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dkirschner's Fallout 4 (PC)

[May 16, 2017 05:09:45 PM]

So I've been playing this for a couple months and never posted an entry. Woops! I thought about it a couple times, but there's really not a lot to say. Let's slot it in between the other Fallout FPS games.

Worst: Fallout 3
Middle: Fallout 4
Best: New Vegas

What did I like about Fallout 4?

It's denser than Fallout 3 was. Still a large place, but more stuff to explore. By the end all the different buildings were feeling pretty same-y, but most of them told a little story through enemies, emails, computer terminals, robots, and other means. I remember going in some robotics factory and reading the employees' email-based D&D game. Or stumbling upon a doorway with a bunch of arrows pointing to it. I decided to go in, and there was a maze with tons of traps. Nice ammo and other loot awaited, but I was disappointed not to find a unique NPC living there. Like, "Ah, you made it through my maze of traps! I'm clearly a really interesting character with a neat story and a cool quest line!" There's a cool quest where you get to pretend to be a superhero, and there were a handful of other solid, memorable ones.

The interplay of the different factions was cool, and I like that there weren't too many. Some games give you sooo many factions or guilds to join, but this really had three or four (if you count the Minutemen). And I like that I didn't realize they were all going to come into conflict at first, but then I saw it start to happen and it was making me anxious! I was pretty committed to the Minutemen and the Railroad, and I guess luckily hadn't done much except meet the Brotherhood of Steel. But when the story led me to the Institute, I just had to side with them, which meant I had to assassinate the Railroad leadership and annihilate the Brotherhood of Steel. I didn't mind the latter, but the first was tough. I was like one quest away from liberating all the synths from the Institute (which I'm sure would have made them enemies).

I enjoyed the combat. VATS gloriously returns, and I made a sniper/rifle-based character to exploit VATS. I could headshot anyone with 95% accuracy by the end of the game, have a 35% chance upon kill to refill all my AP, and just constantly refilled my crit meter. Brutal. I would have liked to re-do my character stat allocation though. I initially put something like 10 perception, 10 intelligence, and 8 agility. I was thinking intelligence because you could make weapon mods and get more junk to build settlements with. Turns out I absolutely hated bothering with all that, so my intelligence points were pretty much wasted. I got the perks I wanted and started filling up luck next. But I should have had perception, agility, luck, and charisma instead I think. I didn't like not being able to effectively persuade anyone the whole game either. But I knew I was making that choice at least.

I also enjoyed the overarching story. It had some stupid plot points, but the twist about Shaun was cool. Definitely did not see that coming. If you follow the main storyline, the game is probably not long at all. I spent 54 hours, but did a ton of side quests and spent way too much time poking through garbage in abandoned houses.

What did I dislike about Fallout 4?

Poking through garbage in abandoned houses. There is so much junk laying around everywhere to pick up. Every now and then there will be something valuable, like a magazine, or some good ammo, but it's like playing slots. I just had to look at everything. What if there's a safe? Gotta read the computer terminal. Maybe some purified water in the fridge? I had plenty of everything the whole game (except the first 5 hours or so) but I still felt compelled to rummage because it was there. All that crap is components for crafting, so if you're crafting, you need to constantly be picking it up.

I've (re)learned that I really don't care for crafting games. I didn't like settlements. I ended up ignoring them. Didn't care about the settlers. Didn't want to use workshops. Never upgraded a weapon or built a mod. My weapons were fine, and I was better off not managing NPCs' farms. The build interface sucked too, and scrapping items was really annoying. You have to hold V to go into build mode, then walk around and push R to scrap an object, then push Enter to confirm. For the amount of crap you have to scrap, that should all be one button, not require like three button presses and two hands for every.single.item. So as one might expect, my settlements were in poor condition and I don't think any of them were much more than 50% happiness. And I'll give you a hint: it doesn't matter one bit!

Like Fallout 3 before it (and unlike New Vegas), NPCs were generally pretty dull. The game wasn't funny. Towns weren't that interesting. Settlements and farms were the same boring thing over and over. Fallout 4 added repeating quests that never ended that I would do several times before I realized I wasn't moving anything forward. I really hate "dailies" in single-player games if they aren't clearly marked as such. There were some weird quest moments that made no sense. For example, this one Institute quest has you going to Bunker Hill to capture a synth, but the Railroad is there trying to save it and the Brotherhood of Steel is there trying to destroy it. Not one person shot at me. I've got an army of Institute synths and coursers behind me, and no one shoots at me. So I waltzed in, completed my objective, walked past the Railroad members who were now just standing still with no one to fire at since the synth was gone, and left. Weird.

Anyway, Fallout 4 definitely had more personality than Fallout 3, but it doesn't hold a candle to New Vegas, and that is so disappointing. I was hoping it would be more like New Vegas, but I guess at least it was somewhere in between and not just an update of Fallout 3. I think I'll skip the next one unless it gets like rave reviews.