The Fallout franchise has always held a special place in my heart. I've put countless hours into playing and replaying Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4 (no I haven't played through 1 and 2, but believe me I've tried and maybe one day I'll have the mental dexterity to take on such a complicated task). Every time I enter their realm I love them more and more. Sure they're cheesy at times and they may not have the strongest of stories, but the care that went into the characters and the environment always spoke to me.
Naturally, when I heard the announcement for 76 I was stoked. I immediately pre-ordered the special edition (you know, the one with the "canvas" bag that was actually nylon?) and I tried to find ways to kill time until I was back in the Fallout universe. I tried replaying the previous games... that didn't do it for me. I tried distracting myself with other games... still nothing. So I started brainstorming things to occupy my time. That lead me to my Fallout Perks Pack series. If you don't know about F76, they implemented a new perks "card" system that gives you the ability to switch out your perks whenever you need to. This allows you to be fluid in a live and interactive world. In theory, it sounds great, and there are a lot of elements of F76 that could have been great... But I'll get to that later.
So as I was patiently waiting for F76 to drop, I began thinking about what kinds of perk cards would be available for a fully online Fallout world. Fallout had never been online before, so the perks would HAVE to be different. There are some things in a solo world that would never fly online, and vise versa. So I begin to draft up some fun and silly perk ideas and convert them into "playing card" type pieces.
You can imagine my disappointment when F76 ended up being a total dumpster fire of a game. Not only the game but the company itself! What the hell happened to them? I know they have their faults (cough, releasing the same 12-year-old game 30 times just to make money, cough) but I never expected them to completely chuck all of their moral standards out the window when taking on their first online game. It's really been quite surprising to see just how bad it's been. Between the bad PR and the bad game, they are not sitting well with me right now, but that doesn't mean that I don't still love their games. I understand that things change and companies change, but their past accomplishments shouldn't be tossed aside just because they suck now.
Really the point of this post is to just say that I'm proud of the work that I came up with and I had a wonderful time making them. This post kind of turned into a rant about Bethesda though. But honestly, the reason I was so happy to be making this series was because I care so much about the franchise and I wanted to be apart of that world. I think what I'm learning about myself as I write this piece is that I want to feel that connection again. I started this whole website as a way to learn more about myself and what I'm passionate about. I think I'm on to something, but I'm just scratching the surface.
Much love!
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