Game Babble: Fallout 4

Well surprise, surprise. Life didn't turn out quite as I had expected. Granted the same happened to my nanowrimo. I did, however, managed to write 15 000 words full of complete and utter shite on the last day. It is the most words I've ever written in a day (I think) and I spent two days recovering.

Behold!

Now November is a terrible month for me. It's the month of working overtime, swearing at people, being sworn at by people, insane deadlines, insaner expectations and the shedding of a tear or two. It is the worst time to try and be creative.

And besides, Fallout 4 came out.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. The long, long, long, long awaited sequel finally rolled it's irradiated butt through the doors and it is beautiful. How beautiful you ask? Well, that I can't tell you because my super dooper game pc (well moderately super) isn't powerful enough to fully show how awesomely pretty the game is. Needless to say, it is still beautiful. Tons. a bit too demanding perhaps for the pc, but we'll overlook that on account of everything else.

Let the babbling begin:

Let me spoil you horrendously by saying 1. You lived in the time prior to the war. 2. You get bullied into a vault where you're turned into an ice cube for 200 years. 3. Someone steals something precious to you and does things that will make more than one person flip their lid. 4. You get thawed out and find the world got somewhat crispier since you last saw it.

There, now you don't have to play it. You know everything.

Well, everything that starts off the game. So maybe you should play it.

The challenge with open-world games has always been striking the balance between freedom of choice and driving the character's motivations. Either you get that the player isn't invested and mostly detached from everything their character would probably feel something for, or the story is on rails. Fallout 4 also struggles. I found myself enjoying the open road and lack of responsibility (well, somewhat lack, I'll get to that later). Then I'd finally reach an area and discussion that triggers the next main story thread, and my character's voice trembles and is very upset. And then I am moved and have this moment of 'Oh, I suppose I should care'. One mission later and I'm back to exploring the open world, all the lovely places with silent stories, all the lovely places where people shoot at me for no good reason, and I forget about that caring bit. I'm having too much fun doing other stuff.

It can be a little jarring.

But then, I have yet to play a game that gets this balance right.

Since I've mentioned it, let me say that I really enjoy the voice acting in this game. There hasn't been a situation like I got in Oblivion and Skyrim where characters began sounding the same. I'm sure that at some point I feel like they've melded together but at present they don't.

For interest, the female main character (aka Sole Survivor) is voiced by Courtenay Taylor - Jack from Mass Effect, Juhani from SW KotOR. And then I had my OOHHHH!!! moment while checking the wiki for voice actors. Claudia Christian - Susan Ivanova from Babylon 5!! - is also adding her voice to the game.

Ah hem. So yes, there's that.

Everything is essentially been updated and upgraded. There will be tons of other reviews spending time on how exactly. What I enjoy about the game is walking into a 'house' seeing all that was left behind and puzzling out the story. Pointless, but so much detail was put into this game that it is delightful. The VATS system no longer stops everything but only slows things down considerably, giving you that feeling that combat is still flowing and you better move your butt and decide where you want to shoot the dude. Weapons handling feels good. Upgrading weapons and armour is a mix of essential and redundant. You tinker to make things better but don't expect that you won't stumble over some other delightful thing later.

The leveling up system has changed. Less stats, more perks. Here you select what your character will be good at without having to look too much at the numbers. Allow them to be better at rifles, for example. Make them better crafters. Have them scrounge through things with better success. Some might find the simplicity annoying, but it does make you feel that you're creating a unique character in a sense. While you could choose perks all across the board, it makes you the typical Jack of all Trades and master of none.

Right let's get back to that matter of responsibility. Early on in the game, you find Dogmeat (side

note, your companions can no longer die, so you don't have to avoid taking along some like your favourite German Sheppard. He's not going to kick it. Which is good because they tend to keep tumbling off of high places and making clumsy asses of themselves.

But I digress, So after you meet Dogmeat, you (can) wonder down into a town where you (may) meet people, save said people (if you want to), and escort them back to the location you start at namely Sanctuary Hills. Here they start a settlement, or more accurately, YOU start their settlement. This is where the crafters and builders are free to go insane and build beds and shelters and defenses and stuff. There is good and bad too it. One the one hand, the number of settlements you build gives you the resources and help you might find really necessary while travelling the ruins of Boston. You simply shoot a flare gun into the air and they come running (apparently, I haven't actually tried this yet). Or, you later can build artillery, chuck smoke grenades and run away like hell while the bombs come raining down.

Could be useful...

But, they're like the sims. You need to make them happy by doing annoying things like planting crops, building beds, building defenses. While some are shown to be hitting things with hammers from time to time, no one seems to know how to actually use one and build things themselves. Some might like it, total control and all of that. I find it frustrating. You have the opportunity to make yourself a good home in the wastelands, people. Take some initiative!

There are things I can nitpick about. There are four things I will mention since I think they're the most ... well not annoying, but they bug me somewhat.

1. XP for building and crafting:
Maybe it's to nudge you on to building settlements, but you get XP for every single thing you build.

While it sounds great in the beginning, I ended up feeling that I didn't actually do much to get all those higher levels the game was congratulating me on. You get XP for every plant you plant even. I felt they were far too generous in that regard and it actually pushes me away from building settlements.

I want to feel like my character is growing as she sees the world, faces down obstacles, runs away from Deathclaws, screaming and finding shelter in the nick of time (or running through a raider camp and having the two groups kill each other off). I don't want to get that Level up notice from sticking a carrot into the ground.

2. Programming bugs:
Bethesda, we'll love this game as much as we did Fallout 3, as bug-ridden as it was, but that doesn't mean we want to see the same kinds of bugs in this game. You should have moved on by now. But there you have it. Similar bugs pop up in FO4 as in FO3. Dead bodies still jerk around as if their nervous systems haven't figured out that they're dead yet. The pipboy screen sometimes comes up blank of invisible (reloading helps). Objects and people still have moments where they mimic X-Men's Shadow Cat and you see pieces disappear through walls and such.

My favourite example of this is an old lady in Diamond City. She sits politely in a dress with her hands in on her lap. Only, her fingers go through the dress... thus seeming even more determined to defend her modesty...

3.Trust:
Seems an annoying nitpick, but here's an example that might explain the problem. I meet mister metal head. He is part of an organisation of very arrogant metal heads who tell you things like "Move along, outsider," and "If you're not part of us, you're nothing." So, not a nice bunch of people. But despite this, I decided to be a good neighbour because, shame, the one is injured and they need a radio signal sorted to proceed with evacuation. Main metal head and I get to the station, hook up the beacon, Bob's your auntie, and the mission is completed. And then the metal head invites me to join the metal head organisation.

'Scuse me? You were an arrogant bastard just three seconds ago, you don't know me from Adam's

cousin, and you want me to join the asshole brigade because I knew how to flip a switch?

Apparently, yes. It's that simple.

In the game, you get offered the position of general, become part of the metal heads for helping them with a radio beacon, become part of a Grease-esque power armour gang for sticking a part into a nearby machine, and goodness knows what else. You immediately get trusted after completing small tasks even when you have no reason whatsoever of trusting them. It felt like a cheap reward and what could have been meaningful introductions and initiations into these organisations (ala Oblivion).

4. Music selection:
The selection of songs are very, very, very limited. Maybe a silly nitpick, but you can only listen to Butcher Pete so many times. I'd have loved if they at least included some of the songs from FO3 and FO: New Vegas. I check in on the radio every now and again, but mostly I tend to just keep it off. Which is a pity. It's such a nifty feature.

Conclusion
If you loved Fallout 3, you're enjoy its successor. There are some things you might not like, but if you want to be the lone wanderer, nothing is stopping you. I would say someone who isn't used to the open-world idea might find yourself losing whatever "main story threads" are floating around. In the end, I take each day as they come. One day I help build beds, the other day I gather parts to build beds. Some days I do missions, other days I wander from random door to random door and see what lies beyond.

In the end the choice is yours and if I have to rate it, I'd probably give it as close as a ten out of ten as I can get while muttering over all of the above.