Fallout 4: 10 Core Lessons It Must Learn From Skyrim

3. Keep Us On Our Toes

One of the best things about the dragon encounters in Skyrim is that they can sometimes occur completely at random. Few video game experiences can boast that they invoke the same feeling of terror and doom that Skyrim does when players are slugging away against a few low level enemies, only to see hear a dragon approach from the distance. Events like these in games come from emergent gameplay, where the events and story of the game take place and evolve around the player's actions. In several online forums it's suggested that emergent gameplay is the future of interactive gaming, and was employed very well by Bethesda in Skyrim's random dragon encounters. Whether players were coasting along without challenge or just having a particularly torrid time plagued by enemies, these random events keep the player guessing and never let the gameplay get too routine or boring. Though the placement and behaviour of many enemies in the game was pre-determined, these random encounters were not, and so players could not account for them at all times. This sort of unpredictability would make Fallout 4 a truly great experience, and perhaps even more realistic. The V.A.T.S system and weapon scopes made it far too easy for players to avoid difficult scenarios in Fallout 3 altogether, and the random encounters that did exist were limited and easy to predict. Emergent encounters would take this power away from players and better replicate the experience of trying to survive in the harsh wasteland. The odds would be stacked further against the player, and would make for a true gaming challenge.