--JO’Geran--
Whenever I think of Fallout 4, I think of the half-arsed world-design and nonsensical story. The post-war segment starts with you being unfrozen from cryostasis 210 years after the bombs fell, something that, as established in Fallout 2, has negative consequences. After returning to your hometown, you run across your robotic butler Codsworth, who somehow had enough fuel to keep functioning those same 210 years.
He leads you to Preston Garvey of the Minutemen, someone whose radiant quests are a shining example of just how poor the world-building is. “Go help this farm with 2 people living on it, no walls or defenses, no weapons but pipe pistols, who are somehow having trouble with Raiders” Seriously, if they were having such troubles with raiders, wouldn't they, more likely, be dead by now? The whole world is designed in such a way that it can’t exist without the player’s intervention. Not to mention, so few of these generic farm settlements actually have any meaningful backstory, as the entire world is supposed to be a blank slate for the player to build upon.
And the game ends with you having to choose 1 of 4 factions to side with, which seems great until you realize that every single faction makes absolutely no sense.
You have the Minutemen, who one guy made you leader of when they were struggling, and once they're fully-rebuilt, nobody even thinks to hold another election. They’ll just stick with a guy who has no idea what their history and customs are.
By the way, the whole “General” thing is nothing but an empty title. Much like being the Archmage of the Winterhold College, or the sentinel of the Brotherhood, it has no meaning associated with it beyond a fancy name, once again showing that Bethesda doesn't understand, AT ALL, how to put players into a position of power. A game that knows how to handle such a thing would've made you work for the title, and given you some level of power and responsibility when you did get it so it would feel like an achievement. Instead, you get made General immediately, and not once do you make difficult decisions, nor have any power associated with it.
A game that knows how to handle putting you in a position of power would have made you work for the title of General so it seems like an achievement, and would have also given you some levels of power/responsibility. The whole time you work with the Minutemen, you do solely what Preston wants you to do. He’s the one who decides which settlements you save, when you need to deal with problems, how you respond to issues and so forth. You make no tough decisions, and can have practically no effect on the faction, meaning that in every single way imaginable except for titles, Preston is the general.
When you side with the Minutemen, it becomes extremely unclear what the future of the Commonwealth actually is, since you don’t have to do anything about the Brotherhood, and they clearly have other plans. Oh, did I mention that you can bring raiders into the Commonwealth, slaughter all the Minutemen, and still be considered “General?” Or that you’re forced to hand Sanctuary Hills over to the Minutemen after rescuing Preston and crew? Or that you have no choice but to put up with the constant nagging and radiants from Preston? It reeks of a game failsafe, where you can do anything you want and not piss them off.
The Minutemen were clearly intended to be an independent option, but it fails to feel that way. They have their own ideals on the Commonwealth’s future, and have existing faction members. Given also that you’re not really General as Preston says you are, the Minutemen look less like an independent faction than the Railroad. Speaking of...
The Railroad faction is too incompetent to exist. Why? Because the location of their top-secret base can be found through the riddle “Follow the Freedom-Trail”. You could essentially pick up a tourist’s guide to Boston and find a path leading right into the middle of their base. They couldn't be just a bit more vague? And then when you reach the Railroad’s top secret base, guess what there password is. That’s right, it’s “Railroad”. And even if you haven’t figured it out by that point, that’s OK because the letters and their placement are written along the entire trail. Keep in mind that the Railroad are considered, by the people of the Commonwealth, to be the main opposition of the Institute, yet somehow the brightest mind of the 23rd century are somehow incapable of finding their super-secret hideout.
What’s more, the Railroad’s methods are incredibly confusing; they wipe the memories of the Synths they rescue, which seems innocuous, but wouldn't a memory wipe change the personality of the Synth majorly? Couldn't it be argued that it’s now a different person altogether? If they fully forget their past lives and have their personalities changed so drastically, couldn't it be argued that it’s comparable to killing them? Surely it would be better if the Synths kept their memories to help fight the Institute in future? (Glory does, and she’s able to help the Railroad lots more because of it.) And if they do that, what separates their treatment of Synths from the Institute's?
While I understand the basic idea behind the memory-wiping, it seems to, like most of Fallout 4, leave more questions than answers.
Later in the Railroad’s storyline, the base is under attack by the Brotherhood of Steel, who are supposed to be at open war with the Institute. (Sure, just piss off another supposedly powerful group for the fun of it.) That said, did you notice how easily the Brotherhood found the Railroad’s secret base? Within weeks, versus the Institute who've been unable to find it for years.
Speaking of the Brotherhood, the third faction in this, they’re one that Bethesda tried to return to their roots, with no success. The Brotherhood are supposed to be isolationist, not getting involved with the events of the outside world, only ever letting outsiders in if they perform a remarkable service. What we got instead was a genocidal Elder, who is a descendant of the Maxon family no less, who not only persuades the people of the Commonwealth to assist him, he makes an outsider a Sentinel within a few months. That is as far removed from the Brotherhood’s roots as one could get, especially since this guy was approved for leadership by other Brotherhood Elders back west.
It seems where Bethesda is involved, the Brotherhood is always going to get handled poorly; Fallout 3 showed that they can’t handle a radically more idealistic Brotherhood, and Fallout 4 showed they can’t handle a traditional style Brotherhood. Now, the Brotherhood has been portrayed as more idealistic before Bethesda bought the IP, namely in Fallout: Tactics, a game developed by Micro-Forte. Despite the poor writing and inconsistencies, Tactics handled the idea of a idealistic Brotherhood correctly. Micro-Forte showed them gradually opening up to the outside in response to the world around them, though it also implied that this Midwestern chapter would eventually come into conflict with the traditionalists of the Brotherhood.
Speaking of traditionalists, New Vegas handled this far better than Bethesda did. Throughout Veronica’s quest “I Could Make You Care”, we saw that because the Brotherhood were so focused on pre-war tech, while making no changes to the outside world, they were fading away, suffering a slow, sorry death in isolation. The isolationism was also causing problems with food and supply scavenging, leaving them unable to repair their aging and malfunctioning bunkers, and creating conflicts with the more militaristic leaning members.
This is the Brotherhood done right. What we got in Fallout 4 by comparison feels “Traditionalist” in-so-far as they can still be considered a badass army with a zeppelin at their disposal, but enough room for an outsider to reach the rank of Sentinel.
In addition to being handled incorrectly, the Brotherhood are also stunningly incompetent; they focus their entire military force on one easy to destroy zeppelin, they waste resources hunting down Synths with little reason other than “They are a threat to humanity, which they never bother to justify, and the vast majority of their questlines could be done without the player's intervention, yet for some reason they send you along on missions that they could easily do without you, just so you can get meaningless titles and promotions.
Lastly, we have the Institute, who are supposed to be the most technologically advanced faction in the world, yet all they have actually accomplished are Synths, 2 models of which are basically miniaturized Protectrons, and Teleportation. It’s also incredibly ambiguous why they made Synths in the first place; they've made numerous artificial intelligences yet used them for jobs like mining and cleaning the floors. The Synth Infiltrators I can understand, but so many for menial jobs? No wonder these guys rebel.
Not only are the goals of the Institute ambiguous at best, the actions they take before and during the game in pursuit of these goals are nonsensical; they create hundreds of Synths for no good reason, use other Synths to hunt down the ones that escape because they can’t think of a better solution to stop them from getting away, litter the Commonwealth with Super Mutants instead of coming up with something useful for the FEV, end a cybernetics project that allowed a key agent to live past 100 years, shut down Vault 111, which leads to the death of all but one of the residents, the ‘backup’, and the list goes on and on.
One final thing I’d like to do with this section is disprove the perception that Bethesda is somehow skilled at “Environmental Storytelling.” With so much of the story and lore tucked away in terminals and notes, what we mostly get here are skeletons placed in positions that point out the blatantly obvious, like someone getting kicked out of their house when the bombs fell. The few instances where this doesn't happen are either bland and generic, or easter eggs.
A better example of “Environmental Storytelling” would be how you can find a ball gag in a character’s room in Fallout 2, or the “Happy Birthday” sign over Rhonda in New Vegas, which implies that Tabitha is still celebrating Rhonda’s birthday after all these years. Spooky skeletons do not equal good environmental storytelling.
And then there’s the point that much of the story and lore is hidden in words on paper, books and computer screens. While I will admit that the terminal stories are a major improvement over dialogue ones, I’d say that’s because they didn't place ridiculous, and inane, limits on them like “Only 4 options at a time.” That is not a valid replacement for proper dialogue interactions though, as the stories are often bland and generic; describing Ghoulification like it’s some kind of 28 Days Later-style virus, detailing what lead a business to having to sell out to the army, things like that.
This isn't helped by how shoddily patched together parts of the lore are if you take the time to read what you find and compare it to what came before. The Institute’s terminals especially leave more questions than answers, and not in a good way.
-- 0wing --
Fallout 4 is a story about people, sometimes synthetic people. Fallout 4 is also a very personal story, not the player’s anymore.
The game opens with a live-action introduction narrated by the protagonist instead of Ron Perlman, detailing the conflict leading to the Great War from his point of view. The sole point of this intro is to hammer home that America is strong with nuclear energy, and that the Chinese are invaders, but the protagonist is afraid for his wife and son. Not only is it a drag to hear, it’s also misleading because it’s told from a personal perspective instead of one coming from a neutral perspective. And it degrades the value of the “War Never Changes” line, the most poignant phrase Fallout has, by using it twice after the intro is finished.
Remember the “Press F to pay respects” thing from Call of Duty? Fallout 4 does the same thing if you check the clothes in the closet.
Once the intro is over, the character creation screen is presented, this time as a Sims 4-esque face sculpting tool. However, because of the way the story is written and presented, this system is not about choosing the look of our character, but the family member who will, very soon, be on a quest to find the MacGuffin the drives the story, Shaun.
No matter who you choose, you’re always a middle-age veteran, if you’re male, or a lawyer with a new child, if you’re female, and you’re always living in a middle class suburban neighborhood with a nuclear powered car and a robot butler, who is sentient for some reason, but that’s for another time.
Anyway, the intro content consists of a tiny environment -- the protagonist’s home -- where only two dialogues take place. The first with the Vault-Tec representative, where the SPECIAL stats are filled out, and then with the player’s spouse, where no matter what you choose, Codsworth calls both of you to the TV.
Fast forward a few minutes, and as both characters stand on the platform leading down to the vault, the first nuclear explosion occurs. One that is close enough to, if not burn everyone to a crisp, at least blind them or pummel their bodies with radiation. The child too, which opens a gaping plot hole later in the story, but again, we’ll get to that.
The fact that the blast wave only reached the elevator after the people standing on it were deep enough down to be saved from death I’ll also leave for now, but it’s quite an indication of how railroaded the rest of the story will be, and how much sense it will make.
Afterward, the protagonist, along with their neighbors, spouse and child, are cryogenically frozen, for the purposes of science, and the central story. Centuries later, after thawing out and escaping the vault, the player is pushed out into the wasteland with the main goal established: Find the son, and avenge the spouse.
Now, unlike Fallout 3, where you can make up any number of reasons not to go after your father, such as he’s a deluded asshole, the thing that pushes the player into the world in Fallout 4 is a time-sensitive mission. Something that contradicts Bethesda’s maxim of “maximum freedom for the player”, especially when the protagonist brings up the ‘Shaun’ subject so often.
-- CT Phipps --
The story is a reversal of Fallout 3 where a child was looking for their father. This time, it’s a parent looking for their child. This is a questionable choice because as many reviewers have noted, it doesn't make sense to do sidequests when you have a helpless child missing versus an adult. I will give applause to the game developers for creating a Main Quest which results in you interacting with the four main factions of the Commonwealth however and coming to see their various points of view.
Unfortunately, even this is hurt by the fact the primary antagonist, the Institute, is underwritten and confusing in its goals, while the Minutemen faction lacks the ambiguity which would make them interesting. I appreciate the handling of the Brotherhood of Steel though, since it is revised from its "white knight" status in Fallout 3 to something more interesting. I think they make more effective antagonists than the Institute, and this is why I always choose to side with the latter. The Railroad, by contrast, has interesting characters but I don't know how they got together nor how they became such a powerful faction.
The world itself is a disappointment as there's some truly great set pieces like the Glowing Sea, Institute, and Diamond City, but the majority of the map is nothing more than nearly identical settlements along with ruins which lack grandiosity. Exploration rarely rewards the player character with fascinating new locations and this is perhaps Fallout 4's biggest flaw. The game would have strongly benefited from more eye-popping locations or taking advantage of Boston's more famous locations and history.
If I were to give one area credit, it would be the companions and their stories. These are the most detailed and interesting companions in the series yet; I especially loved the characters of Piper, Nick Valentine, Cait, and Paladin Danse. I think the option to allow romances was a good one as well, even if the "Like" and "Dislike" system is very clunky. The fact they're player sexual and capable of being romanced in multiple ways may strike some people as unrealistic (which it is) but I think it was a good choice. I also felt like the game discouraged lore-seeking as there's only a few places where the past 200 years of the factions is explorable.
-- Ediros --
Because the story of Fallout 4 is a rehash of 3, we once again have limited role-playing capabilities to go along with the poorly written story and ridiculous locations. Fallout 3 didn’t have an issue with the latter; if it had been a spin-off and fixed some of its writing issues, it could have been a decent game.
Aside from being cliche ridden and full of plot holes, the story of Fallout 4 does not give anyone time to care about their spouse and son before both are taken away. At most, you’ll have ten minutes, which I guess is all Bethesda thought players needed since these two are family, but it doesn’t work.
Not even for a second did I feel anything positive about the child or the wife/spouse. Also, when the Vault-Tec rep appears and tells us about the vault that is less than 100 meters from the house we start in, I found it very odd that neither member of this family even acknowledged it. It gets worse as it goes on, and I could spend an entire review pointing out the terrible writing, but we’ll leave that and focus on the world next.
The world of Fallout 4 is small. There’s no other word that sums it up better; it’s smaller than Skyrim, and much more boring. All the locations are essentially the same: a place infested with super mutants, ghouls, raiders, etc., with some kind of major loot crate at the end, behind some doors, or in a notable location, and there’s Power Armor everywhere, either the frames or the complete models. For a technology that is supposed to be akin to rare, end-game loot, it loses its value by being another level-dependent item, much less something you can get within two Main Quest missions.
Last, Legendaries. There are no unique weapons in this game, as I see it. The unique effects are just applied to normal weapons, which can then be modified as all base models can. It’s when you see effects like Two Shot and Bloodied that you realize these effects are no different than magic effects from Skyrim.
It’s not only completely ridiculous, but a detriment to the kind of series Fallout is.
-- Adam G. --
I'm sure many who were paying attention to the pre-release hype for Fallout 4 remember what happened when the news leaked that your character's son was going to be one of the big names among the factions playing at controlling the Commonwealth. Fans who thought this was a huge spoiler went crazy, the joke about how to kill your son went viral, and then we had Pete Hines enter the fray with a statement that regardless of this reveal, players would have more than enough to like about Fallout 4.
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https://i.redditmedia.com/jXxmvZm9c....jpg?w=320&s=baf0d119ef19e411e699b049ce9c851b)
Sorry Pete. That's a lie if I ever heard one.
In essence, what he was admitting to was this part of the main plot, the part that pulls your character into and through the world of Fallout 4, is completely forgettable and not as big a deal spoiled as it would've been unspoiled.
Here's a comparative example, just to show how dumb this is. Let's say Fallout 1 had the same caliber of hype surrounding it that Fallout 4 had, and then some players got their hands into the core of the game early, found out about how the main plot ends, and then posted things like, "Hey, don't ask the water merchants to supply your vault. You'll lose more easily that way." And then let's say Tim Cain (Sorry, Tim) came forward and said, "I'm sorry this got spoiled for you, but it's just one option in our game. You can try it if you choose, though."
See how dumb this gets? Finding the water chip is the crux of the early game in Fallout 1, and you're on a timer, so of course the water merchants making trips to extend your time seems like a great idea, but being told that choice, and its consequence, is not that bad spoiled versus unspoiled is a blatant lie because it changes the outcome of events in the game in a big way.
All that said, I was laughing all the way to the bank at the reveal; I was under the impression that your character would be turned synth while under then given false memories before being let loose. You know, something very sci-fi and in line with the film the developers thought so highly of when designing this game and the central plot threads you get tangled up in.
Of course, the main plot of finding your character's son is terrible in many other ways. For one, it's something that leaves a segment of players, likely a large one, open to simply not care about it and abandon it in favor of wandering the wastes. A major sin for RPG storytelling on par with giving your character the wrong emphasis for stopping the Darkspawn in Dragon Age: Origins. And if the Main Quest is forgettable, what does that say about the rest of the game?
Now, full disclosure here: I have not played the DLCs, nor do I ever plan to. I've seen plenty of them thanks to past roommates and other players to know that the 49.99 I would be spending to get those DLCs would be better spent on other games, or new PC hardware. What I have to say is strictly on the core game, but, again, if the core game is bad, what should that say about the rest of the game?
The impression I got as I went through the game was Bethesda was trying to ape New Vegas. They gave four main factions vying for the Commonwealth (The Institute, The Railroad, The Brotherhood of Steel and The Minutemen) just as you had four factions vying for New Vegas (Caesar's Legion, The NCR, Mr. House, and Yes Man (Independent)), and the story even progresses in a similar fashion, with your goals changing once you realize where your son has been since he was stolen, but they failed to grasp why the story, and your choices, in New Vegas had such an impact.
Because the characters and world on display supported the desire of these factions to control such an important area of the West Coast, which in turn made you think about what direction you wanted to take the story, and because the West Coast area of California and Nevada has been part of Fallout canon since 1997. New Vegas drew from the isometric games to help build the world. Fallout 4 builds on whatever Bethesda felt was enough to use from Fallout 3. (Dr. Li and several other faces return from Fallout 3, in fact.)
This isn’t helped by how much the game goes the ‘tell you’ rather than ‘show you’ route with things. This is something that a fellow NMA-goer brought up a while back, and having thought about it since I last played the game, they’re right. So much of what you’re told about this world comes from notes, computer terminals, and other static things that you can’t engage with, and when the characters you can talk to are unable to detail things you might be interested in hearing about most times, in my case what exactly made caps the new world currency versus old bills and coins, it all adds onto the shallow feel of the world. (I know why this was thanks to Fallout 1 and the Fallout Bible, but still the point stands.)
What makes this even worse is the fact that there are only two endings in the game, one for if you sided with The Institute, and the other for if you did not. You're also shown no slides detailing choices you made throughout the game, because there are no decisions you can make, or things you can affect, on a scale even comparable to The Necropolis, Vault City, New Vegas, or any other games from Black Isle/Obsidian. That or Bethesda simply left the idea on the cutting room floor like other things I'll get to shortly.
It really makes one appreciate the slides you earned by finishing New Vegas, Dragon Age: Origins, or Skies of Arcadia. (Yeah, that game had ending slides, and earning them is still awesome to this day.)
