Crawling out through the Fallout

As of this morning, Steam tells me that I’ve played 144 hours of Fallout 4. Since the game was released just over three weeks ago, that means I’ve been spending as much (or more) playing it as I do going to my actual, paying day job. So yes, the gist of this review is going to be that Fallout 4 is worth playing. It’s a fantastic sandbox shooter with an unreal amount to do. And while it’s definitely a great game, it’s simultaneously not a great Fallout game. There are a number of things that absolutely streamline and improve on the old mechanics, but it lacks a level of uniqueness of character and gravity of choice that made its immediate predecessors so enjoyable.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll recommend Fallout 4 to everyone I know that has a system capable of running it. I haven’t bought a game with this much entertainment value per dollar since Skyrim. I haven’t actually completed any of the four endings possible for the main story yet. I’m trying, but there are just so damn many distractions. Of course I’m going to explore the Super Duper Mart over there in the distance! What if there’s a magazine or a bobblehead inside? I’m not taking the chance of missing out on it. Honestly, I just hate seeing an unexplored location pop up on my navigation bar and leaving it for later. It’s a huge world and there are so many things to do and explore that I’m probably going to be at this for at least another hundred hours.

So beyond the addition of the nav bar icons, Fallout 4 boasts a bunch of other improvements (at least in my opinion) over previous games. Companions that can’t perma-die, for example. I know some people may have appreciated knowing that companions were mortal, but they were also dumb as shit. I swear I had companions that would see a deathclaw half a mile away and feel the need to charge off after it before I could even figure out which direction they ran. And that, my friends, is why I always played the lone wanderer. However, while the AI isn’t greatly improved, at least now my idiotic mules will pick themselves back up after combat and continue happily hauling my junk around. That’s really why I take them with me anyway. That and to be meat shields while I stand back and unload a couple clips into some super mutants.

And sometimes you paint your armor with a shark motif.

Power armor! Thank fuck they finally made power armor something more impressive than just another outfit to put on. I can’t stress enough how happy I am that it’s a piece of hardware that my character now steps into and pilots. They require a power source (which I am perfectly fine with) and even change the style of the HUD. It’s also the only type of armor in the world that takes damage from combat and requires repair and maintenance. Mixing and matching pieces onto a single frame is fantastic as well. The only real issue I have is that power armor frames seem to be everywhere. It feels a little less special to have a walking tank suit when it and a minigun are virtually handed to me within the first couple hours of game play. Welcome to the wasteland, please take a complimentary piece of old world tech (that probably cost the government a small mint to produce) and a lollipop. Enjoy your stay.

The commonplace status of power armor is a small complaint, but it’s only part of why this doesn’t really feel like a Fallout game. The sense of creating something unique is missing. The streamlining of skills and perks into the new progression system makes it easy to jump in and helps to assure that people don’t make a bad character, but it also means a level of sameness that I just can’t get behind. Having enough points in explosives to be able to dismantle (or detonate) the bomb in Megaton or enough points in stealth and pickpocketing to be able to sneak up to someone and slip a live grenade into their pocket were choices that made a character feel truly unique. Nearly everything in the perk system is aimed at streamlining the copious amount of combat the game throws at me. Fallout 4 has a very specific set of skills and it’s very good at what it does–being a open-world murder box.

Beyond character creation, the use of a reputation system was a vital part of Fallout 3 and New Vegas. In those games, my reputation would precede me as word of my deeds (like shooting a random townsperson in the face for no reason) spread across the land. It affected the way that characters throughout the world interacted with me. Hell, it was a make or break reason to travel with me (not that I’d let them) for potential companions. Knowing that decisions would impact my future choices was part of the whole role playing experience. Now the dialogue choices I make are just different ways of following a questline on rails. It reminds me of the old JRPG games where I knew that if I was asked if I wanted to undertake a task, nothing would happen unless I said yes. It’s kind of like that, only instead of yes or no there are four ways of saying yes.

Look, I love playing Fallout 4; it’s a fantastic experience that I would recommend to anyone that loves FPS games with a heavy emphasis on open world exploration. I think it’s awesome that I can play it successfully like a standard FPS. The crafting is great, the town building is addicting, and the companion affinity/romance system is fun. I will, however, continue to argue that a plot line that emphasizes urgency is completely out of place in a game system like this. (Should I save my kidnapped infant son? Nah, let me help this random farmer here first.) There is a serious lack of choice and consequences outside of the main story and even that is pretty direct about when your choice actually impacts things. You’ll only rarely be able to sneak or talk your way out of a situation. Fallout 4 is an amazing game on its own merits and succeeds brilliantly in accomplishing what I think Bethesda set out to do with it. It’s epic, the combat is amazing, it’s just not a great Fallout game when held up to the standards of its predecessors.