Right from the start, your compass lights up with intriguing silhouettes which grow brighter as you approach, until they fill in with a drum roll and the on-screen declaration that you've discovered another location of interest. Debate will surely rage about whether Fallout 4's map is smaller or bigger than previous games - scale is always an elastic thing in the virtual world - but it feels bigger simply because there's so much to do. That adventure that awaits is, of course, whatever you want to make of it. By making us navigate the world both before and after the cataclysm, Bethesda gives us more of a sense of what's at stake than simply dropping us into the wasteland.
It's a neat narrative trick, as effective as it was when used by Valve in Half-Life. The environment this time is Boston, and following a gruelling opening sequence that leans heavily on chintzy Americana for its emotional weight, you awake in Vault 111 and emerge, blinking, into the exact same suburban landscape, now blasted by atomic fire and years of decay. Maybe such creaky, chaotic rough edges are just the price that must be paid for game environments that are this detailed and alive. For every minute spent cursing the inconvenience of some random glitch, there are 30 more where I'm completely, wilfully lost in the desolate ruins of Boston, dreading the moment when real life intrudes and pulls me back out. If you were expecting the move to powerful new generation console hardware to smooth out the kinks that endured in Bethesda's RPGs for the decade-long lifespan of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, you'll be disappointed.Īnd yet I can't bring myself to slam the game too hard. At the same time, it's often falling apart at the seams and pushing its game engine far beyond its comfortable limits.
It's insanely ambitious and utterly absorbing, a game that has clearly had thousands of hours poured into every detail of its compelling world.
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