With the Nov. 10 release of “Fallout 4” just around the corner, there’s just under a week left between us and the scattered remnants of Massachusetts’ post-apocalyptic civilization. Those with $59.99 to spare will be playing Bethesda’s newest title just in time to nuke their final exams, while the rest of us may have a shot at getting in on the action later this holiday season. Either way, “Fallout 4” is jam packed with over 400 hours of gameplay and 111,000 lines of dialogue ready to swallow your entire winter vacation like a Deathclaw tearing into an unsuspecting mole rat.
Adding to this already intimidating prospect, according to Official Xbox Magazine “Fallout 4” will have no skill cap and a “perk-ception” leveling system with 275 options similar to the branching ability constellations in “Skyrim.” Achieving 100 percent game completion might annihilate you IRL, but it can be done.
Amongst the return of V.A.T.S., rideable vehicles and craftable weapons, the chance to build your own settlements and travel with Dogmeat, your very own canine companion, have definitely been the most hyped features in “Fallout 4.” As an avid fan of the city simulation genre, I can’t wait to start my very own post-apocalyptic society or even just build a cabin in the radiation blasted woods.
Based on the trailers, “Fallout 4” seems likely to send you in pursuit of your lost child and partner, a deliberate reversal of “Fallout 3’s” find-dad plot, so it would be a good idea to have a home base to shelter them from raiders and mutants later on in the game. That is, assuming Bethesda has a heart and they made it into Vault 111 with you.
Beyond that, the list of exciting “Fallout 4” features continues without end. The character creation system allows players to mold their face by hand, a huge step up over the plastic surgery horror stories that passed for human in previous “Fallout” games. There’s also been word of multiple romantic subplots, which is difficult to imagine succeeding with “Fallout 3’s” painfully stilted dialogue, but could really go somewhere if Bethesda is finally ready to compete with the “Mass Effect” series’ top tier voice acting.
Amid so much promise, the one “feature” fans might doubt the developer’s ability to deliver on is “Fallout 4’s” supposed lack of backwards dragons and contortionist NPCs. Game breaking glitches have been a Bethesda staple up until now, but their next-gen iteration of the Creation Engine used in “Skyria” is supposed to fix all that. If the dramatic improvement in character design and environmental quality is anything to go by, the Creation Engine just might do the trick and even if it doesn’t “Fallout 4’s” breakdancing corpses will still be kinda beautiful.
Kimberly Armstrong is a staff writer for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at kimberly.armstrong@uconn.edu.
