Fallout 4: Fifteen-hour Impressions #1

So at the moment, I'm somewhere between 10 and 20 hours into Fallout 4, and I don't think I'll be finished anytime soon, so I thought I'd start a new segment here on the Multi-platformer: 15 Hour Impressions. This is for big open world games that I definitely will never finish and if I do, it will be in 2078. When I get games like this, I always think to myself "I should've gotten something that will help me. Ya know like with my job, maybe." But then once I'm in, I have no regrets about it. So I decided, if I enjoy this game so much, why not find a way to talk about it without even having finished 10 percent of it? This is 15 Hour Impressions. 

Fallout 4 is a post-apocalyptic WRPG set in a futuristic 1950s style Boston after a full scale nuclear war. If that sentence was rather confusing to you, don't worry: it is confusing. Point is, you shoot things, get experience, level up, and then get a passive ability that occasionally makes people explode into a (name drop) Bloody Mess *puts on sunglasses*. You also get experience from (here we go): Picking locks, hacking computers, giving people things they want, choosing specific dialogue when you have enough Charisma, building shit, modifying weapons, or just inputting a console command to make you level 400 and make a grenade that blows up releasing a pack of Deathclaws an item which unfortunately does not exist in the base game for some odd reason. 

The combat is incredibly satisfying, feeling like a refined version of Borderlands. People often say that Fallout 4 relies too heavily on VATS, seeing how it's often your best chance of doing damage, but it never feels like that to me. In my opinion, VATS is merely a complement to the rest of the game's combat, especially now that VATS has been nerfed from previous games, only slowing time instead of freezing it. Standard shooter tactics like sniping, getting cover and stealthily avoiding sight are still valid tactics. Also, your use of VATS is tied to your ability to run the fuck away, so often, you end up choosing between getting some extra damage in while your enemy's close or having the energy to run off to a better position. This, combined with your limited time to decide, makes strategy and careful planning a large part of the experience.

The world of Fallout 4 isn't always the prettiest open world, but it's definitely the most alive. Every person wandering the wasteland or trying to pick the pieces up and start a life in a settlement really pulls you into the game's world, reminding you that life in the wasteland isn't easy or fun (like the term "video game" would have you believe) but is instead full of hardship and despair. The quests aren't exactly Witcher quests, but a lot of them do open up new parts of the world you wouldn't have found on your own or get you to interact with some interesting characters. In reality, most of them are just "go here, clear out the raiders, come back and tell me about it" but even those end up holding your interest because you'll usually get them from characters that you straight want to talk to because they're just so real. They don't just ask you to clear out Raiders from a specific area because they have a feeling that the a Raiders might be big meanies. They actually have problems that they need your help to overcome. 

The story is quite interesting. I'm not going to say all that much about because of spoilers and the fact that you can ignore it if you feel like it, but I will say that it definitely keeps you engaged for a prolonged amount of time.

But what this game truly excels at is something that eludes far too many games these days: Finding the borderline between making you feel like a badass and not overpowering you. Make no mistake. You will die far more often than your enemies will. It will be frustrating at first but then you'll be able to take your experience and apply it back to the same event. And then you can rush in, knowing perfectly well what to do, and suddenly, you're the Fallout master. So you're always feeling like a badass, especially when you're using a really cool, badass weapon like a baseball bat or the infamous Cryolator, but simultaneously you're always feeling like you need to improve. And in the game, the progression system also enforces this concept. When you level, you have three choices: choose a perk, a typically passive ability that enhances your experience without ever completely altering it; increasing one of your stats which also opens up a new perk that can be chosen; or enhancing a perk you already have so that you can go further with that skill. As I said, the perks never give you some broken new ability but instead offer a new option that will make your experience just a bit more convenient. Some perks give occasional multipliers to your experience gains; some make you do just a little more damage; and some make traveling in water easier by removing the risk of drowning or being irradiated like nobody's business by it. These all do nothing more than make Fallout 4 a bit less helpless. You now can control the way the game reacts to you rather than just having to go in and play by the game's rules. And if none of that made any sense, well I can't say I'm surprised. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to massacre some Raiders to see if I can find some glue. I need it for basically everything.