Spoilers lie ahead for Fallout 3, 4 and New Vegas so reader beware.

Let’s start with the all important caveats before criticise something people love. I enjoy the Fallout series, I’ve played through all three 3d games and put way more of my life into Fallout Shelter than I care to admit. I’m a little too young to have played the old geometric games but if I ever find the time I’m not opposed to going back to them. I actually really enjoyed Fallout 4, which is part of the issue. I also don't really enjoy playing role playing games outside of my own character, so certain options in game seem unconscionable to me. Lastly I do have commitment issues so tend to be uncomfortable doing stuff in games with permanent decisions until i know for sure what outcome I want, as a small child I wouldn't pick a fossil on mt moon in Pokémon until I had spoken with friends to make sure we didn't get the same one, and that habit dies hard.

The world is too interesting, seriously

With Fallout 4, I wanted to do anything but the main quest. The Commonwealth is fascinating, with some great characters within it. I could spend all day reading terminal entries (modern action RPGs have taught me other people's emails are fascinating). There are some truly endearing sidequests, becoming the silver shroud, giving Travis some confidence and rescuing a silly posh man who tried to teach Shakespeare to supermutants to name a few. While this is a commendable achievement in game design, a huge chunk of the writing and set design went into the main quest, and to get a player to go through with it the game needs to encourage the player to pursue it. There’s a number of ways games tend to go about this.

Three ways to encourage players to follow the story

The first, and most straightforward way to funnel a player towards the main quest is to require it. A strong example of this is the Mass Effect series. In Mass Effect you get some autonomy, the player often gets a couple of main quests to do at once and a variety of side quests to go with it. How Mass Effect restricts the player though is by only giving planets on your map when it is time to go there. Once the player gets the Normandy, they can't go to Virmire until they’ve been and completed the quests on Feros and Noveria. While this can make the game linear, it keeps the focus coming back to the main quest as it becomes the only thing left to do relatively quickly.

The second way to push the player towards the main quest is the hide content behind it. A classic example of this is how in Guild Wars Prophecies, for a player to change their second profession they need to complete Augury Rock, the 18th of 25 main missions, and to get the maximum armour the player must complete the next quest (The Dragon’s Lair) so they can buy them in Droknar’s Forge. To some extent Fallout 4 uses this technique, some items only become available (either in shops or as loot) after certain quests are completed, but it's not clear in game, and the value of the unlocked items is questionable.

The third, and most satisfying, way to push a player into the main quest is to create a sense of urgency. This can be done two ways, either mechanically or through writing. In Fallout: New Vegas, the player’s actions change how different factions respond to the player. If a player has a bad reputation with a faction they encounter, they will be attacked. This encourages the player to resolve the conflicts between factions, which form the main quests. Fallout 4 actually does this through writing for the first half of the game. When the player first goes looking for their son, they believe he is still a child, vulnerable to whoever has taken him. Even if it doesn't make a difference in the game, it feels important to find him fast, that if the player waits too long it might be too late. This gives the game a tempo, the bits and pieces of information discovered on the way keep the player interested and on the verge of a breakthrough.

Does the Commonwealth really need saving?

Where Fallout 4 starts to lose its urgency is once the player finds their son. At that point the decisions the player makes are no longer strictly personal and serve only to advance one of the four factions interests. At this point, the player picks a faction to back and does their bidding from there to the end of the game.

And none of the factions interests really seem to matter, which makes it hard to find motivation. Once the player enters the institute and finds Shaun, the next question is what is actually wrong with the Commonwealth, as fixing that should be the main thrust of the rest of the game. In Fallout 3 the player finds their dad, then they fix the water purifier. Given the player has probably given themselves radiation poisoning at least fourteen times drinking dirty toilet water, that is an obvious in universe issue to be solved. In Fallout 4, the answer isn’t that simple.

There’s the obvious living in a post apocalyptic wasteland thing which is a problem. I personally don’t think I’d sleep that well knowing feral ghouls and deathclaws were peeking through the window. Also I drink so much tap water I’d probably die instantly. The Institute profess to solve this problem, but their plan seems to be to live like mole people, do some good sciencing and let everyone above ground suffer because why not?

There’s a big running theme throughout the game of people snatching. Shaun gets nicked, Piper dedicates a whole newspaper to people getting nicked, there’s a science man in a house that the institute really want to nick but he locked himself in a cupboard. Problem is the only two the player witnesses in the game are the two I just mentioned, and it doesn’t feel like a consistent issue. Are the Institute still nicking people? Do I need to care about them?

The Minutemen just want to mind their own business free from raider and synth raids, which is nice, but defending a lot of small towns isn’t really some grand ending to a game (that’s not the Minutemen ending but it should be because really the Minutemen destroying the Institute when their general is also the director of the Institute seems like something that doesn’t need to happen).

The final issue gets a bit/a lot racist, which is the Brotherhood of Steel (who seem much nastier than the nice group of lads I met in Fallout 3) who think that all synths, ghouls and super mutants need to be destroyed, no ifs no buts. It’s just not that much of a problem to me, yeah some super mutants are a bit nasty, and I don’t really like to decorate with so much human flesh, but genocide seems like a bad solution.

So there’s no obviously important thing the player has to do next. There’s one last thing too. The more of the main quest you do, the less of the game the player has access to. There’s a point where the player loses access to other
factions. By the end, two of three factions are totally destroyed, and for what? The final act of the game feel very much like a box ticking exercise, with a couple of dialogue payoffs, but nothing that meaningful is achieved because nothing that important is there to be done. Destroying the Institute should be a huge moment, but feels far less important than destroying Megaton in Fallout 3, because there’s basically nothing to go back for anyway.

To finish, I think this uncovers an important point. Stories in games need to fit the medium. The conflict between the three big factions has some interesting plot points, and if they were to be viewed from the outside would be great, but a first person roleplaying game needs to be more personal. The actions of the player character have to feel somewhat organic. The most natural response in Fallout 4 after finding your son is to spend the next couple of days in the Dugout Inn and then wondering why your headache is so bad.