Think calm and composed thoughts…Oh forget that folks! Fallout 4 is finally here, and it’s been an absolute blast to experience. It’s been seven grueling long years since Bethesda Softworks and Bethesda Game Studios released Fallout 3 onto the masses and over those years millions of players have forged their own path through the atomic wasteland; myself included. The big allure to the Fallout series to me has always been that not everyone would experience the same playthrough as you did, as your actions would ultimately shape the wasteland and the people that live there.
Fallout 4, like the rest of the series, takes place in the nuclear wasteland that was the United States. This new entry focusing on Boston, Massachusetts 200 years after a war over dwindling resources that ended in the very thing that the world feared would happen during the very real Atomic Age during the 1950s, nuclear holocaust. Before the fallout, the world seemed historically stunted in the 1950s with technology being powered by atomic energy and nuclear materials instead of the modern technologies that would have been created at the time.
This newest entry into the Fallout franchise has a few first this year as well as a much-needed advancement or two. Without giving away certain things, Fallout 4 is the first game to take place on the day the bombs drop, October 23, 2077, so for a small brief time you can see the main character’s picturesque world before well…Boom!
After the events that take place in the Vault, you set out to make your mark on the Commonwealth but not before stopping in to say Hey to your robotic butler Codsworth in Sanctuary Hills, your former home before the blast.
But home can be home again with the new feature of base building. Instead of earning the right to live in places like Tenpenny Tower you can get started right away making the simply known as Sanctuary live up to its name. There are other settlements that you can build up and help during your travels though some of which are way more important than others. I found a lot of these settlements in the early hours of my playthrough via one of the multiple factions. I’ll talk about them a little later.
Settlements like Sanctuary are a great way to improve conditions across the Commonwealth, but they also add an advantage to you the player. For starters you’ll have a steady base of operations to use for repairing power armor, upgrading weapons and even affecting trade supply lines between settlements if you have the Local Leader perk under the Charisma skill tree. The base building function, as well as many others, lacks a bit of tutorial on navigation but once I got the hang of it it became quite easy. The best part of base building is that all that once useless junk you used to find in previous games ACTUALLY has purpose now as their base components can be used in pretty every facet of your base building or person gear and weapons upgrades.
While you’re pretty safe in your settlements, save for the random attacks, you won’t get so lucky outside of them. This is where the much-improved combat system comes into play in Fallout 4. While the V.A.T.S (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) returns from Fallout 3 and New Vegas this time it comes with the added element to trigger a powerful yet satisfying Critical Attack when you fill up a Critical gauge after landing hits on your foes. Though unlike the last two games the unassisted gun combat has been drastically tweaked for a much more enjoyable experience, as this time you actually hit what you aim at instead hoping that you land a hit without using V.A.T.S.
Of course, your experience with Fallout 4 will heavily be affected by how you decide to develop your character via the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system. S.P.E.C.I.A.L. is short for the seven stats of a character’s progression system comprised of Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. Will you specialize in a more active and aggressive attack style with Strength and Endurance or go the stealthy path with Perception and Agility like I did. Assigning your base attributes that is your first step towards your desired playstyle this time is a lot simpler than straightforward than the G.O.A.T. from Fallout 3 though no less as laughably annoying as the way it’s presented. Seriously how many times can you say NO to a salesman?
Beyond this starting “sales pitch” you earn a point to spend raising one of the 7 core stat categories from 1 to 10 every time you level up with enough experience. As you rise in level you unlock new ability perks such as my personal favorites, Aquaboy/Aquagirl and Black Widow/Lady Killer and Ninja. You just have to be the proper level and have a high enough ranking in the desired tree to be able to purchase it. There are other temporary or permanent perks that you can earn by doing other activities as resting, maxing out a companion affinity or finding collectibles like magazines or bobbleheads so always be on the lookout for ways to improve your character.
Fallout 4 is full of little surprises, challenges, and tough decisions that you will encounter and a few of the toughest aside from key story choices is figuring out how gear your character from all the gear that you will find or earn and how to not piss off the companion that you’re trying to woo or at least max affinity with. Some companions are seemingly super picky like Strong the super mutant. This hulking green powerhouse seemed to dislike my use of power armor, lockpicks and generally my playstyle so seeking out the right companion regardless of romancing might be in your best interest. Of course, nothing is more important than your ultimate goal and deciding the fate of the Commonwealth by siding with one of the 4 main factions: Minutemen, Brotherhood of Steel, The Railroad or The Institute. To give you an idea of how your choices matter there are 8 different endings based on gender and factions.
One of the not so surprising things about Fallout 4 is that it is not without its issues. As a game released on the now current generation of system, Fallout 4 still uses the same albeit modified engine as previous entries which still has issues to this day including this release. While I haven’t been looking for all the bugs like villagers on a witch hunt or trying to actual break the game that doesn’t mean that didn’t run into a few issues of my own. For starters one issue presented itself pretty early on with NPCs as Codsworth seemed to get stuck in a building during the quest where he patrols Sanctuary with you. The NPC pathing reared its head throughout my experience often with my companions getting stuck in odd places or enemies blindly attacking with no rhyme or reason. I’m also considering placing Lost Dog posters as I have not seen Dogmeat for some time and I want my Fat Man back. Considering he can’t die, like all companions, he’s either cross at me or has disappeared into the digital ether.
Two of my other issues affect one of my favorite additions to the Fallout series, spoken dialogue. Fallout 4 steps out of the silent protagonist era with spoken conversations much like what BioWare has been doing for a while. I felt like I had more of a deeper connection with my avatar than I did with Fallout 3, which I really liked. On the downside to this there is often a delayed trigger when conversations start and even if they do trigger correctly, it’s often drowned out by mission completion audio, so I have no idea exactly what I’m agreeing to until I check my quest log afterwards. What I do agree upon however is the killer score by industry veteran Inon Zur. The music is rich with strong pieces like the Main Theme as well as delightfully sinister tracks like Concrete Mysteries. Put this ambient score together with the two radio stations featuring classical and 50’s music that is absolutely perfect for this game.
From the very moment that I started playing Fallout 4, I quickly realized how much color can change an experience. Past titles in the series suffered from well… a serious case of the browns and pale in comparison to Fallout 4’s use of color to create breathtaking vistas. On closer inspection those vistas don’t hold up and much as I’d like but it’s a major step up from Fallout 3. Just remember when the green storm cloud rolls in head for cover. There is the also the vastly improved character creation system that throws the sliders right out the window and replaced it with a more precise molding system similar to Sims 4 which I spent waaay too much time in creating my character before setting out into the ruined world.
Fallout 4 is an experience full of quests to do, places to explore and companions to travel with as you set out on your journey. While I enjoyed the immersion of Fallout 3’s opening, this time around I felt more of a part of the world that I roamed even though my character was 210 years out of touch of the ways things had become in the wasteland. I also found the combat to be a lot more responsive and actually enjoyable as I landed critical after critical with satisfying effect. Compared to Fallout 3, which currently comes free, with every copy of Fallout 4, I found myself far less frustrated at the game than myself for screwing up encounters.
The beauty of Fallout 4 is that you can experience it the way you want to and then share those experiences with your friends and be amazed on how different things can turn out. Fallout 4 still suffers a bit from age old problems though somehow still performed remarkably well even under the most extreme encounters during my time with it. The new base building and deeper crafting elements actually were a lot of fun and pulled me in a lot more than most games do so that rather impressive. It’s no wonder the internet is exploding with all things Fallout 4 as this is easily my favorite entry so far. So if you want to sink hundreds of hours into a much more refined wasteland experience go pick up a copy of Fallout 4 for the Xbox One today.
