As part of my old Backlog to the Future series, we’ll be taking a look at Fallout 4 today and it does contain story spoilers. After having a major binge on Fallout 76 on PlayStation 4, it still didn’t quite feel fully like the other experiences Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4 provided. While it is better after the Wastelanders update I just wanted my Fallout world to do what I want and shape it accordingly to my actions. I decided to reinstall Fallout 4 and I am hooked.
This will be the 4th time I tackle the game from the start, this time though I wanted to add mods, nothing too much to change the way the game is set out but to add more life to it. I installed a nature mod which beautifully adds nature back to the Commonwealth and makes it look like nature after the 200 plus years that had gone by had taken it all back. I love the mod, combined with a LOD mod it just looks beautiful strolling down a road that has been uprooted by the untouched tree roots that are spread around the Boston Wasteland. Other mods I had installed were Better Settlers with an alternate mod to add more clothing, armour and haircuts. This adds more randomly generated settlers that all look distinctively unique which helped with identifying each settler that joins your settlements. The last mod I installed was one that added more pre-war furniture that you’ll see in the screenshot below, I felt like I could really and truly personalise my place in Sanctuary, my favourite settlement to mess around with.
Fallout 4 with mods adds things to the game that Bethesda didn’t and I’m very grateful for that, I like how with just a couple mods I’ve turned it into the game that I wanted it to be and it has had me hooked. Enough about mods though, how does the vanilla gameplay hold up now in 2020? I’m enjoying it a lot I think the dialogue system is quite flawed this time round which when the game released many were not happy about it but it still adds enough options to give you a choice on how you’re going to act in the World.
The play-through I’m doing now is the Minuet Men choices, I have instantly refused to join the Institute this time around so I am getting ready for a big show-down with them and then, after all, that’s done I plan on exploration and settlement expansion. The story never felt like the highlight of this game, it’s good enough but I felt like it really ripped out a lot of the freedoms that Fallout 3 and especially New Vegas brought in but it is interesting enough to keep on going back and trying out different ways to tackle it. The gameplay I always felt that Fallout 4’s combat system was perfect, on consoles Fallout 3 and New Vegas’s combat was always difficult to get to grips with, I had to often use VATS to manage but in Fallout 4 the combat system for consoles and PC were vastly improved and quite satisfying as-well. The overall love for Fallout games for me though isn’t the campaign or gun-play, it’s the World that Bethesda and Obsidian managed to create. If anyone knows me they know I’m obsessed with apocalypse video games, the Fallout games always provided such vast and beautifully detailed worlds to explore with so many locations filled with exciting, horrifying and crazy lore items. Fallout 4 with an upgraded engine that feels like it has aged quite well makes exploration a lot of fun and even now I’m discovering new things that I had missed before and exploring the new DLC areas is all the more exciting when taking a different approach.
Fallout 4 feels like a game that has so much going for it and so much to do, obviously it’s still using Bethesda’s ancient old engine so there are still bugs, glitches and all sorts going on but it’s enjoyable to go back to. I love having it on PC as well, I feel that a mouse and keyboard makes it much easier to build this time around and combat is flawless using the combination. I love exploring the Wasteland on ultra settings with mods to make it look even better, I love how smooth it runs though I had to get a mod to fix the lag you get when going into Boston, a problem that was prevalent on both consoles and PC and still hasn’t been fixed properly. If you’re bored during the isolation period and have Fallout gathering dust somewhere, I recommend you get it back out and give it another go.
Nerdy Bird Games 