Fallout 4 – A few thoughts

To advance my writing, I feel it’s important to set up a
kind of regimen.  I feel it would be good
to actually have deadlines in order to focus my attention on getting stuff done
and not let things happen like me getting stuck and deciding to just go and
play Fallout 4 for two months.  (I haven’t
actually just been playing games.  I’ve
been doing a few things over the summer, including writing.)

But, now that the final DLC for Fallout 4 is out, I figured
I’d share a few thoughts about the game.

I liked it.  I’ve
loved all the Fallout games as the setting with its 1950’s American sci-fi
aesthetic is unique and a welcome change from all the generic fantasy RPG’s out
there.  Most the complaints I have about
this game are minor, like the building system can be a bit clunky and
frustrating at times, and having fully voiced protagonists does restrict your
role playing options a tiny bit, but it’s not too bad and both the male and
female voice actors are very good.  And
for a Bethesda game it’s actually stable and doesn’t crash very often at
all.  I still save every couple of minutes
– it’s just a habit I’ve had since Daggerfall and it’s never going to change.

On a sad note, I realise that this is the first flagship
(the ones with numbers) Fallout game not to have a Harold.  I mean, there may be a Harold,
somewhere.  I don’t remember. But not the
Harold.  You know, the ghoul with the
tree growing from his head?  But in
Fallout 3 he actually became a tree, so I guess there wasn’t any way he could
go after that.  Shame though.  But other familiar faces do return.

The other continuity issue if that there are cats in this
game.  Long term Fallout players may
recall that it was suggested cats were extinct in the Fallout universe.  In Fallout 2 I think there’s a character you
talk to who tells you a story about her kitty and how it and all the cats were
hunted for food.  Either all the cats in
the Commonwealth are synths – an earlier experiment before working their way up
to human synths that somehow got out.  Or
maybe the woman in Fallout 2 was just a mad cat person and mistaken and there
actually are just cats still around.  I
guess if no one can tell the difference then it doesn’t really matter.

I liked all of the companions.  But then I’m just a really nice guy so I like
most people, even fictional ones.
Obviously Dogmeat is my favourite, but my other favourites are probably
Nick and Curie, the later of whom is a robot with a French accent.  Speaking of accents, Cait is Irish, like
Moriarty in Fallout 3, so the emerald isle obviously still survives in the
Fallout universe.  Although it’s never
explained why anyone would risk traversing a presumably radioactive ocean to
reach North America… maybe a future DLC?
There are also a few Russian accents in the game (and I think a guy with
a Yorkshire accent in Far Harbor), so… I mean, the writers of Fallout do
understand how accents work, right?
Children adopt the accents of their peers, not of their parents.  The only way there would be Yorkshire accents
in Far Harbor would be if there was a whole community of folks from Yorkshire
who had settled there.  I probably
shouldn’t think about it so much. It’s just game.

But as I said I can’t think of any really major complaints I
have about this game.  Yes, the ‘twist’
halfway through the main quest is kind of obvious and I doubt anyone hadn’t
already called it by that point.  But it’s
fine as I feel the star of Fallout is really just the lore and the world, and
it looks gorgeous… in a desolate, lonely sort of way.