No there isn’t a typo in the title. You read it right. I hate the fallout series. Now before you close out your browser or curse me out in the comments, I just want you know that yes I know I’m in the minority and yes I know you think I’m wrong for having an opinion. I know you guys probably don’t even want to bother reading all the reasons I dislike the fallout series because its heresy, but all I ask is that you hear me out.
The Great Expansive World of Nothingness
One of the biggest reasons I’ve never been able to get into the Fallout series, lies within the game’s open world. It’s boring as hell. The premise of the world being sent into a nuclear apocalypse and you emerging from a vault after hundreds of years exploring what used to be America sounds great...on paper at least. But, when you go out into the world, there’s nothing interesting to really explore. Probably because most of the world has been reduced to ash.
I’ve played several Fallout games and I’ve always been bored because when you walk outside there’s nothing to really marvel at. Everything is dead and gone. I would spend so much time trying to explore these different areas, but they couldn’t entice me at all.
I never got excited or interested in exploring any part of the Fallout world, which kinda ruins my experience playing an open world game. Sorry, but I’m not going to happen upon an old ransacked grocery store and be like “Wow! Look at this destroyed store with nothing in it! Whoa are those a couple of empty canned beans lying around?? Score! Better save these.
I’m sure they're priceless!”
No, I’m not going to do that because why would I!? It's not exciting or interesting at all. If it wasn’t a bland grocery store that bored me, it was an old town or a decayed forest or a few skyscrapers left from a city. An open world game needs to give the player incentive and a feeling of excitement and curiosity for discovering new locations that are interesting. It has to make the player think, “I wonder what this is or what it looked like before everything went to hell?”
When most of the world has been obliterated by a nuclear holocaust, there’s not a whole lot of cool stuff waiting to be discovered in the aftermath. Some people might argue that the absence of a world helps drive the setting of Fallout. The developers can create an interesting world using the remnants of an older, extinct civilization as the foundation for something new. The lack of bustling towns and landmarks can make it more worthwhile when the player actually does discover something, even if its something that would normally be considered trivial. I completely agree with this approach in world building. It's awesome, in fact!
Horizon Zero Dawn did something similar, by building a world on what was left on a modern society that was all but wiped out. Except the world wasn't dead like in Fallout. It was alive and flourishing. It made the world interesting to explore because you could see remnants of the older, more sophisticated civilization in the world, but you could also see how time and nature has taken hold of the earth. In Horizon Zero Dawn you could find landmarks like the Red Rocks Amphitheater completely overgrown with plant life and abandoned. But, it drew you in. It made you want to learn what was there before. The cool thing about landmarks like the Red Hat Amphitheater is that it exists in the real world, offer the player a deeper sense of immersion and realism when exploring places.
I think that kind of world building helps drive that awestruck factor when exploring worlds because there’s very little background given to the player from the start and puts the player in a position to make their own conclusions. However, Fallout doesn’t really accomplish this in my opinion.
The world is just simply uninteresting and bland to me and I'm not filled with any sense of wonder when I discover landmarks or new settlements. A friend of mine gave me a revelation when one day he told me that the reason why I don’t typically like games like Fallout or Call of Duty is because those games are monochromatic and serious and I’m more into colorful and vibrant worlds, and he is absolutely right! I love games like Ratchet and Clank and Breath of the Wild because they have these beautiful and incredible worlds that make you want to explore every inch of the map and learn everything there is to know about the world’s origin and the people in it.
Skyrim, Fallout's counterpart, does an awesome job in building worlds worth exploring and I think it's superior to Fallout in almost every way. The world in Skyrim is so amazing and vibrant that it's hard to not explore everything it has to offer. You have snowy mountains, murky swamps, lush forests, towns and cities with actually interesting people not to mention all the tombs, caves, dragon burial grounds, and secret places to explore and plunder! It's no wonder that people keep coming back to this game years after its initial release in 2011!
I find a lack of this awestruck sort of wonder in the Fallout because most of the world is comprised of a whole lot of nothing! There’s only been a couple times when I actually discovered a location and found it genuinely interesting. I've played Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and Fallout 76, which all had different settings, and have experienced the same level of boredom and disappointment in my exploration endeavors.
I remember playing Fallout 3 and it was great because the first place I came across in the game was a cool place called Nuketown. A civilization built around a dormant nuke that never went off during the war. Every day the residents of this town just go about their business not knowing if today will be the day where the town just blows up into the sky. There's even a story-line quest where you can decide if you want to save Nuketown or activate the nuke and completely eviscerate Nuketown form the world! This is an awesome place and one of my favorite locations in Fallout 3!
However, NukeTown marked the end of awesome locations for a long time. Nothing else sparked my interest and, after a while, I just turned the game off because what was the point?
The Weapons
The guns aren’t all the special or interesting to be honest. The weapons are all remnant guns that were left behind after the nukes dropped and some were modified by current settlers. When I played Fallout I kept finding the same kind of guns. Pistols, Sub-machine guns, and assault rifles were the main ones. All the guns just blend together. There’s nothing very interesting about one gun over the other besides that it might have more damage or better range.
Now you can modify your weapons at a workbench and turn them into something more customization and powerful which is cool, but it's very limited. In Fallout 3 you could only make 7 custom weapons, which were cool if you had the resources to make them, but if you didn't you basically had to deal with the lame looking power pistol. I get that the world blew up and there’s not a crazy amount of weapons to find in the world, but come on! Give me something to work with!
My favorite weapon from Fallout 3 was the Rock-It Launcher where you pick up whatever garbage you could find on the ground and shoot it at high speed at enemies. This was fun at first, but its not really powerful. It’s more for fun than anything else. You couldn’t make or find some of the really powerful and cool weapons that Fallout is known for, until you were further in the game. It makes sense. The game would get a little too easy and boring if you had all the cool weapons from the start of the game.
In Skyrim, you have loads of unique weapons that you can find in the world or craft on your own. Each one has something different to offer. Whether it was a sword that does more damage to the undead or a bow that shoots fire arrows! I just found the weapons in Fallout to be severely lacking in comparison.
Hacking
This is one of the most convoluted mechanics in Fallout and I never could understand why it was ever in the game in the first place. In Skyrim you pick locks on chests and doors to get special loot or get into unique areas. Well in Fallout, hacking computers is like picking locks except not nearly as fun and straightforward.
When you try to hack a computer there’s all these words and random symbols on the screen and you have to input the right password hidden somewhere on the screen. To successfully hack a computer you had to guess the password from a list of possible answers. If you guessed wrong, the computer would tell you how many letters in the right order you got correct, so you can make an educated guess on the next answer you wanted to try out. But, you would have a limited amount of guesses and (I know this happens in Fallout 3, but I’m not sure about other Fallout games) if you run out of tries guessing the password, you’re locked out of the computer for good.
So, in order to get through this you would have to:
a.) Be a very lucky guesser
b.) Spend 5 - 10 minutes analyzing every possible answer and still get it wrong
c.) You would stop hacking before all your guesses were up and do it again just to have it reset and ask for a different password, or
d.) Get locked out and shoot the computer like crazy.
It's a frustrating mechanic that you can’t really master at. There’s things you can do to delete wrong answers off the screen, narrowing down the list of possible correct passwords, but you’re still involved in a guessing game. You would think for something as technical as hacking, Bethesda would come up with a mini-game that would make you feel like you’re actually hacking something rather than just playing a guessing game.
Hacking just feels dumb, frustrating, and at the end of the day not worth it all. The problem is, there’s probably some cool stuff to get if you successfully hack the computers, but it becomes so bothersome that after a while you just stop caring.
Karma System
Ohhh I hated Karma in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas!! I honestly think this was one of the biggest reasons that killed Fallout for me when I first started playing the franchise.
Karma was this dumb system in place where if you did good or bad actions it would effect how the people in the world would behave and interact towards you. So if you did good things people would be friendly toward you and they would be more willing to be your companion on quests. If you did bad actions everyone would be pissed at you, refuse to talk to you, and even attack you on sight.
I hated this because I didn't feel like I could do anything I wanted to do without getting punished for it. I felt like I couldn’t steal or beat anybody up or do anything really fun that I wanted to do in fear of a mob eventually coming after me.
I don’t know about you, but I play games so I don't have to face the consequences of my actions!
Now I know any good game with freedom of choice has to make the player pause and think on their choices, weighing the consequences of their actions. I’m perfectly fine with this. In Skyrim, if you committed a crime like pickpocketing someone or chopping their head off and the townsfolk caught you, a bounty would be placed on you head and the guards of that town would try to arrest or kill you.
However, if you were sneaky enough, you could commit crimes without getting caught and go on your merry way. The NPC’s would determine consequences for your actions if they saw you do them. The great spiritual gods of the post apocalyptic world of Fallout wouldn’t punish you for stealing a piece of garbage from someone’s home. So, yea Karma System sucks!
Ok I guess I'm done with my rant for now. I want to like the Fallout series. I really do! An open world post-apocalyptic America should be fun! But, every time I've tried my hand at it I've always felt short changed and didn't have nearly as much fun as I wanted to have when playing the game. I guess what I'm ultimately trying to say with this post is...Skyrim is the best and Fallout sucks! If you want to fight me on these grounds take it up in the comments section and I'll see you there, until then I'll see you next time!
Dean Willms
~Gamer. Designer. Friend
