okay.

We made it. I let out a sigh of relief; I loosen my death grip on my controller. I crouch down again, expecting friendly yellow brackets around the word Hidden, because we’re okay now. But it’s still red. Red, red, red. I’m out of bullets and I can see two more enemies. I hopelessly switch to the machete I found just moments before and handily (What? Wow!) cut down the last two Scorched without taking a hit. Huh, machete. Nice.

This is my barn now. Mine. And I strip it for every last piece of junk I can find. It’s very clear I’ll need all of it to survive. I’m less than half an hour out of the vault and not even to The Wayward (the first guided quest stop) and I know this game is a keeper. This is a Fallout game. I’m home.

Let’s quickly rewind to when Fallout 76 first came out. In need of a new console, I had purchased the Xbox One X bundle with Fallout 76 because it was $100 cheaper than all the others. No one wanted Fallout 76, and that saved me money. I like saving money. Critics and players alike excoriated it in every review; every comment was negative. No personality; either crushingly hard or ridiculously easy depending on where you wandered; players dropping nukes on your head; not enough inventory; all the good camping spots were always taken; bugs, bugs, bugs.

But I owned it now. How bad could it be? I set the download going overnight because it was huge.

Eagerly, to familiar music and the vault symbol, I loaded the game. Look: it’s a Fallout game with the music and the vault symbol and I’m in a vault and the controls are the same and there is the familiar crappy character creator that makes faces that look like melting clay. There are party hats on tables. In a vault! How bad could it be?

I walked through the vault (A new vault! So many years had gone by since the last game, since the last fresh vault) and it was just like a Fallout game. Success!

That feeling lasted a whole 10 minutes.

I left the vault, greeted by the familiar brightness-lens-flare effect. I emerged into an empty world, worked my way down the path in front of me and into a lot of nothing. Where to go? What to do? I had no idea. I walked until I saw a road. On that road were… what? People. Oh, other players in a Fallout game. That’s kind of neat. They circled me, all shooting at me. My health tinked down. I was reminded on-screen that I could fire back and engage in combat with them. Five against one. Five of them waiting where new players were likely to walk. Perfect.

I pressed the Xbox button on my controller, pressed the options button, scrolled down to quit and then uninstalled the game.

As the next two years went by, I read Bethesda had increased item and weight limits. Yawn. There were patches to fix all of the things. Yawn. I opened one eye halfway when they announced private servers. Hmm, but yawn. A shitty half-game on a private server is still shitty.

Then, in April 2020, the Wastelanders expansion was released with much fanfare, promising an entirely revamped game. I ignored it for a while. Elder Scrolls Online was fueling my game sessions, so Bethesda was already taking my money. The number of games that have pulled off resurrection revamps successfully could be counted on one hand. I was good, thanks.

But a couple weeks ago, there was this: “We have rebalanced the game so it levels with you.” The carnival barker that is advertising cried into my mind, his eyebrows up high to accommodate his exaggerated wide eye roll, and felt so close I could see the tiny caking of his heavy eyeliner.

“We have human NPCs with personalities now, like a real Bethesda game,” the man at the ticket booth croaked at me through his ill-fitting and yellowed COVID mask. I stood at the imaginary counter in the hellscape of my isolation-soaked mind and thought-said, “I already have a ticket. I already own this. It will cost me nothing but download time. I can do that overnight.” He nodded at the unmanned turnstile, and it opened for me.

“There is a faction system and a main quest now, just like a real Fallout game.” A woman in a sharp tuxedo and top hat raised the tent flap for me with one arm and performed a grandiose flourish with the other.

I entered the tent and… I’m crouched down because I’m always crouched down because that is how you play Fallout games. (Right?) And this is now a Fallout game, or so they claim.

And they are right.

After my first couple of hours of play, nukes going off constantly, I opted for a Fallout 1st subscription. It means a personal server for me and 7 friends, a monthly stipend of micro-transaction currency, a few little in-game doodads, and no strangers. I don’t want or need an MMO; those are everywhere you look. I do want, and now have, a multiplayer Fallout game for the same basic cost to rent a hosted Ark: Survival Evolved or Conan Exiles server.

Unfortunately, it is not a persistent world, so I have to be logged in for my non-Fallout 1st friends to use it, but hey… Multiplayer Fallout! There has to be a catch.

And so far, that is the only catch. I’m level 40, sporting T-60 power armor, and tearing up Appalachia with my one friend that also let himself be lured in. You see, he also had the $100 discount golden ticket from the Fallout 76 Xbox bundle that no one else wanted.

To my other friends (that includes you!): it’s on Game Pass, so pretty much everyone has a ticket to the circus now. Come see the deathclaws. The molerats are all here. There is power armor. Come in, come in. Welcome home. We missed you.

Fallout 76 can now be the multiplayer Fallout game you always hoped for. The big top is waiting, and I have gladly become the barker. How’s my eyeliner look?