Fallout 4 – Wrapping Up

I finished the main story in Fallout 4 (I think) and I don’t see myself going back very much any more.

I reached a point where I almost decided to quit the game. Like a lot of people, and like the game almost forces you to do from the beginning, I kept trying to maintain my Minuteman settlements. I was under the illusion that it was a side quest chain that would eventually end, at which point I would resume the main story. Well at some point it dawned on me that I was on an endless treadmill. I’d go out and rescue a hostage or help a settlement or build a radio beacon, then come back to Preston Garvey only to discover another settlement in trouble. It became pretty obvious that the cycle would never end and they were random quests intended to keep me busy forever. When I started having to clear out the same places over and over again, I got fed up with it.

After that I turned back to the main story until the end, which saved the game for me. The main story gives you a lot of interesting choices to make. So if you’re getting bored and/or irritated with the game, I recommend just sticking to the main story. Once it’s done, you can still run around in the open world if you want to.

While I enjoyed the story of the game, I started to notice more and more gameplay problems the longer I played. For one thing, I was a bit too complementary about the game engine improvements. While it is definitely better than Fallout New Vegas, which I had played a little bit (for the first time, if you can believe it) in the weeks leading up to Fallout 4, there were plenty of situations where I felt like I was playing a very old game. Particularly if I tried to play it like a first-person shooter. I got stuck on terrain a lot, which is my number one pet peeve of any 3D game.

Of course the most glaring problem with the game was the loading times. I mean holy geez did it take a long time to “fast” travel around, and I dreaded walking through doors. That’s probably the biggest reason I don’t feel like loading it up again. There’s some stories and places I’d like to visit, and I enjoyed just wandering around, but I feel like I need to clear my calendar and block out a whole afternoon to sit down and play it, and that’s just not going to happen.

The Pip-Boy interface became a little frustrating over time too. So many different buttons to press to get anywhere. (I was playing on a controller.) I tried the iPad app for a little while, which was a neat concept, but it took me out of the game and I found it a bit of a cop-out that they chose that route instead of trying to improve the actual interface.

I had quite a few companions disappear on me, especially Dogmeat. I was always terrified to dismiss him for fear I’d never see him again. Paladin Danse got stuck inside a warehouse once and I had to track down a workaround on Reddit to get him back. (Solution: Use the summoning bell.)

I also realized something about myself: I don’t like games where you have to explicitly save your progress. I guess this is a side effect of playing MMORPGs for so long, where you just log in and log out and the “saving” is all automatic. It just feels so antiquated to have to save your game. And there’s nothing worse than getting killed and realizing you haven’t saved your game for an hour.

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• Fallout 4 – Better Than Expected