Say what you will about Fallout, whether you love it, hate it, or just give it a fleeting glance as you walk past it in the store, they are generally accepted to be a great series of games. But there’s one thing that they lack, and that’s any real sense of difficulty.
The reason behind this is simple, every problem can be overcome with a ton of armour, a massive gun and a pile of chemicals to flood your system with. Giant mutant? Hit it with the Fatman. Enclave Patrol? Hit it with the Fatman. Massive killer Alpha Deathclaw? Hit it with the Fatman twice. Everything in the game succumbs to you should you just blast it with big guns.
So with that in mind, a fair case could be made that the game should take a page out of some other books and perhaps change up the difficulty. Should it be like Bloodborne? No, not really. Bloodborne is, from what I’ve played of it, a very solid game the likes of which From Software excel at creating. The problem though, is that the game relies to heavily on stamina management and dodging, two things which are very out of place in Fallout.
Fallout should instead draw from Dark Souls. Very similar, but subtly challenging and more difficult. Stamina management in Dark Souls feels different than it does in Bloodborne. A character in Bloodborne should use zero stamina dodging in a leather duster, a character in Dark Souls should barely be able to breath after executing a dodge roll in plate armour.
This makes more sense for Fallout. If armour is to be effective, it needs to be thick and strong, so perhaps a Brotherhood of Steel soldier would need to effectively manage stamina to properly move and wield weapons with any degree of skill. As for levelling up, well that could be super interesting. Imagine a near rogue-like state of play. If, or more likely when, you die, your characters data is stored on their Pipboy. When you respawn as a new wanderer, you can rediscover this lost data, effectively regaining your experience, etc. Though, I think this would need to be optional.
Several games in the past has taught us that it’s easy to ape difficult games, but it’s hard to make their mechanics your own. So what could Fallout do to increase the difficulty without making it cheap? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments below.
This article is part of our series on Bethesda’s next big entry into the world of Fallout. Through this series we take a look at the possible new features that Bethesda can add into Fallout 4, based on what they implemented in the previous entries and player feedback.