Fallout 4 could do with a proper Hardcore Mode

[Administrator]

Video game heroes and heroines don't die - they're forgotten. For every conquering protagonist there's a handful of leads who never made it to the credits roll, never weighed a civilisation's fate in the scales. Instead, these characters are left to languish on a save file for months and years as feckless players drift to other releases, their skill trees mere sprouts in the dirt, unfinished plot arcs jutting over a wilderness of backstory. Like ghosts in need of exorcism, they haunt the dreams of their owners. No, Shepard, no! I never meant to abandon you on the Moon. It was Cerberus, I swear. Cerberus put that complete Dawn of War collection in my hands. Cerberus hid the controller charger under the sofa.
One of the restless souls I feel guiltiest about is the Courier from Fallout: New Vegas. As far as I can recall, when I last quit out a couple of years ago I left her staring into a dishevelled toilet in a collapsed shack somewhere near Boulder City - this being one of the quintessential dilemmas of a New Vegas playthrough on Hardcore Mode, with its additional hunger, thirst and fatigue modifiers. On the one hand, that toilet water looks delicious and I'm a few points down on Endurance and Perception thanks to dehydration. On the other, that water is swimming with ions who would just love to get acquainted with my red blood cells, and I'm all out of RadAway. A mucky, ignoble quandary, to be sure, but also rawer, tougher, more "real" than any choice I've wrestled with in last year's Fallout 4. Yes, that's it. That's why I left you all alone, Courier - the pressure was too much for me. It certainly had nothing to do with The Wire boxset my flatmates got for Christmas. Nothing whatsoever.
Hardcore Mode isn't quite the Cormac McCarthy-type nightmare it's cracked up to be. Obsidian's biggest concession to human frailty is that you can still fast-travel, which means you can generally warp back to a doctor's laboratory or a safe-house whenever your romantic rovings lead you into difficulties. Sleeping in a bed you own also restores you to full health and limb functionality, though you'll have to worry about your hunger and thirst metres going up in the process. But the pall of gentle despair the mode casts is, nonetheless, without compare in most other big-ticket role-playing games and, indeed, most other Fallouts.
Read more…


More...