Fallout 4 Review - IGN (2024)

Most of the way this huge roleplaying-shooter game works is carried over from its excellent predecessors, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. It is the Skyrim to Fallout 3’s Oblivion, if you will – it iterates on the previous game’s already amazing systems, and it’s similarly dense with locations to explore, genuinely creepy monsters to fight, and superbly engrossing post-nuclear atmosphere that blends unsettling gore and death with dark comedy. After more than 55 hours played I may have seen an ending, yet I feel like I’ve only begun to explore its extraordinary world; from the look of it, I’ll easily be able to spend another 100 happy hours here and still see new and exciting things.

Watch the first 20 minutes of Fallout 4 above.

A story that begins as a basic search for your lost family evolves into something much more complex and morally nuanced. Like in Fallout: New Vegas, we’re drawn into a struggle between several groups competing for control of the region, and deciding which of their imperfect post-apocalyptic philosophies to align with made me pause to consider how I wanted events to play out. Even the highly questionable Institute has a tempting reason to side with them, and turning away from them in my playthrough wasn’t as clear-cut a choice as I’d expected. I was impressed by the sympathy shown toward the villains, too - even the most irredeemable murderer is explored and given a trace of humanity.

Mega(Bos)ton

The main story isn’t nearly as gripping an attraction as the huge number of well-written side quests.

“

Of course, as is the tradition with developer Bethesda Game Studios’ open-world RPGs, the main story isn’t nearly as gripping an attraction as the huge number of well-written side quests you’ll come across just by wandering through the ruins of the Boston area, now known as The Commonwealth. I found it difficult to complete even the most basic point-A-to-point-B task without being sidetracked at least twice by enticing detours. An abandoned comic book publisher office? How can I not explore it? Boston’s famous Fenway Park? Gotta see what’s become of that. A crumbling high school with heads on pikes outside? I bet there’s great loot in there! Practically tripping over new discoveries like this, I feel like a kid on Easter whose parents are bad at hiding the candy.

Watch a 24-hour time lapse above.

Attention to detail is evident everywhere.

“

Exploration has its own rewards, as this is the most diverse Fallout world yet, with dilapidated urban areas, ominous dead forests, eerie swamps, a desolate area mired in a hellish radioactive haze, and even some areas that look borderline hospitable like beaches and budding farms. The Commonwealth’s much more color-saturated than Fallout 3’s Capital Wasteland, though it has its fair share of grays and browns, and it shares New Vegas’ bright blue sky (as opposed to oppressive clouds) when it’s not night time or raining or green with a terrifying radiation storm. It’s often beautiful. Attention to detail is evident everywhere – Fallout 4 might not be a leader in all areas of graphics technology (character animations are still a weakness) but from the intricate Pip-Boy wrist-computer interface (which completely changes when you’re in power armor), to careful arrangement of skeletal remains that tell the tragically dark or tragically funny stories of long-dead characters, to tattered poster art on the walls, to even raindrops on your visor (if you’re wearing one) it’s consistently impressive.

Over Powered

Perhaps because this adventure is such a long haul, Fallout 4 is a bit overeager to hook us in the beginning. After a brief glimpse of pre-war life in Fallout’s familiar-but-strange near-future and a retelling of the events on the day the bombs fell in 2077, we barely have time to get our hands dirty in the post-apocalyptic era before Fallout 4 throws us into a big action moment: You’re given a suit of the big, stompy power armor and a heavy weapon, and put into an intense brawl against the series’ most iconic monster.

Above: Vault IGN discusses the first things we'll do in Fallout 4.

It Builds Character

The decision of what to do with the single point you get each level has a significant impact.

“

One of the first things a returning Fallout player will notice after creating a character with the intuitive push-and-pull face-sculpting tool is that the entire concepts of skill points and traits have been consumed by the perks system, unifying all character progression under one big, elaborately animated Vault Boy chart with so many unlockable options you have to scroll through them to see them all. While this streamlining does mean giving up a lot of minute control over where your character improves with each level, it also means the decision of what to do with the single point you get each level has a significant impact, and therefore those decisions represent a commitment and are tough to make: do you want to spend it on a new low-level perk, increase the level of an existing one, or pump it into a SPECIAL attribute like Luck to boost certain stats and also open up a new, more powerful perk, like the Mysterious Stranger, that you’ll be able to unlock with your next level?

Watch the Fallout 4 Launch Trailer above.

These might be more general, jack-of-all-trades types than previous Fallout character builds, in that you generally don’t have any crippling deficiencies, but they definitely have their distinguishing features that’ll make one playthrough feel different from the next. And before you lament it as a “dumbing down” of Fallout’s overall complexity, turn your eye to the new crafting and equipment progression system, which has picked up the slack by becoming vastly more complicated and interesting.

One Man’s Trash

Fallout 4’s crafting system gives even more motivation to compulsively collect everything that isn’t nailed down.

“

As if I didn’t already have enough of a hoarding problem, Fallout 4’s crafting system gives even more motivation to compulsively collect everything that isn’t nailed down. It’s so easy, too - grabbing things out of containers happens quickly in window that pops up when you look over it. Every item in the world is made up of material components, most of which you can intuitively guess: bottles are needed for glass, a desk fan will provide you with steel and gears, and a roll of duct tape is worth its weight in gold. I once went on a desperate search for pencils so that I could extract the lead they contained to use for radiation shielding. (Apparently Fallout's alternate universe never switched to graphite.) Nothing is worthless junk, which means that managing the weight of your inventory is a constant series of agonizing decisions of what to take with you and what to leave behind.

Above: Catch up on the Fallout universe in (a little over) 5 minutes.

Nearly every modification you make is reflected in the look of your gun.

“

The value of those materials comes from their use in the fantastic equipment upgrades, which give most guns you pick up extraordinary potential for flexibility and longevity. Stopping at a crafting bench with the right components in hand can turn a pistol into a short-range, pray-and-spray automatic or a scoped sniper with a long barrel for accuracy and a big stock to reduce recoil. A few tweaks to a standard-issue laser rifle can add burning damage over time, or split the beam into a shotgun-like spread. The best part is that those changes aren’t just tweaked numbers in the stats; nearly every modification you make is reflected in the look of your gun as well, creating an extremely varied selection of weapons both for you and for enemies.

Post-Apoca-Chic

Likewise, the new armor system lets you piece together six chunks of gear - helmet, chest plate, and each individual arm and leg - on top of your clothes to form cobbled-together, asymmetrical outfits that feel like exactly what someone who assembled their wardrobe by scavenging the wasteland should wear. The suit my character wears now has at least one piece from each major faction, reflecting both his allegiances and his victories over foes. And of course, armor can be upgraded using collected materials as well, though it sadly doesn’t have as dramatic a cosmetic effect as with weapons.

The armor system suffers from some inconsistency: several times I was a little bit heartbroken to find a new outfit like a tuxedo or a Halloween costume, but couldn’t use them as the foundation of a new custom-built look. Only certain jumpsuits can have pauldrons and shin guards strapped onto them, it seems, and no distinction is made in the item description.

Another major change to personal protection is that Fallout’s distinctive power armor behaves almost like a walking tank that you climb into and out of (with a great Iron Man-style animation as it closes around you) instead of wearing like clothes, and its fuel is a limited resource you have to find in the world. It’s a bold design move that makes these hulks’ appearance on the battlefield feel like a big event. However, since it’s always just a fast-travel away, in practice, having to run and grab it when the going got tough became more of an inconvenience than anything - two loading screens between you and resuming the fight. It also forces you to use fast-travel to conserve fuel, which would mess with a no-fast-travel play style. But I do love how every piece of the armor can be individually damaged, repaired, upgraded, customized, or even swapped out for other models.

Watch us unbox the Limited Pip-Boy Edition above.

All those upgrades are a great way to keep a favorite piece of gear useful long after its original weak stats would’ve led you to sell it off to a junk dealer for a handful of caps. Letting you name those items yourself is a great touch, too - I have fond memories of my adventures with my trusty long double-barrel shotgun, Ol’ Shooty.

I changed my playstyle to take advantage of the bonuses Legendary items offer.

“

On top of that, loot has been punched up in a very Diablo-style way: even better than the typical spoils of battle and foraging, every so often you’ll come across a Legendary enemy who will drop a uniquely named special weapon or item with a modifier. You might get a pistol that refreshes your action points when executing a critical hit, an arm piece that makes lockpicking easier, a flamethrower that deals extra radiation damage, or any of dozens of others. I found it difficult to part with these - they’re so full of potential, and I found I changed my playstyle to take advantage of the bonuses they offer, and sacrificing superior protection to keep them. And of course, all of these items are just as customizable as anything else (except you can’t break them down for parts).

A Straight Shooter

Even small changes to gun stats are important, because Fallout 4’s gunplay feels more like a typical good-quality first-person shooter than the series ever has before, so skilled aim is important to the point where you could comfortably avoid the pause-and-plan Vault-Tec-Assisted Targeting System (VATS) button if you wanted to. The interface even allows you to create shortcuts on the D-pad or number keys, so you can access stimpacks and other healing or performance-enhancing drugs and items without pausing the action to go into your inventory. But I didn’t want to, because planning and watching those slow-motion dismembering kills play out is still a great reward for a job well done.

Above: Watch us rank the seven previous Fallout games.

VATS slows time, it doesn’t stop it, so bullets are still flying at you.

“

VATS is repetitive when overused, sure, but there’s still an element of danger to it: though VATS slows time, it doesn’t stop it, so bullets are still flying at you even as you pick which part of your enemy you want to separate from their other parts. Additionally, a new manually activated critical-strike system and the ability to cancel out of slow-mo at any time give some much needed control over those events. Your limited action points (which are now also drained by sprinting) prevent you from really overdoing it, too. Melee combat is still disappointingly basic, though - real-time hacking and smashing now includes the ability to block and do a heavy strike (similar to Skyrim) but in VATS you aren’t able to target specific body parts, which makes it useless for crippling the limbs of tough enemies.

You’ll find no shortage of those in Fallout 4, as the enemy types are broadly diverse. Piled on top of the expected raiders, super mutants, mole rats, mirelurks, and other returning creatures are a selection of new ones, including the terrifying blood bugs. There’s something unsettling about these giant mosquitos that makes me want to keep pulling the trigger, even after they’re dead, until the gun goes “click.” There are more unique behaviors, too - the zombie-like feral ghouls, for instance, throw themselves at you with such ferocity they fall down and have to pick themselves up again, giving you a free shot after they’ve already inflicted theirs. And radscorpions have a new trick that makes their new more-terrifying-than-ever appearance an even bigger surprise.

Speak For Yourself

A fully voiced male or female protagonist is a first for Fallout, but I frankly don’t feel like it added much beyond the convenience of not having to read as much text when playing from the couch. It doesn’t get in the way, either - performances are fine, if somewhat bland - and would only be objectionable to me if I’d envisioned my character’s voice as something outlandishly different. So it’s successfully unobtrusive, at least.

It’s definitely possible to open up or close off entire quest chains through dialogue decisions and actions.

“

How you use that voice is what counts, and though Fallout 4’s quests aren’t remarkably open or character-specific in how you navigate them (only a high Charisma stat opens up unique dialogue options), it’s definitely possible to open up or close off entire quest chains through dialogue decisions and actions. Not every decision has far-reaching consequences, but enough do that I often paused to consider the ramifications because of some that popped up later: as a result of letting a job go south and someone getting killed, I was later confronted by a vengeful daughter. Because I’d shown mercy and left a witness alive after interfering with a criminal gang’s plans, they knew who to come after. On top of the big story decisions, events like those are enough to personalize a playthrough significantly.

Be My Valentine

More interesting than the blank-slate main character are Fallout 4’s stable of companions. These characters are shy of all-time greats, but at least a few of them are certainly memorable. The stand-out star, above even the lovably aloof robot butler Codsworth and the adorably expressive yet vicious Dog Meat, is hard-boiled detective Nick Valentine. At first he comes across as little more than a walking, talking noir cliche delivered with gusto, but he soon develops into his own man with an intriguing backstory and a case history ready to be explored. And you could just get lost in those eyes.

Watch us build a sweet house above.

Beyond some great contextual flavor dialogue, each companion also has their own skills, likes, and dislikes, so choosing one that complements your play style is important. For example, with Nick at your side, you won’t need to invest points into lockpicking or computer hacking - he’s got Expert-level skills. But if you’re planning to play as a lying, cheating, thieving scoundrel, you probably won’t want him or the post-apocalyptic Boy Scout, Preston Garvey, along. Things won’t work out between you, and you’ll see fewer side-mission opportunities arise from their dialogue.

It seems that in Bethesda’s drive to make settlements unintrusive to anyone who doesn’t want to bother with them, it ended up making them mostly irrelevant.

“

Building up rickety shacks, crops, water pumps, power generators, and defenses to create settlements in predefined areas with the finicky build mode interface definitely adds something to fiddle with beyond quests, but my network of towns almost never contributed meaningfully to my adventures other than somewhere to hang my vast collection of looted hats. Part of that is that their higher-level workings, and how they interact with the Leader perks in the Charisma column, aren’t well explained, but it seems that in Bethesda’s drive to make settlements unintrusive to anyone who doesn’t want to bother with them, it ended up making them mostly irrelevant. There’s potential here for crafty people to build impressive stuff, though - there’s a whole tool set of switches and other items that will no doubt result in some goofy YouTube videos of elaborate contraptions. It’s there to help you tell your own stories, more than anything else.

Nuts and Bolts

On all platforms we saw occasional crashes, and every so often a side quest won’t properly begin or end.

“

Fallout 4’s performance on both consoles is tolerable, but sometimes disappointing. We’ve seen frequent frame rate slowdowns well below the target of 30 when simply walking around the world, and hitches of a second or more that arise mostly after loading a new save or fast-traveling. The PC version has been much smoother in that regard, running between 40 and 60fps on Ultra settings on my GeForce GTX 970, and maintaining 60 when I lowered only the anti-aliasing settings. On all platforms we saw occasional crashes (the auto-save system prevented any major loss of progress), and every so often we hit a side quest that won’t properly begin or end due to scripting bugs. But at no point did I encounter anything that halted my progress, or significantly dampened my enthusiasm for exploring, fighting, looting, and just existing in this fantastic, lore-filled universe.

Finally, a spoiler-free note on the ending I saw: the resulting cutscene wasn’t as tailored an epilogue to my adventure as previous Fallouts have trained me to expect, which was disappointing, but Fallout 4 also doesn’t make the mistake of putting a hard stop to it after the final battle – it’s left open for further questing, as is the level cap. That’s a tradeoff.

Verdict

The world, exploration, crafting, atmosphere, and story of Fallout 4 are all key parts of this hugely successful sandbox role-playing game. Great new reasons to obsessively gather and hoard relics of happier times, strong companions, and sympathetic villains driving tough decisions make it an adventure I’ll definitely replay and revisit. Even the technical shakiness that crops up here and there can’t even begin to slow down its momentum.