Connector Staff

With a considerable number of hours in the post-apocalyptic Boston of “Fallout 4” under his belt, UMass Lowell student David DaCosta was impressed. “I went in with lower expectations as a fan of the series, and was wary of the changes I heard were made, but it blew me away,” he said. “Mechanics are great, the main story is much better than I anticipated, and the local lore is very interesting.”

As one of the most anticipated games of the year, it comes as no surprise that UMass Lowell students are abuzz over “Fallout 4.” The game follows up on the highly popular third entry in Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic first person shooter/RPG series, as well as its spinoff-cum-semi sequel “Fallout: New Vegas.” The game follows a survivor of nuclear war in an alternate history that bears a strong resemblance to post-WWII 1950s America, with events taking place this time around in none other than Boston.

Fellow student Vannak Chim also spoke highly of the game, having spent an hour in the character creator and thrown himself in on the games highest difficulty setting. “My favorite part of the game is how massive the world is, and the attention to detail that Bethesda brought to this game that no other game really ever reaches,” he said. “I have yet to honestly run into a flaw in the game, except the difficulty being rather more difficult than usual. But I mean, games are supposed to be a challenge.”

While impressions on the game were positive across the board, there were still some minor complaints. Dante Taing had been building his anticipation for the game “for little over 5 years” and was loving his experience, but still had some issues with one of the new gameplay systems. “[One of the] things I dislike is the building system for settlements, which [could] be polished a bit more,” he said, listing off some of the problems. “Raking leaves, cutting the grass, some objects have too big of a hitbox, little to no chat options with your settlers, can’t see what jobs which settlers have, and a bunch more.” Nevertheless, he said he believes all of the above could be easily fixed.

Tim Coyle said he appreciated how “Fallout 4” addressed most of his problems with its predecessors but still had issues with the AI of non-player characters, or NPCs. “The companion AI has a lot of trouble pathing around certain things and gets messed up a lot,” he said. “[But] overall the amount of bugs seems much lower than previous ‘Fallout’s.’”

Despite Bethesda’s reputation as a studio notorious for putting out games that are highly buggy on release, if not outright unplayable before a patch, “Fallout 4” has come out the gate far stronger than either “Fallout 3” or the Obsidian Entertainment-developed “New Vegas.” “Honestly, I haven’t run into as nearly as many bugs as I did in ‘Skyrim,’ which was terribly buggy,” Chim said in reference to the latest game in Bethesda’s other flagship RPG series, “The Elder Scrolls.”

Taing joked that the “Fallout 4” bugs actually “add[ed] to the fun,” but only to an extent.  “People teleporting short distances through objects, like beds, or a wall, maybe an AI starts spinning at an abnormal angle and speed, or they just randomly get launched in the air after randomly walking or getting shot, and animals getting put onto the roof,” he said, by way of example. “Many of the bugs making a worthy and hilarious moment to remember and screenshot.”

Nevertheless, players said that other gamers should still beware of game-breaking bugs, even if there are less to worry about this time around. Coyle recalled a few game crashes during attempts to open the player character’s wrist-mounted Pip Boy device, which serves as the in-game menu system. Taing also attested to bugs that could hinder progression.

“There are game breaking bugs where sometimes the NPC will not talk to you or will randomly disappear, and then there are others where your game will crash when loading certain areas that you come by,” he said.

Despite any potential trouble, “Fallout 4” still seems to have lived up to the hype. “Bethesda, again, has my vote for game of the year,” said Chim.