‘Fallout 4’ Won’t Be As Bleak As Previous Installments Of The Series

Later this fall, gamers can expect to see all kinds of apocalyptic horrors when Fallout 4 launches on current-gen platforms. However, despite the fact that the world is still trying to survive the aftermath of a nuclear cataclysm, Bethesda says that Fallout 4 won’t feel as dark as earlier entries of the series such as the studios’ last foray into the franchise with Fallout 3.

In the upcoming next installment of Fallout, fans will be introduced to a world that is past the stage of simply trying to survive. Speaking to PC PowerPlay, Bethesda’s Pete Hines revealed that players will witness a world that is actually beginning to rebuild society. Because of this, hope has returned to many of the people that gamers will encounter in Fallout 4.

“Oh, yeah. I think it was a conscious decision. I think the team was very self-aware that Fallout 3 was a depressing-looking world, but that was part of the motif that they were going for, which is, you emerge into this world having lived in the vault and it was very much, your father is on this quest to save humanity. Like, humanity needs saving. Look at all this. It’s horrible. Somebody has got to do something.”

That doesn’t mean that the setting of Fallout 4 will be bright and peaceful, however. The game will still ultimately be full of the hardships that come as a result of the devastation that happened when the bombs fell and the horrors that followed, bringing years of new terrors at the hands of bandits and mutants.

Since players will take control of a new protagonist that actually saw the world before the war happened, Fallout 4 will have an ongoing theme of emotional loss. Through the eyes of the main character, players will be reminded of just how different the world has become.

“This has got a slightly different tone to it. And not specific to the story, but just, the mood of the world is more of a, this is life, like, this is normal. This is reality now. There is no more nicely manicured lawns or white picket fences or going back to that. This is what home looks like now.”

That’s where hope will begin to resurface in Fallout 4. Rather than simply accept that everything will remain in ruins, players will see that the people of the post-apocalyptic setting are finally starting to pull together in order to rebuild. As Hines explained, it will be a long process to bring order back to the wastes.

“We now have a job to do. That’s the ‘Welcome home’ tagline [for Fallout 4], which was part of Todd’s contribution, because it does have this slightly ominous thing to it. This is where you live and the whole settlement thing allows you to do a little bit of rebuilding the world and so forth, but still within this context. It’s not like you suddenly make it clean and perfect and everything is back to pre-war.”

It might be good news that players might be able to help recreate the world since it looks like those wanting to max out their characters will have to spend a lot of time playing Fallout 4. Gamepur reports that an article in the latest issue of the Official Xbox Magazine revealed that gamers would have to gain enough experience to reach level 275 in order to acquire every perk in the game.

Just because the title might not be a dark and depressing as the series’ previous installments, doesn’t mean that Fallout 4 is looking to completely break away from the established feeling of the franchise. As the Inquisitr reported last month, Bethesda has already stated that Fallout 4 will definitely feel familiar to Fallout fans.

Do you plan to help the people of Fallout 4 create a new society or would you rather join in the bandits cause to further its destruction?

[Images via Fallout 4]