#tbwednesday

It’s been 2 years since Fallout 4 originally released. My hardware at the time could not run the game, so due to my own self, I remained in complete isolation from information of the game. For these two years, the only thing I knew about Fallout 4 was that it existed, was made by Bethesda and that fateful picture of the Red Rocket garage. That was it. I knew nothing else of the game until recently, when I got sufficient hardware to run the game.

Now, usually, when I play video games I’m pretty detached. I create a character that looks nice, usually female, and just play nice and easy. Fallout 4, though, felt somewhat different. I felt at ease creating a character that I somewhat related to. Hell, I think I took the whole intro worse than the character whose fate happened in the virtual world, yet I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Couldn’t get over it. But my character seemed fine (or so my dialogue options led out to be that way). Either way, I felt engaged in a way I haven’t done that in a fallout game in quite a while.

I don’t consider myself the most knowledgeable Fallout fan. I don’t consider myself the most die-hard fan, but I damn well felt like I was something when the game presented me this. I was already in an emotional spiral when the game hammered the nostalgia super-sledge onto my jaw.

This year is the 9th anniversary since Fallout 3 was released. It was when I first got it and when I first popped it into my disk tray, install that dreaded Games for Windows Live and play my worries away. I haven’t had played anything of the same caliber. Learning a new weapon system, a new inventory system, hell, even new navigation methods, as the other competitors Fallout 3 had in time for me were linear first person shooters.

I still remember the first time I encountered ghouls. I entered a train tunnel. There was virtually no sound, and the ambiance music was gone. I could hear my computer running, and my pipboy whenever I opened it up. It was almost pitch black and I froze in place. I knew something was wrong but I kept pressing forward. That was until I heard the horrifying shriek of the ghouls over in the distance. With a panic I stopped and aimed my gun at anything moving, but this only proved to be worse as I was soon to be surrounded by those abominations. 

I panicked. I tried run outside and as soon as one of them did damage to me, I paused the game. I let my weeping voice come to an end and I exited the game. As a kid, this was the scariest thing I ever witnessed and I seriously considered reading the PEGI ratings on game boxes to influence my future purchase options.

Fallout 4 forced me to think this way again. Even in New Vegas this hadn’t happened. Ghouls were annoying and scary if in numbers, but I never felt this helpless. Even in the early game. Ghouls, in Fallout 4, were a force to be reckoned with once again. I didn’t panic and leave the game as I did as I was a kid, but it left me in such a way that I jerked my mouse whenever I heard the iconic screech and darted my eyes around the screen as if looking for the boogeyman. The new ‘zombie’ and ‘horde mentality’ meant that if one came, there were more following. It was a blast to the past.

Another thing that I very well remember is learning how to play the game. The guns felt different than everything I’ve ever played, back in Fallout 3 era. Finding ammo in containers? Finding WEAPONS in containers? Hell, having to even repair them? Hell, this idea was so alien to me you could’ve just said the game was entirely programmed by monkeys and I would have bought it, if the information came alongside the features. And not to mention melee weapons, the games I’ve played had so little of them, I thought it was insane to see the melee arsenal available at one’s will. (Then I got disheartened by melee weapons because I never got any points in that skill.)

Fallout 4, once more, made me re-learn the weapon system. While I have no doubt Obsidian would’ve worked on the gun play would them have more time, I feel like the new system is fantastic. The weapons certainly feel the way they shoot and the melee fighting is a whole lot more satisfying. It no longer feels a mash-em-up, and it has real parrying with real staggering, which I felt was... hard to get used to, but a very nice addition nonetheless. The finisher moves were also a hidden surprise for me, not because they existed, but because on how seamless they were compared to the game. Just a nice little addition, I thought I’d mention. 

In short, it was just a whole new system of delays, melee staggering and whatever subjective quirk each weapon category had, it was new and fresh. VATS finally became what I thought it was meant to be all these years: a small side-play feature. With its relative ‘nerf’ and the reward by simply using the weapons, I feel like I rely less on VATS to do all of the shooting/maiming.

And finally, the way Fallout 3 still surprised me even after throwing a bunch of shit at me. By the end of it, I thought I had seen it all. Mastered the Capital Wasteland, got me a healthy amount of caps, consumables and ammunition, I thought I had seen it all. From the disgusting bloatfly to the Deathclaw, I thought the game was finished with me.

That was, until, they presented the last mission... and Liberty Prime. Once they hoisted that son-of-a-gun off the Pentagon blew my mind like an Atomic Wrangler hooker blows a low standards gentleman. Fighting alongside it, both in the vanilla game AND in Broken Steel made my child self the most awestruck I ever remember.

Fallout 4 replicated this. Although it did not wait until the end of the game, it managed to replicate this feeling. The Prydwen. The giant Brotherhood of Steel ship that appears after the fateful meeting with Kelogg. Once I exited the fort, I immediately locked into my pipboy in the hopes to teleport quickly to Sanctuary Hills, to repair my power armor and drop off the crap I was carrying. It wasn’t until I read the message “You can’t fast travel in this location” that I left the pipboy and looked around. And there it was. The flying hulking behemoth of a ship, broadcasting its ‘peaceful message’. I just stood there, walking around, leading Nick Valentine into a senseless ‘Mary around the roses’ circle. The only words I could ever muster in that moment were “Holy” and “shit”, respectively.