Fallout 4: Traveling the Wastes of Massachusetts and Bethesda

Fallout 4 + DLC:

Fallout 4: The Fall and Rise of the Commonwealth

Fallout 4: Traveling the Wastes of Massachusetts and Bethesda

Fallout Far Harbor: Malevolence in the Outdoors

Bethesda is known as a company that successfully builds open world games.  So why does Fallout 4 feel littered with the detritus of the past?

The Commonwealth is huge, making travel both a delight and a chore. Distance requires travel, travel requires time. There has to be something to look at, but Fallout 4 is not a pretty game. The textures of the land, the people, and the builds is poor. It's five years old, but that's no excuse. Sometimes the HUD doesn't load. Talk about loading: Fallout 4 loads after fast travel and after entering or exiting a building. The time to load the open world is atrociously, unforgivably long. Even the loading time for the inside of buildings is surprising protracted. Exploring can be enjoyable. Traveling the open road leads to random encounters. Sometimes the player stumbles into a naturally occurring engagement between rival factions. Once the Brotherhood of Steel arrive, they patrol the skies of Boston in their vertibird helicopters. They draw the ire and fire of bandits. On multiple occasions my companion and I joined the Brotherhood of Steel in a fight against different bandit factions, like the Forged or Gunners.

Arriving at specific locations unlocks fast travel. These locations are marked in the map, and clicking them brings the the player there immediately. Fallout 4 includes a couple hundred mapped buildings and landmarks. The developers did a good job of scattering quests far and wide to force the player to explore distant regions of The Commonwealth. Each building is packed with foes and loot. When the player clears an area it is labeled “Cleared” on the map, but eventually enemies return, and loot restocks. Buildings are best explored with the lock-picking and hacking skills. Though they are not necessary, they are helpful, though the tasks become tiresome. Initially the excitement of historic locations draws the player into every building, but the insides are always the same. Enemies to fight, loot to scavenge.

Outside travel has its own problems. Fallout 4 includes rough terrain; hills, crumbling buildings, fences, and caverns. Unfortunately climbing is non-existent and the protagonist can only jump a foot in the air. These limitations make it impossible to traverse even the smallest cliffs or ledges, which is a problem because Fallout 4 is full of them. Villagers, NPCs, allies, and enemies are constantly caught on terrain, because of their incompetent pathing. In the field one can see for a fair distance, but it's impossible to tell if NPCs are enemies or neutral. The common method of differentiating one from the other is if they start shooting. This lack of knowledge limits the use of sniper rifles. One would think the recon scanner on the Power Armor would solve this problem. It marks enemies with a red hue, but it also marks every living creature with the same color.

When the player isn't traveling from place to place across the waste, they are almost certainly in combat. Yet, combat is another weakness of Fallout 4. The series never successfully transitioned combat from the 2D model of Black Isle Studios to the 3D Bethesda series. Fallout 1 and 2 are turn-based RPGs. Dealing small amounts of damage or missing attacks is acceptable. In a 3D shooter, these mechanics are unsatisfying. When a rocket, or a fully augmented shotgun, only removes a fifth of an enemy's health, it saps the fun. Fallout 4 also suffers from an overabundance of weapon types. By the end of game my backpack included more than ten types of ammunition; .44, 10mm, .38, .308, mini nukes, shells, cells, .45, .50, gamma rounds, misses, and 5.56 . Ammunition has no weight, but weapons do. Trying to carry a weapon for each ammo type is a self defeating affair, but I certainly tried. A smarter player would sell extra ammunition and use the proceeds to purchase other equipment. This overabundance is compounded by an incomprehensible user interface. It's difficult to compare weapons, it's difficult to sort weapons in any meaningful way, and special weapons, marked with a ☆, can't be broken down into scrap, so they clog up the inventory.

Armor is equally as confusing and frustrating. The player wear a piece of armor on their left and right arms, left and right legs, chest, and head. But some armors take up multiple spots. Some armors cover the entire body. Some types of armor can be worn under other types of armor. The user interface doesn't label any of these differences. And does the effects of regular armor combine with Power Armor? Or does wearing Power Armor ignore other clothing? Fallout 4 doesn't clarify.

Fallout 4 includes thirteen companions to follow the protagonist into combat. They don't offer much except a bit of patter for the quiet moments, a decoy in firefights, and a wagon to carry extra equipment. Like the other NPCs they share a difficulty in pathing, but also have a habit of disappearing. When the player exchanges one companion for another, the old companion waits ... somewhere. The map doesn't indicate where companions are waiting, the player must rely on their memory. Companions aren't too useful, but are at their most annoying when the protagonist is sneaking. To sneak the player crouches. The top of the screen displays a stealth bar. The bar is labeled Hidden (enemies don't know about the player), Caution (enemies suspect the player is in the area), or Detected/Danger. Danger redundantly informs the player that enemies are shooting at them. Detected means someone can see them, but isn't shooting yet. The developers thought the protagonist should be “detected” by their own companions. Of course their companion can see them, but this absurd design prevents the player from knowing if other NPCs can see them.

The coolest part of Fallout 4 are the explosions. It's as if the developers said, “If Fallout includes enthralling explosions the players will overlook our many mistakes.” Maybe. But why is it that I can't break a window, but ding a 200 year old car and it explodes like a mini-nuke! It looks cool though. Another form of explosives are the artillery the Minutemen rebuild. The effect looks devastating, but it's only as dangerous as acid rain (also in the game). Stand under a roof, even an overhang, and nothing bad happens to the protagonist. Explosives are the deadliest weapon in the game, but they are unable to effect terrain.

One of the systems touted by Bethesda is the ability to construct settlements. Like everything else, settlements are good in theory, but the execution is fundamentally flawed. The Minutemen are the faction most interested in settlements.  They see them as a means to create order out of the chaos, The Commonwealth resurrected with a virtuous citizenry.  While other factions allow settlements, only the Minutemen require them for advancement.  Creating a settlement begins by ridding the area of whatever foe resides there.  Settlements can only be built in predetermined locations, and each has a toolbox.  Clicking the toolbox opens up another ill-conceived user interface.  The player could use it to build a thriving settlement, if only they could find what they need.  The first thing a functioning settlement requires is a recruitment radio beacon to attract new settlers.  Then it needs the essentials; water, food, defenses, shelter, and beds.  These are built from materials.  There are two sources of materials.  The player breaks down items they have like unused weapons, or they find junk.  Junk has no other purpose than to serve as raw materials for building.  At the various types of craft stations the player creates weapon modifications, food, houses, and generators. When the player deposits materials in the toolbox they are saved, but can only be used at that location. At the settlements the player assigns jobs to each settler. One job is provisoner.  These hardy settlers travel from their home settlement to their destination and back again.  As long as a settlement is connected to another they share resources.  The sharing is instantaneous, but the game has the NPC walk back and forth across the wasteland. Because of the importance of collecting materials, Fallout 4 would be more fun if junk didn't weigh anything, though it would be less realistic.

Through all these “adventures” I thought about quitting. When doubt struck I gazed at the ravaged Boston skyline, and thought, maybe the next area will be better.

It wasn't.

There are hundreds of buildings and a thousand possible encounters. Fallout 4 resolves ninety-five percent of them with violence. By the by the fiftieth building the protagonist has dispatched an uncounted number of bandits, synths, ghouls, and super-mutants, with a smattering of mutated animals along the way. Diplomacy, when it appears, is brief, limited, and straightforward. The speech is uninspired, with no options. The characters glitches during conversation. Most locations are devoid of dialogue. Puzzles are abandoned for combat. Fighting through three floors of a hospital is the same as a firefight in the subway. They have no original story of their own, nor do they connect to the larger plot.

In the region north of Boston robots work an ancient open air mall. Before the war it was serviced by bots, overseen by a top bot and a human supervisor. At the entrance a malfunctioning bot asks if the protagonist is the the survivor they've waited two centuries for. The player's answer, yes or no, doesn't matter. If the player bothers to explore the half dozen stores they'll encounter the same design six times. Each of the bots tells a thing that is supposed to be a “joke”. Then they shoot the player. Ha Ha.

The Salem Witch museum is a metaphor for the entire game. As the player approaches, Fallout 4 plays up how spooky it is. Inside a collection of tapes try to frighten the player with promises of a unique threat. A cursory exploration reveals that it's just a deathclaw. The developers couldn't bother to create a unique threat for a unique setting. They preserved it for two centuries for this?

So don't get tricked into clearing every building. Focus on the key quests, clear a new buildings for some extra loot, only complete side quests which seem particularly interesting. Even on the topic of quests Fallout 4 messes up. I hate games where quest items remain with the player even after they complete the quest. It's another example of Fallout 4's terrible user interface and inventory system.

I tried to download a mod to improve the user interface. I heard that mods greatly improve the base game. I read a number of articles about all the mods to install, and I made a list. But the in game mod downloader offered few options, none of which I wanted. And while I'm sure Nexus Mods are good, I didn't bother. I can't see what the purpose of having an in game mod installer is if it is so useless.

We're not done. Next week venture on a trip north of The Commonwealth to an irradiated island.

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