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According to Steam, I’ve played 691 hours of Fallout 4 since it was published in 2015.1 I remember waking up early before classes in college, wandering the irradiated wasteland of downtown Boston and meticulously arranging furniture and paintings inside my numerous bustling settlements.
That playtime doesn’t even encapsulate the time I’ve spent installing mods, tinkering with settings, and burning it all to the ground. I can’t even count the number of times…
And yet I’ve never actually beaten the game. I’m not sure I ever will.
Fallout 4 and Skyrim occupy a place in my life that few games do. They’re not games I play for any real sense of accomplishment — I often don’t even complete questlines when I return to them. No, these are games I play to enter another world. To spend some time in another place. To boil things down to a basic loop of exploration, combat, and progression.
Ever since Bethesda released survival mode, it’s been my difficulty of choice. It’s often punishing; the game disables the ability to quick-save, along with all auto-saving. Now you can only save by sleeping in a bed. You need to eat, drink, and sleep to stay healthy. Animal attacks can lead to parasites and disease. It can be rough.
But it shapes the way I play in ways I find intriguing. I find myself erecting personal bunkers at settlements throughout the Commonwealth, small oases of calm in a hostile world. I set up equipment caches, a bed, and often a painting. Something to mute the world’s harshness for a time.
Building a place of comfort and safety becomes a worthy goal above and beyond any quest.
In many ways, I don’t think that’s an experience I’ve had in another game.
All links to games mentioned in this article are Humble Bundle affiliate links; I get a small portion of any purchase made after using them↩︎
