Fallout 4: One Month In
Sneaking through abandoned schools, pistol at the ready. Blasting through a military compound. Sweet-talking around conflict. Fighting a giant mutant with a portable nuclear bomb.
It could only be Fallout.
I’ve had more fun with Fallout 4 in the last month than I have with many games of the last twelve months, and I think it’s quite possibly because it allows for so many different approaches. Not just approaches to combat, though it’s certainly possible to take stealthy routes as much as it is to wade in guns blazing. Or to just nuke from a safe distance. No, there’s also the sense of adventure, of exploring places that seem genuinely undiscovered in the world (or at least that your friends have likely not encountered yet). And if you want, you can just make a mini town in any of your settlements. It’s a post-apocalyptic Sims.
Taking a derelict building room-by-room with a rifle or pistol is all the better thanks to the release of The Walking Dead, due to the quite unnerving (and quick) ghoul infestation. It’s satisfying to explore places that have no immediate or obvious merit — maybe there’s a collectible, maybe a better weapon. Even better: perhaps there’s a scene arranged with mannequins or skeletons or teddy bears. Little touches that tell a story about the world, that less eagle-eyed players would walk straight past. Or maybe a Deathclaw will emerge suddenly, throwing the player into an unexpected fight for their life.
A month after release, most readers will already know how great the game is and whether or not it’s for them. Hell, you’ve probably already bought it, maybe even ‘completed’ it. But I’ve now completed the main story, the vast majority of faction missions and I’m near enough level 50. Aside from exploration (which there’s still a huge amount to do, of course) there’s not a lot jumping out at me to do. Instead of raving about how great Fallout 4 is, here are some (minor) criticisms.
It’s a shame that it’s almost inevitable (and even more so that it’s somewhat expected) that the story in an open-world game such as Fallout will be a little lackluster. It doesn’t have the linear bombast of Call of Duty, and the nature of its world means it sort of can’t, but it would have been nice if the missions weren’t always quite so ‘fetch quest’ based. And the story doesn’t ever take off; by the time it appears to be starting it’s flipped on its head (with little impact on the character or player) and then that’s it. It’s over. It’s meant to be more emotional and family-oriented, but it felt as if it fell flat. The factions offer a more exciting flavour, but too often their missions also repeat themselves to provide the player an endless source of XP.
Let’s just be thankful this isn’t Fallout: New Vegas. At least this game doesn’t corrupt your save file right at the end, forcing you to restart the entire game from scratch (a fairly common bug in New Vegas). I’ve been stuck in the wall a couple times (though I always managed to get free after some wiggling) and a couple quests have glitched, causing them to be forever in progress. Will that goddamn Beer Robot just get in the bloody pub? Quite forgivable however, given the complexity of the enormous world and the bazillion different intricate details that could go tits-up but don’t.
But at the end of the day, it’s the personal experience that makes Fallout 4 so brilliant. It’s not the story that anyone else can go through. It’s not the combat mechanics, or the range of things to shoot. It’s the sense of adventure, of carving your own story through the Commonwealth. It’s taking a character of your creation from the doorway of Vault 111 to wherever you want to take him (or her). It’s shaping them along their journey, not just through the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes but in your choices and sense of direction.
It’s about playing for fifty hours, and knowing that I’ve only scratched the surface.
