I think this’ll end up being a parrot of most things said before.
Fallout 4 is a game made for a mass audience. It is made for the (very) casual gamers who take an art medium at face value and don’t interest themselves in the nitty gritty of such things like franchise consistency or the ideals behind the origins. It is a game made for those who want the instant gratification of being given greater and more meaningless positions of artificial power. It is for those who have a busy life and want to play an hour or three at the end of the day and not have to truly immerse themselves in long winded and confusing storylines and thematic ideals.
And yet, it posses the threads of creativity and thematic grounding that could have made a great game under different leadership. You can see the imagination peaking out from behind character interactions, stunted questlines, and nondescript dungeons. It is a fetus thrown under a rug, torn from the womb before it’s time and now resides as nothing more than a soft extrusion on an otherwise flat ground.
Is it a fun game? Yes. It holds up as a game you can end up sticking high numbers in since it just doesn’t end.
Is it a Fallout game? Yes. It is a modern Fallout game. It is the Fallout of a company who did not create it, who either didn’t understand the foundation created in the originals or just didn’t care. It is a parody of what the classics presented, a drag queen strutting like they are a biological woman, but it is what Fallout is now.
Is it an RPG? Go no.
Do I still play it? Yes. When I go to visit home I will flick it on for an hour or two, romancing up Piper or Cait and fiddling about with settlements before going off on a mindless quest that keeps repeating itself.
Should you play it? Yes. You may enjoy it. You may find the embers of the classics scattered on the polluted ocean that is Bethesda’s vision for a Fallout stripped down and streamlined to the extent that is resembles a kid’s attempts at the Mona Lisa