A coworker of mine the other day was talking about Fallout, and I mentioned how I thought Fallout 4 sucked shit (in a much more polite way, we're cool). She asked why, and in response, I asked her to describe her favorite character in the game and why they resonated with her. I didn't get an answer, nor did I expect one.

As an open world game where you walk around in the woods for 40-80 hours and pick up used candy bar wrappers to repair your guns, Fallout 4 is totally acceptable. If they offered PS4 games on flights, there would be worse ways to kill a few hours.

As a narrative, it's a Bethesda game. I don't think there's any other developer that could do a worse job with the story of Fallout. Idea Factory would be a welcome improvement. The changes to the core setting of the game are, at best, lazy and at worst outright contemptuous of the themes of the previous games. None of the characters work. Their use of pre-war American iconography totally misses the point of the previous games. Even divorced from the previous games, the role playing aspect of Fallout 4 looks barren compared to even other flawed WRPGs like Mass Effect. It's a game that railroads you in order to tell a very specific story, and that story was written by hollow men.

This game set the tone that the franchise would take going forward. I think about other Bethesda games like Skyrim and laugh at their total ineptitude. Fallout 4 actively makes me upset. If there's any just and loving God, Zenimax will be bought out by a private equity firm and stripped for parts like Sears, or Toys r' Us.

The mid 2010s were so bad for gaming, it's insane how much better things have gotten.