T w e n t y S i d e d

Lately, since I’ve felt kind of lost, I got back into some older franchises that I enjoy and started chipping away at my backlog until I felt excited about gaming again. Inspired by streamer I saw who did a goofy RP low INT build that made the game seem appealing again, I started replaying Fallout 4. That got me thinking, did I judge the game too harshly on release?

I have beaten New Vegas and 3 dozens of times each. They have quite a bit of replayability due to the different build paths you can go down mixed with the many different factions that you can interact with. The environments are interesting and immersive. The main stories are fine, but the side stories and deep, engaging lore are incredible. Most importantly though, they are simple fun. Fallout 4 falls short of the mark set by its predecessors by a lot.

When Fallout 4 was first released I was pumped. I had loved the franchise since the original TTRPG days, and was very excited for a new entry and I let that hype and appreciation of the past games taint my view. After a couple weeks, I began to see all the flaws. I became incredibly disappointed. I played all the way to the end wishing for more, but it never provided that same immersion or feeling of adventure. It felt formulaic and lazy. It just wasn’t what I wanted it and I wasn’t alone in my opinion. The internet at large was also unhappy. It was the beginning of my recognition of Bethesda’s weaknesses in regards to their design and programming decisions, and I was far from the only one.

First, I’d like to recognize the good. Gunplay in Fallout 4 is better than New Vegas and 3. It feels impactful and satisfying most of the time. While it’s far from the best feedback I’ve seen in video games from firing weapons, it’s more than suitable. Graphically, Fallout 4 looks quite good for its time. For an open world game to have a consistent style and a relatively realistic look, it’s fairly impressive. That’s a lot of resources that have to be dedicated during development for modelling, textures, etc. and that should be appreciated.

I also really love the inclusion of the settlements system. I know it’s not everyone’s favorite, but I like having a real reason to loot random environmental bits and pieces to help build up my compound. The minutemen can go die in a hole. That nonsense is obnoxious and I ignore every single call for help from every settlement except the ones I actually care about. Do that and I think you may find you actually enjoy that system too.

However, the game truly did miss the mark. Difficulty in Fallout 4 isn’t on a curve, it’s on a rollercoaster. You might be cruising through an area killing mutant bugs and rats and then BAM! mini-nuke from a raider. Or a yaoguai. Or, god forbid, an assaultron. You’re better off running if you can. And, honestly, I start with that because I don’t see that as too big a problem. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that on your journey through the wastes there’s some enemies that will absolutely mollywop you. It makes the stakes higher. Sometimes, that extends into questlines, but it’s almost not a huge problem.

What is a problem is that every NPC has the same head and nearly the same face. Every male character resembles the male protag and every female character looks like the female protag. It’s incredibly distracting to the point of complete immersion break. It’s kind of like the voice acting in Skyrim. You can tell they only had a handful of voice actors for non-essential NPCs because half the characters sound the damn same.

These guys are two different races with tons of different sliders adjusted and they still look like they could be cousins. I’ll admit this may be more of a me problem. Or maybe it’s a problem with the art style. I don’t know for sure.

But somebody tried to get Hulk Hogan running wild in Boston but it still ends up looking less like Terry Bolea and more like a wig, contacts, and prosthetics on the default protag to me.

Another bug up my butt regarding Fallout 4, that everyone seems to agree on, is the dialog options in the game just not being good enough. It’s so awful. Your options really do boil down to “Yes,” “Yes but sassy,” “No,” or “Tell me more.” Once in a while you get the “nice guy,” “boring guy,” or “comically evil for literally no reason guy,” as well, but that’s less common and barely more engaging. Conversations in Fallout 3 and New Vegas weren’t exactly TTRPG levels of choice but they always had flavor. It wasn’t as common to just say “not interested” and have nothing happen but an NPC waiting for you to make the “correct” choice. It’s something that I feel is better felt than described, though, and I feel like that particular point has been talked to death. It’s hard to “prove your point” on something that is less concrete than other details like level design or statistics.

Though, for me, the worst issue by far is the skill and perk system. Gone are the interesting quirks that made each playthrough genuinely more interesting. Now, you get to choose between mission critical skills like lockpicking and hacking or small buffs to damage numbers. Add to that the crafting system that makes it important to level up blacksmithing, gunsmithing, armorer, and science traits, if you want to have the best gear possible, and you don’t get a whole lot of choice that feels great until way down the perk tree where the fun stuff really starts.

Hopefully, the upcoming remasters of Fallout 3 and New Vegas end up being actually competent. I love diving back into 3 and New Vegas every once and a while but they’re unstable and incredibly poorly optimized, like every other Bethesda game. Maybe Todd and his band of miscreants figure out how the polishing and optimization steps of releasing a game work. That’d be swell.

I have more problems with Fallout 4 and more things to praise but I think I said all I really care to at this point on it. Articles for the next bit of time with be a bit spotty again. I have a lot of chaos and large changes happening in my life right now. I just can’t guarantee that I’ll have the mental fortitude to handle anything right now, if I’m honest. I’m safe in each sense of the word, so don’t worry about my dumb ass. Just know that things are rough and I’m doing what I can.

Ethan Rodgers