Fallout 4 Editorials

A couple of new editorials regarding Bethesda's latest post-apocalyptic effort have caught our attention this week, including this piece on SideQuesting entitled "Fallout 4 and the Problem with Choice" and this piece on The Daily Gazette entitled "Gender and Sexuality in Fallout 4". You can probably speculate as to the type of subject matter you'll find within each, but I'll share a quote or two below to help you establish whether you want to invest in reading them.

A little something from SideQuesting's article, which features a number of spoilers:

Fallout 4 still has plenty of great choices to make. For example, you can decide to make your character a cruel barbarian launching missiles at everyone they meet while wearing a mail carrier uniform. Those kind of character choices are still plenty and fruitful. It's the other kind of choice, the story-based ones developers so often emphasize in previews and press events, where some cracks start to show.

The first problem was that there's no connection to all the choices made in previous Fallouts. Obviously, carrying choices over from Fallout 1 & 2 would be more than a little difficult, but Fallout 3 and New Vegas were both on the last generation of consoles. Bioware was able to mount that hurdle for last year's Dragon Age: Inquisition with their nifty Keep web browser tool that gave players granular control over specific choices made during earlier games. The Witcher 3 kept it simple by giving you dialogue choices that allowed you to establish your Witcher 2 choices by implying them.


And a bit from The Daily Gazette's piece:

Female relationships have been a central part of my experience with Fallout 4. I met Piper, like anyone else playing Fallout 4, when I arrived at the game's largest hub, Diamond City. She soon offered to accompany me out in the the post-apocalyptic remains of Boston. As she and Chloe explored and adventured together she started to open up about herself. I quickly fell for her quirky attitude, and despite the rather jarring nature of flirting with someone not long after my husband's murder, I immediately began making romantic gestures. Chloe is bisexual, and this is presented as just another aspect of her character. Nothing else to it. Chloe and Piper's romance progressed believably and I was invested in their relationship. I wanted them to be together. I loved having Piper around and hearing her journalistic take on the ruins of Boston. As fun as Bethesda RPG's are, being invested in the relationship between two characters in one of their games was a first for me.