Fallout 4 (Video Game)
Developed by Bethesda Game Studios
Available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One
Rated M for Mature
War… War, never changes. That, and Bethesda games. For over a decade, their iconic style has dominated the open-world RPG format. Ever since Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind hit the scenes in 2002, it has become impossible to discuss the freeroaming titles without referencing a Bethesda product. They brought this fluid and expansive style to the Fallout franchise in 2006, and ever since have absolutely dominated the market. The Bethesda Game Studios team (not to be confused with the published Bethesda Softworks) exclusively focuses on these titanic endeavors, and every installment has been an earth shattering success.
While always phenomenal titles, there is also change very little between installments. This isn’t always a bad thing: gamers love their system, and want more of it. I’m not belittling Bethesda Game Studios for sticking to a formula. I’m simply stating that your decision to buy Fallout 4 is a foregone conclusion. You already know if you like these games, and if sales figures and internet hype are to be believed, likely are now installing the game and jumping into it with animal abandon this very moment.
This isn’t going to be one of those “gotcha” reviews that tries to hard reverse into negativity to shock the rug out from under you. Fallout 4 is great, and likely to be remembered by many to be the best of the series. The game is massive, diverse, well balanced, and interesting. It works very well at this point for a title this large, with most of the bugs being minor. There were a few times I had to reload, but nothing halted my progress completely.
Good job finally launching only a partially broken game, AAA games industry.
The rub lies in that this is the game that deviates most from the formula. Those of you that are used to the expansive dialogue trees, character specialization, massive menus, and overall loose exploitability are going to be severely let down. Starting Fallout 4 is a very jarring experience, especially for those acclimated to the old system. This initial friction is made bumpier by a terribly paced opening, breakneck introduction of mechanics, and some bullshit story moments.
I won’t spoil the narrative out of respect for you (and Bethesda, who kindly asked me to please not), but within the first hour you: escape a nuclear blast, experience a family tragedy, wake up 200 years in the future, see your ruined town, meet your robot, meet a dog, fight off some raiders, defend a group of travelers, find your first laser rifle, get in power armor, tear a minigun off of a crashed vertibird, fight off a horde of raiders, fight a deathclaw, learn from a psychic woman where to go next, have those travelers settle down in your town, and learn to build a town. For a series that has built its reputation on slow progression, clawing your way up from knives and rags to fusion rifles and power armor, it is completely out of place. After the psychic lady told me literally where to go next through a spirit vision, I was ready to give the game a 3/5.
Killing rats in sewers is so passé.
On the surface, the game seems the same. You still scavenge the wasteland, searching ruins and camps for loot while shooting mutants, raiders, and the occasional innocent bystander if they have a nice enough gun. There’s still a V.A.T.S. system for focusing your shots, laser weapons that shoot lasers, bullet weapons that shoot bullets, bludgeons that bludgeon, and missile launchers that launch missiles.
While mechanically the system is similar, it is massively simplified. This will be the biggest point of contention for most players. There are no more “skills” to dictate your marginal increases in proficiency in various fields. There are no requirements to dictate which weapons you can equip. There are no more complex dialogue options, rewarding you for specializing in medicine with a unique quest path. All conversation rolls are dictated by Charisma (and maybe another S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat sometimes, the game is vague on this). All leveling is done through Perk points, which you get one of per level. There are 10 Perks for each stat, and each corresponds to a level for that stat. So, if you have seven points in Intelligence, you will be able to select any of the first seven ranks of Intelligence Perks. Upgrading these Perks has a level requirement, but overall your stats will dictate more of what you get than level.
*Completion boner intensifies*
You can also now upgrade your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats with a Perk point. There’s no level cap, so given enough time you can unlock everything. Most of the Perks only unlock marginal benefits, with even the highest level Perks falling short of being totally game changing. It generally takes a few levels of investment to see the impact, which rewards specialization. The weapon selection is also much more varied, giving you the option to play the style you want from the start. There are early game energy and heavy weapon options, so you don’t just have to slum around with the basic pistol for the first several hours.
Alright, enough of the technical stuff. I have appeased my fellow meta-nerds, and can now start talking about the shit most of you are interested in anyways. Around hour 5, after getting out of the tutorial zone and into the world, the bigger picture started to come into clear view. From that hour on, each has only built upon the previous one. This game is both dense and absolutely massive. The difficulty curve is much smoother, and progression meaningful. The world is fleshed out to a mind boggling extent. Taking it as an individual snapshot is impossible, and requires a pulling back of your focus to see the exact magnitude of this game. Every moment you spend in this game is a build, and it hasn’t let up in the 45 hours I’ve put in.
A fraction of my map at time of writing.
At 45 hours, I have not even scratched the first 20% of this game. There is so much to do, such an incredible amount to see, that the week they gave me to review this proved impossibly insufficient time to see it through. Maybe it would have been enough time to run from objective to objective, but that is not how you play a Bethesda game. Each objective leads you to a new zone, and each zone branches off into dozens of new objectives. This is a familiar format, but the degree that Fallout 4 presents new opportunities for distraction is unprecedented.
I found myself getting lost for days in a single town. Along with the numerous marked locations are a ton of unmarked little curiosities, which can as frequently as main objectives offer new avenues of exploration. Replacing the sprawling desert of Fallout: New Vegas and massive underground subways of Fallout 3 are the futuristic mega-freeways of Fallout 4. This network of suspended roads towers above much of the map, and provides an entirely new avenue of exploration. While trudging through the streets offers a slower, more procedural exploration option, the freeways offer a more directed route. While a lesser game might just offer this as a method of getting from point A to B, Fallout 4’s freeways offer an entirely new avenue of entry for many locations. Locations along the the way are observable and enterable through new, higher vantage points. Like the rest of the world, I have not even begun to scratch the surface of all they have to offer.
Variety is the name of the game, and the smoother difficulty curve is reflective of this design mentality. Each gun can be modified extensively, to the point of changing its fundamental role. Laser pistols can be changed to rifles, rifles to sniper rifles, and sniper rifles to shotguns. Guns have a basic “frame”, which can be modified to serve a number of functions. While certain guns have more options than others, this variety allows you to build guns to fit your style, rather than pigeonhole you into one kind of loot. Are you playing machine guns, but find a pistol you like? Change the receiver out to automatic, and you have yourself a fit. This never becomes absurd, as unfortunately you can’t change a revolver into rocket launcher.
Pictured Here: how you will spend an embarrassing amount of your next few weeks
This initial variety allows for you to build the game to your style. As you level you’ll find new tiers of weapons that allow for further specialization. Enemy gear and drops are based on your level, so you can’t just run to the nearest super mutant stronghold and pick up rifle a dozen levels above your current loadout. The game is built for the long haul, but that doesn’t mean that the earlier stuff is boring. Finding new levels of gear is rewarding, but isn’t a requirement to start enjoying things.
As a fan of the series, the greatest factor for me was the fleshing out of mechanics that for so long felt vestigial. The radio, which always hinted at a promise of an interesting way to deliver information and discover new quests, finally sees that realized. Different stations offer quests for various factions, while a number of distress beacons litter the land to hunt down. While previous games had some kind of room that you could build into your own house, it was always just a place to drop off loot and craft. Now, you can build entire towns, moulding the various farmsteads and strongholds into your own empire.
What I will remember as the greatest improvement is the introduction of meaningful companions. Even in their most recent title, Skyrim, companions felt tacked on, serving as little more than portable storage chests. Fallout: New Vegas had the most interesting companions so far, but they all felt too much like “good guys” to allow for variable playstyles. The cast of supporting characters in Fallout 4 is massive and varied, ranging from a synthetic gumshoe to a super mutant obsessed with milk. It’s hard to please everyone, and even some of the most likable companions will get miffed if you put the good of random bystanders over the group. No matter how you like to play, you’ll find a partner that fits your style.
Fun Fact: I majored in Shakespeare, and even I missed this particular little nuance in the text.
As far as my favorite in the series, the crown still rests on the head of Fallout: New Vegas. The varied conversation options and quest completion is still unparallelled. While the world of Fallout 4 is incredibly diverse, most of it lacks the humor that made New Vegas so endearing. Fallout 4 is a successor to Fallout 3, with a more serious tone and complex urban environments. In that regard, Fallout 4 is a triumph.
With so much more left to do, I will certainly be jumping back into the wastes of the Massachusetts Commonwealth as soon as I am done writing this. It is an almost perfect package, that is unfortunately held back by a few key factors. The tutorial doesn’t do a good enough job explaining everything, leading to a considerable amount of time just figuring out how the new features work (I still can’t figure out how to set up base supply lines, let alone what they do). I have this molerat disease that is apparently incurable. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out how to assign settlers to jobs. I get how much damage my gun does, but how armor, crit chance, and my other stats factor into it is a mystery. For a game with a massive cast of companions, there’s no way to track them all.
When you are struggling with yourself on what grade to give a game out of a range of 4 to 5, you know you’ve hit a gem. For me, this was a 5-star title that I marked points off of for the poor tutorial and bugs. In a few months, after some patches and extensive modding, this game is easily a 5/5. For the amount of gameplay given dollars spent, this defies scale. This is the kind of game you keep coming back to year after year. The branching paths and sheer volume of content assure that there will be new things to see in every playthrough. The potential for mods and experimentation give the game limitless potential. While the base game falls short of perfection, the promise of the title is beyond rating. It is a paragon of a genre that is already beloved, and should not be absent from any fan’s library.
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Categorized:Horror Gaming Reviews
