Fallout 4

I originally played Fallout 4 the day it came out, November 10th 2015. And I was addicted I played for some 30 hours but within 2 weeks I was done with the game. I remember a point where I realized I was just doing the same thing nonstop: going to a new location, stealth sniping everyone, hauling loot, and maybe upgrading my stuff. I found whenever I'd talk to NPCs they'd often have generic names like "Settler" and would have no real dialogue. Even named NPCs often only had a couple lines of dialogue and they'd give me radiant quests with no point other than to get some experience. In short it felt like a hollow, empty world and I was sick of it.

Fast forward 6 years and I started playing again. I wanted to finish it because despite putting in 30 hours I had not even touched the first main quest. Hell, I never made it to Diamond City, the biggest hub in the game where everything kicks off. And boy am I glad I came back. Because it turns out I was wrong.

Last time I stuck around because the loop of getting new gear and leveling up and picking perks and killing stuff was a huge amount of fun. But that gets old after a bit. What I
didn't realize was there were plenty of substantial side quests as well as a pretty excellent main story line to follow that did have a lot of depth. The depth I was missing in my first play through.

Side quests like The Cabot House have excellent lore. The Cabot's are an old family that has found a way to live forever by harvesting the blood from their ageless father. The father started living forever and gained supernatural powers after putting on a helmet likely left by ancient aliens he dug up in the 19th century. How cool is that?

In the main story you have the Institute, Brotherhood, and Railroad all interacting with each other and vying for control of the Commonwealth. There's some great moral quandaries and some interesting characters. I loved learning about the origins of the synths and pondering the best outcome for everyone.

All in all, I ended up playing for another almost 50 hours. I enjoyed the store, I loved building up my settlements, and adored the fact that there was no level cap and my character kept getting stronger and stronger and stronger as I played.

While it certainly has flaws, the greatest of which is that it still has a superficial bent to it, where I really wish they just had more detail to the characters and their backgrounds-- at the end of the day it's an incredible game with massive world full of fun things to do. I highly recommend it.