10 Things Fallout 5 Should Learn From 1 & 2

For a game about post-nuclear survivors, surviving in Fallout 3 and 4 is remarkably easy. You can sleep off or stim up broken limbs, haul around immense piles of ammo, and all of your companions are essentially immortal.

Sure, there is New Vegas’ hardcore mode and the survival mode added in a later update for Fallout 4. Both rectify some of the issues, adding weight to ammunition and requiring slightly more effort to cure broken limbs. They also make you require food, water and sleep to survive. This seems like a reasonable thing to do in a post-apocalyptic scenario, but instead of making things more interesting, it makes them a chore.

And then there are the immortal companions. What’s the purpose in caring for someone, protecting them and sharing your last stimpack with them, if once smoke clears, they just brush off the dust and stand back up, good as new.

Now, Fallout 1 and 2 were never up there with the most difficult of games. But they still made you think twice before abandoning a companion in the line of fire, because magical resurrection just isn’t a thing in the wasteland. If they die, they die. And unless you know how to set a broken leg straight, you have to hobble to the nearest physician, because a quick stim shot won’t knit broken bones back together.

Fallout 5 could use at least a bit of that gravity, just as a reminder that the wasteland isn’t fooling around with us.