#OLMGamer- A Wasteland Experience Like No Other in Fallout 4

In-game screenshots taken by Isabel Payne. All rights belong to Bethesda Softworks.

After almost a year after its release, does the post-apocalypse game Fallout 4 live up to the hype? The answer is a big bold and italicized YES! After over 140 hours of exploring irradiated ruins, fighting horrifying mutated creatures and rescuing settlements, Bethesda’s post-apocalypse RPG lives up to the intense hype it built after its announcement at last year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo.

As a huge fantasy RPG fan, I’ve always loved exploring the different landscapes like lush forests and seeing all the different creatures and settlements. The idea of trading in my spells and swords for guns (and the occasional board with a nail through it), as well as playing in what seemed like an empty and dead wasteland was unappealing. After a little convincing I gave Fallout 3 a shot and a few days later, I found myself over 20 hours into the game, settling in as a resident of Megaton and constantly reloading the game to keep my loyal pooch Dogmeat alive. Next, I was racing around the Mojave Desert in Fallout: New Vegas with my robo-dog Rex, battling Ceasar’s Legion and a gang of old ladies with rolling pins. In the latest instalment, Fallout 4 brings you to the Commonwealth, a wasteland that was once Boston. Play as the Sole Survivor in a hunt for your son which begins as a simple quest but quickly turns into something much more complex.

When Fallout 4 was announced for current-gen consoles, I was ecstatic to see what all the same quirks and humour of Bethesda’s previous Fallout games were included, along with a whack-tonne of awesome extras. One thing that really caught my attention was how customizable this game is compared to previous Fallout games. Players who want to start playing right away can choose from the default faces and body types, or if you’re like me, you can spend huge amounts of time making sure your character looks just the way you want them to. Fallout 4’s character customization is so vast that people have managed to create in-game versions of popular tv show characters or real life celebrities.

Customization in Fallout 4 goes beyond character creation. Instead of scavenging around for ammo and stimpacks, you’ll find yourself excited to find some tin cans or crazy glue. You can level up your character with specific perks (there are 278 in total) and use them to create mods for your weapons and armor. You can now also build new settlements using scrap materials found across the Commonwealth and recruit settlers to live and work there. It’s only in Fallout 4 where I can kick butt while still embracing my feminine side. My character’s fabulous armour comes in the form of a red sequin dress modified with ballistic weave, and I’ve been known to take down Deathclaws in power armour decked-out with bright pink flames.

For music lovers, the game also contains an excellent soundtrack that comes with a vast amount of variation. Choose Diamond City Radio for music from and similar to Fallout 3’s Galaxy News Radio. For something a little different, you can make your adventures a little more pleasant and your battles a lot more epic with Classical Radio, or simply enjoy some radio dramas with Silver Shroud Radio. If you get sick of the radio, however, the ambient soundtrack, composed by the amazing Inon Zur (who also did Fallout 3, Fallout Tactics, Fallout: New Vegas, and the first two Dragon Age games) is, simply put, gorgeous and perfectly captures the atmosphere of the game.

Beyond customization are the endless hours you can spend exploring the vast Commonwealth. The map is packed full of fun Easter eggs and secrets like the Swan at Boston Commons or the siren at Lynn Woods, which makes exploration actually worth it and a whole lot more fun. While there aren’t many huge settlements, it is still fun to find them and explore all the shops and quests within them. One thing I found about the main quest itself is that they can be conflicting in terms of faction quests. While the game notifies you at certain points that proceeding with a quest will make you enemies with another faction, it doesn’t always tell you. Saving often solves this issue. The fact that you can do quite a bit of each faction’s quest line also motivates me less to replay the game to see the different outcomes.

Fallout 4 already has five DLCs to enhance your experience with the game. Nuka-World, the final DLC for Fallout 4 which was released on August 30^th and looks like it’ll be one heck of a good time.