12 Ways Bethesda Should Have Made Fallout 4

7. Story (Part 2) - Pacing & The Son Reveal

I've covered the intro pacing, but even if you accept that your infant son is just going to fend for themselves, you'll then dart off and indulge in other missions and exploration. Fine. But come the point where you track him down and discover he's been an old man this entire time, there are even morehours where the story changes altogether, trying to get you invested in choosing between the four factions.

Narratively, it doesn't feel right. Your goal up to this point has been to find your son, but the reveal he's the head of the Institute comes with only the barest explanation. Re-evaluating what you thought you knew about your purpose in this world - which was already poorly portrayed by your character just going along with everything - you now have to start siding with pivotal characters for the sake of an unknown, encroaching event.

The extended chunk of time after this reveal makes it feel like one elongated epilogue, but within that, multiple prompts rush to warn you of the dangers of siding with one person over the other.

You're repeatedly told "Doing this will negate this and this", but the rationale or reasoning inherent to these decisions isn't there, being the preceding tens of hours were spent finding your son. There's not even an option to unite the factions, despite you being best buds with all their leaders, culminating in a forced decision that triggers a final battle and - for some factions - another catastrophic explosion.

Your main character then has the gall to chime in with "War... war never changes". It feels crowbarred in, like Bethesda thought "Hey, if we just put this at the end, the fans will love it!" Sorry, but you need to earn that phrase if you're ultimately going to fall back on the idea of everything being a loop.

This isn't Bioshock, after all.