How, you might ask? Well, the honest answer is because my wife and I don’t want to have student loans hanging over our heads, and so we stick to a pretty tight budget. With Christmas presents to buy this month, I didn’t factor in new games for myself when deciding how we’ll spend our money. That means if I want something new to play, something else has to go. I’m starving for a great RPG. It’s been so long since I was given a truly wonderful world to explore with characters that I want to level up and learn more about. I had no doubt that Fallout 4 would scratch that itch, but I was very much mistaken.
Before you start picking which four letter word you want to use first, you should know that I really, really wanted to love Fallout 4. Fallout 3 made a huge impact on me; it was one of the most memorable gaming experiences I’ve ever had, and I just don’t think that Bethesda was aiming high enough with its sequel. It wanted to deliver the same kind of gritty experience that shook us up in all the right ways in Fallout 3 , not realizing that it was novelty that made the game so unforgettable. Who can forget their first time progressing through the vault and getting their Pip Boy; getting revenge on their bully; breaking through to new light and hearing the Ink Spots on the radio for the first time?
Back then Bethesda’s twisted humor and Fallout’s unforgiving difficulty shown so brightly, but instead of sparking a new flame with Fallout 4 it seems Bethesda’s strategy was to add more kindling to a dying fire; to take the same formula (and pretty much the exact same UI) and repackage it with prettier – albeit still janky – visuals. I am so disappointed to say that it just didn’t do it for me. I played the game for a few weeks and, beyond that initial honeymoon period that you experience with any new game when you can’t wait to play it at the end of the day, I just didn’t find the RPG experience that I was craving. If I can find a buyer, I’m selling this guy on craigslist and pretending that I won a $40 off coupon for Xenoblade Chronicles X.
Xenoblade Chronicles X is a game that went a whole new direction from its predecessor. Where Chronicles was a more linear, story-driven affair, Chronicles X is more about getting lost in and conquering an enormous, living, breathing world. I’ve been watching this game and dreaming about exploring that world ever since the initial E3 teaser trailer, and I should have listened to that little voice in my head that said that this was going to be the definitive JRPG – and quite possibly the definitive RPG – of 2015. There is so much to see and do, and none of it feels familiar.
It’s all about Mira. Whenever multiple reviewers praise a game world as one of the game’s best characters (is that a cliché yet?), I know that the game is for me. I love getting lost in believable fantasy worlds; that’s what made Dark Souls so special to me. The world of Fallout 4 is not varied enough to keep me interested, and only mysterious in that you can find hidden traps and side quests almost anywhere you go, both of which ended up equally annoying to me in time. No matter how many Chronicles X gameplay videos I watch, I’m always seeing a new landscape or a new creature, and it turns out the Mira is several times the size of Fallout 4’s game world.
If you enjoy Fallout 4 today just as much as you did on launch day, that’s awesome. I’m not here to tell you why one game is better than the other; this is an opinion piece , after all. I’m just trying to cope with the fact that I’m already willing to not only set this game aside for a while, but to sell it. After trying to tell myself for weeks that Fallout 4 was the game I wanted it to be I just can’t kid myself any longer and I had to say it out loud. I’m over it, and I’m not going to miss it. I can’t imagine any kind of DLC that could possibly draw me back into the wasteland, especially when Mira’s diverse and dangerous megacosm beckons so seductively. Besides, in a fight between someone in a Skell and someone in power armor, the Skell is going to win decisively. So there’s that.