I put Fallout 4 down yesterday. Not in the temporary "I need a break from this" sense, where you leave the game alone for a week and give yourself some breathing time in the hope you'll return to the game with renewed vitality and vigour. Nor in the permanent "I'm finished with this" sense, where you acknowledge your time with the game is definitively over. I put Fallout 4 down in a way that recognises I just wasn't having fun the way I was playing it, and needed to step away from it for a good long time while I think about what I want to get out of the experience. Upon finishing the quest I was on, I closed the game, deleted all my save data and ejected the disc from my PlayStation 4. No going back, at least not for a while.

It's not the first time I've done this with a giant Bethesda RPG, although it is the first time I've done it in a very long time. I had multiple false starts with Fallout 3 and Oblivion when I first played them back in late 2008 and early 2009 - more familiar with linear console RPGs of the Japanese variety at the time, I struggled to find my footing in their vast, wide open game-worlds. It wasn't until I played Morrowind in the summer of 2009 that the Bethesda formula 'clicked' for me, and I was able to lose myself in one of their games for a significant amount of time. Subsequent attempts to revisit Cyrodiil and the Capital Wasteland were much more successful and significantly lengthier affairs, and Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim kept me similarly engrossed. That magical 'click' still hasn't happened with Fallout 4.

What this occasion does mark is the first time I've done this with a Bethesda RPG after such a substantial amount of play-time. My failed attempts to get into Fallout 3 and Oblivion each constituted no more than a dozen hours on the clock, but at the time of abandonment my Fallout 4 save data had just passed the fifty-five hour mark. I'd explored vast swathes of the Commonwealth, reached level 35, visited over two hundred locations and completed a substantial number of quests for all of the game's four central factions. That's a lot of progress to lose whichever way you spin it, but I don't feel bad about casting it all into the void, because almost all of it ended up feeling kind of fruitless.

As I've spent time thinking about what went wrong (or perhaps more accurately, what wasn't quite going right) with Fallout 4 compared to the other Bethesda RPGs I've played, I've come to a conclusion. My experience with Fallout 4 has fallen flat for at least partially the same reason those initial forays into Fallout 3 and Oblivion fell flat - I went in without a clear goal in mind. In those games, going in blind ended up feeling overwhelming because of the sheer size of the worlds and my lack of familiarity with the Bethesda formula. In Fallout 4, the lack of direction has combined with my now reasonable level of experience with these kinds of games to produce something very different from intimidation - a lackadaisical approach to questing and exploration that has left me indifferent to everything I've encountered in the game, in spite of the several dozen hours of investment I've put into it.

It's here that I need to revisit the lessons that I learned in my time spent in Vvardenfell all those summers ago. I get the most out of Bethesda's games when I go into them with a pre-defined character in mind, and not just in terms of development and build, but with regards to their goals and choices too. I shouldn't be aiming to please everyone, or taking on every single quest I come across regardless of allegiance or moral implications. I should be playing in a way that's true to my character, allying myself with the factions who best represent his or her ideals, and steering clear of anything that he or she obviously wouldn't do. Ironically, approaching the game in this way will probably provide me with a more complete experience than trying to complete everything I stumble upon the minute I stumble upon it. It's how I approached Skyrim, after all, and look how well that turned out.

I'm not sure when I'll be going back to Fallout 4 yet, but I can say for certain that it won't be in what little remains of this year. I need to take some time to think about who I want to be when I set foot in the Commonwealth again. Perhaps I'll be ready to do that in the new year, or perhaps I'll wait until the spring when I'll likely have a bit more free time on my hands. Whatever happens, I know I'll be much better prepared for my next trip through post-apocalyptic Boston. I just hope that extra preparation and clearer guidance will equate to a more enjoyable experience. Thanks for reading guys. Take care, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Pokémon Omega Ruby (3DS)