Fallout 4: Falling Out of Favor

Fallout 4 has received some great reviews and I really don’t agree with all of them. This game pulls you in with its features like weapon crafting and settlement building.  The bulk of the motivation to keep playing the game revolves around things such as that, instead of more interesting things to do in the world. 

After you finish the main story line-- which isn’t that long--there isn’t really anything going on in the wasteland setting. There are some pretty good side quests, but they don’t feel like you’re doing anything that is too important. A lot of the side quests revolve around the backstory of the commonwealth and tell you things about the America before the bombs fell. For some people, that is enough. It was for me for a while too, but it gets boring after a while. Generally, the world feels pretty empty. 

After I thought about this for a while, I thought of Skyrim and how it had a pretty good main quest like Fallout, but it also had quests like "the Dark Brotherhood" and "the Mages College". There were more significant things to do before and after the main quest unlike Fallout. If you finish the main story of Fallout 4, it makes it so you can’t do one of the more interesting side quests! Another big problem with the more interesting side quests is that they don’t last very long. You get invested in the story of a side quest and then it ends. 

Let’s talk about what really keeps you playing the game after the main story: exploration and investigation of the backstory, collecting items, and upgrading your character and equipment. Instead of being invested in an interesting story, you’re worried about how many tin cans you can carry. You will care more about that than almost every side quest. This game is definitely worth $60 but I think this game was cut short for a paid DLC. I know everyone says that now, but they did have the DLC planned a while back and that might be a factor in why I really don’t like this game. Buy this game if you like to explore and read backstory. If you don’t want to invest your $60 into a better RPG, just know that there’s a lot of them out now that are way better than Fallout 4.

Andrew Cherrington

(Pragmus Pi)

Video Game Reviewer