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?<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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!<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n
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