Retrospective Review: Fallout 4

 

Fallout 4 Retrospective Review

Fallout 4 was released in 2015 and was developed and published by Bethesda. It takes place in Boston and the surrounding area of Massachusetts and is set 10 years after the events of Fallout 3. The game begins in the pre-War era where you play one half of a married couple (dependent on which gender you choose) who run to the Vault and then become the Sole Survivor. You wake up 210 years later to a blasted Wasteland and must find your missing child.

This is the first time a voiced protagonist has been included in Fallout and while it makes for good immersion, it also has some problems as well. There are romance options, a huge map to explore and settlements to help. The game also added a much more complex crafting system where you can customise your weapons, armor, power armor and settlements to a huge extent. The game later received several add ons including two that took you to brand new maps and locations to explore. And more settlements to help.

The Good

·       The environment: the game looks beautiful, and had good graphics for its time. The stark contrast of the pre-War world during the frantic run to the Vault compared to how it looks when you leave again is effective. The Commonwealth has a brilliant design, and Boston itself is a fascinating and well designed urban playground to explore.

·       Combat: this is a big improvement on the games predecessors. The gunplay is smooth but VATS still has plenty of utility and it allows for more flexibility in playstyle. Those who like FPS type gunplay can play the game that way, but VATS remains a good and useful option.

·       Gameplay: the utility of all the random crap you pick up in the wasteland into the new crafting system is perfect. All the stuff you picked up in Fallout 3 didn’t do much, but in Fallout 4 you will find yourself getting ridiculously excited over finding a desk fan or pack of duct tape. Or dinner plates if you do a lot of power armor crafting.

·       Building: look, I know the building system is a bit rough around the edges, it’s not perfect and kind of fiddly but it’s so much fun to do. I mean, maybe it’s not for everyone but I never played the Sims for the lives of my Sims. I played it to build ridiculously ostentatious houses. So yeah, I like the building stuff.

·       Characters: don’t get me wrong, there are a few duds but most of the companions and characters you run into are great. I love Hancock so much, he’s hilarious. Even MacCready is fun, and I like how he avoids swearing as an adult, considering the foul language he used as a kid in Little Lamplight. Preston Garvey is okay but annoying, I like Kellogg as an act one mini-villain. Nick Valentine is the sassy snarky detective best friend I never knew I needed in my life and Dogmeat is the goodest boy. Even Rex Goodman, the radio guy who tried to teach the Super Mutant’s Shakespeare!

·       The map: So many iconic locations to visit, and so much to see. I loved exploring Boston, I loved exploring Cambridge and I especially loved visiting Salem and the Museum of Witchcraft. The Glowing Sea is phenomenal design, a dangerous locale you don’t want to stay long in but if you explore you can find all manner of secrets. It’s amazingly well designed.

·       Side-quests: there are some brilliant side quests in Fallout 4. I particularly enjoyed The Devil’s Due, set at the aforementioned Museum of Witchcraft. The quest in Vault 81 where you discover the secrets of the Vault is a brilliant one too. The USS Constitution is hilarious and fun. The series of quests around the Cabot family is equal parts wacky and horrifying and it’s fun to have people who have lived through all the World Wars, not just the one in 2077.

·       The factions: they all make sense in how they approach things. The Railroad are all secret cloak-and-dagger stuff, the Minutemen build communities to defend each other and the Brotherhood of Steel come in with their airship and vertibirds and a big show of military force. The Institute throw mad science at the wall to see what sticks.

·       Enemy design: it’s clear that a lot of love and care went into the new enemy designs, both for pre-existing enemy types and newly added ones. The new mirelurks are awesome, the mirelurk queens are terrifying and their ambush tactics of hiding in the mud makes perfect sense. The new deathclaws are awesome too. I like the fact that different creatures have different tactics now: molerats and radscorpions burrow and burst out of the ground behind you. You even have suicide bombers: both the molerats with mines strapped to them and the super mutant suiciders that charge at you with an armed mini-nuke.

·       Enemy types and tiers: not only have the creatures and enemies had a glow up. Pun intended. They have had an escalation in strength as your character levels. As you get stronger, the enemies get tougher too, and stronger versions may act differently too. Low level radstags will flee, but the highest level ones might turn and fight you. The chameleon deathclaws can change colour. Mirelurk kings can turn invisible. It’s good to see us moving past the whole concept that making enemies ‘harder’ just means adding to their HP and defences.

·       Legendary system: I like this. It’s a fun new addition to the game and really stops the stagnation when you have already found the ‘best’ armor and weapons in the game. You could stumble upon a legendary version that gives you a great boost. Or a freezing rolling pin, but it makes exploring and fighting a lot more interesting.

·       Survival mode: they took New Vegas’ ‘hardcore mode’ and made it better. Again, I feel like a lot of games think that increasing the difficulty of the game means making the fights take longer due to higher HP/defence of the enemies. Survival mode actually reduces this, but for you as well as the enemies. It also adds the water/food/sleep meters and fatigue which reduces your AP. But it’s so much more than that. You need to find clean water and cook your food because sickness is now a thing. Swimming in dirty water or going out in the rain increases your chances of getting sick. Using chems is bad for your health. Even using rad chems is dangerous, so you’re better off avoiding rads as much as possible. There’s so many little things in this game mode that make it an additional challenge instead of just being ‘harder’, requiring strategy and planning to survive. It’s stressful, but it’s a challenge mode so it’s supposed to be, and I think Fallout 4 really nailed it.

The Not So Good

·       The main story: It’s not awful, but it’s not great either. There’s four endings, except there’s only really two endings. If you don’t side with the Institute, the ending is basically the same except for who you ally yourself with. The opening of the story is effective but once we’re out of the Vault again, it drops off. For your protagonist to work, they need to care about the immediate plot points and that means the player needs to care. Shaun is a baby, we know nothing of him nor our spouse so it’s hard to get the player to care about finding him. Especially when you’ve got a shiny new wasteland full of stuff to collect, drag home and soup up your guns with and Preston bloody Garvey sending you to all these settlements and stuff. They really dropped the ball here, because you get so many distractions thrown at you early in the game before you even get close to finding someone who could help you find Shaun and have to decide to care about that. It fell flat to me, and the only reason I’m not rating this game lower is because everything else about it (almost) is so damn good.

·       Some side-quests: on the whole, they’re good. Except ‘Kid in a Fridge’ which is just bonkers and breaks any suspension of disbelief. Even if the kid could survive 210 years inside a fridge, how is his sanity still intact? I’m an introverted hermit and even I would have cracked up long before then. It’s just silly. And the radiant quests get a bit tedious and boring. Especially the Minutemen ones. I’m not a huge fan of the ‘protect [settlement] from attack’ quests that pop up. Especially when they’re time-limited. If you’re playing survival mode and in the glowing sea, how are you going to get to Sanctuary in time to help? They’d have been better off reducing the frequency of these and just letting you explore.

·       The Institute: look, I get that their lore was long established as we get quite a bit of detail about it in Fallout 3 from The Replicated Man. But I have so many issues with Father, the Institute and the whole story with them. I’d be here for a week if I go through all of them, but this will probably be a subject for a later blog post series/video series. But I hate it, it could have been so much better.

·       Dialogue system: I don’t have an issue with a voiced protagonist and I can appreciate the work that goes into creating a system when every line your character says has to be recorded by a real person. But the 4 option system is so bizarre and frustrating. You can’t really say ‘no’ to anyone, the ‘no’ option just means ‘I’ll do it later.’ Sarcastic could be anything from a cheerful agreement to downright nasty and asking for more information doesn’t let you ask more questions a lot of the time. Even if you would have more questions. At least having some indication of what your character is about to say would be nice.

·       Okay, I need to talk a bit more about Shaun/Father. He is just so frustrating and nothing he says or does makes much sense to me. He apparently released you from the Vault just to see what would happen. He shows no interest in getting to know you, talking about how you feel on learning your son is now older than you. He has a private chat with you before you go to the department heads meeting. This is when he chooses to drop the bombshell that he’s dying of cancer, treating you like an employee instead of a family member. He was literally just talking to you alone, and he couldn’t tell you then? So you end up baring your emotions in front of a bunch of people you barely know? Then he leaves you with the synth ten-year-old Shaun to keep. It’s so bizarre and I just don’t get it.

·       There’s some content that was cut or changed last minute that removed quests that could have been really fun. I’m thinking of the Combat Zone and Easy City Downs particularly. We know the Combat Zone originally had a quest where you could fight in the arena to get Cait as a companion, but that was dropped and the place is now just full of hostile raiders. Easy City Downs is a lot of fun, with the robots racing and Triggermen and Raiders betting but as soon as they detect you they attack. You could have had some fun interactions with the place, even betting on the races. Some locations and quests just have a feeling of missed potential.

My Thoughts

I loved Fallout 4, I was so excited for it’s release and on the whole I wasn’t disappointed. The main plot isn’t great, but the game offers so much that it almost doesn’t matter. I had and still have a lot of fun running around the Commonwealth, exploring and finding stuff. I love the building system, the cast of characters is great too.

The new perk system is a big step in the right direction as far as I’m concerned as it really allows for flexibility in playstyles. The problem with the previous generation of Fallout is that one character build tends to be the ‘optimum’ and it means that you don’t tend to play any other way. Skyrim is the same with the ‘stealth archer’ build that is hard to avoid falling into. Fallout 4 really gives you a lot of freedom in that regard to choose a new build and play through the game in a different way.

I know there are people out there who don’t like the ‘Bethesda’ Fallout games and denounce Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. I’m sick of it. Fallout 4’s main story isn’t great and is a bit heavy-handed in places but the game has so much to offer. If you play a game and have fun, then it’s a good game. If you don’t like it, fine, but you don’t get to say that your opinion is ‘objective fact’ when you can’t specify what you don’t like about it. I’ve seen the same around Fallout 3 and the Fallout TV show. I love all the Fallout games I’ve played, I loved the TV show and I will continue to share my thoughts. I’ll also share the facts and lore from the games.  

Emi the Cat Lady 💜