On November 10, Bethesda Game Studios released their fifth installment in the Fallout series. Fallout 4 is a huge open-world single-player RPG in which the player traverses the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Boston in a quest to find their child, Shaun, and to avenge their spouse’s death.
Along the way, the player can partake in optional side quests and events to boost their skills and upgrade their arsenal of weaponry. There are over 250 progression perks for the player to unlock, creating a complex environment in which the player can enjoy months of entertainment.
Fallout 4 boasts over 111,000 lines of dialogue, 50 base guns, 700 modifications to those guns, and 12 companions the player can recruit to help them along in the journey.
All this is a major boost in gameplay over the last Fallout game, Fallout: New Vegas, which was released in 2010. The newest game also uses the Creation engine, which was used in Bethesda’s previous major release, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The Creation engine allows for a more diverse environment, as well as bettering the graphics of the game. The engine also allows players to modify their game through downloadable mods that change the new Fallout in various ways such as new guns, new areas, or even new game mechanics.
Even though Fallout 4 came with a nasty amount of bugs, many of which remain unsolved, it still sold approximately 13.2 million copies on its first day of release, grossing $750 million in shipped sales. (The game was so highly anticipated by consumers that adult website Pornhub reported that traffic to the site dropped by a noticeable 10 percent the day the game was released, presumably because people were too busy playing the game to be playing with themselves).
Bethesda has created another fantastic blockbuster game and hopefully their next one is just as impactful as this one.