Fallout 4 and the importance of pacing...
Fallout 4 is free for Playstation Plus members on the PS5, so I thought I’d give it a whirl for a couple of hours. Unfortunately, I found it to be a shallow game put together by hacks. I know that sounds harsh, so let me explain.
The start of the game was promising, showing what life was like right before the bombs started to fall. The game doesn’t spend too much time on the tutorial before getting into the action, which I appreciated. Your child is taken, spouse shot and killed, you are released so you can get revenge. A nice and short starting rationale for a murder spree, a la John Wick. The starting dungeon is setup nicely for you to learn the controls and combat with enemies that aren’t too deadly. This is also where you can access part of the storyline and find out that the vault system was really created to experiment on social groups and psychologically mess with people, which is a non-sensical piece of the lore I always fucking hated, but I digress.
Now comes the hack writing part of the game. I left the first dungeon, found a robot that gave exposition dumps, explored the remnants of the MC’s town, and the next 30 minutes I was railroaded into events designed by a committee of attention-deficit sufferers.
- Do you like crafting? Here is a crafting bench and some recipes. Hop to it.
- Marketing tells us that the dog companion in previous Fallout games was a big hit. Have a dog.
- Look, we are giving you a shack that can act as a crafting and storing base right outside a town. Never know if you might need that.
- Oh noes! The path led you down a narrow street where raiders are attacking a museum and someone is yelling at you for help. No, you can’t choose whether or not to join the raiders or to quietly back away and go somewhere else, since now they are also attacking you and you have a new quest to save the museum and a person you have no reason to care about. Maybe the museum dude is an asshole and deserves what is coming to him. No time for questions, though, since you are being attacked. You should have plenty of weapons and ammo by now, so go help!
This is what I mean by Fallout 4’s pacing issues. The game starts promising, but the rail roading goes for too long and the speed of inputs and events are thrown at you too quickly with little chance to absorb the world around you. I can’t help but wonder if the frantic Borderlands franchise had a negative impact on the game design or whether these were marketing decisions who believe that their casual audience need to have shiny objects and jangled keys put in front of them every few minutes.
For a reference, I decided to start up Fallout New Vegas since it was also free for Playstation Plus members. The game’s premise is even simpler than Fallout 4. You are a courier carrying a package. You are shot, robbed of the package, and left for dead. You survive and are looking for revenge and to finish your mission. As soon as you get through character creation and a brief tutorial, you are advised to meet with some locals, but you can go in any direction you want.
Meeting with the locals helps you better learn combat and also gives you a few meager resources, such as a rifle, ammunition, and some coin. Bethesda never learned this in Fallout 3 or Fallout 4, but the game is better when the world seems to still be depopulated and struggling. You can walk outside the initial settlement without encountering a person, but there is dangerous wildlife outside of the worn roads. This gives a feeling of an environment of desolation and ruin, which sets the tone for the player. In comparison, Fallout 4 doesn’t give the player time to settle in and soak up the setting. You go from pre-bomb era to running to a shelter to headshot to your spouse to ruined settlement then new dog and then firefight. The pacing of events kills the ability to sense the environs of the world. Ironically, Fallout 4 manages to stay busier than New Vegas while simultaneously feeling as lifeless as a plastic toy.
