Skyrimtook the world by storm, being a video game where you could go anywhere and do just about anything. Personally, I never really fell in love with the game the same way everyone else did but still managed to put in hundreds of hours.
A few years later, I found the complete edition ofFallout 3forPlayStation 3and felt compelled to try it out. Framerate drops and all, that was the game that made me understand whyBethesdawas this beloved studio! The world hooked me, and I loved how I was able to shape the story with the admittedly black-and-white morality system.
So, onceFallout 4was announced, I jumped first class onto the hype train, ready to never look back. 4’s reputation is more nebulous, as while reviews at the time called it another Bethesda classic, in years since, people have less positive opinions. For me though, I still find Fallout 4 to be the most enjoyable game Bethesda ever released.
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I’ll start with something I do still see people praise; how the first-person shooting mechanics evolved from Fallout 3 to 4. Shooting was clunky in Fallout 3, sluggish, and even lacking a proper zoom function where you just lifted the gun instead of looking down the scope. It worked fine but was outshined by dialogue options and non-violent solutions. Fallout 4 had a complete overhaul for the guns, and it managed to bring forward the kinetic energy seen in better first-person shooters.
Detractors during release liked to tease that Fallout 4 was a first-person shooter and not an RPG, but I fail to see the issue. The RPG mechanics are still there, and not even all that downscaled from previous Bethesda games, so I’m more than happy for fun combat to also be here.
Fallout 4 also evolved the gun crafting system that began in Fallout 3, resembling how it looked inObsidian’sFallout: New Vegas. Fallout 3 had about half a dozen weapons to make, while New Vegas went heavy on letting you create weapon mods. Fallout 4 leans into the weapon modification and lets you completely retool any gun you find, with better mods hidden behind level-up perks.
These crafted weapons feel like a personal touch for each playthrough, and there’s a great chance of you becoming overpowered in all the best ways! I did a playthrough where I avoided earning weapon perks just to see what happened, and it showcased how important these were. This game’shardwhen you don’t craft your own weapons, even though finding a Pipe weapon will still help immensely, as you will always have spare bullets thanks to how nearly every enemy type uses one too. Practical, but you will feel the sting of not crafting Plasma Rifles or Spiked Baseball Bats.
I do like the weapon degradation system from Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but I still find the removal of it justified in how the weapon crafting evolved for Fallout 4. It also meant melee weapons were far more useful this time around. I can’t tell you my elation when I took out the entire Scorched Raider camp with just a Combat Knife.
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Crafting Better Companions
Companions in Fallout 4 are also easily the best in Bethesda’s library. Fallout 3 and Skyrim had some very vanilla characterization for your followers, and sometimes, calling them vanilla oversells their personalities. For Fallout 3, I had a fondness for companions like Charon, but then there were beyond-boring characters such as Paladin Cross and Jericho. Characters that were only there as “rewards” for playing evil or good, but had nothing to latch onto. Skyrim was even worse in that regard, so many of the companions were just hired bodyguards who shared exact voice lines, making them much more virtual than anything real.
Fallout 4 took cues from New Vegas, as each companion had a solid reason for following the player and had a personalised moral compass and beliefs. Also like New Vegas, you gained approval for each companion based on what you did with them, but it was far less cryptic. Not to say either game did it better; New Vegas limits how you can build up these relationships, where some characters need to be there the first time you see a specific place, and you can lose that bonding opportunity, while Fallout 4 relies so much on making sure you can’t miss them to the point it’s too easy to cheese them with incredibly basic actions you can repeat constantly. I understand why the former makes the journey more personal, but I can’t help but love how I can guarantee making my favorite companion see me as an equal.
The karma system from 3 and New Vegas is completely gone in 4, letting the companion approval system completely replace it. I don’t mind this as the trade-off works well, and personally, I found the karma system to feel haphazard in New Vegas purely because it has to juggle with the more refined and plot-relevant companion/settlement system. While it worked in 3, I am much happier with having my choices reflected in my present company chiming in. It also feels more freeing, as a good or bad playthrough tends to feel like I shouldn’t deviate, versus how natural it is to be sneakier when palling around with shady companions like MacCready and then friendly around goody-two-shoes companions like Piper.
From Ground Zero To Solid Steel
And there’s no praising Fallout 4 without mentioning the settlement system. While it sure is confusing about how to get that coveted 100% approval, the sheer fact that you, the player, get to try and rebuild this destroyed world makes it such a compelling mechanic.
Making sure everyone has food and water, beds to sleep in, leisure activities, and turrets to defend against the monsters and Raiders looking for easy murder. You get to feel like you are making a real difference in this post-nuclear disaster. It’s a power fantasy when you think about it, but it’s one I still enjoy. There’s nothing like seeing happy faces across every settlement marked on my Pipboy.
It’s the little things in Fallout 4, and how well they turned out, and brings me back to it more than any other Bethesda title. Skyrim is addicting, and Fallout 3 is compelling, but I did and will always find Fallout 4 to be a perfect mesh of those two aspects.
