To start this off. I love Fallout as a series, and Fallout: New Vegas is one of my favorite games of all time… I know this kind of review has been done to death, but here are my two cents on where I think Fallout 4 went terribly wrong.

Bethesda has never been known for their writing, but at least you always knew what ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you were gonna say… In Fallout 4 however, you don’t! Have 4 ambiguous choices per interaction (which is a huge downgrade from the extensive list in Fallout 1, 2, 3, and New Vegas), and have all of them say “yes”, but in a different manner that leads to the same conclusion. Sure there are times where choice matters, but it hardly ever does. It has the same syndrome as Cyberpunk 2077 and Skyrim, where most of the time you’re presented options, but none of them matter.

The reputation and faction system were cool… Yeah, let's just remove it! Have fun with your choices having 0 consequence as anyone actually important can’t be killed, and you have no reputation to your name. Factions no longer send men after you, and you can no longer disguise yourself to sneak through an opposing faction's base, or roleplay as said faction. How amazing.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L. was a great system in Fallout 1, 2, 3, and New Vegas, because it defined who you were. Sure there were perks and cybernetics you could get to enhance these to a higher level, but you’d always be wasting perks or endurance levels to do that, and with Fallout: New Vegas levels only giving you a perk every 2 levels, and the max being level 50, you can only get 25 perks, so wasting perks to max out your S.P.E.C.I.A.L was a waste, and had a huge trade off. Now Fallout 4 decides that you could upgrade it every level… So lets start out really dumb (low intelligence), get the perk that benefits dumb people, then make your character really smart, all within the span of 10 or so levels (if you wanted max intelligence)… This is also the most efficient way to play.

What about skills? You know the list of stats you could increase to get better at a selected thing? Oh well now they are all merged in with perks, just like Skyrim! Now you have to waste your perk points getting the ability to lockpick better, or hack better, which before were passive skills that would improve as you invested in them, while perks were interesting unique "skills". The problem with this being that now something that was a side skill, is now being made a main skill, which wastes perk points that you could have invested into more interesting perks. It also makes building your character more simple, and less expansive, as it was in the previous games, with less intricacy to pass speech checks that had certain skill level requirements, as you now only have segmented increases instead of incremental.

Now onto what I think was the most interesting part of Fallout 4 - the weapon modding. In Fallout: New Vegas you had weapon modding, but it wasn’t as expansive as Fallout 4, and didn’t change your weapons up too much besides a few stat changes. In Fallout 4 you could physically change how a gun worked. Add a long barrel to a pistol? Sure! You could create these Frankenstein weapons, and honestly it was very cool. Despite it being the coolest addition to the game, it came at a cost. You love keeping your inventory clear of clutter? You like having little to no weight weighing you down? Good luck, because literally everything is of use in this game. In Fallout: New Vegas you had crafting with the repair/science/survival skill, but it would make you prioritize very specific loot, and it was more of an optional thing. Not in Fallout 4! Now everything down to a spoon is worth picking up to turn into resources that you can use for crafting. This fed into the settlement system as well, so it was even more crucial to pick up literally everything. This makes inventory/resource management and the fun of finding items as you search through trash non-existent. It completely trivialized looting and made it extremely unfun.

To end on a high note, the game's visuals are great for its time, and Bethesda sure knows how to make amazing worlds and places to explore. The exploration, gunplay, and progression still holds up, and if you push past the fact that this isn’t a good RPG by any stretch of the imagination, it is a fun looter shooter at the very least. Now for me, this game is still bad, and I can’t get past the story, writing, choice, reputation, faction, and many other downfalls this game takes, but if you can get it for insanely cheap, and mod the heck out of it, it’s not a terrible experience.

To start this off. I love Fallout as a series, and Fallout: New Vegas is one of my favorite games of all time… I know this kind of review has been done to death, but here are my two cents on where I think Fallout 4 went terribly wrong. Bethesda has never been known for their writing, but at least you always knew what dumb shit you were gonna say… In Fallout 4 however, you don’t! Have 4 ambiguous choices per interaction (which is a huge downgrade from the extensive list in Fallout 1, 2, 3, and New Vegas), and have all of them say “yes”, but in a different manner that leads to the same conclusion. Sure there are times where choice matters, but it hardly ever does. It has the same syndrome as Cyberpunk 2077 and Skyrim, where most of the time you’re presented options, but none of them matter. The reputation and faction system were cool… Yeah, let's just remove it! Have fun with your choices having 0 consequence as anyone actually important can’t be killed, and you have no reputation to your name. Factions no longer send men after you, and you can no longer disguise yourself to sneak through an opposing faction's base, or roleplay as said faction. How amazing. S.P.E.C.I.A.L. was a great system in Fallout 1, 2, 3, and New Vegas, because it defined who you were. Sure there were perks and cybernetics you could get to enhance these to a higher level, but you’d always be wasting perks or endurance levels to do that, and with Fallout: New Vegas levels only giving you a perk every 2 levels, and the max being level 50, you can only get 25 perks, so wasting perks to max out your S.P.E.C.I.A.L was a waste, and had a huge trade off. Now Fallout 4 decides that you could upgrade it every level… So lets start out really dumb (low intelligence), get the perk that benefits dumb people, then make your character really smart, all within the span of 10 or so levels (if you wanted max intelligence)… This is also the most efficient way to play. What about skills? You know the list of stats you could increase to get better at a selected thing? Oh well now they are all merged in with perks, just like Skyrim! Now you have to waste your perk points getting the ability to lockpick better, or hack better, which before were passive skills that would improve as you invested in them, while perks were interesting unique "skills". The problem with this being that now something that was a side skill, is now being made a main skill, which wastes perk points that you could have invested into more interesting perks. It also makes building your character more simple, and less expansive, as it was in the previous games, with less intricacy to pass speech checks that had certain skill level requirements, as you now only have segmented increases instead of incremental. Now onto what I think was the most interesting part of Fallout 4 - the weapon modding. In Fallout: New Vegas you had weapon modding, but it wasn’t as expansive as Fallout 4, and didn’t change your weapons up too much besides a few stat changes. In Fallout 4 you could physically change how a gun worked. Add a long barrel to a pistol? Sure! You could create these Frankenstein weapons, and honestly it was very cool. Despite it being the coolest addition to the game, it came at a cost. You love keeping your inventory clear of clutter? You like having little to no weight weighing you down? Good luck, because literally everything is of use in this game. In Fallout: New Vegas you had crafting with the repair/science/survival skill, but it would make you prioritize very specific loot, and it was more of an optional thing. Not in Fallout 4! Now everything down to a spoon is worth picking up to turn into resources that you can use for crafting. This fed into the settlement system as well, so it was even more crucial to pick up literally everything. This makes inventory/resource management and the fun of finding items as you search through trash non-existent. It completely trivialized looting and made it extremely unfun. To end on a high note, the game's visuals are great for its time, and Bethesda sure knows how to make amazing worlds and places to explore. The exploration, gunplay, and progression still holds up, and if you push past the fact that this isn’t a good RPG by any stretch of the imagination, it is a fun looter shooter at the very least. Now for me, this game is still bad, and I can’t get past the story, writing, choice, reputation, faction, and many other downfalls this game takes, but if you can get it for insanely cheap, and mod the heck out of it, it’s not a terrible experience.