Fallout 4, released by Bethesda Studios on November 10, 2015, is a highly successful single-player open-world game set in a post-apocalyptic version of Boston after a nuclear war. Players control the sole survivor of Vault 111, who embarks on a mission to rescue their son while navigating a world filled with factions, NPCs, and various gameplay mechanics such as a settlement system and an upgraded AI. The game is noted for its immersive graphics and mechanics that enhance player freedom, but also faces criticisms regarding bugs and AI pathfinding issues.

1. Fallout 4
Fallout 4 is the most recent instalment in the fallout
franchise, developed by Bethesda studios and using a
development team of 100 people, the game was then
published by the company of the same name on
November 10th 2015 and shipped 12 millioncopies
generating 750 milliondollars in the first 24 hours of
the games release.
The premise of fallout 4 starts with the creationof the
atomic bomb ending WW2 except in the 1960’s
fallouts’ timeline splits off from our own, into a world
where the cold war never actually ended, in the mid-
twenty first century the world was running short of
resources and the two dominating super powers,
China and the United States are fighting over what is
left, up till the point in the year 2077 when the two
countries finally hit a breaking point and launch
nuclear warheads at each other destroying the world
in nuclear fire.
The fallout games have always taken place after the
apocalypse, in varied states of the US, however due to
the bombs the entire terrain and landscape with only
a few notable exceptions is barren nuclear wasteland.
A lot of the games take place in the post-apocalyptic
wilderness however there are multiple cities and
towns dotted around the landscape of all the games,
pre-war and post-war. Betweentowns and cities the
map is littered with different locations, random
encounter hotspots and NPC characters that the

2. player can either make allieswith, or gun down if
they so choose. The HUD of the game actually
changes depending on your play style, the standard
HUD comes with a health bar at the bottom left hand
side of the screen, the players maximum health can
also be reduced when exposed to radiation, which is
displayed by a red bar restricting full health
regeneration, this can be countered with drugs found
in the game. To the bottom right hand side of the
screen is the ammo counter.
Telling the player how much ammo they have
remaining in the weapon equipped (this feature isn’t
present if the player has a melee weaponequipped),
the game also has a favourite bar which shows up on
screen with the console versions, the bar contains all
the items the player has assigned to it in order to let
them quip items faster without having to open their
inventory, on the computer this tool is activated by
pressing the number keys.
A compass at the bottom centre part of the screen to
direct the player and show the general locationof
enemies marked with a red pip. And objectives
generally marked with a unique compass pip, that
changes colour depending on the colour the player
chose for the HUD. There is also the AP (action point)
bar located underneath the ammo counter, this acts
as the players stamina that determines how long you
can sprint for, and also determines how much use you
will get out of the VATS, this is a targeting system that
has been in the Fallout games since it’s inception but
it has been adapted over the series. In Fallout 4 the

3. game slows down and zooms in on the enemy, their
body parts are then split up into different sections, a
number willappear over the body that depending on
the players stats will determine your chance of hitting
the target, each time u want to confirm a shot on the
enemy the game will show you how much AP it will
drain, if you have inadequate AP it will no longer
allowyou to use VATS until it regenerates, the player
can also switch between targets to hit multiple ones
in one go, after confirming your hits you willenter a
cut scene of your character shooting/hitting the
enemy, hitting is a guaranteed hit but shooting is
always left to chance, you may hit the enemy or miss.
Each body part also has a mini health bar, this goes
for the player character too, this represents how
healthy the body part is, if the bar diminishes to
nothing then that part will become crippled, having
varied adverse effects depending on what is crippled.
The objects and architectureof the game try to
combine a sleek and modern look of the year 2077,
but also try to resemble pop-culture that of the 1960’s
as in the Fallout universe their culture never
developed like ours did, which is also why they have
space aged technology but not coloured TV and all the
music on the radio is artists like Elvis Presley, Ella
Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby and the Inkspots. Many of the
objects in the game aren’t actually destructible, one
thing that is however is the vehicles, every car and
truck you come across in the game can be blown up,
due to all of them having small nuclear reactors for
engines the net result is a small atomic blast, this as a
result makes them tacticaladvantages or death traps

4. depending on whose next to them. For the most part
the rest of the large objects in the game are static,
meaning they can’t be moved or altered, the same
goes for architecture (probably because it was
already blown up once) The game takes place from a
third and first person perspective and utilises a 3D
design likemost games today, operating at a standard
30 fps on the Xbox and PS4 but operating at 60 fps on
the PC.
Concept art

6. Box art
The box art used to advertise the
original game of Fallout 4 uses a
similar design to that of Fallout 3, with
the signature power armour taking up
the majority of the cover, this is
because power armour has been a
part of the Fallout franchise since the
games’ inception and this suit of
armour has become an iconic symbol
of the game today. This box art

7. however sparked players interest because it
introduced the T-60 model of power armour which
was not only a suit not included in the previous
games, but has now a become a fan favourite.
The other box arts displayed above are the additional
DLC content for the game, and while all they’re design
features widely vary, they all have one thing common,
and that is they all use the vintage coke style of
patterns, colour schemes and text, this to really
emphasise the feeling of the 1960’s culture that the
entire game is based around. The graphics of the
game itself however resemble that of a modern first
person shooter than using old fashioned graphics like
Cuphead, the developers decided to use a more
modern look to make the game more immersive, this
is also due to Fallout 4 using the same game engine as
Bethesda’s previous creationThe elder scrolls V;
Skyrim.
The premise of Fallout 4 is a strictly single player
game that took a different turn compared to the other
games, it starts in pre-war America,with you
designing your character while the game teaches you
basic controls, you then are getting ready for the day
while taking care of your son, it’s at this moment the
sirens sound and you make it to an underground
Fallout shelter built by the Vault Tec company funded
by the US government.
At first you believe yourself to be safe, but as you
discover too late each vault is designed to secretly
perform tests on it’s inhabitants, in this case it’s

8. cryogenic freezing of human subjects. You first wake
up 150 years later to find your wife being shot and
son taken for reasons you don’t find out until much
later in the game, you will then wake up again 60
years later and this is where the game begins. You
now control the sole survivor of vault 111 as you
venture into post apocalypticBoston and stop at
nothing to get your son back, you do eventually find
him after progressing about half way through the
main narrative of the game and at this point you have
to start making important decisions, Including which
one of the 4 available factions in the game you will
ultimately side with.
The issue is that Shaun, your son has allied himself
and taken charge of the institute, who are set out to
be the main antagonists from the start, this can
however change depending on your choices and
decisions. In the end however the game is an open
world game with next to no restrictions, so you can
play the game how you want with no rules holding
the player back. The game has multiple mechanics
that set it apart from the other Fallout games, one of
these for example is the settlement system
introduced for Fallout 4, and starting life off as a mod
in Fallout 3 called ‘Wasteland defence’ it became an
official mechanic in the next instalment.
The game also has a day/night and weather system,
in an effort to make the game feel more immersive
the developers included a weather called‘rad storm’
this was when clouds of radioactive particles swept
over the map irradiating anyone outside including the
soul survivor, luckily the radiation levels are usually

9. negligiblewith the right drugs but it was smart choice
in order to make the player feel like they’re in a post
nuclear wasteland. Another mechanic is the AI
behaviour patterns of the NPC’s, even though Fallout
4 uses the same game engine as Skyrim Bethesda
refined the AI for Fallout even if it’s still not perfect
and needs some fine tuning, two instances are that
stealth is harder in this game, and while it does
become very easy to sneak once your character is a
high level, at lower levels it’s nearly impossible to
remain undetected, the bigger issue is with the AI
path finding.
Path finding is when the AI willset out a course for
the NPC to follow, whether it involves going forward,
sitting down etc… And this is something the game
gets very wrong as for example companions (NPC
followers you can have accompany you) can fail to
follow simple commands of going to locations that
could be three feet away, and this is something that
Bethesda has still not corrected.
Fallout has always had a large followingespecially
after the release of Fallout 3, and for good reason as
the franchise has always been renowned for being
one of the highest rated open world video game series
to hit the market by fans and critics alike,it shares
many aspects of the genre such as freedom of
decision, many locations to explore, interesting
characters that can only discovered by exploring, a
huge inventory and loot system that allows for
expansive customisation, in this way I believeFallout
4 hugely developed upon the free roam genre with a

10. fully fleshed out weapon upgrade and settlement
system to make the world feel more alive and for the
player to have more control over what they're using.
This was further improved upon with the vault Tec,
contraptions and wasteland workshop add ons’. It
was the finalised with the addition of players on
console finally being able to download community
made mods to alter their game, this is something that
has never been attempted with a free roam game
before and was hugely innovative, unfortunately due
to rights issues with scripting the mods Sony has not
allowedmods to become a feature on the PS4 version
of Fallout.
Open world comparison
Fallout 4 was surely an innovative step forward in the
open world genre but they're were also other open
world videogames that were by all means hugely
progressive for the genre too in their own ways.
Just cause 3
Just cause 3 was the third instalment of the franchise
after the release of just cause 2 back in 2010,
developed by Edios interactive and avalanche studios,
the 2nd game launched to huge success providing the
largest open world released to that day that wasn't
procedurally generated, filled with objectives,
factions and the ability to blow up nearly everything.
Just cause 3 took this a step further by having literally
everything in the game, barring the actual terrain
itself, able to blow up. This is something that the Just
Cause series has always been known for, mass
destruction, including a mechanic calleda 'chaos
system' where the more destruction the player

11. character deals, the more chaos points they're
rewarded. The Just Cause series also provides more
freedom of explorationthat Fallout 4 does, mainly
due to the increased number of ways to get around.
In Fallout 4 the only ways to get around are running
and eventually using Vertibirds. (if you complete the
right missions)
Whereas Just Cause allows the player to traverse the
terrain using a wide array of vehicles ranging from
boats to bikes, cars to planes, and even without a
mode of transportation, this is down to the grapple
and parachute system Rico Rodriguez (the player
controlled character) employs in order to swiftly
navigate the map.
In addition to this the grapple also doubles as a
weapon, being able to tether together enemies and
objects for higher chaos, originally you could only use
one tether in the first two games, however for the PC
just cause there was a mod that allowedplayers to
use multiple tethers at once for more
impressive/hilarious results. The developers
recognised this and made the multiple tethers a
default feature in the main game of Just Cause 3.
The downside that Just Cause 3 compared to Fallout 4
is that the narrative is very linear, there isn't much
choice in the missions you do, whereas in Fallout 4
there is almost always at least a second choice to the
missions you undertake, this allowsfor greater
freedom of play and lets the player truly feel
immersed as they don’t ever feel pushed to do a
certaintask.

12. Videogame addiction
The idea that videogames are an addicting source of
entertainment has been a theory for a long time and
recently became confirmed as a mental disorder by
the WHO, and while the idea certainly doesn’t apply
to everyone who plays videogames, there have been
many people who neglect real life responsibilities in
order to play videogames, as wellas games taking
advantage of the rush of dopamine you get from
completing a game in order to trick you into paying
large amounts of cash into micro transactions,
however this tends to be in mobile games, although
micro-transactions have also recently been
transferring to console and PC games too, online
games to be specific such as Callof Duty and Star
Wars Battlefront.
According to 'addictions.com'the signs that
characterise as a videogame addiction are as follows:
-Aggression towards videogames (under the illusion
that videogames are real or have a real impact on life)
-Playing videogames rather than socialising with
friends or family
-Playing videogames instead of playing outside or
with toys
-Playing videogames for a long time and showing
negative moods when not allowedto play them
-Playing videogames for more than 6 hours a week
-Spending the majority of leisure time playing
videogames
-Showing signs of anxiety when anticipating a new
game or the ability to play a game.

13. However it is important to discern the difference
between ones ability and enthusiasm to play a game
and an actual addiction, the ability to detect a true
videogame addiction requires more insight than one
would need to identify a substance addiction.
Other possible signs of identifying a videogame
addiction specificallyin teens are as follows:
-The teen is only ever happy when gaming
-Spending more time playing games than socialising
-Constantly distracted by games, not thinking about
anything else.
-Catching the teen playing games when they're not
supposed to be