When Fallout 3 came out in 2008, it kind of changed things as far as open world games go. Now, Oblivion did come out two years earlier, but that game was high fantasy and Fallout is all about guns when it comes to combat. It was also one of the first games to explore an area after a nuclear explosion and see what life would be like in the years that followed. There’s something that’s just so satisfying when you blow the head off a super mutant and can listen to old music on your Pip-Boy.
Now, having said all that, the series is also known for having a slew full of problems, and not just story/character related problems that can be just differing opinions. Open-world Bethesda (the publisher) games usually always have some glitches and graphical issues around them. Fallout 3 and New Vegas definitely had more than Fallout 4, but all of them had some problems. Not all of the problems are bad enough to stop playing the games, but they are very noticeable and can take a great game down to just good sometimes. Some of the problems literally force you to stop playing the games and deal with them, though, and those are the bad ones. It’s unfortunate that those problems exist, but they do. Below is a list of 20 things that are wrong with the Fallout games that some people just choose to ignore.
Alright, let’s get to the list!
20 Just... Stand Still
A big reason that some people get turned off of the Fallout games is the combat. Playing the game in first-person is the best way to play and the combat revolves around guns. Now in Fallout 3 you couldn’t even aim down the sights, that was only added later with New Vegas and carried though to Fallout 4. The base gunplay in Fallout 3 and New Vegas just feels rough. It’s so inaccurate to shoot a gun when not using V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted targeting). Using V.A.T.S. definitely improves aiming because it slows time down and you can target specific body parts, but it uses AP (Attack Points) every time you use it. Fallout 4 did improve the aiming down sights gameplay, taking pointers from Destiny, but it still didn’t feel awesome. So, basically, an open-world game that revolves around guns didn’t make it fun to use them till Fallout 4... cool.
19 How Powerful Are The New Consoles Again?
This entry is mainly for the console versions of the games but can bleed over into the PC side too. The environments of the Fallout games are incredible! They make the dead earth interesting to look at, even if it is mainly grey and brown. The problems with the graphics comes into play with the character models and faces. It looks like someone smeared vaseline on some of their faces and the lip syncing is so off. Really the main reason to play a Fallout game is for the characters and branching dialogue options, but they're just so ugly to look at! Especially Fallout 3 and New Vegas, 'cause those games were on the Xbox 360 and PS3. But honestly, Fallout 4 didn’t impress a ton graphically when it came out. Especially with games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Metal Gear Solid 5:The Phantom Pain out that same year...
18 I'm Gonna Get A Snack
So, the Fallout games are huge, and it’s reasonable to not expect the entire world to load in with you, but every time you open a door to a reasonably big area the game takes forever to load. Now, this is mainly a problem with Fallout New Vegas and only really applied to the console versions of the game, but still. You're on the Vegas strip and go into a casino and it can take upwards of a minute to load in. Totally get that the place is a few levels high, but a minute is far too long.
The same goes for every time you first boot the game game up. No need to pause Fallout New Vegas for a bathroom break, just hit a load screen and you're good to go! The load times are much faster on PC. Maybe these PC master race people have the right idea!
17 I'm Not Asking For Directions!
So there isn't really a mini map in the Fallout games; rather, it has directions on the bottom of the screen with arrows representing the enemies and where they're at. It works fine for the most part... that is, until there is someone above or below you and you look around for a year to find them. If it’s an open room or outside, then they will be screaming or shooting at you and it’s not bad, but when it’s inside a building with several floors then it could take a while.
Same goes for the mission markers. They will be all over the place sometimes when you get inside the building you need to be in. This applies to all the games, and it’s a shame that they kept the same approach with Fallout 4. Sometimes you’ll get close to the marker and it will just move to the other side of the building and it’s like looking at a map upside down!
16 What Faction Should I Pick... Oh, It Doesn't Matter
A big part of Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4 were the additions of factions to join. They all represented different points of view with how to handle the greater point of the story and once you joined one you could follow through and have an ending with them or on your own. The problem with this is that no matter which one you choose, the same events happen at the end of the game, you're just with different people and the path may have been altered a little.
Like, if you join the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 4, you can activate Liberty Prime from Fallout 3 and it will fight with you, but if you go against them then you can destroy it and/or bring down the blimp they live in. The blimp exploding is awesome, but the ending of the actual game doesn't revolve around any of that. It’s the same situations regardless who you side with, and that’s a shame.
15 "On Wednesdays, We Wear Pink"
The clothes in the Fallout games are just plain ugly! It’s been that way since Fallout 3 and they haven’t really changed that. Now, the only time you really see them is when shooting from V.A.T.S or if you're a crazy person and play from third-person, but still. There are so many that you would think some of them would look fine or even kinda cool. The coolest looking stuff in all the games comes from factions or is the power armor, and the power armor is an actual suit in Fallout 4, so. We’ll touch on that a bit later.
They're also very low-res and bury even in Fallout 4 running on a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X. Fallout isn't supposed to be a fashion game, but having some cool-looking clothes would be nice. Some of the suits you can get look pretty nice, so that’s something… I guess.
14 Do I Look Like Bob The Builder?
There was a 5 year gap between Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4, and not to mention the PS4 and Xbox One launched. So there was a ton of hype around Fallout 4, and with that sometimes developers decide to put new systems into games to separate them from the previous ones. Well, Fallout 4 put a base-building system in the game, and oh boy that system does not work well.
The interface is confusing and gathering materials for building things is almost a game by itself. The reason it makes this list is that the game forces it to be a recurring thing throughout the story. You have to build up the first settlement you get to and you have to build radio towers at other settlements. It also becomes a major part in setting up the end of the game. If it was just a side thing then no big deal, but it’s forced and unwelcome.
13 I Need New Friends
Fallout 3 gave you the option to have companions to fight alongside you after you did a quest or two for some characters. The other games followed that model and we got some awesome characters like Fawkes in Fallout 3 and Nick Valentine in Fallout 4. Unfortunately, a good bit of the companions are boring and don’t offer much more than just being able to have them hold items.
One of the most annoying companions is Preston Garvey from Fallout 4. He’s one of the first people you come across after the opening and he doesn't shut up about constantly helping the Minutemen until the end of the game! He’s not great in combat and his story isn’t very interesting. It’s like he's there just to have the players go to locations at the start of the game. There are other lame companions, but Preston is like that kid in class that reminds the teacher to give homework.
12 Let's See What That Angle Looks Like... Oh
A great example of a game handling switching between third and first-person is the recent Star Wars Battlefront games. It does a great job of making the game feel good and fun to play in both. A bad example of this is all the Fallout games. You can technically play the entirety of Fallout 4, New Vegas, and Fallout 4 in third-person, but it feels like garbage and looks even worse. The way your character looks in third-person is just so still and feels wrong to look at, and not to mention combat is awful. The combat isn't the strong suit for this series anyway, but it feels so much worse in third-person. Aiming a gun with any type of accuracy is hard but using V.A.T.S. is still just as smooth and simple. Other than seeing what your character looks like, theres not a great reason to ever go into third-person.
11 Cash Money Homie
Having DLC in a game is pretty standard in 2017 and some games even mold themselves around the DLC existing. The additional content for the Fallout games has always been up and down. Fallout 3 had Operation: Anchorage and Broken Steel that were both great but the others, not so much. Mothership Zeta just had you on a spaceship doing nothing but shooting aliens for a few hours. The only one that added story context was Broken Steel, and that’s mainly because people were upset at the ending of Fallout 3.
New Vegas did have interesting stories to tell with its DLC, at least. Honest Hearts wasn't great, but 1 of 4 not being great is fine. Fallout 4 has had some DLC issues. Far Harbor added a lot and is pretty great, but a lot of the other DLC is just add-ons for more base building. It does add a lot but… it’s base building stuff.
10 Power Armor Weighs How Much?
So this is definitely one of the most annoying aspects of the Fallout games and the main reason people play games like these with mods on. That moment when you have a good selection of guns, you have a few armor sets, and you find another helmet you want and you’re overencumbered and can't hold anything else. It makes sense from a lore standpoint that you wouldn’t be able to just have hundreds of things and walk around the wasteland with them, but from a gameplay perspective it’s annoying. There are mods on PC for Fallout 3 and New Vegas that gets rid of that and that alone makes playing them better games. Fallout 4 has mods available on the consoles so that is an option in that game no matter what you play on now. They're already breaking the rules of physics by letting you carry around a fatman launcher so just let us live our dreams, Bethesda, and have all the stuff!
9 Stick To The Sides
A lot of open-world games have what seems like an endless amount of side quests and the Fallout games are no different. A difference between the Fallout games and others games is that the side quests are more interesting than the main quest. Fallout New Vegas did have an interesting story for about half the game, and it kind of fell apart. Fallout 3 and 4 had alright/straightforward stories that did have moments but kinda took a backseat to the rest of the game. There are awesome side quests in the Fallout games like The Replicated Man from Fallout 3 and The Silver Shroud in Fallout 4. The ultimate side quest in these games is the open-word itself though. Just setting out and walking straight forward and seeing what’s out there is unlike anything in gaming. Filling out the map and seeing every inch of the world is better than any story so far in the Fallout series.
8 Ummm... What's Happening?
So another thing the Fallout games are known for is having pretty significant glitches and bugs. The games don’t just have unstable frame rates or some environmental pop-ins, think more along the lines of players not loading in or dialogue completely cutting off. It’s not uncommon to see characters uncontrollably walking around or you trying to talk to them and they keep backing up to the point that they appear off the screen. There’s also some Exorcist-type stuff with Fallout New Vegas where people’s heads will just randomly spin around a few times while talking. Mission markers will sometimes just go away and you’ll have to load the last save. Remembering to quick save is kind of crucial. When New Vegas launched on Xbox 360 and PS3 it was kind of a mess as a whole, especially the PS3 version. Playing a Fallout game on a PlayStation wasn’t really stable until Fallout 4 and that’s kind of a shame.
7 "Russian Roulette Is Not The Same Without A Gun"
Isn’t it fun in a game when you're shooting a lot of enemies and in the middle of it your weapon breaks? Oh… it’s not? You mean you want weapons to actually be a thing that you can use for more than a few minutes before tossing? How absurd!
But for real, Weapons breaking in the Fallout games have to be one of the most annoying things in the franchise. I will give Bethesda credit because they did get rid of that for Fallout 4. But in Fallout 3 and New Vegas weapons were constantly breaking. So if you got a really good one you wanted to save it for a tough enemy and you may go the whole game and not use it because of that mentality. You could repair weapons at some vendors and by having another exact version of the same weapon and you could use parts to fix it. So there were ways around it, but not simple ones.
6 What Did I Just Say?
Interacting with characters is the biggest part of a Fallout game. Building relationships and going on quests for certain people is the reason you’ll want to replay these games several times. When you talk to someone and see the options of saying something positive, negative, or neutral, then you'd think the game would say the option available. Well that’s not always the case. Sometimes when you pick the “positive” answer you can come off as a bit of a jerk and you immediately regret your decision. This is where that quick save feature comes in handy. Fallout 4 is very guilty about doing this. They even go as far as color-coding some answers, and your character still doesn't say what you wanted. Granted, you normally get the end result of pleasing who you want to, but getting there can be a tad jarring. You might as well save before every major confrontation in the game just to be sure.
5 New Member Of The Bullet Club
So do you remember when we talked about the Fallout games revolving around guns for combat? Well, do you know what you need to be able to use that new gun? No, not a permit, that’s right... bullets! Well, that can be a problem. Now, you will find a ton of ammo to use the low-powered handguns that you basically start the game with, and you’ll find plenty for that bolt action rifle that you might use once. The ammo for the really powerful weapons, on the other hand, you’ll struggle to find ammo for. And yes, having a ton of ammo for really powerful guns could break the game and make encounters easy when they're meant to have some challenge to them, but it’s just not as fun. Being able to use the weapon you want and not punish you for it should be more of a focus for these games. Fallout 4 did have the option to craft ammo, though.
4 More, More Power
The cover art for Fallout 3 and 4 both have art of the power armor from the Brotherhood of Steel. It’s kind of become the mascot of the series right along with Vault Boy. In Fallout 3, the power suit was just armor that you could wear, but they completely changed that in Fallout 4. The power armor in 4 is basically like Iron Man’s suit. You get in and out of it, there’s no putting it in your inventory. If you get out of it then it just sits there. And if you want to wear power armor then it has to be repaired and useable. It also requires fusion cores to run. Granted, it’s not tough to find them, but they're used up the longer you stay in the suit. Although it makes sense for the lore within Fallout, it just kind of sucks the fun out of wearing it not being able to use it whenever you want.
3 How Many Of These Guys Are There?
You do encounter a lot of hostile people in the Fallout games. They can range from people, super mutants, ghouls… and people… mutated crabs. The majority of the games are spent just shooting people in the face, and that can get a tad old. There are more enemies in the games, but they are mainly in the side stuff or end game content. The main story missions of all the games pretty much directly involve people or mutants and that’s it. Fallout 4 did get into the machine world with its story, so there is that. And yes, the reason for that is probably the reason that Deathclaws don’t play more of a role because they can’t talk and that makes sense but some more variety would be nice. The variety of enemies is pretty vast in the series, but you need to go outside of the main story to do so and that needs to change in future games.
2 "Can't See The Line, Can You, Russ?"
The main story of the Fallout games has an epic quality to them and they are presented with these huge decisions that you make and how they can alter the world around you. While that is the case to an extent, most of the important decisions come down to you killing one person or the other or picking one side over another with the same final mission regardless.
Fallout 3 ends with the search for your dad concluding no matter what you do, New Vegas ends with a showdown on the Hoover Dam regardless, and Fallout 4 ends with you dealing with your son and the Institute regardless. No decision you make has any world-altering consequences that drastically change the world around you or the outcome of the game. You can decide things like who lives, or if you blow up an entire town or not, but it just makes you a jerk if you do and you get a sweet apartment.
1 Buckle Your Chin Strap
So, the biggest problem with the Fallout games is that they crash… like, they just freeze up and you literally have to do a system reset in order to keep playing. New Vegas was notoriously bad about this, with some people barely making it out of the starting area without the game crashing. Fallout 3 was the first in the line of modern Fallout games, so the base game can get a pass, but some of the DLC ran horribly and was barely playable at launch. The Pitt was basically broken from the moment it launched and it took a while to get it fixed. It was surprising to see that when Fallout 4 came out that this was still a common thing. Skyrim is made by the same studio and it isn't known for having crashing problems, so it’s weird that it’s mainly the Fallout games that do this. Those nuclear bombs are brutal, man.