So my review of Fallout 4 may be a bit on the wordy side. I blame quarantine for that. But I’ll see if I can’t keep this from spilling into a part three. Wish me luck!

Now, I might be feeling my oats a bit, but if there’s anything I feel qualified on criticizing, it’s writing. It’s certainly the aspect I give the most attention and thought to. Even if it sometimes feels like I’m the only one. 

So while there are numerous technical issues plaguing Fallout 4, and not just the ones I covered in part 1 of this review, I can generally overlook design shortcomings if it’s compensated for with strong writing.

But as is often the case, poor design choices can negatively impact the writing. 

For whatever reason, Bethesda decided to utilize the much maligned “dialogue wheel.” I have spent way too many articles complaining about how this system doesn’t work so I’m not going to repeat it here. However, Bethesda certainly has taken the crown for the worst implementation. There isn’t an illusion of choice with this one. The options legitimately boiled down to three different versions of “Yes” and a “Maybe later.” That is until I loaded up a mod which replaced the awful two word options with the full response.

However, the spirit of the problem is still there. Run into a beggar in the street who wants your help and you couldn’t tell them to kick rocks. You could only tell them “Let me think about it” or three almost indistinguishable ways of agreeing to their demands. I can’t tell you why this was implemented. I can only assume the much requested voiced protagonist was the impetus and then the slow realization that it’s way too expensive to voice meaningful choice in a game sank in. Except, prior Bethesda games still gave some semblance of choice and, of course, New Vegas had much more impactful dialogue options with every other character being voiced other than the player. 

But the writing doesn’t just suffer from the lack of choice. Your ability to approach conversations was cobbled because there was no skill system to incorporate into it. In prior games, if you had a certain threshold of aptitude in a skill, you would unlock dialogue options associated with that knowledge. So, when speaking to a village about shoring up their defences against a raider attack, if you were skilled in Explosives, you could recommend setting a minefield. But, once again, Fallout 4 has no skills so there was no way to customize how your character responds to a situation differently than your friend’s. Now, they could have used perks, but the chances of people having the right perks available given how niche they were now, I’m guessing dissuaded them from incorporating that option. Finally, their entire “speech” mini-game was giving very sparse opportunities for persuasion based entirely on your Charisma. These persuasion “checks” would be colour coded depending on the difficulty. How this difficulty was calculated… I have no idea. The line would be coloured yellow, orange or red for increasingly harder checks but how your Charisma changed that, I don’t know. I maxed out my Charisma fairly early because I wanted to play someone with charm. But also, I needed a high Charisma because I wanted to play around their settlement feature and several important perks for building were tied to that. For reasons.

And… sigh. That brings us to settlement building. 

I liked settlement building. But I like building in games. When Derek and I played Terraria, it was me who spent all the time making our village look… well I won’t say pretty but I will say less like a giant mud square. I spent hours in Starbound collecting different materials and terrain from multiple worlds to create little outposts throughout the galaxy. And my Stardew crew can attest that I skip out on farming in order to make my cottage look as good as I can make it. 

As such I downloaded a lot of mods (and I mean A LOT of mods) to improve the building capabilities of Fallout 4. And I would say I sunk the majority of my playtime in building little settlements. This is where my positive gameplay loop developed. I would found an outpost at a spot that looked interesting. Then I would scour the nearby area for materials and items to bring back to my fledgling build. There I would build homes, shops and defences for my settlers. I would establish supply lines between them. I would try and decorate the homes to reflect who lived there. I dutifully tended their (painfully generic) settlement quests. I rushed across the game world (because I was dumb and played on survival mode which disabled fast travel) to defend them from monster attacks. 

And I enjoyed it. For a good half of the game, once my settlement got large enough or my interest waned, I would set out to the next site and sprout up a new hamlet. In this way, I completely avoided the game’s main quest. It wasn’t until I decided that I was tired of my current character and wanted to try a different build (ha! As if character builds exist in this game!) that I decided to focus on the story of Fallout 4. 

This was a decision I immediately regretted. 

See, one of the areas where Fallout 4 truly, severely suffers compared to its predecessors is its main story. It’s skeleton is inescapably recycled from Fallout 3. I was… accepting of the premise. Being the parent searching for a missing child has the potential for interesting divergence from a story where you’re the child searching for your missing parent. Except, any opportunity which Fallout 4’s basic premise establishes is squandered. Often in spectacular fashion. But I’m proficient in Bethesda’s games enough to know that, while it establishes a rather pressing need for you to follow the main story (your child is kidnapped at the ripe age of like… one) I knew there was no actual game mechanic reason to rush after him. In fact, I made the rather obvious observation that in all likelihood my child was already an adult. 

Though this was hardly a huge leap of logic. The game presents you, the main character, as a person out of time. See, as you escaped the incoming nuclear arsenal, you’re ushered into the underground Vault with a select few others from your neighbourhood. The facility’s staff reassured you that everything is fine and you’ll be safe while they ushered you quickly through processing. A doctor led you down some tunnels to a room full of podlike chambers where you underwent “decontamination.” No explanation is given before you and your family are separated into different pods and you’re “processed.” 

The game then makes it abundantly clear that these pods then freeze you. 

If you weren’t familiar with the series, it may come as a shock that the stories take place after this all encompassing nuclear winter. Furthermore, the makers of these Vaults (Vault-Tec) are consistently portrayed as immoral scientists who never had any intention of building shelters to protect people from nuclear fallout. Every shelter is, instead, some highly amoral and exaggerated social experiment. When your pod eventually malfunctions and you stumble out into an abandoned decrepit facility, it’s made plain that your Vault was one running experiments on cryogenics. 

And considering that Bethesda was insistent on creating a rather rigid background for your character, diverging strongly from their prior design philosophies, it is immensely frustrating that they never once capitalized on the story of a survivor displaced into the future. They had a perfect opportunity to both give a focused lens into the past of the Fallout series while also reframing a lot of the series tropes through a more critical individual. They do none of these. 

As for my “big brain” prediction, given the use of the cryogenics chamber, it seemed pretty clear that your son was kidnapped years before your release. Partly because it was pretty telegraphed but largely the model they had for the child was pretty basic and I already knew that Bethesda doesn’t put children in their games. So I was hardly surprised when you came face to face with your “adult” child.

I was, however, surprised by how poorly the writing team handled it. 

This should not come as a surprise but storytelling is the art of communication. And yet, having played through Fallout 4, it’s abundantly clear that Bethesda had nothing to say. This basic premise would at least suggest that the story of Fallout 4 would be focused on upbringing, familial bonds and kinship. Is this person whom you’ve had no hand in raising but is, nevertheless, biologically your child a recognizable member of your family? Or is he a stranger with your face (which would dovetail neatly into their Synthetics plotline)? How far will you go to avenge the loss of your family? What will you give up to save your family?

Fallout 4 asks you none of these questions. In fact, I pressed through the latter half of the game, trying to have a brief, private conversation with my son. The game never allows you to have it. Not even with the hamfisted “I’m dying of cancer… now find me a battery!” conversation occurred. Instead, it whisks you away on a long series of unrelated, uninteresting, irrelevant tasks that the writers try to use as a substitute for high stakes decisions. They throw you, needlessly, into conflict with the game’s four major factions. However, none of these conflicts make any sense because their characters don’t make sense. 

And there’s almost a perverse glee which Bethesda takes in highlighting their own incompetence.

As it turns out, the game is ostensibly about Synthetics. If you read my review of the worst quest in computer gaming, you’ll see how frustrated I am by Bethesda’s own contradictions. In there, they could hardly keep what the concept of a “ghoul” in the Fallout universe is straight despite it being fairly well established in prior games. However, they completely fail to provide a coherent idea about what a Synthetic is in Fallout 4 which is more egregious because these were made wholly by Bethesda almost entirely for this game. 

What we get is some poorly conceived homage to Bladerunner. Synthetics are the creation of the major villain of the game, The Institute, and are robots. Robots that look like people. Which are meant to serve as some sort of shocking technological advancement by a highly technical scientific community. And yet, the game already has advanced AI. Your robot butler from the very start is a highly developed personality machine. Fallout 3 had the President Eden AI heading its Covenant faction. New Vegas both had incidental AI with Yes Man and highly complex cybernetics with Mr. House. So artificial intelligence is hardly something noteworthy. At least it didn’t warrant all the attention which the people of Fallout 4 spent on it. 

So then they try to shift the focus on the fact that Synthetics have surpassed the uncanny valley and look indistinguishably human. And yet, the game fails a fundamental question.

Why? Why did the Institute build these machines?

Ostensibly it was for a worker force but the Mr. Handy and Protectron robots are literally littered throughout the countryside. You trip over them the moment you leave the vault. They go into great detail about Synths being used to infiltrate communities by replacing people with a perfect simulacrum. But yet when you ask your son, who developed these machines, why they do that, he literally has no idea. He tries to blame the Railroad for creating these infiltrators accidentally when they try to liberate Synths from Institute control. But then he simply shrugs away the question of why the Institute is so insistent on making perfect replicants of humans in the first place. 

But let’s divert for a second to the Railroad. They’re a faction that believe Synths are intelligent life which should be afforded the freedoms and right to life as any other individual. They are, by name alone, making oblique references to slavery and emancipation. But with the very first quest with this faction, their main contact brings up an important contradiction and immediately dismisses it.

For, he explains, the Railroad recognizes that Synths are intelligent machines and deserve freedom and yet they don’t know what that means for literally every single other robot clogging up the streets of Boston. Should they be liberating your robot butler? Should they be seeking emancipation for your computer console? 

And just as cavalier as he recognizes the contradiction at the core philosophy of his faction, he dismisses and encourages you to continue on murdering all the Synths in the current dungeon you’re delving without a hint of remorse. 

This is endemic with the writing in Fallout 4. Bethesda has no idea what their characters are doing. They have no concept of motivation for the people that populate their stories. As such, pretty much everyone you encounter will act irrationally, contradictory and ultimately capriciously simply to push forward a narrative with no direction. They fail a very basic component of writing. As an author myself, here’s a free bit of advice. 

The first thing you should consider whenever you’re about to write a scene with characters is to understand their motivation. This isn’t to say that every character is meant to be entirely logical and reasonable. We know from life that isn’t the case. But everyone wants something. They may behave in ways that ultimately undermine their desires and goals but, from their perspective, they should be striving for those goals. And that’s the issue with Fallout 4. 

And it should be getting old by now, but all they had to do was follow Obsidian’s example.

New Vegas has a pretty simple story. The complexity comes from the interaction of its primary factions struggling against each other. But their motivations are simple. All three major players in New Vegas want to control Hoover Dam. That’s it. From that simple desire, we get a rich web of political intrigue. Their reasons, of course, vary too but largely each seek the power produced by the dam to further their own goals. Mr. House wishes to establish an independent city state and can enforce its sovereignty through the power provided by the dam to energize an enormous legion of military grade robots. The New California Republic wishes to fold Nevada into its political sphere of influence and the power from the dam is integral in providing energy for local farmers and businesses to turn the area into a productive economic hub. Caesar recognizes the resources the dam would provide for his invading forces, giving them a large well of water and production to keep his conquering legions steamrolling through the desert. 

And then we have Fallout 4. The Institute wants to build Synths… because? The Railroad wishes to free Synths because they’re smart. But not smart like other robots. Or maybe they are. But the Institute is evil for making Synths so we’re going to kill Synths to free Synths for freedom. But only the Synths that look human. And even then, only the Synths that look human and don’t shoot you in some specific quests. The others are whatever. The Brotherhood of Steel wants to kill Synths because they’re abominations. Why are they abominations? We don’t know. Because they said so. They aren’t pure humans. Now take your super soldier serum and cybernetic implants without question. And then there’s the Minutemen.

And I hate the Minutemen. 

The Minutemen are literally a neighbourhood watch without a neighbourhood (because for some reason there’s only a single city in the game) that decided dressing up like literal 1700s colonists would make people take them more seriously. Or something. They’re arbitrarily against the Institute because the Institute kidnaps people. But it doesn’t. But maybe sometimes they do. We don’t know. They’re scary so go kill them.

I mean, we could assign motivations to these factions but we would be doing Bethesda’s work clearly after they had finished their product. The Brotherhood wants to establish a military presence in the area. Why? Dunno. The Institute, as it turns out, wants a new furnace and all this Synth stuff is literally irrelevant to what they’re bopping around doing and not integral to any of their initiatives and just a couple of scientists’ pet project. The Minutemen want to establish laws and order though they seemingly have no interest in governance so hope that by scattering isolated communities imperialistically about the land without any support or help will maybe lead to… something?

And how does this all tie back to the personal story of you and your lost child?

Well, it doesn’t. And each major beat of the main story makes less and less sense until the grand finale which hits with all the power and force of a leaky whoopee cushion. Then the game ends in the most generic, unsatisfying little video that tells you nothing of the journey you’ve taken all so that when the credits would roll, you’re snapped back to your character to just… continue putzing around, I suppose.

Because, really, putzing is the only thing that Bethesda does well.

I would be remiss, however, to drop this review of the game without mentioning the best part I came across. Aside from the settlement building, however. 

Far Harbour is one of the DLC for Fallout 4 and is clearly the best thing the team accomplished on this project. Ironically, it’s set in a far off harbour detached from the events of the main story and yet it addresses some of the themes far better that the main narrative stoically avoids. It starts with you and your hard-boiled private detective robot sailing off to distant shores in search of a missing girl. There, however, you come across a strange natural phenomenon plaguing the island and three very different measures that its principal factions take to address it. It actually has a decent narrative structure and coherent motivations for its groups. It’s far from brilliant but given the exceedingly low bar that Fallout 4 sets, it stands head and shoulders above the rest of the product. 

Here you have a simple conflict between the native fishermen of the island battling a fanatical religious order that has come to the island to safeguard and worship a deadly fog spreading across the land. This fog has forced the original inhabitants to the furthest shores as they cling to the salty rocks trying to keep to their old homesteads and way of life. Pressing them further and further to the edge are the Children of Atom. They see this radioactive fog as divine providence of their god and came to worship the blight. They take umbrage at both the fishermen’s rejection of their tenets and their attempts to repel the holy mist. Caught in the middle is a reclusive sanctuary for escaped Synthetics, headed by your robot companion’s brother and an early prototype, Dima. 

Course, standard Bethesda silliness is present. You very quickly discover your missing girl holed up in Dima’s sanctuary where she has convinced herself that she’s a Synth and doesn’t want to return home. The only way you can convince her to do otherwise is to literally fix all the problems on the island. Why? Ostensibly because she’s compassionate? But largely the missing girl serves as a MacGuffin to get you to the action and is otherwise irrelevant to everything else that happens. Furthermore, the direction of the story is less than satisfying. There’s a number of dangling threads that could have been woven into something more interesting. For example, I would have liked an option to reconcile the Harbourmen and Children of Atom by convincing dissenters to strive for peace while replacing the warlike religious head of the Children with the prior, peace-seeking leader they had before your arrival. Some measure of diplomacy and politicking would have added a much needed higher layer to the themes and message. As such, it loses its moral by having a hilariously tone deaf solution for bringing the two factions together if you desperately want both to cohabitate the island. 

The story could certainly have been strengthened into something good with greatly impactful decisions. However, considering the original product that this expansion emerged from, it’s hard to be too upset. At least it took some important baby steps. That it also had unique enemies, actually integrated action beats and somewhat developed personalities is enough to laud it for achieving… the basics of most other games. Far Harbour as a location is interesting too, with the rugged coastline offering a nice change from Boston’s muddy brown vistas. And overall, the boneheaded elements are kept to a minimum while maintaining some of the cute wit of the Fallout series. It achieves a unique story, some interesting characters and varied locals that suggests competency on the team. It’s perhaps the best DLC that Bethesda has done for Fallout. 

It’s possibly the best Fallout Bethesda has done. Though I admit I’ve skipped some of their other little offerings here and there. It’s a pity that Far Harbour serves as the exception rather than the rule. 

Overall, I can’t fault the people who panned the game when it originally released. Their concerns remain valid. And while its clear that Bethesda is listening, as evident by stripping the hilariously two dimensional morality of the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 3 away, it still remains they have a long way to go if they want to stand amongst the best of the genre.

On the other hand, these things sell like gangbusters so maybe they don’t need to be critically successful. 

The rest of us just get to weather their fallout.