A long journey that started with a pair of first evers for Bethesda Softworks comes to a close on Nov. 10, the date Fallout 4 finally launches.
Fallout 4 is by no means a shoo in for game of the year, but it certainly has the momentum and the heritage behind it.
The game was announced at Bethesda's first-ever E3 presentation and that news was followed by the game maker's first-ever mobile game, a marketing tool most people call Fallout Shelter. Bethesda kept the hype train with marketing materials, including a real-life PipBoy (Personal Information Processor) and even a soft drink: Nuka Cola Quantum.
As for heritage, Fallout 3, the first in the series to go first person, has been able to maintain a MetaCritic score between 90 and 93 out of 100 since its launch all the way back in 2008.
Beyond all that the marketing team has done, the men and women who've coded and quality assured Fallout 4 look like they have a product that'll live up to the hype.
Game of the Year Material
In the latest installment of the wildly popular sci-fi role playing game, players emerge from another vault in yet another wasteland created by a nuclear event. It's what players want, but they also seek new stories and refined gameplay, so Fallout 4 is promising all that and more.
The game is more thematic, said Bethesda's Todd Howard, creative director. He also said he believes the game will be more emotional than the last game.
"You are somebody that lived before this world and now you're returning to it," said Howard in a recent interview with iDigital Times. "And how are you going to find, and get used to, the new normal. Your life has been turned over. All the people you knew, everybody is gone. And it's the experience of 'how do I survive now?' Both physically and emotionally. That's part of the story. That was our experience."
Not quite dieselpunk by definition, the Fallout games live in their own alternative universes in which dated-looking technologies prove to be more advanced than many advances the world is seeing now.
Players customize their characters, from physical to mental attributes, and then emerge from their fallout shelters, or vaults, to a world radicalized by radiation in which most things are out to harm them.
The Fallout games offer an abundance of lore and an offbeat sense of humor. And like other Bethesda games, Fallout 4 will support player mods. Combining the wealth of gameplay promised and the support for mods, people might be playing this game for a long time.
"I think our official answer now when people ask how many hours is the game is, 'All of them,'" said Bethesda's Howard.
The last Fallout game, Fallout 3 expansion "Fallout: New Vegas," set players out across Nevada's nuked metropolis. This time around, the action takes place in Boston.
During the game's prologue, players will get to design their characters and learn about the game's version of Boston before the apocalypse.
That character will take shelter in a vault and then awaken about two centuries later to world where all of his or her loved ones are dead. It'll be alien to the player character, but those already wondering the wasteland don't know what life was like before the apocalypse.
"Fallout 4 is about realizing that your life has a new normal," Howard said. "We want to put you in the shoes of someone who knows what life was like before this."
The Launch Party
To celebrate the impending launch of its latest game, Bethesda converted an empty warehouse in downtown LA into its version of a wasteland settlement last Thursday. But that settlement looked a lot like a nightclub.
Some of the high-profile guest as the settlement include Calvin Harris, Bloc Party, Walk the Moon, Halle Berry and Kaley Cuoco.
On tap, Bethesda was serving up something it was calling a Fallout drink. There were N-Out burgers and fries, a regenerating candy store and tons of other sweets.
The launch party was accompanied by a launch trailer:
Fallout 4: launches on Tuesday, Nov. 10 for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The game is available for purchase via all major retailers of video games including Steam and Bethesda itself.
Related: Fallout 4 Review
