Fallout 4 is technically about being the wasteland to find your son Sean who was kidnapped from the vault, of which you’re the Sole Survivor. However, what it’s really about is listening to music from the fifties and pumping yourself full of chemicals in order to become the second apocalyptic event to happen to this wasteland
What Makes you S.P.E.C.I.A.L.
Creating your character is a two step process. First you need to decide what you look like. This game has an absurd amount of customization, as you can mold each little individual area of your character’s face. Then you assign your S.P.E.C.I.A.L’s, which in the older games would have determined what your S.P.E.C.I.A.L.’s would look like at the end of the game(mostly)
Strength: How much you can lift and how hard you hit
Perception: How effective your V.A.T.S. (Vault Assisted Targeting System) is
Endurance: How tough your character is, how many action points they have
Charisma: How much of a smooth talker your character is
Intelligence: How smart your character is
Agility: How quick your character is, in both combat and exploration is
Luck: How likely it is to find better loot
Once you create your Sole Survivor you’re ready to get frozen for 200 years. But after that you’re ready to brave this brand new wasteland that somehow still looks a lot like Boston.
“My Little Atom Bomb…”
After being frozen for two hundred you’d think they’d have some damage, but surprisingly no. Waking back up in the Commonwealth after so long and seeing the new wasteland your character is obviously surprised. Thankfully you have a PIP-Boy to help with your journey.
The PIP-Boy is a wrist mounted computer that serves as your menu giving you access to the inventory and much more. This personal computer lets you trek across the wasteland in style and also has a radio to let you enjoy some tunes as you adventure across the wasteland. The most extraordinary ability of the PIP-Boy is V.A.T.S. The Vault Assisted Targeting System allows the Sole Survivor to target specific body parts on the enemies. After all… how can an enemy hold a weapon if their arm is broken?
But hey, what are you supposed to attack with? The answer is that there’s a lot to fight with. From baseball bats to the Fat Man (which launches miniature nuclear bombs) there are many ways to purge the wasteland of your enemies. Don’t forget about the perks you can get to affect combat. There’s simple ones like Rifleman (which improves the damage and armor penetration effects of rifles). However there’s more unique perks like Mysterious Stranger, which adds a chance for a man in a trench coat to spawn and attack whoever you’re targeting before disappearing again.
One of the biggest power boosts you can get are Legendary weapons, can be bought, awarded, or looted from Legendary enemies after you let them take a forever nap. Legendary effects come in many different varieties. There are the weak ones like reduced costs in V.A.T.S. to the over powered ones (like double and explosive shot). Getting a weapon like Spray and Pray, a legendary tommy gun that has explosive bullets, can carry you the whole game.
Hey, is that a gorilla?
There are multiple factions which you can ally with in the Commonwealth. Each one offers a completely different quest line that the player can complete. The Brotherhood of Steel wants to preserve the technology of Pre-War America and prevent what they consider abuses of tech, such as Synths. The Brotherhood has a burning hatred of the creatures of the wasteland and even ghouls who have been warped by the wasteland.
The Institute wants to ascend beyond humanity and become perfect machines. The Institute views the wasteland as a playground to test different experiments they think are interesting. The Railroad wants to free Synths from the oppressive control of the Institutes via subterfuge. The Railroad is by far the weakest faction and due to their view on synths they have cited the anger of both the Institute and Brotherhood of Steel,
The final faction is the Minutemen. The Minutemen want to unite the various settlements of survivors over the commonwealth under one banner to stand up against the raiders and creatures of the wasteland. The down side of this is that Preston Garvey sends you to different The Minutemen are unique since you can be allied with any other factions and still be allied with the Minutment. The other three factions all hate each other and part of their quest in destroying the other two factions. Though even the minutemen ending has you destroying the Institute.
At least there aren’t Cazadors
The Fallout series has a lot of different enemy factions that you can face. There are the obvious things like raiders that want to loot your corpse for all of your caps, to feral ghouls who want to eat your face. The diversity in what wants to add you to the wasteland death toll is part of what makes the game so fun. Having a group of big green guys who are all dumber than a bag of bricks screaming at you is funnier than it is scary. Then there’s the top of the totem pole of the wasteland creature, the deathclaw. These overgrown lizards will hunt you down with extreme prejudice. While they aren’t as terrifying as they were in the older games you still don’t want to discover one dashing towards you.
Don’t worry though if you’re on death’s door all you need is some performance enhancing chems, which give you absurd boosts in power (from increasing resilience, to slowing time, and even making you practically immune to radiation). It is important to keep a good stock of chems. Even Stimpaks, the primary healing item of the game, is technically a chem. A well stocked pharmacy is important if you don’t want to die because all of your limbs are broken and you have acute radiation sickness.
Why Todd? Just… why?
Fallout 4 is an improvement when it comes to the core gameplay compared to the other 3d Fallout games. That being said it is a step back when it comes to just about everything else. The perk system of Fallout 4 reduces the emphasis on picking the right perks, since you can just get them all given enough time and effort (whereas in the older games you need to be conscientious of what perks you choose). Plus: the perks in the other games were just far more exciting.
Fallout New Vegas for example has a perk called Sneering Imperialist, which gives you unique dialogue options and bonus damage against tribal enemies. While being able to get every perk is good, it comes at the price of a lack of variety since they need to affect your basic stats, which were originally governed by your skills. Each level up in the old games gave you a number of skill points to spend. This was affected by a ton of factors, but it let every perk feel more important since you didn’t have to improve your weapons damage, or better stealth.
Beep, beep, beep
Some of the enemies that you have to face are just annoying. Trying to kill a mirelurk with a melee weapon is like trying to force the square block into the triangle hole. It ain’t gonna work. But hey if crustaceans aren’t your thing how about a big green guy who’s dumber than a kindergartner trying to rush you down while holding a nuclear bomb. Listen they are not bad in big open spaces with lots of visibility, but you’re in Boston not Kansas, they’re going to surprise you.. Especially when you don’t find them until your corpse is sailing through the sky.Fallout 4 is definitely not the worst game in the series, but where it makes improvements it also takes multiple steps backwards in other areas. The game is a perfectly acceptable furious power fist.
