Fallout 4 – Prologue
It has been quite a while since we’ve had an official Fallout game from Bethesda Studios (or developed by Obsidian and released by Bethesda). Some of us were rather shocked when they announced earlier in 2015 that not only does Fallout 4 exist, it is being released in Fall 2015. This of course caused the hype train to leave the station, picking up steam as the release date grew closer and closer. Now that it has pulled into the release station we will get to where we’ll get to see some great parts of a game from the Fallout universe, while other aspects will leave us wondering “Why didn’t they wait until 2016 to release it?” They spent a decent amount of developer time on related pieces of software, including the Fallout Shelter game (which was fun but grew boring quickly), the videos explaining the benefits of each S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attribute (that surprisingly were absent from the game), and the mobile app that would allow you to use your phone as your Pip-Boy instead of having to pull it up in game instead. Sure all of these helped build towards the Fallout 4 mythos, it could have been time spent on the game itself instead.
Fallout 4 – Graphics
We unfortunately have had zero upgrades to report this time around for our gaming system, somehow staying away from the upgrade itch that a lot of PC enthusiast gamers usually suffer from. As per our norm, here is what is running under the hood for our review;
- Intel i7 4930k processor
- 16GB of DDR3 quad channel memory
- Crucial MX200 1TB SSD
- PNY GTX 980 XLR8 Pro OC
- Samsung 2560 x 1440p monitor.
The first thing we noted when we fired up the game was uh…where the hell were the next generation AAA title graphics? Perhaps we were just spoiled with how spectacular the Witcher 3 looked, despite it not being as ‘amazing’ as original promised, Fallout 4 looks severely dated. It is as if they are using an engine from 2011…oh wait, they are. Bethesda chose to use the Creation Engine that their last tittle Skyrim ran on with some minor ‘face lifts’ or enhancements to it. If you compare Skyrim and Fallout 4 side by side you can see the graphical improvements, though the Witcher 2 (as if you remember our Witcher 2 review, came out the same year as Skyrim) looks like the better graphical game. Not only that, the facial animations are still not a strong suit for Bethesda. They improved over Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas, they are nowhere near the same level detail or accuracy of the Witcher 3 or other titles released this or last year. Dragon Age: Inquisition looks like the better graphically looking game with less awkward facial animations too. Those defending the graphics of Fallout 4 will say they designed it that way so that the game could run well on the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 I choose to counter that argument with other games that came out this year such as Halo 5 or the Rise of the Tomb Raiser that look significantly better and not a game looks more at home graphically on the previous generation consoles and then ported to the PC.
The load times on our machine tend to be rather high when fast travelling between two open world locations or moving from inside an area to the open world. We just went back and re-loaded the Witcher 3, finding that fast travelling between two different locations in the same open world (which the Witcher 3 could have about the same open world area in the main section as Fallout 4 does) it takes a fraction of the time. We were waiting 3 seconds at max maybe. With Fallout 4 there were times we were waiting 15-20 seconds. The game seems to be not very well optimized for the computer crowd, especially with the mediocre graphics. As the review was based around playing when the game first came out we found there to be quite a few graphical glitches that have happened to countless gamers including ourselves. We’ve decided to include an example in the following two screenshots. As stated in the prologue, we are baffled as to why Bethesda rushed the release of Fallout 4 for 2015 versus waiting an extra six months to a year where they could have spent that extra time performing more quality assurance testing in order to fixing ridiculous bugs like this one.
Fallout 4 – Gameplay
After reading about how unimpressed we were with the graphics, you might be thinking that there is going to be no point in reading the review further nor picking up Fallout 4 yourself. This might have been true if it was a generic open world game clone, Fallout 4 follows and tweaks its own formula involving gameplay and combat mechanics that help us look past the mediocre graphics, making it a game worth investing some time into.
One of which is the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system which makes its series return (well it never left) with some alterations to each of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes, changing what some of them were tied to in prior games. For those new to the Fallout universe, or have plum forgotten S.P.E.C.I.A.L stands for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, (and) Luck. In order to unlock certain perks (also known as talents in other RPGs) you must have a certain amount of attribute points into that specific attribute in order to able to ‘purchase’ or enable the ability provided you meet the other requirement, level.
Strength governments how much you can carry (inventory space) along with how much damage you can inflict with melee weapons and unarmed combat. Perception determines your overall weapon accuracy in V.A.T.S (we plan to explain later), what difficulty of locks you can pick, and the ability and success of pick pocking or stealing items from NPCs. Endurance, no surprise, is tied to your overall maximum amount of health and how quickly you lose action points from sprinting. Charisma allows you to use your tongue to fight some battles, enabling you to sway certain characters in conversation to do or answer a question they would otherwise avoid answering, vendor pricing for buying and selling items, and the limit to how many settlers you can have in or at a specific settlement. Intelligence effects how many experience points you get from completing a quest and killing enemies, as well as the ability to unlock terminals. How successful you are sneaking around and how many action points you have in V.A.T.S. is what Agility controls. Finally, if you want to have your critical hit meter recharge faster or you want better loot drops, Luck would be the attribute for you.
Now that we’ve outline the basics of what the main attributes due, we can dive into the perks some themselves. Each S.P.E.C.I.A.L. has its own set of related perks, each tier of which is unlocked when more points are put into it. For example, in order to have the Rifleman perk, you must have 2 points into Perception. Say you want to be able to pick locks? Well you are going to need 4 points into Perception for that. Most perks have multiple iterations, with different benefits or enhancements depending on what they are. We’ll use our Rifleman perk once again as an example (we really liked using this perk in game). As you can see it has 5 different iterations, with this last one being where non-automatic rifles (such as Combat Rifles, Hunting Rifles, Sniper Rifles, Laser Rifles, and Combat Shotguns) will do double their default listed damage when maxed out. Conversely, the first iteration of the perk will only increase those weapons base damage by 20%. To help balance the game, it is impossible to max out any of the perks right off the bat as they all have various level requirements, preventing at level 10 from having the double damage benefit to all your non-assault rifles, breaking the game by making combat trivial. There are some perks we were of the mind that were more important to us than others such as the Armour Perk under Strength (let us upgrade our armour so we don’t take as much damage), The Lock Picking perk under Perception, the Gun Nut (‘build’ a better gun), Hacking, and Science (trick out the power armour) perks under Intelligence to just name a few.
The Fallout universe Swiss-army knife of keeping track of all your character’s Status, Inventory, Data, Map and Radio, can all still found within your Pip-Boy 3000 Mark IV that you were so graciously given upon your entry into Vault 111. Status contain the information about current status, covering your current and maximum health, weapon and armor equipped, resistance, radiation level, and if you have any crippled limbs. A crippled limb can provide a severe disadvantage, especially during a fight as a crippled arm will make it so that your accuracy (including in V.A.T.S.) goes down significantly, or a crippled leg, which severely slows down how fast you can move, including sprinting. S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes. Perks are also available under Status, allowing you to see what they are with equipment that may have some bonuses to an attribute or items (such as bobble heads or magazines) that gave you a permanent passive a Perk such as 5% better unarmed combat.
Inventory is broken down into several categories consisting namely of Weapons, Apparel, Aid, Misc, Junk, Mods, and Ammo. There should be no surprise that Weapons is where all well your weapons you are currently carrying can be found or equipped (including grenades). Apparel relates to anything you can wear as armour or cosmetically, including spare power armour parts you may scavenge throughout the Commonwealth in Fallout 4. Aid enables you to restore your health or reduce your radiation levels as your maximum amount of health will decrease the more radiation you absorb. Either can be dealt with using food or medicine, found or purchased at vendors. There are also doctors you can pay to restore your health or clear out your rads too. Misc is ‘typically’ where quest items end up. Junk houses most of what you’ll pick up while scavenging in Fallout 4 and is used primarily with crafting the various crafting that you can perform. Mods, for weapons or armours will show up here if you’ve crafted any but haven’t equipped them into your gear. Lastly, ammo will list all the various ammo you may have and their quantities. Everything within the Inventory tab is organized alphabetically with no other way to sort it. This could be an issue if it weren’t for the ability to rename your weapons or armour, it can be performed at the corresponding work bench for the item allowing you to keep the items you don’t want to accidentally salvage or. In our case we named all our modded weapons (and armour) with the precursor of My having them easily stand out during combat or when salvaging/selling.
There isn’t a lot to talk about the Data section as it namely contains your quests (current, completed, and failed), along with your workshops, and general stats such as enemies killed, criminal acts. There should be no surprise as to what the purpose of the last two tabs are. Maps has the entire map of the game with locations you’ve visited or haven’t, and the Radio will allow you to select or deselect a radio station based on if you are in the area to get the signal or if you want to listen to it. Several quests cannot be completed or started without picking up and/or following a radio signal.
The money or currency of Fallout 4 is still based on the finite bottle caps system. We won’t get into great detail as to why they are used aside from the fact there is a finite quantity of them as the process to make bottle caps was lost when the bombs fell.
In order to use the crafting benches to create improvements to certain armour or guns you must have the Armour Perk unlocked for Armour and the Gun Nut perk unlocked for Guns. We never touched the melee weapons, you do require a separate perk for that. Regardless if you have any of the perks, you are still able to scrap these items to get some of the materials that were required to create them. We mentioned prior you cannot max out any perks in the first few levels, with these armour and weapon perks being no different. You are remove any weapon or armour mods that already exist in the armour and use them in another similar piece. If you decide to just scrap/break down an item, it will double check if you want to scrap the item AND what you will receive from scrapping it. The Scrapper perk under Intelligence expands what additional crafting materials you can receive from scrapping item, either uncommon items such as screws and copper for rank 1 and circuity and nuclear material for rank 2.
The armour workbench is where you want to go in order to perform armour modifications or break down non-legendary ‘modable’ armour you may have picked up along the way. It is a little silly you are unable to break down legendary items (armour or weapons) as well as clothing you wear under your armour. Perhaps you don’t have the skills to breakdown textiles such as a shirt, there is no reason why a legendary item cannot be scrapped freeing up inventory space and giving additional crafting materials.
Once an armoured item has been selected you can go into various ‘slots’ for the item, the first of which is usually the paint job. If you have all your items with the same paint job you will receive a bonus to whatever it lists, such as to charisma. The next slot has to do with improving its kinetic protection, energy protection, and some items or modifications allow you to increase radiation protection too. As you can see if we wanted to improve the armour on our chest piece it would require us to have the Armouer 3 perk and all the crafting materials necessary to make the modification. Cloth, Leather, and Steel are examples of crafting materials that happen to be rather abundant. Unfortunately adhesives such as duct tape, Wonderglue, are not as they will never be found from scrapping an item, they must be found or purchased. The final mod spot usually will allow you to have specific ‘perk’ for that armour piece, we only ever chose any of the variations of Pocketed as it allowed us to increase our carrying capacity without having to put more points into strength. Someone who is playing a high strength build would not necessarily go for this, they’d probably go for something more beneficial to that build instead.
As you can conclude, the weapon bench is where you need to go in order to perform any modifications to your weapons. There is a lot more variety of modifications available for weapons versus armour, for guns there can be; the receiver, barrel, stock, magazine, scope, and brake. Our Combat Riffle has quite a few different modifications, the .308 Receiver allows us to change from using the .45 ammo to .308 increasing the overall damage it can do. Adding a ported barrel improved the range of our rifle where the scope helped boost the accuracy of it. We will note that most new modifications will usually they increase the overall weight of the weapon (or armour), this is indicated by the negative and increased value for Weight. As mentioned previously the ability to re-name any of your weapons or armour allows you to easily organize them making it harder accidentally scrap the item at a bench, interacting with a vendor, or being able to find a certain weapon when you’re in combat. Who wants to waste precious seconds trying to find that Fat Man mini-nuke launcher or need to switch to a weapon you have ammo for because you just ran out for the Combat Shotgun. There is a feature added in Fallout: New Vegas that we were GREATLY disappointed to not see in Fallout 4, ammo crafting. The only way to craft your own ammunition, while breaking down the ones you do not use is using a mod. Of course you could always just switch between a few weapons buying up all the ammo when you find it at vendors too.
After you get your first set of power armour, and then the next, and then the next… you can take them to a Power Armour station in order to repair and upgrade them. In order to upgrade a piece of power armour, you will need to have the perks in Armour and Science, requiring higher levels in both in order to perform more advanced modifications such as the Jet Pack shown. Upgrading your power armour model will increase the damage resistance that it has, namely kinetic and laser, though you can increase the radiation resistance through other modifications. We modified our helmet to give us increased V.A.T.S. accuracy as we use it fairly often in combat, while both the leg pieces have the mod to allow us to increase our carry weight while in the power armour. As an aside, Science is also required to perform any weapon modifications to laser weapons, you will need the Gun Nut perk too, can’t have just Science and mod your weapons.
Another crafting station that has no requirements it the cooking station. The only thing you need in order to craft any of the various food or beverages is having the crafting material such as meat, water, etc. Cooking your own food is VERY advantageous as cooked food has NO radiation in it, allowing you to heal up without also increasing your rad levels too. Most foods that are not cooked have radiation. There are of course other ways to boost your health, Stimpaks will rejuvenate your health faster than eating cooked or radiated food, it will also help heal a crippled limb. Certain cooked foods will also have temporary bonuses such as eating Mutant Hound Chops will remove 50 points of radiation. You can also remove radiation using RadAway, so make sure you have a ‘good’ supply of Stimpaks and Radaway as who knows what sort of radiation you may run into while out in the wasteland. It is more important to have Radaway in Fallout 4 than any other version as radiation will limit how much your ‘current’ maximum health is versus your total health. The more radiation you have the less current maximum health you have.
Are you more of a stimpak, Radway, or just chems head? Well the Chemistry station is for you! If you gather the necessary crafting materials you too can make Stimpaks, Radaways, or Chems like Mentat, Jet, or the temporary increased resistance to radiation RadX.
Power Armour is a lovely double edged sword introduced into Fallout 4. This is true as it is nice to have when you have the power cores to run the thing, yet if you run out of power cores you are stuck with the Power Armour being mostly useless. Lore wise having it so that the player’s power armour requires power cores that run out ‘fairly’ quickly compare to ANY other character (read NPCs) in the game does not make a lot of sense. We know it is there to create some balance to the game so that players are not constantly using the power armour to gain all the advantages from it compared to not wearing it, they could have put more effort into it so that it would ‘make’ sense why yours doesn’t work as well as others. If there was only ever one power armour chassis and it had a design flaw where it has something fault with it causing it to consume power at a non-normal rate that would have been a good idea. This would work only were there not multiple chassis out in the Commonwealth, including some that enemies were wearing with a fresh 100/100 power core in it. There could have probably been other possible ideas that we’re not thinking of to make it so that you cannot use the power armour all the time that would fit into the lore better, still it is better than the half-baked ‘excuse’ we’re given. The power armour itself is not needed for most of the game, we were playing on the hardest difficulty (at the time of release) and rarely took it for a stroll. The only time we did was when we went to a heavily radiated location as the power armour has a lot better radiation protect then almost any other piece of armour or clothing you can equip. The radiation suit is the best, but has no damage protection. We finally took our power armour out of its bay near the end of the main campaign as we sided with the Brotherhood of Steel and felt it was just the right thing to wear surrounded by other Brotherhood of Steel members in Power Armour. As a result we found ourselves having squirreled away 50+ power cores resulting in us never monitoring our power core levels as the game/power armour will automatically cycle an empty power core with a higher charged one as long as it is in your inventory.
Settlement Building, something that had a lot of potential was unfortunately a bait and switch when you look at the promotional material and ‘gameplay’ footage they showed us before what we really got in Fallout 4. It wasn’t even entirely a unique idea for the Fallout universe, Bethesda took a mod that someone(s) created for Fallout: New Vegas, tweaked it a bit and then created a horrible User Interface when it came to creating and customizing the settlements. There is NO aerial view to allow you to swoop around placing items where you want. You have to walk around as if you are carrying the item and place it instead. The interface for crafting anything in the Settlement Builder is another red flag as to why we called this a console port. You CANNOT switch between tabs or items with your mouse, you HAVE to use the keyboard simulating what would be a controller press on a console. Good luck sprinting, that feature is disabled during settlement building too. Not only does Settlement building not add much to most the game, it becomes a babysitting simulator as you to look after the settlers by making sure they have enough defenses, that they have enough food planted and enough water, beds too. The settlers will only be happy if you build beds to sleep in despite you providing every other comfort, such as those defenses and food/water. You must also assign your settlers to at least tend to the food or patrol duty as it is not something the AI can figure out on its own, at least it couldn’t for our first settlement. Depending on what the defenses look like, your settlements will be randomly attacked and provided you don’t go and protect them and they usually have problems protecting themselves the settlers will be killed, destroying all that hard work you put into building that. There are a few perks to Settlements though, you have caravans setup between them enabling you to share resources (like food) or provide access your crafting material stash (really anything in your stash) at any settlement setup on the caravan. You can also set up shows for your settlers to tend to, we never really found most the shops had anything good to sell compared to ‘normal’ default ones. If you do enough of the Minutemen quests, you are able to build artillery at that settlement that can be targeted with a signal grenade to call in an artillery strike if one or more settlements are within range. We never really used this feature much ourselves, they can be effective in taking out enemies in cover or just balancing a fight more in your favour.
Fallout 4 – Combat
Combat is one department in which the game really shines, despite what you will hear from ‘purists’ complaining that Fallout 4 has moved away from its roots to something more Call of Duty like. These are mainly directed towards the V.A.T.S system, where it no longer ‘stops’ time to allow you to use it, instead it slow down time instead while determining what targets and where to hit them. As it no longer stops time you are vulnerable to enemy attacks. V.A.T.S stands for Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System and it allows you to target enemy body parts while telling you what the chance is to hit said body part in V.A.T.S. Hitting the same body part repeatedly will cripple them if it’s a limb or kill them quicker if it is their head (this is valid for 95% enemies engaged). In order to be able to use V.A.T.S. you must have sufficient available Action Points. Do not freight, they regenerate during meaning you are not limited to your maximum amount of Action Points in one fight. V.A.T.S. will also show a meter of a guaranteed critical hit, once the critical hit bar is full are able to unleashed the critical hit in her next attack in V.A.T.S. These critical hits are best saved for tougher enemies such as legendary or bosses. Once spent, it will take time to regenerate your critical hit built up from your attacks. This amount is determined by how your Luck is and/or certain weapons that may have a perk that allows rewards you double the ‘points’ towards a full critical hit bar.
A new ability that allows you to traverse the Commonwealth of Fallout 4 ‘quicker’ is Sprinting. Sprinting provides you the ability to sprint for a short period of time at the cost of consuming Action Points. It is a nice way to say ‘screw it’ to an area with several enemies in an effort to put more space between you and them (say if you have a sniper or ranged build) or to quickly leave an area with enemies above your level range that will be a challenge to fight or were not ready for.
Power Armour is another added ‘item’ to the arsenal of combat that for the most part was rather useless. You receive a basic model early in the game with fusion cores that are required to use them. The thing is, these fusion cores run out over time, relatively ‘quickly’ by default despite the fact all NPCs using power armour never have theirs run out. You know that sprinting ability we just told you, well rather than using up action points in the power armour, it will use up some of the fusion core instead, depleting it even faster. We rarely used our power armour as we were worried about not having enough fusion cores only to find near the later part of the game we had amassed quite a bit, deciding to use it for the remainder of the campaigh. Power armour does have its uses though, it will protect you from radiation a lot better than most other apparel you can equip (the radiation suit does the best job but has no armour). It also provides you with more armour and the ability to carry more items, meaning you can ‘take’ more damage before it hits your health and you can carry even more toasters and broomsticks to dissemble back at a settlement. Just like with regular armour, you are able to upgrade your Power Armour, as well as adding additional perks such as a jet pack that lets you jump higher then you normally or hovering in the air briefly (while using up a chunk of your fusion core), or the V.A.T.S. Matrix Overlay which increases your hit chance while in V.A.T.S.
Aside from these additions, Fallout 4 plays much like its predecessors (Fallout 3 and New Vegas at the minimum) in that you have your standard movement controls, ability to shoot from the waist or iron sights/scope, melee, and toss grenades. We are glad to see these core mechanics did not change much as it helps players from previous games or other RPGs/shooters to jump in and be comfortable with the controls after a short period of time.
At the time of our review Survival mode in its current forms did not exist, so we played it on the hardest difficulty that we could. In the beginning it was quite challenging as we were low level and most of our weapons were crap, we didn’t have a lot of caps, and most importantly did not have a lot of ammo forcing a lot of switching between weapons during fights. As we leveled up and built better and more powerful guns, as well as better armour, we found most fights becoming a lot easier, especially if we threw on the power armour or had a companion that was well armed. Had we known about the abundance of power cores we would find in Fallout 4, we could have made our early game much easier using it in fights more.
Fallout 4 – Side Quests
After having been severely spoiled by the Witcher 3 side quests and even some from Dragon Age: Inquisition, Fallout 4’s side quests for a lack of better words aren’t all that great. Where the Witcher 3 had side quests that did not feel like content filler, the same can’t be said for Fallout 4. There are maybe a handful of side quests that actually feel like they have some substance to them including the one where you have to find a beer dispensing robot then guide it ‘home’ to a bar, but most of them fall short. The main source of this problem is the return of Bethesda’s infinite quest generator. What that means is you theoretically could never run out of quests. In practice it means you get the same handful of quests recycled over and over at finite locations for different quest givers. It also means locations that you had cleared prior, will have enemies ‘randomly’ spawned in them. Sure they may say it is to let you play for however long you want, but in Fallout 4 it feels mostly like to bloat the play time for one play through, causing us to feel like why would we keep replaying the same repeatable quests?
Another set of quests that are supposed to ‘add’ something to the game are settlements, as mentioned prior. The Minutemen will usually be the faction that asks you if you can go clear out areas to create settlements where you can put up recruitment beacons that will slowly attract residents (and attackers) that can be to work defending and maintaining them with basic resources. The problem is, even if they were well defend, you will still periodically be notified that they are under attack and if you let them fend for themselves most the time they end up being wiped out leaving an empty settlement. Only way to ‘restock’ that now empty settlement is a recruitment beacon, which can attract more enemies too periodically. Settlements sadly do not add much to the game other than being ‘safe’ areas you can store your items, or setup vendors to buy/sell items to. Even still, without the same amount of effort, crafting materials that could be going towards guns or armour, and perks required for those settlement vendors, you can go to the several vendors throughout the Commonwealth and still be able to buy/sell the items you need.
Fallout 4 – Story
We were really hoping that despite the ‘lackluster’ of quality side quests in Fallout 4, that we’d be given a main storyline that has some real substance. Sadly we do not feel this is case. The game starts off before the nuclear bombs were dropped in the Great War, giving us, the player, a small glimpse into what the world was like in the Fallout universe before it turned the planet into a nuclear wasteland of sorts. You are given the choice play as either the male war veteran or his wife the lawyer, with the ability to fully customize how either of them look. You find out after this that you have a son, Shaun, and a Mister Handy robot (think robotic butler) named Codsworth. There is a knock at the door, it just so happens to be a Vault Tech representative who is going over the details of the local vault that you have been registered with, how convenient! Shortly after bidding them farewell there is a new alert that there are nuclear detonations on the eastern seaboard with more nuclear warheads on their way. Time to run the vault, be quickly admitted inside as the ‘blast’ doors closing just as the nuclear bomb detonates nearby. Once inside you are ushered off to be ‘decontaminated’, only to find out mere seconds later that it is actually a cryogenic freezer. Unknown amount of time passes when a group of individuals are at your spouse’s cryogenic ‘pod’, for some reason taking your infant child. You quickly are ‘refrozen’, waking again when there’s a malfunction on your pod, with more unknown time having passed.
So starts your ‘mission’ of trying to find your son, in what turns out to be a foreign wasteland compared to what you knew when you entered the vault. Early on you run into the Commonwealth Minutemen who are under attack by raiders. The soldier Preston eventually elevates you to their ‘General’, proclaiming that you will help the Minutemen take back the Commonwealth for the people (and their safety from what’s out there). Thus starts your fun optional journey of settlements.
As the story continues on you are prompted with several different factions to side with, including the Brotherhood of Steel, the Railroad, or the Institute itself (the creators of Synthetics or Synths that seem to be ‘randomly’ kidnapping or replacing people with robotic replicates that are impossible to discern the difference from a human). You will eventually have to decide which of these three factions you want to beat the campaign, with them seemingly all are fine with the Minutemen for the most part, and it will depend on some certain choices you make if you choose to alienate them with the three major factions.
The Brotherhood of Steel are the same that were in Fallout 3 with some leadership changes. This time around they are additionally focused on stopping the creation of synthetics and eventually give you the chance to rebuild and fight beside Liberty Prime. The Railroad want to help free and protect the Synths they find from the Institute, acting like a successor to the Underground Railroad of old. The Institute are the ones who can create these Synths, wanting them to obey their commands all while hiding behind the guile of wanting to make the world a better place. Well only if that place is within the Institute itself.
We have several issues with how the campaign of the game is handled, including certain twists that we won’t spoil but leaves the story feeling a little ‘shallow’. Sure the motivation to find your son and deal with those that did something to your spouse is noble, it comes off as a little ‘short sided’ at times with how certain dialogue or scenes play out. We did not do nearly as many side quests that were could have as we were tricked a few times with the infinite quest general causing our playtime to be about 50 hours. We would have played and explored the game more had the side quests and exploration because of them yielded more reward (including lore). Based on our play through we are roughly guessing we spent around 20 hours on the main storyline, which for an RPG honestly isn’t that long and shows the lack of substance that was the storyline in Fallout 4. When you do finish the main story you will be treated to one of three boiler plate endings, simplifying them versus how more detailed prior Fallout endings went. It really left us with an even bigger bitter taste in our mouths as the game itself was pointing out how little our choices or actions made during ‘major’ events.
Fallout 4 – Misc/Replayability
On the one hand the game does offer quite a bit in the aspect of Replayability. There is no way to reset any of your S.P.E.C.I.A.L., which forces you to start new games every time you want to try a new or different build. This promotes or forces the replaying the game multiple times to see how it feels like to go all melee or being extremely sneaking with a stealth build. Yet on the other hand, the lackluster main story with very little deviation in the how game ends along with the boring cookie cutter quests will leave you wondering, “Why am I playing the EXACT same game over and over?” Needless to say we are not saying this is a play once and never play again, instead it is play once, then wait 6 months or until you forget a lot of the game, then play it again.
Fallout 4 – Conclusion
Too Long, Didn’t Read (TLDR)
Fallout 4 is a game that had a lot of potential that sadly comes up short. The graphics do not look like a triple A title from 2016, rather more a game that could have been released in 2012. It also released with a lot of graphical bugs on a game engine that is from 2011. We wished Bethesda would have waited perhaps a year to improve and quality assure the game more, it could have been a much better looking game. Fallout 4 has a lot to offer from gameplay, with the ability to modify your weapons and armour, though lack the ability to create your own ammunition. The Power Armour is a double edged addition, as it is a fun gameplay and combat mechanic, it requires power cores that run out conflicting with Fallout lore and preventing you from using it a lot. We enjoyed having the ability to spring around the Commonwealth, agreeing they balanced it well having it consume the same action points V.A.T.S. uses. The Settlement Building, ‘copied’ from a Fallout: New Vegas mod had a lot of potential, it too comes up short as it was not what we were promised, with a rather clunky UI. Infinite quest generator makes a lot of the side quests rather boring, turning them into filler rather than expanding upon the Fallout universe lore. On the positive side it will allow you to continually play the game without it ever truly ending. The main story line should have been one of the large selling points of Fallout 4, it is after all an RPG. Sadly this is not the case, with it only being about 20 hours of our 50 hour play through (on the near hardest difficulty) and the cookie cutter endings, it once again leads us to wonder why Bethesda released this game the same year it was announced.
Graphics:
Sub-par graphics from a triple A title that had years of work done upon it, partnered with it residing on a 5 year old engine with plenty of in game bugs gives the game a release date feel that is from 2012 rather than a 2015 feel.
Gameplay:
Gamplay is one of the areas the game really shines, with the ability to craft your own weapon and armour modifications, it does not include the ability to create your own ammo. Power Armour provides additional protection from the elements and enemies, yet rely on power cores that can run out fairly quickly with no way of crafting them. S.P.E.C.A.L. and Perks have seen some changes to them though there is no way to reset them during the play through.
Combat:
V.A.T.S. returns, though no longer stops time, instead it slows it down making it so that it no longer gives you time to use it while remaining immune to damage. Sprinting is introduced, consuming Action Points (the same as V.A.T.S.), with no real other changes from the Fallout universe combat we’ve experienced before (shooting, moving, grenades).
Side Quests:
Side quests are mostly filler, thanks to the infinite quest generator. They truly come up short from being able to help shape a better gaming experience versus dragging out a play through for a completionist.
Story:
The story was rather sub-par, felt more like Call of Duty, Wolfenstein, or Battlefield 20 hour story versus something you’d come to expect from an RPG, especially the Fallout franchise itself. The endings themselves are fairly cookie cutter, similar to another 2012 game’s ending Mass Effect 3.
Misc/Replayability:
Replayability is there if you want to play different builds or experience the three different factions’ take on the main story line, the endings being not all that expansive means the likelihood of playing the game a second time would be more of 6 months to a year later instead of again after beating it the first time.
