Fallout 4 has a serious bug and it's totally not your fault.
Heaps of players are taking to forums and threads online trying to figure out what looks like permanently blurred vision as they trek through the Wasteland.
At first, players on the Steam forums thought it was their settings. That makes enough sense. Tweaking screen resolutions from 1,280 x 720p to 1,080p, for example, doesn't work. Others have found that playing in window mode helped sharpen a bit of the blur. Even switching from TAA to FXAA has worked for some, but if anything, there hasn't been an all-around cure for Fallout 4's blurred vision bug.
It turns out the culprit is in each player's save file. Unfortunately, if you're the obsessive compulsive type who deletes previous save files, then you're a bit out of luck. Much like Polygon's Owen S. Good who lost 25 hours of gameplay, reverting back to a previous save file is the only fix for the bug.
Right now, no one knows why this happens, but it's a very real possibility to develop permanently blurred vision in Fallout 4. Normally, this occurs when a player takes a critical hit to the head. Things often go back to normal when a player heals themselves with a Stimpak. Not with this bug.
Blurred vision isn't the only symptom of the bug. Other players have also reported glitches where their vision is stuck in black and white. No amount of waiting and resting fixes it. Neither does treatment with multiple Stimpaks and RadAway work. Changing attires and even changing genders does nothing to alleviate the blurred vision. Visiting the doctor? Nope, that's been tried of course, and that didn't work. Finally, restarting the game seems like a last but effective resort, but alas! It is not.
The only "fix" is having to reload a save point during which the character can still see clearly. It does seem, however, that if one cheats, there is a higher the likelihood of contracting the blurred vision bug. If a player is supposed to die after getting attacked (especially by an enemy with a powerful special attack) but they've turned on immortality, the bug may show up. It's not necessarily the developer's fault at that point – players aren't supposed to be immortal.
In a wide open world such as that in Fallout 4, where literally anything can happen in between multiple scenarios, decisions, combinations, and more, it'll be tough to find the source of the glitch.
The lesson here is to keep those old save files. A save file takes up to 10 MB of space. On a 500 GB PS4 or Xbox One, 500 game saves only takes up 1% of the drive. Let go of the OCD, and keep those files. Players will save themselves tons of hours of work in case something goes wrong.
