Fallout 4 Review

One aspect of the combat that I have mixed feelings about is the relative scarcity of ammo, and the huge number of different ammo types and firearms. I never seemed to have a ton of ammo for any one weapon, so instead of heading out with two or three weapons, I found myself using seven or eight at any given time since I never had much ammo for any of them. This would lead to situations of frantically swapping between weapons, thinking “oh I don’t want to use my .308 ammo on these weak guys, better switch to my other gun that uses less powerful ammo.” It is nice to have the weapon variety and I really like how ammo is scarce enough that you need to use it wisely, but having to juggle so many different guns feels a bit ridiculous.

VATS returns, but has reduced effectiveness as it only slows down time rather than pausing it. It is still an essential system when fighting the annoying mutant insects who can make your life miserable, but ultimately it feels like a sort of special ability rather than the primary way to get through encounters. While the weapon handling is in line with a more tactical shooter, the movement is still fairly clunky. You can hide behind cover and will automatically peek out when aiming, but you will still get hung up on small objects and perform janky parkour maneuvers to get around the environment.

Nuclear blowouts reduce visibility and cause radiation sickness

You can climb into a suit of power armor if you need more durability and radiation resistance; these suits must be powered by ‘fusion cores’ which can be found scattered around, and these drain while using these suits. Power armor will also get damaged over time, and though all other item degradation is gone, it makes sense for the Power Armor, giving those occasions you do use it a heightened feeling of importance. The clunky movement feels justified when wearing the suit, and some of my favorite parts of the game occur in places where you need it for radiation protection.

The tendency of both enemy and friendly AI to break is a frequent problem that ruins immersion during combat encounters. When indoors, you might be engaged in a brutal noisy shootout with some raiders, only to have other raiders in the next room ten feet away loudly saying things like “did you hear something? What was that?” as if you were instead sneaking around. Feral Ghouls will impressively crawl through windows and other gaps in the environment only to become stuck on a fence or in a wall afterwards.

The AI companions that seem to exist in every Bethesda game are perhaps even worse; they will fail to keep up when you perform unexpected jumps to get around the cluttered environments, and are mostly useless in combat unless you gear them up with your own precious supplies. The game frequently uses elevators in indoor environments, and your NPC followers will generally get confused by the devices and get left behind. Your first companion, a dog, is introduced quickly; he sort of just pops out of nowhere and you start adventuring together, with him immediately able to follow complex commands. Your canine friend will help in combat and even lead you to some hidden stashes, but mostly he just gets in the way. Bethesda did go through the effort to create backstory for your companions, and if you spend enough time traveling together they will randomly pull you into a conversation and start telling you about their past, but mostly I found them to be clumsy and immersion breaking and usually traveled alone.

The conversation wheel leaves much to be desired

Despite the improvements to the gameplay, Bethesda still seem intent on having you spend a good deal of time in conversations with NPCs. They have scrapped the long-standing dialogue system of previous games and replaced it with a Mass Effect-style dialogue wheel. Sadly, the new dialogue system is a bust, partly due to the stilted writing, partly due to the dated facial animations and broken lip syncing, and partly due to the limited options of the wheel. Many dialogue options are redundant, with NPCs responding in the same way to different choices.

Other times, the dialogue options don’t do a good job of indicating what your character will say at all. I chose an option that resulted in an entirely different response than expected on a few occasions. Time doesn’t pause during conversations, and random NPC’s will start talking to you and drown out the important dialogue, or bump into you or the person you are conversing with. As it stands, the conversations simply aren’t good enough to justify the time spent in them. Bethesda either need to pare them down or make them better, rather than rubbing our faces in how behind the times they are in this aspect of their games.

Fortunately, the rest of the game’s presentation fares much better. One of my favorite additions in Fallout 4 is dynamic weather; rain, fog and nuclear blowouts add to the atmosphere in a meaningful way and create moments of unscripted, haunting beauty that will stay with you long after you stop playing. Again I can’t overstate how deliciously detailed and rich the world is to explore; it has an intangible, grounded quality that very few games have, cemented for me at points where you climb up the taller towers in Boston and look around at the map, able to distinguish different locations you have visited and scout out new areas to venture. Taken as a whole, Bethesda’s vision of post-apocalyptic Boston is an enthralling one.

Missions involving NPC companions show Fallout 4 at its buggy worst

From a technical standpoint, there are a lot of inconsistencies when you start looking closely, revealing the fact that Bethesda have been working with the same engine for a very long time now. You still need to endure loading screens when entering towns, buildings or fast traveling, and these can be quite lengthy if you aren’t running the game from a SSD. When you add up the glitches, painfully dated animations, the performance dips that occur in cities and the amount of loading, it’s hard to figure out why Bethesda haven’t bothered to invest in a new engine, especially in light of other open world games that both look and run better. Even though things look good from a distance, the dated tech Fallout 4 is built on rears its ugly head all too often.

On a brighter note, sound design is very much on point; firefights are brought to life with sonic cracks and you can even tell what kind of surface is being hit by bullets simply by the sound of the impact. The distinctive static of your Geiger counter will tell you when it’s time to get the hell out of your current location, while the moody soundtrack heightens the darkly wondrous tone that permeates the whole experience.

In many ways, Fallout 4 feels a bit like a game that belongs on Steam Early Access; impossibly ambitious, a bit broken and painfully clunky. Yet somehow, despite the weak storytelling, bugs and dated technology, the game is frequently a joy to play, with some of the best organic exploration you can find in the medium. To make things even better, the game does a great job of incentivizing this exploration, giving you plenty of reason to ignore the tedium of the story and venture off into the unknown. If Bethesda want to retain their status as a top-tier open world game developer, they really need to improve their ability to tell an engaging tale, but despite this serious failing, Fallout 4 still somehow managed to win me over.