Bethesda openings are an odd breed. They’re undeniably iconic, with the wagon ride in Skyrim and the vault sequence in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fallout 3 having long lodged themselves in our gamer brains forever. And yet, on repeat pla⛦ythroughs, we hate them. Some of the most popular mods for these games let you alter the intro or skip it altogether, speedꦇing you up to the bit where you can actually start playing the game.

So, it’s little surprise that Bethesda eventually learned its lesson, and kept 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fallout 4’s opening mercifully short. You’re introduced to your nuclear family, and then five minutes later, the atomic bombs are dropping and everyone’s family goes nuclear. The vaul𒊎t sequence, if we can even call it that, is over in a flash, and the tutorial is instead woven into the main game, with each mechanic getting introduced whenever you stumble across it.

That is about the only nice thing I can say about Fallout 4’s opening moments, because having gone back for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the new update, a♔ll it’s done is highlight the game’s greatest flaws.

What Fallout 4's Opening Few Hours Get Wrong

Fallout 4 is a great shooter with a prettyꦇ enouౠgh sandbox to run around in. But as I free my first settlement and take on some bad guys, all I see is every poor design decision held under a microscope, accentuated by pop-ups on screen giving me advice on how to shoot my way through all of its problems. Nothing exemplifies this more than your first tussle with raiders.

This scuffle takes place shortly after leaving your vault, as the game directs you towards the nearby town of Concord. Here, you find the fir𓃲st human beings you’ve seen since surviving the apocalypse and they immediately open fire.

Whatever you do, these raiders cannot be reasoned with. They’re not part of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:any faction and they don’t even have names. You don’t know why they’re in a gunfight with Preston Garvey and the settlers he’s protecting, and you can’t stop to find out. So you sure as hell can’t join them. Thꦡe raiders could have been ghouls or radroaches, and nothing would have changed. They don’t teach you anything about the world, or what kind of civilisation you’ve woken up to. All they teach you is to always keep your hand on your gun.

Later down the line, a terminal entry reveals that the raiders were sent to kidnap Mama Murphy for their leader, so he could use her ability to read the future. I love this, it's a neat twist, and gives this one group of generic raiders an actual purpose. But that makes the inability to talk with them all the more baffling.

That's the thing with Bethesda's storytelling - it's like a cool story is happening around you. You're simultaneously the all-important leader every faction is vying for, and a glorified camera person who watches everyone else have fun. This is what Concord teaches you. You’re the Minutemen's saviour, but you have no say in the matter.

This should be a pivotal moment for our character, just as it was in Fallout 3 when we escaped Vault 101. In a matter of hours, your home has been ripped away, your child🐭 kidnapped, and the world as you knew it is a desolate wasteland. You’re running around aimlessly to find someone who can help you, and 𒁃instead, you run into raiders. But this isn’t a moment for learning about the world and its people. Raiders are just raiders. Their purpose in the game is to be something to shoot at, and your purpose is to do the shooting. But they could and should be something more.

Fallout 4 Should Have Learned From Fallout: New Vegas' Opening

This is worlds away from how Fallout has handled these kinds of encounters before. Both the first game and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:New Vegas have very similar openings, with the first settlements also coming into conflict with raiders. Except t✱hey’re not called raiders, they’re actual factions full of actual people.

Take New Vegas, for example. Here, you spend some time in Goodsprings, learning the game mechanics and making some caps. Then, tensions flare between the locals and a nearby gang of escaped convicts, the Powder Gangers. They send one o💛f their guys to harass the local leader into handing over a caravaner that’s holed up in town.

From here, you have a variety of options. You can walk away, and decide it’s none of your business. You’re a stranger, after all, and you’ve got your own mission. No one expects you to do anything. Or, you can use a bunch of different skill checks (explosions, speech and barter - remember them?) to inspire locals into building a militia and fighting back. Or, you can side with the gang, and wipe out the town in return fo⭕r safer passage throughout Powder Ganger territory, even u♚nlocking further quests down the line.

This s﷽ets up the rest of the game beautifully. Not only do you get a taste of combat, but you get to use the skills you’ve given your character through dialogue to unlock new paths forward. Most importantly, it introduces you to the setting of the Mojave, as you learn that many of the enemies you come across won’t be randomly generated baddies, but actual factions who are affected by the reputation you build.

With this setup, New Vegas still gets to have the raider factions that randomly attack you, but it never makes them feel like generic enemies like in Fallout 4. Take the other gangs,🐈 the Vipers and Fiends. Both are automatically hostile like Fallout 4’s lot, but it’s clear why. Vipers set up ambushes on the road, planting landmines and jumping on unsuspecting targets as they make their way to Vegas. You’re a lone traveller who’s sprung the trap as they planned, it makes sense that they can’t be reasoned with. You have nothing to offer them alive.

You quickly find out that these raiders are thriving because the lawmakers in the Mojave, the NCR, are stretched too thin. Their orders are to divert all of their time and resources into fighting 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the Legion, leaving nothing to help small towns. In the first NCR outpost you come across, they’re not letting caravaners leave becaus💦e they can&rs🦩quo;t guarantee their safety. You see that they have more than enough resources to keep the roads safe, they’re just not authorised to use them.

Fallout 4 doesn’t set anything up like this. The wasteland is dangerous because the wasteland is dangerous, and no one is making any attempts to change that. Even the Minutemen, the closest we have to anyone who cares about this issue, aren’t too fussed. Their idea of civilisation is a handful of settlements made of garbage, with no consideration for how people are sup🐼posed to trav🐈el between them. Distance was everything in New Vegas, dictating how locals lived their lives, and how bad guys attack the vulnerable. In 4, it doesn’t exist.

As a result, in just a few hours, Fallout 4 has given me a huge map that feels small. There’s no logic or life to it, just NPCs going through the motions. Sure, shooting in Fallout 4 is better than any game before it, but that shouldn't have come at the expense of worldbuilding.

I know my time with Fallout 4 will improve, especially as I meet more of the factions, but the game’s failure to set this up makes their inclusion in the story feel as random and disjointed as the settlements that litter the Commonwealth. I hope 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fallout 5 has grander aims than this and doesn’t just rely on a few fun game mechanics to ꩲcarry the experience forward.

Next

How Can Fallout 76's Multiplayer Still Be This Bad?

After s✱ix years you'd think you could actually play this multiplayer game🧸 with your friends.

Posts 168澳洲幸运5开奖网: ﷽