Why Fallout 4 Should Be Game of the Year

THE WORLD!!!

It’s currently Twinfinite’s Game of the Year week! All week long, our Editors and Writers will be nominating games from this year that stood out in 2015. Today, Yamilia Avendano tells us why Fallout 4 is worthy of being Twinfinite’s 2015 Game of the Year.

Fallout 4 features that same post-apocalyptic world we know and love from past games in the series. Except this time, it’s Boston. It’s an expansive world that’s filled to the brim with life and locations and creatures and humans and its own history and adventure. You’d struggle not to find something to do in this world. No two locations are alike and everywhere is filled with unique characters, enemies, and even items you can hoard.

2015 was a year  full of open worlds, but Fallout 4 managed to make a mark by thrusting players into the harsh reality of a nuclear Wasteland as soon as possible. The story grips you as soon as the nuke drops in the beginning and takes you for a ride over the course of its twenty hour main storyline and possible 100 hour game. You’ll meet countless characters that all have their backstory and personality traits, and you’ll feel like you’re actually a part of a greater picture in this vast universe.

SETTLEMENTS!!!

Fallout 4 introduces to the series settlements that you can expand and customize to your liking. What could have been a tacked on gameplay mechanic was practically a game within the game. It’s as though they used Fallout Shelter to gauge how to make a ballin’ town builder. You can edit right down to the lighting around your towns. You’ll absolutely be surprised by how many hours just this aspect of Fallout 4 will suck out of you. It’s a wonderful change of pace from the action and it manages to not at all feel like a hassle to deal with.

With just the simple act of adding a town building mode, the game was expanded exponentially, adding tons of new mechanics to the fold. Now, players don’t just roam through the world, they shape it. In a year of games looking to master their genre, Fallout 4 used this to bust it wide open.

COMPANIONS!!!

Among the characters you’ll meet are companions. They’ve been around in Fallout games before and have many times been used in games in general, but Fallout 4’s companions are definitely among the best in gaming. There’s Piper with her tough older sister act, Dogmeat with his adorable unconditional love, Nick Valentine and his super cool noir detective self, and many more. Each one has their own extensive backstory and personality and it truly feels like you grow with them throughout your journey together. They offer comedic relief, dramatic undertones, and even erotic context. They’re a huge part of why adventuring through the Wasteland, where there are creatures and raiders just waiting to kill you, isn’t such a bad thing.

GAMEPLAY!!!

Fallout 4 took everything from past games and made it better. VATS, the most unique part of a Fallout game’s gameplay, has been revamped and improved upon. The animations while running and jumping don’t look stupid anymore. This may seem like a small reason, but it really helps with the immersion into the game. And that’s exactly what every part of Fallout 4 builds up to: a complete, immersive experience. Whether you’re in first person view or third person, you feel like you are that survivor in the Wasteland searching for answers. You meet people, you fight, you thrive, and it’s all thanks to every single part of the game.

While 2015’s sequels kept to their own status quo, Fallout 4 made sure to expand on what players loved in order to provide something seriously solid.

CUSTOMIZATION!!!

The customization in Fallout 4 is everything. It is absolutely everything. You’re able to make your character look however you want, sure. But it doesn’t stop there. How about customizing clothes? How about settlements? How about guns? Every single part of the game that can be made unique, can be done in an incredible amount of ways. Guns, explosives, and melee items no longer just are what they appear to be; all the crap you pick up during your travels finally has a use and can become upgrades for your weapons.

And to top it all off is Fallout’s signature SPECIAL system of perks. The RPG elements shine here as every level allows you to choose different perks that adjust your character to your playstyle. Are you all about brute force? Would you rather be sneaky? How about being an excellent sharpshooter? Or, perhaps, you love talking your way out of stuff, stealing with finesse, and the ability to carry all the items you can possibly hoard? The sky’s the limit with Fallout 4’s customization.

Fallout 4 was a highly anticipated title with a lot riding on it. Fans hadn’t received a new one in awhile, so they weren’t looking for anything less than stellar. In a year of top-notch releases, Fallout 4 managed to stand out by breaking the mold it had created for itself and being something more.

Keep checking back all this week for more opinions from Twinfinite on which game should be Game of the Year! And finally, next week, we’ll announce our Game of the Year!