
Fallout 4 Fridays: Part Two — Systems, Systems, Systems!
Bethesda goes all-in on mechanical complexity
Welcome to Fallout 4 Fridays. Catch up Here: Part Zero, Part One
Before plunging into Diamond City, which is perhaps the most dynamically designed and interesting town that Bethesda has ever created, I decide to take a few moments and dive into the elaborate systemic backbone of Fallout 4.
Bethesda Game Studios has always loved to build games made up of complex standalone systems that interlock and form the overall experience. Players are usually given the freedom to interact with as many or as few of these systems as they wish. This is true going all the way back to early games like The Terminator and Elder Scrolls: Arena.
In the last ten years or so, game design has trended towards accessibility, often to the detriment of systemic/mechanical complexity.
I don’t actually think this is a bad thing. Games should be easy for people to interact with, even if the core challenges of the game are still difficult.
Only the best game designers find a way to marry a fun and easy user interface/user experience design with mechanical depth. Skyrim was a half-step that smoothed out the rough interface edges of earlier Elder Scrolls games, but it lost a few bits of complexity in the process.
Fallout 4 nails it.
And it gets there with a brilliant marriage of a simple, familiar UI and layers of mechanical complexity that all tie into each other and everything you might want to do in the game. The complexity is born out of the goals you need to accomplish, and is not just charts, numbers, and menus for the sake of it.

The weapon crafting system is the perfect place to start. This gun from a loading screen has had a bunch of crafted upgrade stuff slapped onto it. All of the weapons in the game can be broken down into components and customized to a high degree, and you can get even more options via the skill system.
Rather than make you hunt for crafting materials, the endless physics-enabled junk in the game world serves as the fodder for crafting. This is the single smartest mechanical change to the design over past Bethesda games, in my opinion. Suddenly this random stuff is given additional purpose other than just adding realism to the world.
I’ve had friends who liked to collect forks and teddy bears and random tin cans in past Bethesda titles; now you can break them down and make weapons out of them.
Or armor. Or even buildings.
It’s wonderful.
I decided to make a pipe pistol with an elongated barrel, a better grip, a reflex sight, and a quick release magazine. I like to reload fast and often.

The crafting interface does a good job of showing you exactly what changes will happen when you add an upgrade, both visually and stats-wise.
And you can feel these changes instantly. A few points of damage here and there makes a big difference in the combat, and the system is dynamic enough that you’ll be able to see the differences in the gameplay and not just on the stats screen.
Incredibly, Bethesda doesn’t really teach you how to use any of these many crafting systems. They’re just gently presented to you throughout the normal course of play. It’s up to the player to explore them and see what happens, and the interface is well-designed enough that this is quite easy to do.

The building workshop is the most elaborate new crafting system here. But rather than offer the initially-arcane complexity of something like Minecraft, it goes out of its way to be easy for the player. A couple of quests do show you how to open the building interface, but beyond that you’re on your own.
Those quests don’t limit your creativity. When you have to build your first radio tower to attract new settlers, they don’t force you to put it in once specific place, nor do they walk you through how to power it up.
You have to intuit this and choose it for yourself.
This gentle trust in the player has the effect of strongly reinforcing ownership and pride in these crafting systems. You feel like you really did a thing, not like you just followed some instructions a game handed out to you.
I love the way that the weapon changes are immediately apparent. I love that all of the crafting is represented in a dramatic, visual way. I love that cooking is actually useful for once, with clear buffs and bonuses. I love the way that world junk is integrated into the game mechanics, making you want to pick it up. I love the way that building settlements can lead to new quest opportunities.
Even the skill system embraces this balance of freedom and fun.

Fallout 4’s skill tree takes the system from Skyrim, and makes one crucial change: later perk unlocks aren’t bound behind earlier ones.
If you have enough base attribute points to unlock something all the way at the end of the tree, you can get it right at the beginning of the game as soon as you level up once.
Again, this is so cool.
Bethesda has finally given players all the tools they need to truly build a character and a world that reflects their own play style and game preferences, in a way they’ve never quite managed before.
Further, the quest and combat design is robust, dynamic, and adaptable enough to counter your decisions and keep the challenge high.
Every part of Fallout 4 is designed with its reliance on the other parts in mind. For the first time, the systems all truly complement each other, instead of being separate things for you to engage with.
And you still don’t have to do any of it.
You barely have to touch settlement stuff to complete the main quest line. You never have to craft weapons or armor; you could get through the whole game with loot you pick up off of enemies.
But the rewards for interacting with these systems are both intrinsic and extrinsic to the player and your progress through the game, and you are trusted to find them yourself, so the level of satisfaction is much greater than just watching numbers go up.
After spending some time crafting weapons, armor, building my first radio tower at a cleared- out dungeon, and beefing up the defenses around Sanctuary, I decided it was time to get back on track.
It was time to go to Diamond City.
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This article was written by Super Jump contributor, Alex Rowe. Please check out his work and follow him on Medium.


