Todd Howard has announced that Fallout 76 V.A.T.S. will be in real time in an interview with the Dorito Pope himself, Geoff Keighley. This is the third major change for the system in the span of four games of the Fallout franchise.
Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System was one of the major Fallout components through the entire series, but it was also a major issue for Bethesda's creative teams. First they had to make a transition between turn based tactics and real time RPG with Fallout 3 which resulted in the first major change in how V.A.T.S. worked and then they further changed it into a bullet time of sorts in Fallout 4.
Since Fallout 76 will be a multiplayer game, a device that stops or at least slows down the solar system could be an issue, as you can imagine. To that end, Todd Howard bravely decided to remove the super powers of Pip-Boy wearers so nothing can stand in the way of his Fallout-as-a-service dream. Therefore, V.A.T.S. will now happen in real time and it will be a glorified aim assist.
It will be interesting to see how the system will work since enemies will have plenty of time to obliterate you while you're standing still, trying to shoot the body part with the highest percentage number on it. The system may work on consoles due to lower accuracy with gamepads but if the game happens to have a regular aim assist, V.A.T.S. will be in danger of being completely obsolete.
On the flip side, if Bethesda make it so accurate that it will be a borderline aimbot, the fan outrage will be even worse. Fallout 76 is coming on 14 November 2018 which means there is less than five months in which we will definitely get a closer look at the new V.A.T.S. that could potentially break the game.
Bethesda
Complete lack of mods on release and permanent internet connection requirement are also bad omens for Fallout's transition to online multiplayer experience which is already starting to look shady. Shady enough to seem like a good set up for microtransaction fiesta and paid mods.
