“Fallout 3” and “New Vegas” differed from the original two games in the franchise in many ways, not just the camera perspective. The games made an attempt to bring “Fallout” to a wider audience by making the gameplay more streamlined and accessible, and while that did work, it also alienated a small group of hardcore fans of the first games who saw the new ones as too easy.
In the end, there’s no way to please everyone, and “Fallout 3” did see a lot of success on the market, as did its successor. There were some small problems with the games, but overall, they offered a solid gameplay experience. And now, we’ve been hearing more and more rumors about “Fallout 4” being in the works, and possibly even being announced soon. If that’s true, fans are asking, how much is the game going to change its style over the last entries in the franchise, and is it going to increase the difficulty this time?
Fans have been requesting that Bethesda reevaluate the game’s difficulty to some extent, and this request is becoming more and more widespread among the community. Even those who once enjoyed the newly introduced changes that simplified the gameplay seem to want some more challenge now, and Bethesda should definitely sit down and have a long hard discussion about the current state of the game’s difficulty progression.
There are several issues that can be addressed. On one hand, quests were made a lot easier by removing the puzzle aspect from their solving, and instead focusing on following an arrow to the solution. While this allowed players to focus more on the story and environment, and immerse themselves more, it also removed a little bit from the game’s challenge and made quests too straightforward, according to some players.
The way the game’s difficulty scales as the player progresses through the levels can also be addresses, according to some, as currently enemies just scale up along with the player, and there is no real incentive to try and come up with a more unique combination of attributes and items for a given location, as the player usually knows what kinds of enemies they’ll be facing anyway. On the other hand, this helps preserve the story’s linear aspect where it’s necessary.
Players don’t even seem to be split on this anymore – pretty much everyone agrees that Bethesda should do something about the game’s difficulty if they’re working on “Fallout 4”, and ensure that the new title gives players a more challenging experience compared to the last two installments. It certainly still has the potential to be a difficult, yet fair game, without getting too frustrating.