4 Huge problems with Fallout 4

Fallout 4 has been out for a little bit now and I think we've all had our share of joy with the game. I myself put in a good seventy hours in the first week and am nearing the end of my second play-through. The game is great, definitely one of the best releases this year, but it has it share of problems, which I shall list here.

1. The very simplified conversation system

Now, don't get me wrong. I like having a voiced companion, Courtenay Taylor and Brian Delaney did an amazing job voicing the Sole Survivor. However, since the success of Mass Effect it feels like this simplified conversation 'wheel' is spreading to all AAA open world roleplaying games, even those where it shouldn't necessarily be.

The problem with this is that the sole survivor is portrayed in the game in a very set way. It takes you away from the experience of making your own character, with their own distinct personality. I often felt that I couldn't take any truly evil options in the game.

Let's make up an example. You're approached by an NPC who has lost her dog. "Please help me find him," she says. Your options are as follows.

1. Yes, I'll find the dog.

2. [Sarcastic] A missing dog? Sure you didn't scare it away with the promise of a bath?

3. Tell me more about the dog.

4. Sorry, I don't have time.

There is just very little personality in here, or rather, there is just one personality. The sarcastic option is usually just a less nice way of getting to the same result as the "good" option. What amounts to evil, and often persuasion is you trying to get a few extra caps out of the person. In the end you're just left with question, a neutral response, a good response and a sarcastic/bad one.

There's also the issue with not knowing what the option entails. However, this has been fixed by one of the great modders and can be found here.

2. The building of settlements

The addition of settlements has been fun, but how tedious do the controls have to be? A simple option like turning off snapping with a key is not present, and building something larger will just result in hours of frustration and having to use bugs or exploits to get things how you want.

In addition, the way you handle settlers is incredibly inefficient. You don't know who is assigned to what, nor where they are. Is a small list too much to ask for? Perhaps you could press E on the shop you wish to assign a settler too and it would bring up a tiny little list of free settlers.

3. The aging game engine

The engine used by Fallout 4 has been in use for quite a while, being first used by Skyrim and a previous version being used for Oblivion and Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. Then age of the engine shows quite a bit.

While I would never say that graphics make the game, the visuals in Fallout 4 are lacking. The improvement from previous titles is there, but it's not really substantial for the amount of time that has passed. We're nearing 2016, yet the game looks more like something you'd see in 2012.

Another thing that is problematic with the engine is its tendency to completely destroy physics at higher framerates, making the game essentially capped at 60 frames per second. 

4. The weapon balance

The legendary enemies in the game drops special weapons with effects, some of them less useful like doing more damage at night, and some of them more so like having unlimited magazine capacity or firing two shots instead of one like the assault rifle pictured here that was found by Reddit user LatrodectusVS.

It's incredibly easy to make your weapons overpowered enough to kill everything with ease. Deathclaws will feel like radscorpions. Bandits are just sheep for the slaughter.

It's an odd feeling where even on the highest difficulty I found myself having to limit my weapon usage to non-legendary weapons to still have some challenge left in the game, and I am by no means a good player.

Did you find anything else that either decreased or increased your enjoyment of Fallout 4? Tell us in the comments down below!