Considered one of the most hyped-up games of the 21st century, Fallout 4, the most recent installment of Bethesda Softworks’ Fallout series, will be released on Nov. 10. Lauded for the extreme advances made in graphics, storyline, character customization, and more, the game is expected to be a hit among new fans and diehard veterans.
Fallout 4 is a role-playing video game with a post-apocalyptic backdrop — the protagonist is the “Sole Survivor” of a nuclear tirade between two superpowers. After sleeping through two hundred years of this nuclear winter in an underground vault, the character wakes up from a state of suspended animation, ready to make a name for him/herself.
Fallout 4 boasts myriad features of game design. The game’s graphics have sharp nuances seen in character models and background textures, which is a large improvement from the glossy orange and green tints seen in previous Fallout games. Fallout 4’s animations are also very smooth, immersing the player in the game.
While these improvements in the video area are definitely enticing, they should be taken with a grain of salt. Bethesda Softworks has had trouble in the past with noticeable animation glitches; there have been instances where objects like weapons and armor phase and clip into one another, an off-putting mistake that jerks eager gamers out of the Fallout world and into the real world. Animation messups detract from the realism that creators work tediously to develop, disappointing gamers who see something so great offset by something so minor.
Fallout 4 also features a fully voiced player system. With over 11,000 lines of speech, Fallout 4 has more dialogue than any other Fallout game. This means that your character has something to say for every mission, conversation, or random encounter. It’s intriguing and imaginative to play as a character who matches your personality through speech. For instance, you can play as a ruthless killing machine with a thick Texan accent or as a damsel in distress who moonlights as a cutthroat assassin.
With player customization playing such a big part in Fallout 4, improvements to the game’s facial creation system are essential. The game uses freeform point-and-click methods to construct the player’s face instead of using standard sliders as seen in previous Fallout games. Every aspect of the face, down to the tiniest freckles, can be manipulated; this is definitely a step forward from the blocky faces from previous Fallout games.
Overcoming the challenge of realistically portraying a post-apocalyptic setting is definitely an attractive quality of Fallout 4. The game allows players to build a settlement or customize weaponry, appealing to gamers’ sense of realism. In Fallout 4, you have the opportunity to create a town or fiefdom from the meager resources that you can squander from the Boston ruins. For the first time in a Fallout game, players can combine the tactics found in tower defense or real-time strategy games to experience the joy of cultivating something created by the gamer himself. Fallout 4 breaches the limits of keeping video games within the playing styles of a certain genre — Fallout 4 can be played both as a role-playing game and strategic game.
The game’s qualities can be attributed to the skill of Bethesda Softworks. Unlike other game developers, Bethesda has a solid fan base given its success in past hits like Dishonored and The Elder Scrolls series. All of these past Bethesda games have gotten great feedback from a majority of players. Development of Fallout 4 has taken more than four years and for good cause: Fallout 4 runs on a improved gaming engine, specially modified from the gaming engine for Bethesda’s other games, specifically for Fallout 4.
The game offers enhanced graphics/animations, fully voiced player characters, and an improved gaming engine, leaving little room for failure.
