The protagonist is still more or less a blank state (male characters gets two or three sentences of backstory, his wife gets even less) and a limited number of choices (combined with the fact that the options given to you are often non-descriptive: you never know why your character will ‘hate newspapers’ or ‘support the news’ and ‘sarcastic’ can mean anything from a little joke to an insult) means that creating your own character based on Bethesda’s template is rather difficult. The protagonist is now voiced and your dialog options are reduced to what fits on a dialog wheel but there’s absolutely no point in doing that as unlike protagonists from Witcher series or even modern Bioware games, the game’s more directed approach does not result in a strong, defined character. It is temtping to call Fallout 4’s approach ‘experimental’ but in reality, it’s more like a cargo cult. Fallout 4 might have some feelings for Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Destiny, Borderlands, Minecraft and Mass Effect but they’re ultimately shallow and superficial. This is another great metaphor for the game itself as it constantly flirts with different ideas but it doesn’t commit to any of them. Occasionally, your romantic partners will criticize you for flirting with other people but for the most part they don’t care if you cheat on them, they don’t care if you leave them and even if they care, you can regain their trust by travelling with them for about five minutes. In Fallout 4, you can romance your companions and a few NPCs.
#Fallout 4 most popular faction mods#
This mechanic serves as a perfect metaphor for the game’s identity crisis: in that it has some recognizable Fallout features but they’re buried underneath unrelated elements taken from different popular games and a few mods without much rhyme or reason. As for clothing, it will usually be your Vault jumpsuit as most clothing you find is inferior to it. Pieces of armor are usually bought or salvaged from enemies and as a result, you’ll rarely wear a single set, instead mixing and matching elements as you go. This time, it’s composed of six independent pieces worn over the character’s clothes. In Fallout 4, armor works different than in every single Fallout game before it.