5 Features Fallout 4 is Missing
By John Jacques 26 December 2015
Fallout 4 is a gigantic game, but I felt that there were a few pieces missing to the puzzle. Read on to find out what missing features I feel could have made the game even better!
The world of Fallout 4 is chock-full of amazing sidestories and countless Easter Eggs, but now that the honeymoon period is over, we’ve acknowledged a few this Fallout 4 was missing. These features have all been in the series at one point or another, and their inclusion would have ultimately helped rocket the game to an even higher reception, although it evidently fared perfectly fine without their inclusion.
Bethesda did a great job populating the commonwealth of Boston with interesting characters, quests, and locales, but every now and then gamers probably come across something – or a lack of something – that would irk them. I had a few of these same thoughts across 60-odd hours of playtime, and some of them were certainly avoidable. Without further ado, here’s 5 things that Fallout 4 should have had:
Craftable Ammo
Fallout 4 drastically changed the feel of the series when it placed such a large emphasis on crafting. Suddenly, junk items had much more tangible value, and players could craft their own armor and weapons, or even build entire settlements from the ground up. With this focus on crafting, it felt very strange that ammunition couldn’t be crafted from any of the spare materials lying around. New Vegas had Reloading Benches for this exact purpose, so why drop the feature from Fallout 4 if the game was poised to bring a focus on crafting?
Fallout 4 was only out for a few days before one intrepid fan made his own Ammo Crafting modification, and the current download count for it shows this is something many gamers are certainly interested in. If players can add recon scopes to rifles using duck tape adhesive and a few screws, it makes sense that they ought to be able to craft the bullets for the gun, too.
Armor Display Mannequins
Boston is teeming with a borderline-creepy amount of mannequins, so it’s a little weird players can’t put any in their settlements and use them to display different pieces of armor and apparel they collect. Skyrim houses featured plenty of armor display mannequins, and it was sad to see that they didn’t transition over into the Commonwealth. While it’s great that the renewed focus on power armor brought Power Armor Stands, the bulky suits of armor can technically be left anywhere, and we wish standard clothes had their own way to be displayed in the Sole Survivor’s home.
The same case could be made for weapon racks, but at least Fallout 4 fans have a modification that adds those into the game. The only way to display clothes is to drop the folded apparel models, which just isn’t the same thing as actually placing them on a mannequin so gamers can admire what the clothes would actually look like on a person.
The Robobrain and Giant Ants
The robobrain is a robotic NPC that has been in every Fallout title up to Fallout 4. It was likely removed to let the new assaultron robot grab a bigger spotlight, but I found myself missing the ol’ brain-bearing strangle-machine. Though most of the robobrains reportedly used brains from chimpanzees, a number of robobrains from previous Fallout titles played host to human brains, and had personalities from their owners. This led to some interesting storylines, and it feels amiss that Bethesda would drop the iconic robot from their lineup for the first time ever.
Likewise, Giant Ants would have fit well into the setting, and the inclusion of Fire Ants would have made a lot of the bug-based combat more interesting, since most bug enemies rely on close melee attacks. Many gamers have commented that Boston has an over-reliance on mirelurks, and whilst that makes sense considering its broad coastline, the abundance of armored shells in the area makes for some tiresome combat. When every bug-type enemy is seemingly either flying or shell-based, a flaming warrior would have been the perfect way to heat things up.
Hardcore Mode
Another feature introduced by Obsidian Entertainment in New Vegas, hardcore mode gave ammunition a weight value and made the character get hungry and thirsty. It added plenty of depth, strategy, and challenge to New Vegas, and I feel like it would have brought a nice optional experience to Fallout 4.
The inclusion of a Hardcore Mode would also have made settlements all the more important, as having farms and water purifiers would carry much more importance to someone who felt the pangs of hunger and thirst. In regular gameplay, most players don’t touch the pile of tatos that build up in settlement inventories, and it feels like Bethesda Studios missed a golden opportunity to include a hardcore mode where it would shine the most.
Low Intelligence Dialogue
For those who don’t know about the low intelligence playthrough, it has a simple premise: if a player had an extremely low intelligence stat, that player would often be able to say ridiculous things, and essentially never made a sentence that was grammatically appropriate.
Given how expensive recording unique dialogue lines for everything would have been now that Fallout 4 introduced a voice protagonist for the first time, it’s understandable why Bethesda nixed the classic feature. The studio also retooled the conversation system into a 4 button experience, which would make the inclusion of a constant fifth dialogue option much harder to stylistically include.
The legendary Low Int dialogue playthroughs brought plenty of laughs as the player stumbled their way through each conversation or shouted out ‘ICECREAM!’ whenever prompted for a password, and I can’t help but miss the absurd joy that the low intelligence dialogue options brought me.
Despite the lack of the above features, Fallout 4 is still an immensely enjoyable title, but I can’t help but feel like it could have been even more. The game has less quests than Skyrim offers, and whilst I’m not likely to replay the game anytime soon, I know I would hop right in if I could do another playthrough in Hardcore Mode.
What do you think about the above list, Ranters? Is there anything you felt Bethesda Game Studios should have included in Fallout 4?
Fallout 4 is currently available on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.
