If you gamers the first time you heard of Fallout 4 mostly thanks to the great media coverage and promotion in the months leading up to the release. And maybe you’ve even wondered what all the fuss. The answer is a few games have managed to combine complexity of RPGs open world, with a unique setting and a subtle humor bottom as the saga Fallout , which reached its highest expression with the third chapter, the first with 3D graphics. Fallout 3 has won fans around the world for the vast world to explore, find the narrative of the many side quests, the retro-futuristic and freedom – even “moral” – awarded to the player tackling the adventure. After half sequel less bright (albeit marked by a still wider world) undertaken by an external study, Fallout: New Vegas , the wait began to grow out for a new true fourth chapter. But with the resources of Bethesda facing the series The Elder Scrolls , many had lost hope. But today we are finally talking about Fallout 4 , announced a surprise last June in time for the E3 amid the joy of the fans, and the first game in the series to be produced for the console new generation.
The plot? If anything LE plots!
For the more distracted or novices respond first to the question: what Fallout 4 ? It’s a role-playing game, it shows the first or third person that throws us in post-apocalyptic devastated by nuclear war , in an alternate future in which everything seems to come from the ’50s and technological development has followed different tracks from the reality we know. The game is of the “open world” to indicate that the gamer is free to move around the world freely, exploring the vast map as he prefers and addressing the missions that will be assigned by the people he met and how when it sees fit. It is this freedom one of the aspects that has always made me appreciate the series, although at the same time is a very big challenge from the technical point of view, as you know who played the previous titles.
In Fallout can be anyone, even without a ruthless law.
Needless to dwell on the history of Fallout 4 : This is a video game that is measured hundreds of hours, with too many adventures to live them in the secondary couple weeks that we had available before publication, and get an idea of the overall system. The main narrative thread follows the / the Our / protagonist to go out for the first time since his anti-atomic shelter (Vault 111) by the end of the war, to find someone dear to him disappeared. He will find himself in Massachusetts post apocalyptic, now known as the Commonwealth, and will have to venture through the remains of Boston and the surrounding area talking to various groups fighting each other, settlements, mutated beasts and more. What we can say is that those who have already played the previous chapters will be perfectly at ease among Ghoul, Paladini Brotherhood of Steel, Super Mutants, and Deathclaw. All the others will come to know the world and its inhabitants without losing the game experience. And as usual there will be many side stories to follow, some simply as fragments that will spring up here and there in the fictional world to explore, in the form of messages on the terminals, and clues scattered throughout the contaminated area.
The charm of the end of the world
The environment continues to be the flagship of Fallout and in this case we can speak of perfect continuity with previous episodes. Indeed, the richest color palette and the greater depth of detail of the landscapes and settlements makes the post apocalyptic world even more fascinating. The new weather effects and lighting (like the morning mist or storms radioactive) make wandering through the ruins a wonderful experience.
La main town which we will explore this time is Boston, or rather what remains of it, but as the Washington of Fallout 3 was a conglomerate of macro closed and interconnected by the narrow places, here there is no interruption between the contaminated area and the peripheral map of the city that is free roaming in all its streets , including historical monuments and landmark faithful to Boston real.
Purtroppo, not that the graphics engine is so great: the characters, in particular, are made with a system of modeling and animation that is very rudimentary define and, with some exceptions, they seem mostly of dummies plastic. Similarly it is not that there is all this variety of textures, with the result that many buildings appear too similar to each other. The same can be said of what remains of vegetation, roads and all the morphological structures “generic”. That said, although they can not speak properly of graphic “next gen”, we are still light years ahead of Fallout 3 and actually everything does not detract from what is the real game that conquest for another.
In the scenes of dialogue graphic detail of the characters reaches level a bit ‘embarrassing for a game in 2015.
The impression that we have made is really to play a Fallout 3.5 and while it maybe Bethesda has gone a bit ‘too safe (it must be said that the development has started well before the launch of the new console), the news there. The most important is the crafting system with which we had to play a lot more than we could initially think . Each settlement similar to our cause has a workshop that allows you to build just about anything: buildings, barricades, defense systems, basic resources (water, food, electricity), until you get to furniture and decorations. In practice you can build a real village “recycling” rubble, ruins and literally whatever it happens under fire.
Lo same goes for weapons and armor, which can be completely customized and upgraded with parts of objects that we find for the contaminated area and by developing the right skills while going up a level. It is easy to spend even more than half an hour without noticing to a workbench only to build a gun from a gun or patch our armor to make it more resistant.
Few changes, the most welcome
The other change concerns the growth of character. Bethesda did not follow the road of Skyrim, which was equipped with an automatic leveling, where the skills were developed simply by using them, but remained faithful to the SPECIAL, an acronym that identifies the seven main attributes: Strength (Strength) , Perception (Perception), Endurance (Constitution), Charisma (Carisma), Intelligence (Intelligence), Agility (Agility) and Luck (Fortuna) .
The legendary Pip-Boy, the old know who follows Fallout long, now you also app for smartphones.
At higher level we will get the points that we can spend to improve one of these attributes, or unlock special abilities related to the same. All these skills are visible at once in a table that initially may also overwhelm the player with the available options, but just a few hours of the game to understand what is immediately according to our style. And compared to before there is a limit to the growth of your character: there is no limit level, and potentially you can get all abilities. True enough time to spend.
The tablella talent to develop. In the early hours of the game you can also be intimidated.
it was finally revised the typical combat system VATS in Fallout 3 and New Vegas froze time and allowed the player to select the points where hit opponents by blocking the action. Here, time slows down and instead we will still be affected when we decide which part of the body attack, while they move, and they may be more vulnerable when we completed our selection.
Allo same time has become more feasible approach combat as in a normal FPS , although the temptation to resort to the VATS It is always high and the easiest way out of the most challenging in the clashes. Speaking of fighting, is also the usual shortcut RPG Bethesda: once properly developed stealth and some special abilities that give bonuses in the event of a surprise attack, will soon become a breeze to get rid of 80% of the enemies, even the most dangerous.
Fallout 4 in a word: a drug
Let’s say that fans probably already knew: despite the many advances Fallout 4 from a purely technical point of view is not that dramatic leap forward that perhaps many expected . The game was developed more on the basis of Creation Engine already used for Skyrim on the previous generation of consoles, which means, beyond the graphic, that many of the “woodiness” of that title (in turn inherited from the engine Fallout 3 and Oblivion), can be found verbatim in this new chapter: loadings area sometimes unnerving, bugs of various types of the first hour and in general, the graphics disappointing in some ways, when compared with the best titles of this era. All very true, but, and here’s the catch, also all very irrelevant : because eventually Fallout 4 is a real pleasure to play for hundreds of hours and the perfect continuation of the previous chapters. Fallout is one of those games that completely sucks the player in a fictional world, losing the sense of real time, with the risk of finding after several hours still glued to the joypad. You may have the feeling they’ve had enough after a long session, but we assure you that after a few hours away from the console or PC, you already want to ributtarvi in the contaminated area.
Every street of Boston is explored and every alleyway hides a surprise. Just enough to lose hours and hours just to know every corner.
Even with all its faults, Fallout 4 is a game that offers something for every type of player and so much material to be discovered. Just the taste of ‘ exploration, to discover all the subplots and now also to shape the world with its buildings, means that there is always something to do in Fallout 4 , also paradoxically relax more and staying in the game, taking a break from the quests that you are following at some point to return to their base and add some new structure, improve the distribution of energy, reorganize its inventory and so on. The biggest flaw, if you will, is the mechanical nature of many quests, that often boil down to follow the indicator of the map, talk to a character (the dialogue system in particular was perhaps too simplified than in the past), go to a new destination possibly infested with enemies and bring an object to the character of departure. But the approach also depends on the player. You can also never follow the map and get carried away by instinct, with the risk of ending up in an area but not yet up to its possibilities.
If the interior of the buildings “generic” are rather repetitive, those where occur important plain narrative are in contrast very detailed.
Fallout gives its best in the many small details that make the real world in its own way. An arc (following some small spoilers, be warned) begins after just overheard a conversation between citizens of Diamond City and will lead us to turn from the main monuments of Boston in search of clues that will allow us to contact one of the factions most elusive Commonwealth. The alleys of the city are dotted with billboards pre-apocalypse meticulously maintained, while the terminals or on notes and journals scattered around the world can learn about everyday stories of the inhabitants before and after the war. In larger settlements you will discover relationships of any kind between their inhabitants, that often, if you take the trouble to dig deeper, hiding a few secrets.
Ultimately Fallout 4 So convincing in what is its primary mission: to provide dozens of hours of entertainment and no matter whether on a technical level there is the shooting forward that perhaps many asked in Bethesda. The fun is still assured. If you want a game to put under the tree, Fallout 4 should be high on your list.
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