Fallout 4: The Fall and Rise of the Commonwealth

900D9B7AC113B45B720ED8C215F3CE135F9107E6 (2560×1440) Fallout 4 + DLC:

Time to Beat:

Fallout 4: 50 Hours

Far Harbor DLC: 15 Hours

I bought Fallout 4 for the sole reason that it was set in Boston. As long as the DLC Far Harbor was on sale, and well reviewed, I might as well get it too. Remember these facts during this review of Bethesda's second foray into the Fallout universe.

The only Fallout game I've played (aside from an hour or two of Fallout and Fallout Tactics) is Fallout New Vegas. I didn't care for that game (I played 29 hours), though the public considers New Vegas the best in series since Bethesda turned the Fallout series into a first person shooter. The slow transformation from isometric RPG to FPS required a number of gameplay and mechanical alterations that Bethesda never implemented. Fallout 4 features these errors that can't be propped up by a unsatisfactory story. The feature that nearly redeemed it was the setting of eastern Massachusetts, my home.

Before the player takes control, Fallout 4 forces them to sit through an extended exposition. The player watches the history of a world like the current one, but with an alternate history. Instead of fighting the Cold War, the United States became a technological utopia after World War II. The over-consumption necessary to sustain the utopia led to a global conflict for resources. The world managed to trundle along until 2077. On that year the protagonist returns home to his family from a distant. 43C0C3AF3B65171FA626967E2B5D0AC5FF92E340 (2560×1440)

Fallout 4 allows the player to choose their gender. They live with their spouse and son in an idealistic suburban community, though they look like they are living in the 1950s. A salesman convinces the protagonist to buy a unit in Vault Tech, an underground shelter for protection against nuclear war. Only minutes later the bombs fall and the family flees. As they are herded into the shelter, as bodies fall dead about them, they are led to believe they can live a normal life underground. Under the cover of a routine medical check they are coerced into cryogenic tanks and flash frozen.

Some day in the unknown future, scavengers break into the vault. They unfreeze the prisoners, but only open the protagonist's spouse shell. They kill her and take the boy. Why did they come here, and why take the child? Eventually Fallout 4 reveals an answer which is not stellar, but is at least satisfactory. The protagonist is refrozen. An undefined amount of time later he is unfrozen again, and this time the machine opens, allowing him to escape.

The Vault the protagonist escapes into is a wreck. Records on the remaining functional computers explain that Vault Tech originally intended to unfreeze their guests, but the damage above ground was so devastating, the remaining radiation so expansive, that they could never return. Eventually their resources failed, they died, and the Vault began to fall apart. 672C67EFB45EA18476F3858EA78A85636B491291 (2560×1440)

Returning in shock to his home in Sanctuary Hills, the protagonist is greeted by his old servant robot, who is still functioning, though worse for wear. In a voice dripping with insanity he tells the player he has waited over 200 years for the return of the family. He's tried to keep the house in good repair, “Have you seen the garden?”, but it's a wreck. Just to press home the emotional response the player should feel, the servant gives the protagonist a tape from his wife. It was recorded the day of the event, and intended as present. The contents are cliched and saccharine. It's the sort of upbeat, lovey dovey writing someone makes in a story when they are fated to die. Its inclusion immediately breaks the player's immersion.

From these events the player begins their quest to recover their son. But wait! The protagonist is dumb, or naively optimistic. He intends to rescue his baby son, but perhaps you've already seen the obvious flaw with his plan. With the time spent in the cryotank, Shawn (the son) could be any age. He could be dead (though he isn't) or he might be unrecognizable even if the protagonist discovers him. The latter would have been preferable to the story Bethesda decides to tell. Imagine if Fallout 4 had the player frequently encountered another character, built a close relationship with them, only to have that person revealed as Shawn.

Sanctuary Hills is located in the upper left corner of the map, just northwest of Concord, MA. Aside from this intentional outlier on the developer's part, almost every other city, town, or major location is a real place in 2016 Massachusetts. Fallout 4 covers a square of Massachusetts that stretches from Concord in the Northwest, to Salem in the Northeast, Quincy in the Southeast, and the Glowing Sea (!) in the Southwest. Massachusetts, referred to exclusively as The Commonwealth features real world locations like Fenway (now the capital, renamed Diamond City), the T (though the player can't travel along the subway lines), the Bunker Hill Monument, the Old State House, Walden Pond, and MIT. The map includes the circle Route 95 makes of Boston, including locations just outside its reach. The area is condensed to fit the massive real life expanse into a reasonable in game size. Despite this concentration, and the awkwardness of many famous buildings sitting nearly on top of each other, the area in game is still immense. DA958F06B103DA0486A9D116DBFBB48C84B283AB (2560×1440)

After Sanctuary Hills, Fallout coerces the player toward Concord. In one of the first missions the player meets the first of four joinable factions, the Minutemen. These everyman soldiers seek to rebuild the state as it was, but superior in civic virtue. Next the player meets the Brotherhood of Steel, a technological worshiping faction that appear in every Fallout game and the Railroad (follow the Freedom Trail from Boston Common past the State House, Old Corner Bookstore, and Faneuil Hall, to the Old North Church).

Before leaving Concord, the Minutemen alert the protagonist to a suit of Power Armor. It rests on top of the Concord Museum, abandoned but still functional. Awarding the player one of the most powerful pieces of equipment in the beginning of the game is a grave error. Power Armor provides huge bonuses to defense. It greatly increases the player's carrying capacity (once the player upgrades it). It includes these overwhelming bonuses and minor features (the player can play tapes without a computer), but for some reason the player can't sit down. This design decision forces the player at certain story points to clamber out of their armor, walk around for a few minutes, then reenter. Boston features a couple varieties of Power Armor, and though the one in Concord is the worst, it renders the player effectively invincible to all weapons except explosives. Power Armor runs on fusion cores. These cores are abundant, and can be purchased at almost any shop. Plugging one in provides an amount of energy indicated on the HUD. Energy is supposedly only expended when the player uses Action Points (AP); V.A.T.S., holding breath while using a sniper rifle, running, or activating the jetpack. Yet the the battery seems to drain gradually over time.

The jetpack upgrade sounds awesome, but the design is severely limited. I had beaten the main quest (50 hours), and was part way through the Far Harbor DLC before I could built it. Once built the jetpack also has several limitations. It consumes fusion core energy quickly. Also it overheats after three seconds of sustained use. Both of these limitations mean the jetpack can't propel the player for long distant travel, or even fly from the ground to the roof of skyscrapers. It still would have been better in Boston than it was in the woods of Maine. DF93D1F9DEB7D85029B87D8027995DD74BE7DDF2 (2560×1440)

Unlocking the jetpack requires an understanding of Fallout 4's role-playing system. It's a slimmed down version compared to past games, but with many similarities for Fallout veterans. Every player character is S.P.E.C.I.A.L; Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. Each of these core attributes can be upgraded to a maximum of 10. Each attribute includes 10 possible perks. With only one point in an attribute the player can only unlock the first perk. To unlock it they spend a point in it. Most perks can be upgraded three, four, or even five times. To be able to access the best Perks the player has to place ten points into the relevant core attribute. Perks are the good part. The player should only put points into an attribute to access the perks they want. The player gains one point every level, to place into an attribute or perk.

To build the jetpack the player needs the Armorer perk. To unlock the first level of the Armorer perk the player needs three strength. The first point in Armorer allows the protagonist to create Rank 1 modifications (mods). Unfortunately the jetpack needs Rank 4 mods, so they need Armorer Rank 4. At a minimum the player needs to be level seven (three for three strength to unlock armorer, four for four levels of Armorer. Players start with 21 points to distribute across their seven attributes at the beginning of the game, so they likely already have three strength. But they need more than level seven anyways. Perks are level capped. The player can unlock Armorer rank one at level one, but the game mandates that they be level 13 before rank two of Armorer, and level 39 before being Armorer 4. Do all that, then the player realizes that they also need to be rank 4 in Science! That means six points of Intelligence, four points in Science! and at least level 41. 65 Hours got me to level 47. These level caps prevent specialization and force generalization. Whether they are reasonable or not they prevent the player from building the jetpack in a practical amount of time.

Power Armor is fantastic, extremely durable, and though the player can't build a jetpack until they've played at least fifty hours, once the player wears Power Armor for awhile they'll never go back.

With the Power Armor, or without it, and with some clues about Shawn's whereabouts, the player explores deeper into the Commonwealth. DA0DCDB4AB32431EA11734F41B50F21ED2DE8B2F (2560×1440)

Along the way the player encounters the classic Fallout enemies; radscorpions, super mutants, bandits, ghouls, and synths. The latter feature in the main plot. The people of Diamond City and the Commonwealth fear the synths, and their creator the Institute. The newest synth models replicate people exactly leading citizens to believe that regular people are secretly being replaced. If they suspect a synth switch they start a post-modern witch-hunt. How these organic synths are different from people is like asking how organic cylons were different from people. It's magical thinking.

The clues about Shawn lead to a man named Kellog. Someone vaguely remembers him with a boy in Diamond City. After defeating Kellog the player sifts through his memories in the Goodneighbor location. The dive into Kellog's brain is a tiresome waste of exposition. Though it lasts at least ten minutes it has no gameplay. The brain includes a collection of interactive scenes, as the player watches memories of an irrelevant, dead character. The memories show Kellog caring for an eight year old Shawn. The protagonist only learns two facts from this travesty. One, the Institute has Shawn. The second “fact” is an attempt to deceive the player. Kellog appears to be the same age in his memories as he is when the player kills him. The player is supposed to believe that Shawn is a pre-teen. Later the player learns that the Institute gave Kellog an anti-aging formula allowing him to appear the same age for the last forty years. With the knowledge in Kellog's brain implant, Fallout 4 forces the player to infiltrate the Institute. 4F8335A942F67426968BB7F1B1B23E68F858CB4E (2560×1440)

The final reveal of Shawn is so obvious, and trite, as to render it emotionless, but I won't spoil it with additional detail. One of the problems with Fallout 4 is the story is relatively short and empty. It can be boiled down to a few bullet points most which occur in the first few hours of a fifty hour game. Tricked into cryo, Shawn stolen, escape from vault, synths exist, help Railroad or Brotherhood or Minutemen, meet Institute, and finish the game by completing the missions for one of the four factions. Yes, the player can join the Institute. They are depicted as the enemy of all the other factions, though the game fails to explain why. Aside from creating synths, it isn't clear what nefarious plans the Institute had. If there was a terrible secret hidden in the Institute it was too difficult to find. But in that technological paradise, they've surpassed the technology of2020. In addition to synthetic life they've mastered teleportation. The rest of the world is a wasteland that only vaguely understands pre-war history (they worship a green wall, dress like colonials, and wear baseball equipment to fight), yet every faction, like the Minuteman mechanic can build a teleporter when necessary.

Winning the game with the best ending is anti-climactic. Nothing in The Commonwealth changes, except for that gigantic hole in the ground. And the developers tried to bookend the game with a cliched theme about “war never changes” and “you can't go back.” The character is very dedicated to saying these two things at the beginning and the end, but they are conspicuously absent from the rest of the game. Two throwaway statements that are not anchored with context.

There's a plenty more review to go, but I can say, and will repeat, that if Fallout 4 wasn't set in Boston I would have quit after a few hours. If you've ever driven on the double-decker highway of 93/1 north of Boston, Fallout 4 will let you gaze at its green, destroyed remains that still tower above the ground. If you want to see the crumbling remains of The City upon a Hill it's all there. If this holds no interest for you, find another game, but still read the next article. 92211C28071DEFD441B8E0DEEAC55ED9AAA0AB8E (2560×1440)