It’s been a while since “Fallout 4” came out now, and the dust is settling. There was initially a lot of hype over the game, and the mere fact that it was announced was enough to throw the Internet into a state of excitement. Once the game was released, it was a hot topic all over the web, and people are still talking about it very actively. But now that the hype has died down a bit, many have started to take a more realistic look at the title and have been reevaluating the qualities that it brought to the table. And as it turns out, when not looking at “Fallout 4” through rose-tinted glasses, the game does have some problems, despite the fact that it’s still quite the well-polished title.
For the most part, “Fallout 4” was a huge step forward for the franchise, and it definitely managed to improve the formula in many ways. There is now a lot more to see and do all over the world, and the map is more densely populated than ever, giving players more locations to explore and more interesting situations to get into.
Some have been commenting negatively on this aspect of the game, claiming that the map actually feels constricted and cluttered. Which would be strange, considering it’s actually significantly larger than the maps of either “Fallout 3” or “New Vegas”, plus it has a lot more content to explore at the same time. It outdoes the last games by a large margin, and there’s no denying that, but perhaps the huge variety of locations can be a bit overwhelming at some points.
Perhaps strangely, according to some the map actually lacks enough open empty spaces. Pretty much the entire game world is populated by settlements and buildings, unlike the maps of the last two games. For some players, this made the world feel even larger and more alive, but for others, it apparently killed the sense of scale and made things feel more constricted.
The style of storytelling and conversations in the game were also criticized heavily. On one hand, the game really restricts the narrative more than previous titles, forcing the player along a certain path instead of giving them the option of being good or bad as before. Furthermore, dialogs are mostly streamlined towards the same outcome most of the time and there is no sense in exploring the different conversation trees in any detail.
This, combined with the already sketchy plot in some areas, has resulted in a lot of criticism towards Bethesda for how they handled this aspect of the game. It’s possible that they had a different idea in mind when they implemented this system in the way they did, but it’s hard to tell what they were trying to achieve and how the game was supposed to work out in the end. It’s definitely clear that players are not entirely happy with the way things were handled though.
There are plenty of redeeming qualities to the game though, to Bethesda’s credit – enough that many people will still remember it fondly despite these incidents, and we’re sure that there will be a lot of discussion about “Fallout 4” in the coming months. Once DLC starts coming out too, things will really pick up and we’re curious to see how much more Bethesda could evolve this game and what else they might choose to do with it.