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Chaos and scale have always been the foundation of the Battlefield franchise, and Battlefield V is no different. Squads of soldiers relentlessly push towards objectives with either sheer force or improvised tactics while gunfire and explosions ring throughout the beautiful, but war-torn landscapes. It’s an overwhelming sensory experience and a fine execution of a familiar formula–if you play the better modes.

Battlefield V goes back to where the franchise began by using World War II’s European theater as the backdrop for first-person shooting and vehicular combat in large multiplayer matches. It’s not too dissimilar to Battlefield 1, where every weapon has a distinct weight and impact that comes through vividly in both sight and sound. The core conceits of Battlefield remain mostly untouched, but small tweaks have been made to the formula, most of which are welcome.

Ground troops are even more deadly this time around, with a revamped ballistics model (random bullet deviation is gone) that results in reduced time-to-kill for skilled players; floundering in open areas is now more dangerous than ever. Navigating the maps’ messy terrain has a smooth, intuitive feel whether you’re mantling obstacles or scrambling for cover. All players regardless of class can revive squadmates, which highly encourages sticking together and alleviates the disappointment of dying without a medic around. Since it takes a few precious seconds to perform a revive and is limited to squadmates, it doesn’t negate the importance of the Medic class’ instant revive. The ability to spot enemies is now exclusive to the sniper-focused Recon class by using the manual spotting scope or having the subclass perk to reveal enemies you fire upon.

As impactful as Attrition sounds, it’s not so overbearing as to drastically shake up Battlefield’s core, though it does make going rogue less viable.

Class roles and teamwork are further emphasized by the Attrition system, which encompasses the changes made to resource scarcity and scavenging and affects nearly every aspect of the game. The fact you’re not given much ammo at spawn makes the Support class’s ability to dole out ammo pouches clutch when you survive multiple firefights, while the Assault class has a perk that grants more ammo upon scavenging dead players. Surviving with the game’s health system, which is partially auto-regenerating, relies on having a medkit on hand, which can only be distributed by Medics. As impactful as Attrition sounds, it’s not so overbearing as to drastically shake up Battlefield’s core, though it does make going rogue less viable.

Another new mechanic introduced in Battlefield V is Fortifications, which consists of building predetermined structures within the environment–like sandbag walls, barbed wire coils, and Czech hedgehogs. There are no resources tied to your ability to construct them, though the Support class builds faster than other classes and can prop up things like stationary gun and supply crates in certain spots. Overall, fortifications feels a bit tacked on and inconsequential in some cases, but there’s no denying their effectiveness in the right situation. Something as simple as improvised sandbags for a little cover can go a long way by turning a sitting duck into a well-positioned defender who can better hold down an objective when every other building’s been reduced to rubble.

The narrative dress-up is a nice touch, but the real reason Grand Operations works is because it keeps up the momentum from round to round and packages a variety of game modes into one long match, encouraging you to see it through.

Above all else, Battlefield V truly shines in Grand Operations, a series of three consecutive matches (or rounds) intertwined by brief narrative bits inspired by WWII events. Each round, presented as one in-game day in the same theater of war, is a specific game mode, and teams can earn reinforcement bonuses for certain rounds depending on the outcome of the previous one. The narrative dress-up is a nice touch, but the real reason Grand Operations works is because it keeps up the momentum from round to round and packages a variety of game modes into one long match, encouraging you to see it through.

The success of Grand Operations should be primarily accredited to the more focused, well-executed modes like Airborne, Frontlines, and Breakthrough. Frontlines in particular plays out like a tug-of-war; teams fight over varied objectives in sequential order within defined sections of a map, depending on the phase of the match. Teams will struggle to hold capture points in sequence to push the other back, and other phases may be demolition-style attack/defend skirmishes. The opportunity to push back a phase also makes it so you can regain ground if your back is against the wall; by the same token, you can’t get too comfortable with a lead.

These game types aren’t entirely new; Frontlines was seen in Battlefield 1 DLC and borrows elements from Rush and Conquest, and Grand Operations is a variation–albeit improved–on the original Operations in Battlefield 1. However, the tools and mechanics built around Battlefield V along with how map dynamics shift at each phase make them an absolute thrill to play. It accentuates the best features of the map roster, and also makes the moment to moment firefights distinct since they’re concentrated across different sections. The structure of modes like Frontlines naturally ushers a team’s attention to a handful of clear objectives at a time and provides a method to the madness, creating a satisfying push-and-pull where success feels earned.

As great as Grand Operations is, the series staple of Conquest has become the weakest link. This traditional mode has devolved into a match-long carousel of flag captures, easy kills, and cheap deaths. Maps like Twisted Steel and Arras function well enough for Conquest, but that leaves a majority of the eight available maps lacking. Narvik, Fjell 652, and Devastation feel too condensed and disjointed for the high player count and mechanics of Conquest; the action hardly ever stops, but cramming everyone together in compact, circular maps means you’re often caught from behind or flanked by enemies that simply stumbled upon that fruitful opportunity. It goes both ways, as you’ll frequently find yourself catching enemy squads with their backs turned because you lucked into a certain spawn and ran off in the right direction.

The success of Grand Operations should be primarily accredited to the more focused, well-executed modes like Airborne, Frontlines, and Breakthrough.

Battlefield V is also rough in spots. A few bugs are forgivable, like wild ragdoll physics, but some are more problematic. On rare occasions, the map goes blank when enlarging it, or health packs just don’t work. Very rarely would you have to revive a squadmate by a door, but when this happens, you’re likely to only get the prompt to interact with the door, leaving your friend to die. Thankfully, these issues are not enough to overshadow the game’s best parts.

Regardless of your preferred mode of play, you’ll be earning XP for a number of separate progression paths. There’s overall rank, class rank, individual weapon rank, and for good measure, each tank and plane has its own rank as well. There isn’t a whole lot to unlock for weapons given the WWII setting, but leveling up weapon proficiencies lets you customize them to your play style, like choosing greater hip-fire accuracy, faster reload, quicker aim-down-sights, or less recoil in ADS. Various weapons and pieces of equipment (such as the spawning beacon for Recon or the anti-tank grenade for Assault) unlock as you rank up classes. It’s a fairly sensible system, though the same can’t be said about vehicle progression. Vehicles are tough to come by in Battlefield V as it is and since each one ranks separately, it takes an extra-concerted effort to level them up. There are some useful perks to obtain for vehicles that can provide a slight advantage, but it can be a struggle to acquire them.

The structure of modes like Frontlines naturally ushers a team’s attention to a handful of clear objectives at a time and provides a method to the madness, creating a satisfying push-and-pull where success feels earned.

Aside from weapon skins, you’ll customize each class’s appearance for both Allies and Axis. It’s the cosmetic aspect where you can fit yourself with different parts of uniforms, though it doesn’t bear much fruit since this is a first-person game that moves so fast, even your enemies won’t really notice the ‘rare’ uniform you’re wearing. Cosmetic customization is also how Company Coins comes into play, the in-game currency that you earn through completing challenges (daily orders or assignments) or completing matches. Most cosmetics can be acquired with Company Coins, which can be a grind to earn. You should note that unlocking weapon and vehicle perks are also tied to Company Coins, but at least they are relatively low-cost. There are no microtransactions at the moment, but they are said to coming in the future, and for cosmetics only.

Battlefield V isn’t solely a multiplayer endeavor. War Stories returns as the single-player component that attempts to present a brutal conflict with a more earnest tone. The campaign highlights lesser-known parts of WWII, like the Norwegian resistance, and the Senegalese Tirailleurs who fought for the French Army amid racial discrimination. The effort is admirable, especially when it comes to the Tirailleur campaign as it sheds light on piece of history that has nearly been forgotten; the scale of Battlefield comes through and the story speaks to the horrors of war. Nordlys boils down to a mix of stealth and combat that casts you as a one-person army that’s enjoyable at times, but doesn’t go beyond lone-wolf skirmishes–at least it showcases some of the game’s best setpieces. And the Under No Flag campaign for the English side is an eye-rolling series of tedious missions that goes for a lighthearted note; it doesn’t stick the landing, however. War Stories has its moments but is all over the place in terms of design, tone, and style.

The effort is admirable, especially when it comes to the Tirailleur campaign as it sheds light on piece of history that has nearly been forgotten.

Currently, Battlefield V still has features to implement as part of its game-as-a-service approach (designated Tides of War), but there’s enough to chew on for now given the quality of the better modes. It’s an exciting prospect that there’s more to come at no additional cost, but you can’t help but feel that the launch package could’ve been a bit more dense considering there’s only eight maps. Additional modes (including co-op), new maps, another Grand Operations mission, and the Firestorm battle royale mode will be rolling out intermittently between now and March 2019. All that could make for the most feature-rich game in the series; unfortunately, we won’t be able to evaluate those parts of the game until they arrive.

The Battlefield series has a winning formula that Battlefield V doesn’t deviate far from, at least for now. Conquest and the map roster don’t mesh well together, however, Grand Operations–and the other modes within it–steal the show and foster some of the greatest moments the franchise has offered. You might be surprised by the impact of the slight changes made for this entry, especially when you’re deep into pushing or defending objectives in Frontlines alongside teammates fulfilling their roles. That’s when Battlefield V is at its best.

As you explore the wasteland of West Virginia in Fallout 76, you’ll often happen upon abandoned Power Armor. This high-level piece of equipment is a special armor that can be enhanced further with pieces of armor plating. These pieces are usually around level 40, so you can’t even use them until you’re leveled up. But don’t ignore Power Armor entirely because you’re a low level! Remove the pieces attached and take the Chassis left over, as even without the armor plates attached, you’ll get a bonus to your defense and a boost to your carrying capacity.

It’s also worth noting that once you hop into a Power Armor chassis, it’s yours for good just as long as you store it in your inventory or place it in your Stash. You’ll want to start compiling Power Armor pieces early on so that you can be prepared to use them when you reach the appropriate level.

Power Armor is such a boon to your stats both early and later on, so it’s well worth taking the time to seek them out. To help secure you a set, we’ve gathered below Power Armor locations that are nearby Vault 76 and easy to get early on. It’s worth noting that while these locations are set, sometimes there won’t be Power Armor. This is because the game’s world is persistent, so if a player has picked up that armor recently, that means it’ll be gone. Lucky for you, a Power Armor set does respawn after a while. Remain steadfast and you’ll grab one for yourself in due time!

Be sure to check back often as we highlight more easy-to-find Power Armor sets. If you’re looking for more Fallout 76 guides, check out our survival guide, as well as our guide offering tips you should know before starting. You can also check out our feature showcasing all the Perk Cards we’ve found so far. If you’re more curious about how the game is, we’ll be putting out a review in progress sometime in the days ahead.

Portside Pub / Mama Dolce’s Processing Plant

This set should be the first one you check for if you’re keen on grabbing some Power Armor right away. It’s located east of Vault 76; you’ll see an area that looks like a train yard on the map. You can find the Power Armor in a warehouse located south of Portside Pub, which is a smidge westof Mama Dolce’s Processing Plant. Refer to the map screenshot below for the exact location.

This warehouse is booby trapped, so you’re going to want to be careful in your approach. Fortunately, you can take a staircase to enter the building from the roof to avoid most of the danger. Simply head up the stairs, making sure to steer clear of the explosives traps as they’ll likely trigger as you pass through. Once you’re inside the warehouse, drop down to find the Power Armor. If you need more visual direction, refer to the screenshots in the gallery above.

Morgantown Trainyard

The Morgantown Trainyard is just northwest of Portside Pub at the point on the map that appears as, well, you guessed it: a train yard. This Power Armor set is another one of the easier ones to grab, so you’re more than likely to show up and find nothing. But don’t give up!

When you arrive to the train yard, look out for a train carriage labeled as “USA Star.” There are a couple in the yard, but the one you want is located just below a rusty crane nearby the east side of the main warehouse. The Power Armor suit is inside the carriage to your left.

Gorge Junkyard

This next Power Armor is at the Gorge Junkyard, which is directly east of Vault 76. If you’ve just started, you’ll want to put off getting this set, as it requires a level 3 lock-picking skill. If you want to up your ability to open those pesky locks, try putting points into Perception as much as possible, and if luck is on your side, you’ll receive a few Picklock Perk cards, which should get you to where you want to be.

Once you meet these requirements, head to the junkyard and find a green truck trailer amid the junk for the Power Armor. It should be south of the red beached ship on the northern side of the yard near a tiny shack. Refer to the map above for an estimate of where it is, as well as the shots in the gallery for a more visual look.

Aaronholt Homestead

This Power Armor location has a more lenient lock to pick coming in at a lowly Level 1–that said, it still requires you to have better lock-picking skill than zero, so don’t go here unless you’ve leveled that up! Anyway, this location is a bit further out at the Aaronholt Homestead, which is located northeast of the ferris wheel on the map.

You’ll find the set tucked away in a shack beside the three large silos. Be wary of the giant bugs in the area, as they’re likely to be a nuisance to you if left unattended when you pick the lock.

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Well, war has certainly changed. Fallout, the RPG series with a 20-year legacy, finds its latest entry taking another chance at braving a new direction: online multiplayer. It puts a major focus on cooperating with other people in a world with perpetual activities that seek to sustain your engagement indefinitely. It’s an enormous game and there’s a lot to see. Because of its online nature, GameSpot staff got access to the full version of Fallout 76 on the day of its general release, so we’ve been playing alongside you and everyone else.

At the time of writing, I’ve spent three modest days with Fallout 76, leisurely soaking in the world, churning through quests, and cooperating with both friends and strangers to do quests, participate in public events, and explore. I’m a series-long Fallout fan who’s enjoyed every mainline entry and avoided 76’s beta tests with the intent of making sure my first taste was of the launch product. I’m compiling my early thoughts here and will be updating my opinion with a finalized review once I’ve taken enough time to dive deeper and see the breadth of what Fallout 76 has to offer.

Fallout 76 feels like a game without a strong focus. It makes changes to the time-tested structure seen in Fallout 4 to make it function as both a single-player and multiplayer experience. But in doing so, both styles of play suffer from major compromises that exist only to serve the other, and as a result, neither is exemplary.

You and everyone else is cast a dweller of Vault 76, an underground bunker filled with overachieving, competitive people tasked with rebuilding the world after a nuclear apocalypse. That time is now, and upon leaving, you also discover that the vault’s overseer has undertaken a personal mission. Finding her becomes your overarching pursuit as you enter the vast remains of a scorched world where unknown beasts roam and every other human being is a real person playing the game.

Fallout 76 has no artificial human characters to interact with. The justification is that because the dwellers of Vault 76 are among the first to reenter this devastated America, there are very few coherent beings, and many of the folks who survived nuclear annihilation died before your arrival. Without established characters to populate the world, the vibe of Fallout 76 is an eerie one, frequently amplifying one of the series’ great strengths: the feeling of desolation. There’s a curiosity about the environment that drives you to veer off the beaten path, visit places that once were, attempt to imagine what life might have been like before everything went to hell, and what’s happened there since. Exploring the wasteland remains one of 76’s most enjoyable aspects.

But the lack of inhabitants is also Fallout 76’s biggest problem, and it limits the world to being little more than just an environmental showcase with things to kill. It means that the art of conversation, a fundamental series feature, is disappointingly absent. But more critically, it means there are no strong emotional anchors to help you become truly invested in the world, a complication that diminishes the game’s other core activities.

The biggest victim is the quest system. Without actually having people with needs and desires, initiating and undertaking quests frequently involves the use of environmental storytelling tools–listening to audio logs, reading notes, and browsing through computer terminals for key information. A quest will often explore the stories of certain characters, but they’re characters that have long since passed, and all you get are long monologues and one-way directives from a person who no longer exists and you can’t interact with. Your actions ultimately won’t affect anyone, or the rest of the world for that matter–everywhere you go gets reset with items and enemies regularly–and staying motivated becomes an issue after an extended period.

…there are no strong emotional anchors to help you become truly invested in the world…

Some of these stories are intriguing to be sure, and when you come across a tale about a character who piques your interest, you get excited to find out more about their last living moments. But there’s such an over-reliance on having disembodied voices talking at you for every aspect of the game that it’s easy for these standouts to become lost. The lack of a more relatable and personal connection between your actions, the world, and its inhabitants means that it’s easy for quests to feel like meaningless wild goose chases. It makes the idea of going straight into another quest–listening to more audio logs, running across the country to search for more doohickeys, reading through more diary entries–feel exhausting.

Fallout 76 also feels like it has fewer opportunities to complete quests in your own unique ways at this early stage, which exacerbates the sense that you’re having little impact on the wasteland. Lockpicking, hacking, and stealth abilities remain in 76, which provide a little bit of ability to choose how you solve problems. But the quests we’ve played so far all feel like they have linear throughlines to the goal. Exploring the world’s quieter, idle set pieces at your own pace remains the more rewarding narrative experience.

The reliance on things like audio logs and written notes also proves to be the biggest deterrent to playing Fallout 76 in multiplayer. By teaming up, you can explore the world together, get help in taking down difficult enemies, and complete any quest, but certain things are kept distinct to each individual player’s experience. Containers that hold items, for example, will have unique loot for each person who opens them. But what’s also unique is that quest objective completion is not shared, and every member in your squad needs to activate things personally to have them count toward their progression.

This is a great idea on paper, as it makes sure everyone sees each piece of a story themselves. But in playing with both good friends and strangers, I found that each person’s individual need to advance quests severely hinders the flow of the progress. Because of the need to wait for your squad to catch up, have each member take their own time to listen to important tapes (which is impossible when you’ve got voice chat going) and search terminals for pertinent information, questing in multiplayer requires a lot of patience and courtesy. Add to that the fact that Fallout is already a game that encourages constant, time-consuming gear management which penalizes your movement speed for being over-encumbered, and the idea of having another squad member just feels like an additional burden.

If you have a squad that is happy to skip the narrative content things will go much more smoothly, but then you’re denying yourself the one vector that gives these quests context. Multiplayer is more enjoyable when you and your squad are just content to leisurely explore the world, scavenge for items, and get into scrapes. Questing solo has its own obstacles too–packs of enemies will often have a handful of foes that are 10 or 20 levels above you–but not needing to wait around is definitely a big advantage.

Fighting enemies also doesn’t feel that meaningful in 76, a more morbid consequence of the lack of in-universe characters. Appalachia is filled with an assortment of delightfully mutated creatures both new and old, including humanoid enemies like the Scorched and Mole Miners who can wield firearms. But it isn’t as entertaining to take on enemies that haven’t wronged you or anyone you know. Without sadistic raiders and their despicable actions to be appalled by, interesting gang factions to get on the wrong side of, or being able to understand how this particular brand of super mutants came to be, the hostiles you encounter in 76 just feel like cannon fodder.

The combat mechanics don’t deal well with a lot of cannon fodder, either. Appalachia is filled with dozens of public events that invite everyone on the server to gather and participate in a unique task tied to a particular location. From the dozen or so I’ve seen so far, these largely boil down to escort and defense missions that ask you to hold back multiple waves of enemies. Fallout 76’s combat system is mostly unchanged from Fallout 4 and is serviceable enough to make small skirmishes with either firearms or melee weapons feel good. But the system is not so good that shooting hordes of enemies for 20 minutes in an event feels like anything other than a chore–the gunplay and movement are not satisfyingly responsive or kinetic enough to make them enjoyable for long periods.

That’s also partially due to the change in VATS. What was once a strategic pause-style ability that let you target body parts and take time to assess your surroundings is now a real-time auto-aim system that allows for additional damage, a change presumably made for multiplayer. It serves its purpose in being able to make precision hits on limbs when the action is manageable, but in more intense situations VATS does little to make up for the limitations of the real-time combat system as it once did.

Fallout 76 also falls victim to the series’ now characteristic penchant for technical bugs. Whether caused by the game engine or the online nature of the game, I’ve run into a number of technical oddities in the PC version. Problems like clipping through the world, frozen animations, entire buildings failing to load, enemies getting stuck in walls, audio logs not playing, enemies spawning out of mid-air, losing control due to unstable server connections, and being unable to turn in quests due to unresponsive prompts are just some examples.

Some of the changes in Fallout 76 are wholly positive, though. The straightforward but satisfying base-building component carries over from Fallout 4 and plays a bigger part in 76. A few smart decisions, like the ability to move your base camp for a trivial fee and the ability to save blueprints of entire structures for easy placement elsewhere, makes building complex camps a pleasant and fulfilling activity. The game’s unique take on player-versus-player competition is effective at deterring unprovoked attacks when exploring the world, too–it’s a lot of work for little reward if your target doesn’t retaliate. The flexibility of the new perk system (which is now card-based) allows you to change your abilities at will, which has encouraged me to use of Fallout’s weirder skills, depending on my situation.

Fallout 76 attempts to pull off some significantly new ideas for the series, but with few exceptions, they notably diminish many aspects of the game. Multiplayer is fun, but it’s not an ideal way to enjoy questing, and the shooting mechanics aren’t strong enough to make combat-heavy activities enjoyable for long periods. Things feel better as a solo experience, but the lack of in-universe characters makes becoming emotionally invested in the world and your goals difficult.

I’ll continue to play the game with the intention of finishing the campaign, a good portion of the side quests, and getting involved in end-game content. This review will be updated and finalized when all that happens. But at this early stage, I feel like the only reason I’m enjoying the game as much as I am is because of an existing fondness for the Fallout series, not because of anything that can be distinctly attributed to Fallout 76.