Reviews
Fallout 4
I am sure that I am not the only one who’s insanely excited about the Fallout 4 announcement – a game announcement that I’ve been waiting for years and one that didn’t fail to impress. We’ve already talked about why and how the game should be bigger and better than its predecessors, but now since we actually have some meat on the bone that Bethesda threw at us earlier, it’s time to talk real Fallout 4 based on facts. Or mostly facts.
The first Fallout 4 trailer has been launched and after watching it a million times (more or less), I have decided to come with a complete analysis of the teaser and share with you all the interesting bits of information that are hidden behind the three minutes of footage. Which, by the way, is way more than anybody expected in the first place.
But before we proceed to the trailer analysis, let’s check out the video itself below so it’s fresh in our mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE2BkLqMef4
Now let’s get to the actual trailer analysis!
From the start, we are greeted with the tunes that I personally got to love in the previous installment of the game. The image that was initially used as a teaser on the Fallout 4 website is actually on a TV screen in a pretty beat up room. This is several years after the apocalypse came. This is the present time of the game. This looks nice and stays true to the original Fallout’s game intro cinematic as well!
Unlike other Fallout trailers, this video also focuses quite a bit on how things were BEFORE the bombing and the destruction, showing us images from the pre-war era. Hopefully this doesn’t mean that the game itself will have a lot of pre-war gameplay moments – that’s not why we play Fallout for!
A dog suddenly appears at the entrance and looks a lot like the well known Dogmeat. Although this is obviously not Dogmeat, I am sure that from now on we’ll all refer to it as Dogmeat, so we have the pup once more in Fallout. And he is the main character of the trailer, too!
As Dogmeat walks through what was a kitchen, we can see Mister Handy in another flashback scene – a robot that Fallout fans certainly recognize. We also get all that old school, 50s decor that we were expecting from the game.
We move forward and we’re shown a scene from the pre-war era where two parents are looking at their newly-born baby in a crib. This might actually be the game’s main character, so remember this scene as we’re probably going to see a bit more of it during character creation. Or it’s nothing but a sad story of a few souls that were lost during the war…
The dog then hears a sound and quickly goes outside to show us the first glimpse of the Wasteland (which we’ll later see that is actually Boston). It looks a lot like the wasteland from Fallout 3, which makes a lot of sense – but fortunately that green color that used to drive us crazy is gone. So it’s a better looking wasteland so far.
Moving forward, after another glimpse of the pre-war times – the actual moments before all hell broke loose, we see the people desperately trying to get into the Vault. Here we can see the Enclave troops protecting the entry to the vault, wearing their impressive and bulky armor, keeping away those who don’t deserve to enter. The scene is really nice, actually: you can see the cop on the ground, probably trying to accept the fact that he won’t be given permission to enter and the civilians grabbing the fence and hoping for a miracle to get in. Really powerful stuff!
Then we hear the iconic Fallout catchphrase: “war never changes…” as we’re shown what is surely the home-Vault of our protagonist: Vault 111. Remember that the home Vault in Fallout 3 was 101, so there’s definitely a connection here.
Finally, we get to see some first person footage, which might actually be in-game footage. It most likely shows the protagonist as he leaves the vault and sees for the first time in many, many years, the brightness of a real day:
Now we get to some really juicy stuff, things that show us in-game locales and confirm that it will take place in Boston. We start with the Bunker Hill Monument.
Then we move on to see the USS Constitution which has apparently been transformed into some sort of an airship or at least upgraded with some really cool techy stuff. I am sure we’ll spend quite some time there, maybe it’s a place similar to Rivet City in Fallout 3:
Finally, an extremely colorful version of Scollay Square, a place in Boston that was actually demolished (in real life) back in the 60s. We also see our Mysterious Stranger walking casually down the street – so he’s returning too! There’s also lightning and some rain in this shot, which might mean that we’ll have different types of weather in Fallout 4!
We are then showed a bunch of quick scenes from the universe of Fallout 4, and we can understand a lot about the world we’re going to explore. For example, the first scene that shows us the Brahmin (and confirms we’ll get to trade once more) also shows in the background something extremely interesting: electricity! Notice that there’s some sort of shack built there, the electricity lines seem to be intact so we might actually get to explore a world where civilization is trying to start over – something welcome compared to Fallout 3 where, after all the years, they still looked like they were pretty much behind everything:
Next, we see some characters that are pretty difficult to distinguish, but I personally believe that they’re mutants. So they might make a slightly unexpected comeback in Fallout 4!
What follows is a shot of a Protectron and what will probably be one of the in-game towns. We see some cars there, many have asked for them and even though they seem to be in a pretty good shape, we still have no reasons to believe that we’ll actually have to practice driving in the upcoming game.
A shot of a never seen before mutant creature shows next:
Right before the scary Deathclaw (notice that the area is no longer as colorful, so in some places the green might be replaced by the brown):
What follows is a bunch of ghouls attacking the main character and apart from their new look, we can see that the physics engine has been tweaked a bit too: notice in the trailer that as the ghoul attacks, the shopping cart actually moves to the side. That’s pretty nice stuff!
We then get to see the Fenway Park stadium, according to Redditors, which has been rebuilt into a nice city:
We’re shown another Boston Monument, the Paul Revere monument – and a really cool airship in the back. That looks pretty strange – like a flying bottle, I’d say – and even though it looks terribly fragile, it’s something we might actually get to ride in the game. There’s also lightning, again:
Next, we see another guy in an armor in some sort of airship, making us believe that we’ll indeed get to fly at some point in Fallout 4. If you look carefully, you will also see the billboard with the letters GNN on them, which might mean that Three Dog is returning with some sort of Galaxy News Network. I remember that a long, long while ago the Three Dog actor confirmed his return in a new Fallout game, so this might be it.
What follows is a look at the post-apocalyptic Massachusetts State House, which is in a really good shape, like most of the buildings shown in this trailer.
Now we see the dog getting back to the rooftop entrance/exit of Vault 111 that we saw earlier in the trailer.
On the same rooftop, we’re taken back to the pre-war times, right when an explosion occurs. We can see the young family that was presented to us in the beginning sitting just above the vault’s rooftop entrance. However, the blast is really close so normally they couldn’t have survived the blast. We’ll see exactly what happened sometime in the future when Bethesda releases more details about the game.
As we near the end of the trailer, we have a shot that offers us a ton of information. Except for the cool Power Armor that might show some tweaking (see the difference between the left and right arms). Also, on our left, we see a Bobblehead, so we’re going to collect a ton of those too. There are also weapons that might hint at some crafting, as well as magazines that will most likely boost our stats. Could that actually be our in-game house? Maybe!
Finally, we get to see Dogmeat again and the protagonist, wearing a Pipboy (yay for that). Another really exciting thing that we need to notice is the fact that the protagonist… speaks! It might be just something for the trailer, it might be that we’re getting the first fully voiced character in the game. Something that many won’t really appreciate, though!
So that would be our analysis of the trailer and hopefully there will be a lot more for us in the coming days and weeks. Although there’s no release date announced yet, we do know that Fallout 4 will be only available on next gen consoles (PS4 and Xbox One) as well as PCs.
