Fallout 4 (PC, 2015)

The best Fallout experience yet, warts and all.

Nostalgia Factor: High. I’m a massive geek for Bethesda Studios games, especially Fallout 3.
Difficulty: Easy to medium. You may encounter difficulty spikes in the mid game in certain locations and with certain character builds.

Wow. I finally finished Fallout 4, 220 hours later. That is the most time I’ve ever invested into a single playthrough of any game, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. If anything, that number alone should serve as a strong indicator of how much of a “Mo game” FO4 is. I’m still digesting what I just experienced (and discerning whether recency bias is at play), but for the moment, it seems that FO4 has dethroned Oblivion as my favorite game of all time. Apologies in advance for the length of this review. TLDR: Lots of bugs, but Mo still really enjoyed Fallout 4.

The incredible story content is this game’s greatest strength. I’ve always enjoyed the writing in Bethesda Studios games, but FO4 has reached another level. FO3’s very black and white, good-guy-or-bad-guy player choices suited me just fine, since I almost always opt for lawful-good or at least neutral-good role playing. I struggled a bit with New Vegas’s swathe of moral grays, though most others seemed to find this complexity much more interesting than FO3. FO4 clearly takes cues from NV by adding so much more complexity and player choice than FO3, yet they pave a more agreeable path for players who want to be the hero.

One valid criticism is that FO4 seems to be lacking in meaningful evil player choices outside of the Nuka World questlines. And yet, even though there does seem to be a clear “good guy” path, there’s still a touch of that New Vegas getting-your-hands-dirty compromise required. Rarely are the major storylines neatly concluded without some measure of sacrifice for the greater good. I will say, the impressively complex spaghetti ball of player choices at the end of the main quest is very well crafted. There’s plenty of replayability for those who want to side with a different faction in another playthrough.

The game often faces you with difficult choices, sometimes very emotionally raw, with plenty of twists along the way (one twist in particular had me reeling). It seems impossible for any sci-fi writing today to avoid tropes, but I did find FO4’s take on the familiar sci-fi concepts to be well executed. I was completely enthralled in the themes, questions, and ethics surrounding memory, advanced technology, and the essence of humanity. I loved exploring the Nuka World DLC, which may be the closest thing we’ll ever have to experiencing a post-apocalyptic Disney World, and Far Harbor may be the best Bethesda DLC I’ve played yet (even outshining Shivering Isles, IMO). Talk about getting your hands dirty.

I devoured this game. I played through every single available quest, aside from the never-ending procedurally generated radiant quests. There’s a few fetch quests (this is an RPG after all), but nearly all of the quests carried some sort of interesting storyline or a new character with unique dialogue. I love good lore, so I gobbled up every scrap of lore I found left behind on terminals, holotapes, and on handwritten notes. I often found myself chuckling at the cheeky humor periodically injected into this bleak post-apocalyptic world. The “Vault boy” retro-futuristic vibes continue to be a strength for the series, with the fantastic animated S.P.E.C.I.A.L. video intros being a particular treat.

I have mixed feelings about the visuals. It’s the best looking Fallout game yet, but the graphics are certainly not on par with some of the best that 2015 had to offer (like Until Dawn or Arkham Knight). The textures seem wanting in that regard, but the well-designed characters, creatures, and environments still pull FO4 along. They’ve really pumped up the violence and gore in FO4, which may be a boon for some. Gore is not really my thing (thankfully there’s a mod for that). If anything, absurdly unrealistic gore inhibit’s the game’s immersion, which is normally a strength for Bethesda Studios. Raiders exploding into multiple pieces like some kind of lego figure from just one crit .45 round pulls me out of the suspension of disbelief more than your typical “game logic” issues. To each their own, I guess.

The gameplay loop takes the best from FO3 and adds even more. You’ve got the standard questing, lockpicking, terminal hacking, shooting, and looting gameplay. Gunplay is much improved from FO3, though the changes they made to the dialogue system were rightfully panned. Again, thankfully there’s a mod for that. The enemy AI is much improved, and there were times I found myself going sans-VATS just for the fun of it, even though it’s not as ammo-efficient. The crafting system isn’t perfect, but I really enjoyed modding my guns and my power armor (I didn’t fuss much with the light armor workstation, chem crafting, or cooking). With DLC, you can also make custom robots. You can fill an entire settlement with robots if you want.

Crafting makes anything and everything you find in the wastes useful, since you need raw material to create. I found myself hoarding lamps, hot plates, and telephones just for the copper needed to repair my fully upgraded power armor. The power armor jetpack is a must have. It is so fun dropping in on groups of enemies, and saving time by taking shortcuts up onto buildings or over fences. Hoarding caps and materials is necessary and fun for the first 50 hours, but by the mid to late game (depending on how completionist you are), I had such a huge stack of caps, ammo, fusion cores, and raw materials that looting began to feel meaningless.

This may be a key drawback of this game’s massive size. There’s just so much content. I’m not sure how they could better balance the game. Do they balance the game for players that only put in 20-30 hrs, or do they balance the game for those who commit to the 200 hour experience? There’s no enemy scaling, which is a good move. The further south you go on the map, the higher the level of the enemies. However, by late game, with fully modded unique weapons and power armor and loads of powerful perks, I was one-shotting most enemies and two-shotting nearly everything else. I barely took any damage from enemies except for the crazy face laser from legendary assaultrons. Maybe this is the dream for RPG gamers, but I became so strong that the game ceased to be challenging. I do think the Power Armor is too strong. They now require “rare” and expensive fusion cores to operate, but by the end of the game, I consistently had 60+ fusion cores in my inventory.

I really enjoyed the settlement building, though I found it very finicky and difficult to learn at first. There’s hardly any in-game help or documentation. Thankfully, youtube has plenty of tutorials and there are mods that can ease the process. I really enjoyed decking out Sanctuary, playing with lighting (string lights look amazing at night), and creating a retirement home at the Kingsport Lighthouse for my character. Critics of FO4 often cite settlement “babysitting” as a major annoyance. Players get bombarded with radiant settlement quests, some of which fail after a set amount of in-game time.

Settlements that you build will often get attacked and require defending. You have to fast travel and defend within 24 in-game hours or your crops, turrets, and even some items in your workbench will be at risk. Very unhappy settlements may even turn against you and attack your other settlements. This distracts from the core gameplay. It’s not uncommon to be knee deep in a story-rich main quest and see “Tenpines Bluffs is under attack by Raiders” pop up on your screen. You feel guilty or stressed if you ignore it. Thankfully, once again, there’s a mod for that.

Out of all the Bethesda Studios RPGs I’ve played, FO4 has been the buggiest. Even with essential mods like the unofficial patch and the script extender, I encountered plenty of “Bethesda jank”. I had some atrocious load times (sometimes up to 4 minutes long), but I think that may have been due to my script extender mod not loading correctly. Within my 220 hour playthrough, the game hard crashed on me 5 times, most often in DLC areas. It’s a good thing I’m a seasoned Bethesda gamer, because I made hard saves often.

Most quests worked just fine, but I encountered two completely broken DLC quests that required some console trickery to complete. I did encounter a legendary Fog Crawler that just wouldn’t die. The health bar just kept refreshing over and over. I had to use the console to disable it so it wouldn’t wreck my settlement. I once got stuck in a ceiling and had to load from a save. I got stuck in an elevator (the infamous “infinite elevator” glitch). Hilariously, in that exact moment, my companion Piper said “These things feel too much like tombs for my liking.” I had to load a previous save and then the elevator worked fine. It’s a bit silly when you access a workstation with several companions nearby, because they all spit some kind of dialogue at you, all at the same time. I sent most of my extra companions to Sanctuary, so this was a common occurrence.

At times the companion pathing was laughably bad. I once had to physically push MacCready towards a quest objective with my character because he got stuck on nothing. He just wouldn’t move. Once, Piper got stuck repeating the same line over and over until I left the area. Occasionally, I would get lost when a quest marker was placed incorrectly. The absolute worst offender among all of this Bethesda jank was the night all my saves disappeared, after 170 hrs of gameplay. The folder where they should have been was completely empty. I didn’t update or change anything, they just vanished. I nearly gave up on the game. Turns out it was some weird glitch with steam cloud save (which I had disabled from the beginning based on feedback from the FO4 community). I was able to find my saves buried deep in the steam userdata folder. If this happens to you, do a full windows search for .fos files. I started making duplicates of my most recent save files on my desktop, just in case.

Is this a lot of bugs to experience within 220 hours of gameplay? Probably. Even though this game is a behemoth with seemingly endless content, I’m not going to defend Bethesda. Many gamers have expressed understandable frustration about the sloppy code. Even after these many years of free labor from the modding community, FO4 can still be a very janky experience. Maybe it’s time for Bethesda to leave Creation Engine behind and switch to the more stable Unreal Engine 5. When the Bethesda formula actually works, it’s great. Most of my time in the Commonwealth was rich and rewarding. When the formula doesn’t work, it’s what we’ve come to expect from Bethesda. The bugs disrupt the immersion that normally makes these games so engaging.

Let me end this review on a high note. The original soundtrack from Inon Zur is absolutely stunning. The Elder Scrolls series is famous for its soaring atmospheric themes, but the Fallout series has been known more for the 40s and 50s radio station classics. Zur’s FO3 and NV original soundtracks didn’t offer much outside of the dissonant horror tracks. For FO4, Zur spreads his wings and gets to show off some of the most hauntingly beautiful ambient music I’ve heard in a long time.

There are also plenty of epic battle tracks, and Diamond City radio can be a nice break from those stressful horror tracks that can sometimes be a little too effective. However, it’s the beautiful ambient themes that really take center stage. They are listenable and soothing, yet they still occasionally hit you with a touch of dissonance or scratchiness so you’re reminded of the desolate reality of the world you’re exploring. It seems that Zur will be tackling the Elder Scrolls VI soundtrack, and I can’t wait to hear it.

Overall, in spite of its many notable flaws, Fallout 4 may just be my favorite game of all time. It’s not a perfect game, and giving it a 9/10 still feels overly generous considering its many issues, but what Fallout 4 does well – it does exceedingly well. I don’t remember the last time I was this engrossed in a fictional world. After I retired my character and his pals at Kingsport Lighthouse, it was difficult for me to say goodbye. I felt that odd “homesickness” that you feel when it’s time to say goodbye to a game world that you’ve loved exploring. It’s over. It’s done. There’s nothing left to do. I suppose I could give Fallout 76 or Starfield a try.