Everybody has great games that they put off for one reason or another. I've been hearing about the Fallout games for many years. Certainly there was a lot of hype surrounding Fallout 3 and New Vegas back in the PS3/360 era. And yet I was never really drawn to them. I don't know if it was the post-apocalyptic setting or whatever, but I just wasn't really interested. And like ten years ago, a friend of mine was so sure that I'd love Fallout 4 that he actually mailed me a copy of his when he was done playing through it. I'm embarrassed to say that I never played that Xbox One copy, and don't even currently own an Xbox that has a disc-drive at this point.
But over the past few years, I've grown at least slightly more interested in the series. I've read up on its history and at least that aspect of it has intrigued me. Like, it's interesting how Wasteland kind of became Fallout. And then Fallout 3 completely changed the genre with its first person view. And then how modern sequels of Wasteland 2 and 3 have continued on in the more traditional approach. The super odd thing is this: the day I bought a Playstation 5 is the day I finally decided to download Fallout 4 and give it a try. It's really by chance. Had Gamestop had the Final Fantasy XVI bundle in stock, I'd be playing that brand new hotness. But they didn't. They only had a God Of War bundle and I wasn't interested in that game. So instead, I downloaded something older from my library. It's late June as I write this. Maybe something about sun-scorched visuals just sounded like a summer game to me. I don't know. I can say though, the intro was stunning. The black and white backstory. Walking around a 50s style home with a robot. The bomb. The cryogenic freeze. Watching the murder of your wife. Heading back home and finding your neighborhood leveled, and that 200 years have passed. It's all pretty heavy. For the record, I decided to make my character a middle aged man. He's got gray hair and my own name. It's funny, in any fantasy or sci-fi game I tend to make a badass female character. But in this game, and this story, it just seemed fitting to make a really unassuming and un-heroic everyman. Or maybe not every man, but rather me. Having said all that, the opening hours are legit addicting. Like Skyrim level addicting. And that's saying a lot. Anyone who knows my gaming habits surely knows my fondness for Skyrim. It's one of the few long, modern CRPGs that I've beaten multiple times on multiple platforms. And while I always hoped that when I got around to playing the modern Fallout games that they would indeed be sci-fi Elder Scrolls, I guess I'm just pleasantly surprised that that sort of was right. It's been a long time since the first time I played Skyrim, so maybe I had forgotten that these Bethesda games are not particularly easy. Fallout 4 is no exception. It lends itself to that same sort of extreme open world nature, and a slightly cruel world it is. Quick-saving is majorly important, because as you explore you can easily find yourself without bullets or healing items. You can also easily find yourself in a scary situation. Maybe a giant scorpion sneaks up on you when you're low on health. Maybe you stumble into a building that is absolutely packed with dudes that are not happy that you wandered in. Fallout 4 creates a world that begs you to explore it, and yet doesn't always reward your curiosity. Or at least it challenges that curiosity. Of course - much like in Skyrim - Fallout 4 is a game that really allows you to approach it as you see fit. Story missions branch out and can be completed in any real order. They can also be ignored as you just take a long stroll and fill out the map. You'll even earn XP for just discovering new places. Side-quests are everywhere. Sneaking and evading is just as valid an approach as going in guns blazing. In many ways, this game elicits the wide-eyed wonder of pen and paper RPGs, but miraculously played out in a first person perspective. In fairness, Fallout's roots are actually in the old isometric CRPGs, which would probably have never existed had it not been for the first-person dungeon crawlers like Wizardry to begin with. For me, a big draw to this particular entry in the series was the setting. I've often heard that Fallout: New Vegas is the best of the modern Fallouts. However, Fallout 4 takes place in New England. It's the same reason that I was drawn to Assassin's Creed III. In many ways, these games are two extremes. In Assassin's Creed I was exploring Boston as it was in colonial times. That's a very different setting than post-apocalyptic Boston. It's also sort of interesting to view Fallout 4 through the lens of an Americanized Shin Megami Tensei. I'm also a sci-fi and I have to say that exploring this world with a canine companion is giving me strong A Boy And His Dog vibes. I also love the future-retro feel of it, where it's way in the future but I'm using computer terminals that look like an Apple II. Early on, I found it sane to stick to the story quests. I spent time lurking around Concord. I made my way through a cool old history museum and met up with The Minutemen. I donned a Power Suit and mowed down a gigantic mutant lizard looking thing. After that, I felt the world really open up. I stumbled around the landscape and into Lexington. I got myself in sticky situations. I looted train cars. And then I set my sights on seeing Boston itself. Of course the main story hadn't taken me to the capital city yet. I wasn't exactly ready for the journey there in all actuality. I set a waypoint and just started off on my own personal quest. I made a detour into Diamond City, and then back out into the wasteland. And I must say, even if Fallout 4 is basically post-apocalyptic Skyrim, it feels much harder to me than Skyrim. Even though the genre and presentation have come a long way since Wasteland and the early isometric Fallout games, the spirit remains the same. Bethesda wants you to know that leaving a vault or any other safe haven for even a few minutes is tantamount to death. The New England of Fallout 4 is a brutal wilderness. It's full of natural beasts and deformed mutants and cut-throat bandits and well, just a whole lot of stuff that wants you dead. On top of all that you're constantly at the mercy of whatever scraps of weapons, ammo, first aid and clothing you might be able to find. Yes, it's a first person shooter, superficially. But Fallout 4 is deeply rooted in the classic CRPGs that came before it. This isn't a game that you can just muck around with and expect any meaningful progress. After about six hours with the game I find myself feeling like I've barely scratched the slightest surface of its world. But I'm humbled by its massiveness, its storytelling, and its impressive systems. Skyrim is a game that I've dumped over fifty hours into over multiple years. And with that in mind, I feel like I can safely say that I'm not done with Fallout 4 yet. But more importantly, I feel like I can also say that I'm finally a fan of the Fallout series. This game is so awesome (and punishing) that I can say with some certainty that I'll be delving deeper into the series along with the Wasteland games for years to come now.
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