On Fallout 4: My Article in The Times of India

War never changes. A previous article in this column had reviewed Fallout 3 and promised a further visit to the war-ravaged post-apocalyptic America that is featured in the series.  In Fallout 4, we are in Boston, known as the Commonwealth in 2277, where the few survivors of nuclear war have set up their homes in what remains of the once famous metropolis – some now live inside a former baseball stadium and others live in scattered settlements that grow irradiated crops and are constantly under threat from raiders, supermutants and animals that live in the wasteland around them. Besides these, there are ghouls, described as ‘necrotic posthumans’ by the Fallout wiki, the reminders of what excessive radiation can do to humans. Some of them have lost their abilities to reason and turned ‘feral’ or zombie-like. Besides the usual denizens of the Fallout world Fallout 4 is a fitting sequel to the former games and the journey from the Capital Wasteland (erstwhile Washington) and New Vegas seems another worthwhile venture in reflecting on the horrors of what nuclear war can do while having another go at saving humankind in this alternate-reality universe.

The Commonwealth is a huge world to explore and can easily provide over a week’s gameplay if not more, depending on which faction you join and what you do in the game. The Karma system from the earlier game is missing although your companions change their attitude towards you depending on how you act. The factions in the game have obvious intended present-day parallels. The Brotherhood of Steel is what remains of the army and they return from the earlier games with their crusade against the misuse of technology and their goal of establishing peace among humanity. Woven into their plans, however, is their clear rhetoric of racial cleansing – mutants, ghouls, androids and indeed anyone who is ‘other’ than ‘human’ needs to be eliminated. They possess state-of-art pre-apocalypse military technology including a giant robot called Liberty Prime, which destroys everything in its path while alternately spewing anti-communist slogans and lines from Robert Frost. Opposed to them is the Institute, whose resemblance to MIT is easy to spot (it is located underneath the Commonwealth Institute of Technology) and who are committed to improving the world by building ‘synths’ or synthetic humans. Despite their purportedly glorious aims, they are a terror to the Commonwealth residents and their synths are often used against humans rather than to aid them. Among the other factions, the most prominent are the Minutemen, so named after their historical antecedents who fought against the British in the American War of Independence and whose stories, like the poetry of Frost, are deeply connected with the local lore of New England, where the game is set.

As with its predecessors, Fallout 4 is not just about playing a shooter game  - it is also about who you are and wish to be. A web of moral choices determines your path towards the many possible endings and some of them are fairly difficult to make. For example, when you find out that the Director of the Institute is none other than your son whom you have been looking for since the game started. Or when you realise that the easiest and quickest way to finish the game is to side with the Brotherhood of Steel and ‘save’ the world from their problematic perspective and racial agenda. Also, personally speaking, having to witness a nuclear explosion conducted for the ‘noble’ cause of destroying the Institute was less than comfortable.

This does not mean any less of the usual though – boss fights are as challenging and the player will have a hard time fighting the legendary Deathclaw,  the Mirelurk Queen or the Legendary Sentinel Robot. The game also allows you to craft your own weapons and build settlements so if you see junk around you in your many travels, be sure to pick it up for future use. The missions around protecting the settlements tend to get repetitive after a time. Other than that the heavy system requirements (needs high-end graphic cards on PCs and does not play on the older consoles such as PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360) and the high price for all the platforms will surely dampen the enthusiasm of many Indian gamers. All said though, a trip to the Commonwealth is not to be missed -  the system upgrade that you had been putting off and the wait until prices come down, notwithstanding.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Genre: First / third-person shooter, role-playing game (RPG), open-world game

Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.