Just a few opening thoughts
There are three YouTubers I found who spent a lot of time on Fallout. Oxhorn is kind of the unofficial Fallout 4 historian who dives deep into all the lore and everything you are likely to encounter in the game. Gopher Gaming has a great Let’s Play series that covers the base game and the many DLCs that followed it. There are hundreds of hours of videos of these two playing Fallout 4, talking about Fallout 4, and complaining about Fallout 4. All these videos are, of course, several years old and both have moved on to more recent games and seldom, if ever, mention my beloved Fallout 4. For newer content I like Kottabos Games, who spends a lot of time playing new Fallout 4 mods. And there are a lot of new Fallout 4 mods out there. I highly recommend checking out all of these guys, if you haven’t already.
I came to the game late, like six years after the game came out. So I missed the whole debate about everyone hating the Voiced Protagonist, which is pretty much the only kinds of protagonist I have played. I still haven’t bothered playing any of the other Fallout games. I am kind of looking forward to Starfield, assuming it will be released some day and any of us get to play it. My own likes and dislikes have more to do with the story and the general game world.
Things I Love About Fallout 4
Fallout 4 is a true open world game. There are Quests, like any other game, but unlike say The Witcher 3 or Sherlock Holmes Chapter One, you can play the game without being forced to follow any of the main quests. On my first playthrough, I zipped through the main quests and hit the War Never Changes cut-scene after blowing up the Institute around level 20. But you can skip all of that and just wander around. You can hit max affinity with all the Companions. You can get your Gatling Laser and your Quantum Power Armor and get all the perks that make you invincible. If you hate Settlement building, you can skip it. If you don’t want to kill everyone, you can move to Diamond City and sit on the roof and watch the world go by. But, that does get old pretty quick.
I love getting to know everyone. I love wandering around and looking at the sky. Fallout 4 is a beautiful game, even without a tone mods that change the weather and make everything green. I love all the potential in the early game, where your choices seem to matter and the bugs of the Commonwealth kill you with ease. I like the gameplay. I love walking or running and have the world shift with me. I love the sounds and all the effects and the silly dialogue from Raiders and Super Mutants and random people wherever you happen to find people. It really is like walking around inside a novel. There is so much stuff everywhere, so many little stories to find, so much evil and tragedy from before the bombs.
Things I Hate About Fallout 4
You can’t win. The game was made to be played forever, which means you can never clear the Commonwealth of all the Bad Guys. They all Respawn, to use gamespeak. Meaning you can kill them, go away for a bit and return, and there they are again. This means you can Clear the entire map, and when you go back to Saugus Ironworks, a new set of Forged raiders will be waiting there. This also means you never have to worry about supplies again. Want a new Gatling Laser? Swing by the Cambridge Police station and kill the Brotherhood of Steel members that live there forever. Want more caps? Collect everything from the dead and sell it to the nearest Trader. Power Armor, fusion cores, cool weapons, are all easy to get and all pretty pointless once you reach Level 50. The first time I killed all the Raiders in Nuka World it was exciting and impossible. The second time, yeah, let’s get this over with.
You don’t get the option to capture the Prydwen or the Institute. You either join them or you destroy them. Capturing one or both would make a lot more sense. Take over the Institute and hand it over to Curie. Capture the Prydwen and give it to MacCready so he can go back and rescue his son and fight off the bad guys. I know, it’s only a game and there’s only so much space for story and logic. But damnit, destroying the Institute makes no damn sense at all.
You never reach a point where you can ask the Bad Guys to join you. Yeah, you reach a point where the run away screaming when they see you, but that’s not a great option. Why can’t you invite everyone to move to a Settlement? And once you’ve killed all the Feral Ghouls, just leave them dead.
Yeah, it is what it is.
At the end of Blood and Wine, the Witcher 3 DLC, you have the option of retiring to your vineyard with your lover of choice. You can, we assume, live happily ever after here. Eat good food, drink fine wine, and have magical sex until the end of time. Sure, you can leave the wine country and head back to other locations and carry on with other minor quests, but why would you want to?
There’s no happy ending option in Fallout 4’s post apocalyptic story of greed and murder and warring factions. I mean, sure, you can kill all the raiders and retire to Nuka World, or you can set up shop at Home Plate, or even fix up one of your Settlements, but that’s not really the point of the game, is it? I do like the idea of just stopping and writing your own happy ending. Your Companions all find somewhere to be happy. They return home, if they have a home. They lay their weapons down and enjoy the peace they helped bring to the Commonwealth. We make peace with all the bad guys and they join our settlements and become good guys.
It’s All Over
I’ve always thought of the opening screen as being set some time in the future. The Red Rocket is filled with the kinds of items you find and collect in the game. The empty suit of Power Armor, the broken Mr Handy, the Pip Boy abandoned on a work station. I’ve always believed that here was a Shrine to the Vault Dweller. A collection of things he no longer needs, and since it’s all still there, no one else in the Commonwealth needs either. Maybe it was possible to find peace and permanently clear the wasteland.
