FALLOUT 4’S DIALOGUE SYSTEM IN FALLOUT 76: WASTELANDERS
Nobody will deny that Fallout 4 is, at the very least, a solid game- but even so, when it came out, it was easily the least spectacular game in the series since Bethesda took charge of it. A large section of the series’ fanbase criticizes Fallout 4’s excessive streamline, and how much it de-emphasized RPG mechanics to deliver an experience where player expression became much more restricted. The game’s dialogue system was perfectly emblematic of that- instead of giving players a list of responses to choose from like previous games in the series, Fallout 4 instead assigned dialogue choices to the face buttons, which meant that you were limited to a maximum of four choices at any given time. Worse still, quite often the choices didn’t differentiate from each other all that much, and felt extremely simplified as compared to what the series has generally been known for. Now, Fallout 76 is far from a perfect game, and it made several changes and additions itself that it obviously shouldn’t have, but it has been getting progressively better with its expansions. The first major expansion, Wastelanders, was a solid enough piece of content, and the fact that it had a proper, traditional Fallout dialogue system was a massive point in its favour.
