Fallout 4: 10 Lessons It Must Learn From New Vegas

5. Let Players Explore For Themselves

For all it had the feeling of being empty space, New Vegas had something like 4x as many missions for players to complete than Fallout 3. The main plot was divided into three separate acts, it featured over 200 side quests, and subsequently released four DLC packs with new stories and weapons to play with. But, and this might be a petty gripe, the game constantly felt like it was leading you through every single one of these by the nose. Unless you completed everything in a particular way, in a particular order, then the missions didn't quite work properly. Given that the size of the game lends itself best to exploration, the stories all felt incredibly linear. There was almost no reward offered to the player for taking some initiative and trying things out for themselves, with entire towns willing to shoot you on sight if you happened to go slightly rogue when helping them out.