--- description: Bethesda's Fallout 3 follow-up needs to make some major improvements to the series title: 7 Things Fallout 4 Had Better Improve On image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8555d1533a2a5acd/698852cc524fc0eca8df2ed3/fallout-4.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Business](/section/business/) ## Business Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Tech](/tag/time-section-tech/) ## Tech Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # 7 Things _Fallout 4_ Had Better Improve by [Matt Peckham](/author/matt-peckham/) ## Matt Peckham Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jun 5, 2015 11:14 AM CUT  Bethesda Softworks by [Matt Peckham](/author/matt-peckham/) ## Matt Peckham Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jun 5, 2015 11:14 AM CUT What could _Fallout 4_ do better than its predecessor, [now that we know](http://time.com/3906915/fallout-4-announce/ "undefined") the game’s coming, possibly by year’s end? I mean besides the obvious stuff, like better graphics? (Reminder: it’s been seven years since _Fallout 3_.) _Fallout 4_‘s form and fate lie in its creator’s hands. But here’s a humble list of changes or additions I’d like to see: ## A better ending (or endings) Remember _Fallout 3_‘s denouement? The anticlimactic full stop? I know, it’s about “the journey,” and no argument there, but Bethesda caught enough flak about its wrap-up that it eventually removed the stop entirely, letting you brush past the finale to keep rambling around the game’s gorgeously bleak tracts. It’s probably safe to assume there’ll be no terminal paths in _Fallout 4_, I’m just hoping director Todd Howard has a finale (or finales) in mind that doesn’t feel as sudden and dissociative as _Fallout 3_‘s did. ## Will the player finally speak? Speaking of dissociation, Bethesda’s games have a significant Achilles heel that may in part explain why I found _Fallout 3_‘s ending so lifeless: everyone can speak but you in these games. When you do speak, it’s in silent, selectable sentences. Which would be kind of awesome were you _supposed_ to play a voiceless character. But that’s not what’s going on in Bethesda’s games. The rationale, I assume, is that recording all the voice work necessary to establish a palette of unique vocal types, carried through start to finish, would be insane, or at least insanely expensive. So we get the “voiceless vault dweller” compromise, the pro argument—weak, in my view—being that you can just make up any old voice you want to hear in your head. **MORE:** [This Is Microsoft’s Big Secret Windows 10 Feature](http://time.com/3908793/windows-10-feature/?iid=time%5Fspeed "undefined") But maybe not _Fallout 4_. I’m cautiously hopeful change is in store here, because the iconically vault-clothed fellow at the end of the game’s debut trailer—possibly the protagonist, though who knows?—speaks. ## A setting outside the United States? Dang it, too late: based on the landmarks in the trailer, _Fallout 4_ is set in Massachusetts. ## Intelligent artificial intelligence _Fallout 3_‘s quasi-turn-based body targeting combat system (V.A.T.S., or “Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System”) was amazing in principle, until you figured out the game’s anemic enemy A.I. Once you’d mastered headshots, since enemies couldn’t be bothered to protect their eggshell noggins, battles were more or less cranium-splatting busywork. I’m not asking for impossible challenges, I just want _Fallout 4_ to hide the stupidity better. Make enemies more aware of where they are and what they’re up against, and telegraph that awareness to the player somehow. ## A more thought-provoking post-apocalypse I don’t need a bunch of empty-headed small talkers wandering through expanses to fill some social quotient—it’s the nearly-everyone’s-dead-post-apocalypse, not Times Square, after all. If you want vibrant people-choked cities, go play _Grand Theft Auto V_. But there’s plenty Bethesda could do to make the _Fallout_ series’ desiccated vistas more absorbing, meter by lunar meter. If I’m going to eek out a hardscrabble existence, poking around in post-kitsch-1950s rubble, reward me with landscapes that tell stories, where exploration and discovery (of a thing or person or topographical anomaly) becomes an extension of the world-building narrative, and thereby its own reward. My favorite moments in _Fallout 3_ weren’t combat or mission related, they occurred during the game’s quieter stretches, alone in the wilderness, when I’d come across something innocuous, maybe some scrap of information, or a carefully articulated architectural detail, that enriched my sense of being in the world itself. ### See The 15 Best Video Game Graphics of 2014  Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Activision's futuristic first-person shooter in which players take on a rogue private military company uses a brand new engine built specifically for PCs and new-gen consoles to handle its cutting-edge lighting, animation and physics. Sledgehammer Games/Activision  Far Cry 4\. This pulled back shot of fictional Himalayan region Kyrat is in-game, believe it or not, rendered with an overhauled version of the engine Ubisoft used to design Far Cry 3. Ubisoft  The Last of Us: Remastered. Naughty Dog's meditation on the worst (and best) of humanity is built on technology that reaches back through the studio's pulp-adventure Uncharted series. The graphics are so impressive, TIME recently assigned a conflict photographer to photograph inside the game. Ashley Gilbertson for TIME  Alien: Isolation Built from scratch, the Alien: Isolation engine's outstanding deep space visuals all but replicate the set design of Alien film concept artists H.R. Giger and Ron Cobb's work. The Creative Assembly  Assassin's Creed Unity. Ubisoft says it "basically remade the whole rendering engine" in its AnvilNext design tool to handle the studio's meticulous recreation of Paris during the French Revolution. Ubisoft  Child of Light Inspired by filmmakers like Hayao Miyazaki and artist Yoshitaka Amano, Child of Light's hand-drawn artwork puts the lie to presumptions that graphical richness depends on shader support or polygon counts. Ubisoft  Destiny Built from scratch by ex-Halo studio Bungie, Destiny's game engine was designed to scale across the next decade, says the studio. Bungie  Mario Kart 8 Nintendo's kart-racer for Wii U reminds us that raw horsepower is just a facet of crafting a beautiful game world. Nintendo  Infamous Second Son Sucker Punch's freeform Seattle-based superhero adventure models all sorts of minutia, from the intricate wrinkling of an aged character's face to the way eyelids stick, slightly, before separating when characters blink. Sucker Punch Productions  Monument Valley Escher-like at first glance, Ustwo's mind-bending puzzler was also inspired by posters, bonsai plants, arabic calligraphy and filmmaker Tarsem Singh's The Fall. Ustwo  Grand Theft Auto V Rockstar's remastered crime spree opus was crafted from an in-house engine first employed in a game that simulated table tennis. Rockstar  Titanfall Respawn Entertainment  Forza Horizon 2 Turn 10's Euro-racer actually models light refracted through drops of moisture, the render tech plausibly simulating something as intangible but essential as the earth’s atmosphere. Microsoft Studios/Turn 10 Studios  80 Days Inkle's anti-colonialist vamp on Jules Verne's famous novel uses crisp art deco imagery inspired by travel posters to unfurl 80 Days' tale of intrepid globetrotters Monsieur Fogg and his valet Passepartout. Inkle  Tomb Raider Crystal Dynamics' radical reboot of its popular series about an athletic archaeologist uses a modified version of the engine that powered Tomb Raider: Legend in 2006. Square Enix ## Minimized clutter Richard Garriott (the _Ultima_ computer roleplaying series) got a lot of us pretty excited in the 1980s, when he hyped giving every knife, spoon and fork in his games discrete, interactive physical attributes. This was back when adventure games were still a big deal, and 99% of the stuff an artist rendered onscreen was basically eye candy. Decades later, mulling over the wastepile’s worth of junk Bethesda’s crammed into its clearly _Ultima_\-inspired game worlds to scratch that there-for-there’s-sake fetish, I’d say it’s high time for object restraint. If I can pick up a filth-lacquered plate, I want it to be for a reason…like jamming it into a modified compound crossbow (weaponized dinnerware!), not schlepping to a caravan merchant for chump change. ## Vehicles! Why not? _Read next:_ [_The 15 Most Anticipated Video Games of Summer 2015_](http://time.com/3903138/video-games-summer-2015/?iid=time%5Freadnext "undefined") [_Listen to the most important stories of the day._](http://time.com/newsletter/the-brief/autoplay/?xid=spl-fullbrief-article "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3909451/fallout-4-features/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3909451/fallout-4-features/"},"headline":"7 Things Fallout 4 Had Better Improve","datePublished":"2015-06-05T11:14:57.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:44:44.821Z","description":"A great franchise in great need of some upgrades","url":"https://time.com/3909451/fallout-4-features/","keywords":["Tech","Video Games","upgrade"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8555d1533a2a5acd/698852cc524fc0eca8df2ed3/fallout-4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Peckham","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/matt-peckham/"}],"articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8555d1533a2a5acd/698852cc524fc0eca8df2ed3/fallout-4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"fallout-4","caption":"","creditText":"Bethesda Softworks","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-tech/","name":"Tech"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3909451/fallout-4-features/","name":"7 Things Fallout 4 Had Better Improve"}}]}] ```