Burning Springs disappointment
I’ve recently come back into my Fallout hyper-fixation phase and been playing everything I missed in Fo76. Just finished the Burning Springs expansion and was pretty disappointed. A few thoughts:
- Bullet sponges are a pain and completely ruin immersion
- Why was The Ghoul so hyped up for this and the face of all the promo when he had the smallest role imaginable and was utterly unnecessary
- Highway Town was really cool. Loved the concept, loved the execution. Could have had more named characters but overall was a very nice addition that felt very Fallout if that makes sense
- I’m not really a fan of the Rust Raiders taming Deathclaws. It hugely downplays one of the Enclave’s shows of strengths by taming and controlling Deathclaws to fight for them when some random group of raiders can do it to and seemingly more effective
And now for my main disappointment. The quest line was bad. It had great potential to be an epic quest line but instead was just kind of a flop. I loved the idea of gathering an army to take down the tyranny of the Rust King. But then it was just pathetically bad with the “army” being 4 people against an actual big army.
I’d have instead had the questline be longer. Gathering an army could depend on choices you’ve made throughout your gameplay. Yeah you recruit those 3 people from the expansion but then maybe you could go back to Appalachia and try to persuade allied factions to join the fight he before the Rust King invades. If you sided with Rahmani then maybe you can encourage the BoS to send a couple vertibirds for arial support. If you side with Shin he refuses because he doesn’t want the BoS helping people.
Perhaps you could recruit Crater or Foundation to send some fighters depending on who you allied with for the Vault 79 heist. If you’re a Ghoul you could recruit the Revenants.
Could even make it an event akin to Scorched Earth where it’s still a mission that plays a critical role in the story. You put a call-out to other Vault 76 residents to assist in taking down the tyrant.
But no. Get 3 people to help you take on a full fucking army.
I know it ended with the Rust Ming saying this isn’t the last time he’ll face the player but I don’t expect anything to come from that line beyond maybe one more extremely minor questline where nothing happens. I feel like almost every update they have an amazing opportunity and yet they very rarely hit the mark.