izigame.me

I have a relationship with this game I can only describe as toxic. I was a teenager in the prime of my Bethesda fanboy period when it was announced, and it was probably the most I'd ever been hyped for a game, before and since. I am not a hater of Bethesda's Fallout, even as a fan of the classics and New Vegas being one of my favorite games ever. But my feelings on Fallout 4 are extremely complicated.

When it's good, it's REALLY good. Like the world design. I love exploring the Commonwealth, there's so many cool little details to find, tons of unmarked buildings with whole interior cells that you could miss even on repeat visits to an area, and since junk actually has a purpose in this game, there's way more stuff to get excited for when clearing an area. Also, even though it gets clowned on a lot as of late, I do genuinely enjoy the environmental storytelling Bethesda does. Plus you can call in Vertibird rides for a more immersive fast travel, it's all so cool.

Speaking of cool, the modular weapons and armor? Super cool. I know it's pretty divisive, but I do like the idea of building your weapons and armor up over time. Power Armor actually having a major effect on gameplay rather than just being the de facto "strongest armor" is a change for the better in my opinion.

Settlement building is where my thoughts start becoming more insane, bear with me here. In theory, building up a cool base and managing a network of allied settlements is the coolest thing ever added to a Bethesda game, bar none. I'm the type of guy who loved, LOVED Hearthfire in Skyrim, and the type of guy who loves living out the fantasy of actually having an affect on the world, so it's right up my alley, right? Well, yes, but there's several complications. For one, there's just too many bad settlements. Like, most of them suck unless you're hardcore dedicated to spending hours fixing em up. And because all these areas are designed to be player-built, it means there's almost zero established towns to actually explore. If they had drastically cut down on settlement locations, focusing on quality of buildable areas, and had more actual towns with unique characters and quests (potentially as part of a more story-driven Minutemen questline), I believe the feature would have been better received overall.

Continuing from my point above, the shafting of the Minutemen is by far the thing about this game that drives me up a wall the most. In theory, the Minutemen are the perfect moral player faction: a ragtag group of civilians united under the promise of mutual support for the benefit of everyone. The idea of being able to build a faction from nothing, growing your influence by doing quests and helping people, to being able to rival the Institute and/or the Brotherhood, that rules. Hell, that's basically what the entire structure of New Vegas's back half is. In execution it's just radiant quest after radiant quest, only being story relevant if you fail another faction's questline. Like I started saying in the settlement section, if the game had a bit more focus on the towns outside of the context of settlement building, there'd have been way more opportunity for an actual Minutemen questline, though I could probably spend hours and hours theorizing and planning this hypothetical improved questline, and ultimately it's just not relevant to this review.

As for the other main factions, and the main quest as a whole, I share a lot of the common complaints people have, though I find myself a lot less harsh overall. The Brotherhood being the same chapter as Fallout 3's after reverting to the more detached, for-the-greater-good militaristic ways of the original is a cool way of tying classic and modern incarnations together. The designers obviously loved em, too, as the entire selling point of the faction is how cool all their setpieces are. The Railroad and Institute, having been teased in Fallout 3 as well, both bring interesting stuff to the table, and have enough going for them that you could easily get attached regardless of playstyle. Unfortunately, this is part of the problem. By following the main questline, you're given a good amount of exposure to all three, getting attached to the characters, seeing how their group's views on the main dilemma aren't always so clear-cut or universal, etc. Unfortunately, the game cuts itself short before any kind of nuanced stance or option for a less violent resolution can be explored, and you're forced to pick a side and start mass-murdering the other factions. The perfect example of this is the quest Blind Betrayal, where the outcome could allow for a drastic upset in the Brotherhood against their leadership, but instead the game wants to rush itself to the endgame. It just feels undercooked, and I could probably spend hours and hours complaining about it, but that's for another time.

Far Harbor feels like it was made with the last two paragraphs's complaints in mind. While the story is fairly short, even by DLC standards, it has it all. Establishing influence over time by helping a town? Check. Lots of nuance in its central conflict, with the opportunity to affect how things play out because of it? Check. A highly sympathetic antivillain? Check. Not to mention the fact that the entire DLC's story gives secondary main character status to Nick Valentine, one of the best characters in the entire franchise, fight me. And it's not like the peaceful ending is even necessarily a "Let's hold hands and forget all our troubles" kinda thing, it looks you dead in the eyes and says "Are you willing to commit an undeniably evil act for the greater good?", which I LOVE. There's a reason why everyone gasses it up.

The less I say about Nuka-World, the better. To be totally fair, I was already starting to get burnt out on Fallout 4 as a whole by the time I got to it, but man I just did not enjoy it. I know people had been complaining you couldn't be super evil in the base game, but making the main questline for this only be raider-aligned, with the only "good guy" path involving killing most of the named NPCs in the DLC, was pretty lame. Woulda been a perfect opportunity for say, I dunno, a Minutemen questline for good-aligned characters, but I digress. It sucks, because a Fallout expansion taking place in a Hersheypark/Disney type location is such a strong concept, but every different area just amounts to "Wipe out this reskin of a base-game enemy type and maybe talk to one singular named NPC, maybe." (not to slander Cito, we love Cito).

Before I close out, I should address the elephant in the room: the voiced main character. Do I think it dramatically reduced the amount of dialogue options and likely affected the story overall? Yes, definitely. Do I prefer New Vegas's player dialogue? Absolutely. Do I hate the voiced MC? Not at all. It's honestly a shame Brian Delaney hasn't had many other major roles, outside of being in like every Minions movie, because I ADORE his performance. No disrespect to Courtenay Taylor, she also does a good job as the female MC, but I played the male so his I'm more attached to.

Despite the thousand plus words I spent complaining, I really do enjoy this game, and think it's an improvement over Fallout 3. Sure, the version of this game that exists in my head is a million times better, but as an old man of 24, I've learned to accept that daydreaming ways a game could be improved doesn't do much good unless you start a YouTube channel, and I'm too lazy for that. I'll probably keep playing it well into the future, no matter how mad I get. Like I said at the beginning, my relationship with Fallout 4 is toxic at best.