For Fallout 3, it was the exhilaration of exploration, alternating between the grey and bleak downtown environments and the washed-out Capital Wasteland. The result is more appropriate for Fallout 4 anyway.īoth Fallout 3 and its 2010 successor Fallout: New Vegas had a tonal focus that defined them. It wasn’t foolish to hope that Nuka World would follow in its footsteps, but it doesn’t. The Far Harbor DLC was a much-needed return to form for players who wanted the kind of meaningful choice and mysterious frontiers the franchise is known for. The intent is to amuse, and it does, but it doesn’t surprise and it doesn’t connect. It feels like a frivolous thing in a vacuum, like the Nuka World setting itself, surrounded by its empty parking lots and distant sheds. But it doesn’t feel real with so much procedurally generated content, with so little definitive closure. But better from far away, and best with your back turned to what came before.įlashback: Tina Turner Covers Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson on Debut Solo Albumįallout 4 is a game built with undeniable craft and artistry. My favorite moments in Nuka World were on the outside, looking in: the silhouettes of the shattered park against the morning sun, viewed from a nearby overpass. The wasteland itself seems forsaken, given up for tightly choreographed thrills in designated areas. But the surrounding areas may as well be blank – there are few areas even in 2008’s Fallout 3, the first game in the series to feature a 3D world, that are as sparse and featureless. The individual parks are densely packed, condensed around their themes. In Nuka World, you take over a Disneyesque theme park on behalf of warring raiders. Last year’s Fallout 4 was the first game in the series to ditch that sort of epilogue for its ending, and Nuka World, its final DLC released last week, doubles-down on the approach – and it’s the worse for it. It made it seem like what happened mattered, that the dilemmas you reckoned with had impact. When you finish the game, your choices large and small are catalogued via a series of slides that depict how its sprawling, post-apocalyptic wasteland was changed by your passing.
The original Fallout, released what feels like eons ago in 1997, was one of the first games that encouraged you to really believe in its world.
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