Fallout is one of those series that has managed to become an icon of gaming. Very few people who have gaming as a hobby will be unable to identify the famous Vault Boy and his iconic blue and yellow jumpsuit. With five games (Tactics and Brotherhood of Steel don’t count) having been released, and the series having gained mainstream attention and appeal with Fallout 3, the series is more popular than ever.
But I can’t help but look at the direction it’s going in with a sigh. Fallout is easily one of my favorite franchises, and it’s because of that that I say this. I don’t like where it’s going at all. It’s sacrificing a lot of what made it so good in recent installments, specifically Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. Those two games have very little of what makes Fallout so amazing.
What’s wrong with them?
Allow me to clarify something. I am not saying that Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 are bad games, they aren’t. There’s a lot of fun to be had in both of them, and 3 is what got me into the franchise in the first place. Heck, I still have a lot of fond memories of 3, especially the parts involving Liberty Prime. But they lack the incredibly deep world that the other games managed to build.
That’s the main problem with both 3 and 4, they’re very hollow worlds. Not from a gameplay perspective, there’s no end of things to do from a gameplay perspective. No, they’re hollow from a story perspective. The worlds they take place in feel like the scattered contents of a toy box. Plenty to play with and very little chance of being bored, but with little connectivity and structure.
How do they fail?
Simply put Fallout 3 and 4 don’t feel like living breathing worlds, like places that could actually happen, that people live in. They feel like loosely strung together areas and characters that were designed for fun gameplay scenarios and interesting visuals. It makes no sense at all to build a town around a giant atomic bomb, on an aircraft carrier that has no access to clean water, or a broken highway with no water or food. All of these happen in Fallout 3, however.
This brings me to my next point. The worlds of both of these games feel rather barren, more barren than they should be anyway. There doesn’t seem to be any attempts to grow food in 3, with the implication that humanity focuses on hunting and scavenging. While crop growing is present in 4, both games still have a problem with the settlements. All of them are small, isolated, don’t interact with each other, and do little outside of existing. They don’t feel like actual civilizations.
The people who live in these settlements aren’t much better. They rarely talk about anything that hasn’t directly affected them recently. In Fallout 3, barely anyone has anything to say about the sudden emergency of the Enclave, despite them being the most well equipped and trained faction in the area. As far as they seem to be concerned, the only world that exists is what they’ve seen with their eyes. Few seem concerned with what lays beyond that. These are people who survive, but don’t live.
The enemies only exasperate this even further. I swear, for every normal citizen in both games there are ten blood thirsty raiders lurking about. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. There’s no end of random monsters, robots, mutants and animals ready to kill you around every corner. It reminds me of one point early on in Fallout 4 when I was trying to track down Kellog and kept getting ambushed at every stop. Like clockwork. After I was attacked for the fifth time I couldn’t help but wonder how civilization was capable of surviving in the area. The area where the population seemed to be 10% normal people and 90% murderer. The game did not offer an adequate explanation.
How did the other games do it better?
Games that take place on the west coast have quite a few things that the east cost games don’t. First and most importantly is evolution. Fallout 1 was much like 3 and 4 in that many of the towns were small and isolated. Unlike them, the towns in Fallout 1 changed. Come Fallout New Vegas, the small town of Shady Sands has grown into the juggernaut that is the New California Republic. The raider bands that threatened to wipe them out have been driven to the breaking point. They’ve even defeated the Brotherhood of Steel, originally a contender for the strongest power in the wasteland, in direct warfare.
Herein lies the strength of the west coast games, and the weakness of the east ones. Fallout 1 is Fallout 1, Fallout 2 is Fallout 2, and Fallout New Vegas is Fallout New Vegas. Fallout 3 is Fallout 1, and Fallout 4 is also Fallout 1. From 1 to New Vegas, we saw the west coast grow and recover from the nuclear war. By New Vegas, even the untamed frontier of the Mojave had seen radical changes for the better. Paper money, printed propaganda posters, working electrical grids, plumbing, organized charity groups, thriving trade lines, sharecropping, irrigation, tourist towns, entertainment shows and cooperation between nations.
Fallout 3 and 4 have little of this, with it being clear that the only real growth that has occurred is the expansion of the Brotherhood of Steel in the gap between them. Aside from that, it’s just small scavenging towns, much like in Fallout 1, and arguably even more so. At least Fallout 1 had the technologically advanced Vault-City.
The enemies feel less like a never-ending swarm that make me feel like all settlements should have been overrun as well. While there are just as many enemies that want to kill you in Fallout New Vegas the reasons feel much more structured. As opposed to there being a never-ending swarm of bandits that make up the majority of the world’s population, there’s a massive hostile army invading the Mojave Wasteland. With there being a large presence of friendly soldiers to contrast against them.
Even then, oddly enough, the Legion seems to attack less often than bandits. The rest of the enemies rarely swarm you every ten seconds and are restricted to certain areas. Areas that make sense for them to be in. That way Radscorpions and Deathclaws don’t constantly pop out of nowhere. Bandits attack you on the road, animals off of the road, and the Legion attacks you when you are in their sphere of influence.
Conclusion?
Simply put, Fallout 3 and 4 feel like video game worlds. Not fully realized and fleshed out worlds. Something has gone horribly wrong when the Mojave Desert feels like it has more life than Boston and Washington D.C. But that’s what happened. It’s sad really. I would’ve liked to see the complex, interwoven workings in the Capital Wasteland and the Commonwealth. Sadly I probably never will.
I still have fun with Fallout 3 and 4, but to me Fallout New Vegas will always represent just how far the series has come and how it used to build on the foundation of older games. And how it just isn’t living up to those standards as much as it used to.
