Fallout 4 - Review, New Beta and a Mystery

Patricia Hernandez (Kotaku): Fallout 4 Is Not The Fallout Fans Fell In Love With

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Fallout fanatics might say that the franchise lost its way a long time ago, when Fallout was turned into a shooter with more “mainstream” appeal. But if you ask an average fan, they’d probably say that Fallout games are supposed to be rich, choice-driven games where you have the freedom to role-play as you wish. That description could more or less apply to Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. But that’s not what you’ll find in Fallout 4. The newest Fallout is more of an action game than even its immediate predecessors, and as such, Bethesda has streamlined many of the elements that used to define Fallout as an role-playing series.

Gone are the extra attributes known as skills, which players could use in novel ways while exploring the wasteland. In Fallout 3, for example, if you had a high enough explosives skill, you could defuse a bomb in the middle of a city, thus saving everyone. Or, you could choose to detonate it. The entire questline was only available to you if you built your character in a certain way, and while that’s a design that locks some players out from experiencing a rad thing, it did give a sense that how you built your character actually mattered. For a role-playing game, that’s pretty important. The combination of skills folding into perks, along with the lack of level cap in Fallout 4, means that your character build no longer matters in the way that it used to. You start out OK at most things, and eventually, you’ll be a god at everything. Especially combat-oriented things.

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New Beta 1.2.37 is out on Steam.

Gamespot: A mystery structure can be found down by the sea.