Fallout 4 Analysis

Fallout 4 Analysis

David Hunter

April 17, 2017

1 Overview

Fallout 4 is an open world real time post-apocalyptic shooter RPG that was released on November 10, 2015. It takes place in an alternative history where the integrated circuit was never invented, so technology and culture remained at the 1950’s stage. Set roughly 300 years in the future in the Boston area, civilization has been mostly destroyed following a nuclear war between the US and China.

2 Formal Elements

2.1 Players

Fallout 4 is a strictly single player game. There is no online, side-by-side or any other kind of multiplayer mode. The player can have an AI controlled companion accompany them. At the beginning of the game, the player chooses between male or female, and is able to customize their character’s appearance by adjusting hair style, body characteristics and many different facial traits. Unlike previous games in the series, every character, including the player character, are fully voice-acted.

Soon after the player completes the customization, nuclear warning sirens will sound and the player must run into a vault for safety. Here the player and the player’s family are frozen.

The game may be played from first person or third person perspective, but in many situations it is almost impossible to tell if you are lined up properly for a shot from third person perspective. Gameplay occurs in real time, although the internal game clock moves more quickly than in the real world. No vehicles or mounts may be used.

2.2 Objectives

The player is tasked with finding their son, who was taken from you near the beginning of the game, when the player was trapped inside a cryostasis capsule. Your partner is killed in front of your eyes at the same time. This objective takes up many game hours, as the player must track down the person who stole your son, get information from them about where your son is now, find a way to reach that location, gather the components necessary to get there, make contact, etc.

However, it is entirely possible and indeed likely that the player will wander around the Boston wasteland, meet people, have adventures, and build a shrubbery with a nice little path going down the middle…

2.3 Rules

Fallout 4 is a large complex game with many subsystems and rule sets.

2.3.1 Gear

Unlike other games in the Fallout franchise, armor and weapons do not have stat requirements, although some pieces do give stat bonuses.

Armor has been modularized to something like that in The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind: the player may equip a helmet, left and right arm armor, torso armor, and left and right leg armor. Underneath it, the player may equip one coverall item, such as a vault suit. The power armor is similarly modularized. Further, each item may be customized in a host of different ways, from changing the coloring (which may provide stat bonuses and change damage resistances), altering the materials used, or in the case of weapons varying the ammo type, scopes, barrels, stocks, etc. All of these have an effect on the damage, clip capacity, fire rate, range, weight, value, accuracy, and other weapon stats. These customizations make use of the many pieces of ”junk” the player collects during adventures in the wasteland.

Only one weapon (plus a throwable item) may be equipped at one time, although up to 12 items may be saved for quick use.

In general, the player can carry an infinite amount of gear, but can only fast travel and run if the weight is less than or equal to the player’s carry weight stat, as determined below. Many healing items and ammo do not even have a weight, so the player may effectively carry however many they want. Further, there is no armor or weapon degradation, with the exception of power armor which degrades as it takes damage, and which requires fusion cores as a fuel source to move around.

2.3.2 Stats and Leveling

As with the other games in the Fallout franchise, there are seven main stats: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. At the beginning of the game, the player starts with 1 point invested in each stat, and may choose how to invest a further 21 points. The stats affect various secondary stats such as damage, carry weight, purchase and selling price, hit points, sneaking, and others as seen below.

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

(11)

The player levels up according to the equation below. At each level increase, the player is granted one point to spend on a perk or on increasing a base stat. For each of these perks there are different level requirements, and each perk is unlocked by having a base stat level equal to the rank of the perk. That is, to unlock a level 10 luck perk, you need to have luck at 10. To actually invest in it, however, you may need a character that is at level 26, or 40 or some other level. This acts as a kind of gating or Stopping mechanism, preventing the game from becoming too easy too soon. It also creates an opportunity for long-term planning and investment.

(12)

The previous set of skills, which included

• Barter
• Big Guns
• Energy Weapons
• Explosives
• Lockpick
• Medicine
• Melee Weapons
• Repair
• Science
• Small Guns
• Sneak
• Speech
• Unarmed

has been entirely folded into the perk system. This is probably partially responsible for the lack of skill checks during dialogue, although the lack is also probably related to the voiced protagonists.

2.3.3 Crafting and Settlements

Virtually all Bethesda games have a lot of random useless pieces of clutter scattered all over the world in every building. In Fallout 4, Bethesda has finally found a use for them. Although weapons and armor themselves cannot be crafted, food, healing items, and weapon and armor mods can be created from glass bottles, tables, plungers, tin and aluminum cans, glue, and of course duct tape and many, many other objects.

The player is also given the chance to control many settlements. These are small villages or towns where the player may build an extremely diverse range of items:

• fences
• wood, steel or concrete buildings and parts of of buildings
• furniture, including
  • beds
  • TVs
  • couches
  • chairs
  • mats
• power generators
• water pumps
• defenses, including
  • turrets
  • guard posts
  • traps
  • spot lights
• crops
• computer terminals for controlling electronic items
• stores for medicine, clothing, general trade, restaurants, armor, or weapons

These are built using the same junk that the player can collect all over the game world. Some items are locked behind perks, and others are unlocked after completing specific quests.

The player may assign jobs to settlers, and is encouraged to make sure that there is enough water, food, and enough beds for every settler. The player may even link the settlements by assigning a settler to be a provisioner, who will travel between the settlements carrying goods and supplies.

2.3.4 Factions & Quests

There are four major factions, plus several minor ones, which the player may join. These factions all have differing purposes and ideologies, although some are compatible with each other. Again, unlike Fallout: New Vegas, there is no explicit reputation system with each faction. Rather, the player’s reputation is strictly measured by what quests they have completed for the faction. Similarly to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the player may basically join every faction and complete almost every quest for them, up until the end of the game, when the player must suddenly pick sides.

In general, the player will receive a quest by talking to someone, or overhearing something, which will trigger a quest. The dialogue and options have been drastically reduced compared to other RPGs, making this game much more of an open-world shooter like the Far Cry series, than previous games. Almost every quest will fall into two categories:

1. Go somewhere and get something
2. Go somewhere and kill someone.

2.4 Procedures

2.4.1 Talking to an NPC

Many quests and story lines can only advance through player interaction with an NPC. Unlike Fallout: New Vegas, there are very few charisma checks and the viability of talking your way out of trouble is greatly reduced.

2.4.2 Searching an Area & Scavenging

As a post-apocalyptic game, a common procedure will be to either be tasked with finding an item, or the player might want or need to find ammo or a health item, or just collecting scrap parts or plants for crafting. This will involve moving around the location, checking cupboards, dressers, safes, hacking terminals, picking locks, looting corpses, and otherwise nosing around to find the needed item(s).

2.4.3 Killing an NPC

Various factions and NPCs will often task the player with killing someone else. Even protecting an NPC usually boils down to killing the NPCs that want to harm it.

2.4.4 Selling Loot

The player will often need money to buy items or repair them, and selling loot at a merchant is the best way to get money. Each merchant has a limited amount of money, so the player might face the problem of having lots of items to sell but no merchant with enough coin to buy them.

2.4.5 Leveling Up

As the player completes quests, kills NPCs, picks locks, performs a dialogue check successfully, hacks terminals, and discovers locations, the player gains XP.

2.4.6 Managing Health Conditions

In the Hardcore (Survival) mode, the player must manage many health conditions. This requires using food and drink items, doctor’s bags, antivenom, and a bed to maintain health. The player’s character becomes hunger, thirsty, and sleepy over time. These conditions result in debuffs to attack power and accuracy, HP, and eventually kill the player character.

Through special circumstances, the player can suffer from poisoning, crippled limbs, and radiation sickness. These require drugs and/or a doctor’s attention to remove. Crippled limbs have different effects depending on the limb: crippled legs slow the movement, crippled arms reduce accuracy, and crippled heads cause ringing ears and blurred vision.

In normal difficulty mode, almost none of those considerations are relevant. The player only needs to worry about health and radiation. There is a new system in place where one’s radiation level caps maximum health. So if the player has 100 Max HP, and has 10 radiation, the most HP the player will heal to is 90, until the player removes the radiation poisoning through visiting a doctor or using health items like Radaway.

2.5 Resources

For my playthrough, I choose to play in the Survival mode, which forces the player to consider more resources than in other modes.

2.5.1 Tangible Resources

1. Food: The player can collect food items from plants and animals, and purchase them from vendors as well. These can be used to heal the player and to remove starvation effects. Many food items cause minor to severe radiation poisoning, which makes using them a tradeoff between health and radiation.
2. Drink: The player can collect drinks from various locations. These can be used to heal the player and remove dehydration effects. Both food and drink items contribute to the player’s carrying weight.
3. Ammo: All guns require ammunition and (in Survival mode only) ammunition contributes to the weight the player can carry.
4. Armor: All clothes contribute to the armor of the player. Stronger armor sets absorb more damage, but usually weigh more. Some armor sets modify stats like charisma or perception.
5. Weapons: Although Fallout 4 allows some situations to be resolved without violence, weapons are an essential part of gameplay. Each weapon has different damages, damage types, accuracies, fire rates, and weights.
6. Money: Money is used to buy items from vendors, and can sometimes be used to bribe NPCs.Managing this takes up a small chunk of game time.
7. Drugs: Drugs such as stimpaks, jet, cateye, psycho and others give limited bonuses and effects. Some heal the player, others allow night vision, increase damage, etc. In Survival mode, drugs cause additional effects, such as dehydration, fatigue, or addiction
8. Companion: The player may recruit several different companions from NPCs met in the game. These companions can carry heavy items, provide special perks to the player, deal extra damage to enemies, and provide extra story quests. In Hardcore mode, if their HP drops to zero, they fall down and must be healed using a Stimpak.
9. Settlements and Settlers: These have some affect on gameplay, but can safely be ignored by players on Normal difficulty. The player may use them to grow extra food, get purified water, scavenge extra parts, and turn some of crops into useful items.

2.5.2 Intangible Resources

1. Health: If health drops to zero, the player dies.
2. Perks: Perks grant special abilities that change gameplay options. Again, although the player cannot lose a perk once gained, the player only receives one point to invest every level up, so they must invest this point carefully to best augment or expand the player’s preferred playstyle.
3. AP: A lot of gameplay is spent shooting things, and the shooting in general is satisfying: Enemies to being shot realistically, and the player’s weapons have satisfying animations and effects. Further, the VATS (Vault Assisted Targeting System) system is quite fun to use but almost pointless since the shooting system has been improved so much. This slows the action of the game and allows the player to target specific areas of enemies. Each attack has a percentage chance to hit and costs a certain number of action points (AP). These attacks happen in slow motion, feature dramatic camera work and exaggerated hit reactions, and sound great as well.
4. XP: The player receives XP for many actions: hacking terminals, picking locks, completing a conversation challenge, killing enemies, discovering locations, and
5. Oxygen: This only matters under water. If it drops to zero, the player dies.
6. Sleep: (Only in Survival mode) The player must rest periodically to prevent exhaustion. The player’s sleep level is displayed above the HP meter.
7. Radiation: Radiation sickness lowers the player’s maximum health until finally resulting in death. As befits a post-nuclear war setting, managing radiation poisoning is pervasive and also relates to what clothes the player wears, what the player eats, and what the player drinks.
8. Hydration: (Only in Survival mode) The player’s hydration level appears above the HP meter. It shows how badly the player needs water.
9. Hunger: (Only in Survival mode) The player’s hunger level also appears above the HP meter. It shows how badly the player needs food.
10. Addiction: Many drugs are addictive in Fallout 4. When the player becomes addicted, it reduces some of the SPECIAL stats.
11. Limb Condition: Limb condition has already been described in detail elsewhere. The only other item to note is that the condition and its severity are displayed above the HP meter.

2.6 Conflicts

In keeping with the post-apocalyptic setting, there are many types of conflicts in Fallout 4.

2.6.1 Interfactional

Many of the factions are, if not at war with each other, at least do not get along well with each other.

The player may try to help all the factions equally as a way of getting the most XP, however, eventually the player must choose who to help and who to destroy or ignore. It is impossible to do everything like in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but the player can come damn close.

2.6.2 Companion and NPCs

Most of the companions have their own personalities, but when it comes to the nitty gritty these feel like the personality of the princess in Coming to America: when Eddie Murphy asks ”What do you like to do?” she responds with ”Whatever you like to do.” He then proceeds to make her hop on one leg and bark like a dog. The companions rarely become hostile, even though you side with factions that are diametrically opposed to their viewpoint, and a large number of NPCs follow the same pattern. You can basically tell them what to do and they will do it, whether it is in character or not.

2.6.3 Leveling

The player receives only one point during level up, so spending it is a big deal. Investing in a stat might give you an increase in a secondary stat as an immediate effect, but it can also be done as a form of long term investment, to unlock a perk further down that stat tree. Investing in a perk, on the other hand, will yield an immediate affect described by the perk.

2.7 Boundaries

2.7.1 Map

The player may only travel outside of the Boston Wasteland for the Nukaworld and Far Harbor DLCs.

2.7.2 Settlements

The player’s settlements are limited to areas designated by the designers, although there are mods that remove that restriction. Further, the player can only have a maximum of 20 settlers in a settlement due to the equation 7. The player can also only build a set number of stories that varies by location, although there are mods that remove this restriction as well.

2.7.3 Leveling

There is no explicit level cap in Fallout 4, so the player may technically unlock every perk and fully up grade every stat.

2.8 Outcomes

As I understand it, there are two basic endings: either the player sides with the Institute, or the player decides to destroy them. The player may then complete any quests that fall outside of the main quest, and continue to explore the Boston wasteland, build settlements, etc.

3 Dynamic Elements

Fallout 4 contains numerous dynamic elements.

3.1 Settlements

Settlements change dramatically over time and the player has a pivotal role in determining how they develop. Radio beacons can be used to attract new settlers, and as mentioned before, the player can construct new buildings, either piecewise or from slightly larger prefabricated parts or even complete structures with one button press. These buildings and items have a strong effect on the settlement. Growing lots of crops provides extra food, while building lots of water purifiers will generate bottles of clean water to heal with. Some crops can even be turned into adhesive at a workbench.

Creating enough beds, food, water, and jobs for everyone will increase happiness in the settlement, as will spending time there and supplying the town with clinics, and exercise machines. If happiness drops low enough, the settlement will cancel its allegiance to the player.

Raiders will periodically attack a settlement, and if the player does nothing it may suffer damage, or settlers may even be killed.

3.2 Day/Night Cycle and Weather

Fallout 4 features a day/night cycle. Night provides a good time to sneak around outside, while day light allows the player to enjoy the beautiful vistas and make use of distant landmarks to set exploration goals.

There are also frequent radiation storms, and one entire area of the game, The Glowing Sea, is permanently awash in radiation.

3.3 Faction Reputation

As mentioned before, there is no explicit monitoring of player reputation with different factions: this is almost exclusively kept track of by what quests the player has or has not completed. The only exception is if the player attacks members of that faction: if this happens that faction becomes hostile and the player will not be able to complete any of its quests from that point on.

3.4 Companion Reputation

Similarly to factions, companion reputation is never explicitly revealed to the player through meters or numbers. However, they do react to actions you take, such as lying, stealing, killing innocents, scavenging for supplies, giving NPCs compliments and updowns, etc. Most of the companions have quests that will trigger after you have raised their opinion of you high enough, and completing these quests will raise their opinion of you to max level, granting you a special companion perk similar to those in earlier Fallout games, or even other franchises, such as Dragon Age.

4 Dramatic Elements

The dramatic elements of Fallout 4 are shameful. The dialogue can be wooden or nonsensical, the player’s choices during dialogue infrequently have an effect on the outcome, and there are numerous timing issues that arise due to having already completed some step of a quest, but for some characters dialogue options related to that step will appear long after the player has completed it. And as already mentioned, the vast majority of quests fall into poorly-motivated fetch and kill quests.

During cutscenes and dialogue, the camera will try to assume a cinematic angle, but this is also poorly executed. If the player is wearing power armor, for example, the camera will often be positioned inside the player’s shoulder, completely blocking the view, and random NPCs will walk between the player and the person talking regularly.

4.1 Characters

Fallout 4 has a huge cast of characters: many settlements have named characters with unique dialogue options telling about their backstory, and each faction has at least 5 named NPCs with their own personalities and stories. In the vanilla game, many of these NPCs feel like cardboard cutouts and not like any approximation of a real person.

Several companions, Piper and Nick Valentine, feel much more fleshed out and complicated, but these are almost the only ones out of hundreds. Again, it seems Bethesda has gone for quantity instead of quality.

4.2 Story

The main story revolves around finding the player’s son, but the player will stumble upon dozens and dozens of smaller stories scattered throughout the Boston wasteland. There is often only one way to complete a quest: kill an NPC, and/or return to the quest giver with the required item.

Many quests are related to the history of the Boston area, and these are usually interesting to complete and feature more fleshed out dialogue and some pretty well-done detective work.

There are four main faction quest lines in the vanilla game, plus around another dozen factions that the player can complete quests for in the DLC packs. Unfortunately, the player’s choices often do not matter. In the Nukaworld DLC, the player can choose to support one of three raider factions, but story-wise it makes almost no difference who they support.

In the vanilla game, the player will have access to the Minutemen, Railroad and Brotherhood of Steel as soon as the player can locate those factions. At any point (the main exception being that if you help the Institute, you cannot later join the Railroad), the player may join these factions and start completing quests for them. All at the same time. The Railroad wants to free all synths, and the Brotherhood of Steel thinks they are evil technology, and you can join both groups, and even have a synth companion while completing Brotherhood of Steel quests and nothing happens. They might make some comments about your ”synth pet,” but you will never be asked to kill him or get rid of him, and you won’t be turned down as a synth sympathizer. This makes no sense. In Fallout: New Vegas, even wearing the armor or clothing of the wrong faction could get you shot at, but in Fallout 4 bringing a synth companion to the faction that hates the things results in a few nasty comments.

While playing, it is possible to become the leader of the Minutemen and/or the Institute. However, the player never feels like the leader of a vast and powerful organization. Like in previous Bethesda games, instead, the player is tasked by their underlings to do some menial job. They will sometimes even refuse to do something, despite the fact that the player is the leader. In contrast, in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, the enemy AI would adapt to the player’s actions, using helmets if the player scored lots of headshots, or using flashlights and night vision if the player infiltrated at night a lot. To remove those, the player could return to MotherBase and task their private army to complete a supply disruption mission. That is how being the leader should work.

5 Conclusion

I’ve spent over 80 hours playing Fallout 4. I played all the DLC and completed the main quest, plus many of the side quests. While the shooting has been vastly improved, and the exploration is as fun as in any other Bethesda game, the RPG elements have been castrated. Many NPCs react with generic canned dialogue whether the player agrees with them or calls them a camel’s cunt. Quest after quest tasks the player with going to a particular location, and either killing someone or collecting an item. There is almost never an option for talking to the person you are supposed to kill, hearing their side of the story, and maybe deciding that your quest giver is in the wrong. Or for finding out that your quest giver wants to use the quest item for nefarious purposes and so withholding it or giving it to another NPC.

Sid Meier famously said that ”A game is a series of interesting choices.” But it seems that Bethesda has gone out of their way not only to reduce the number and quality of choices the player must make, but to create the illusion of choice wherever possible and to eliminate reduce the impact that the player can have on the world.