10 Fallout 4 Features That Quietly Made Exploration More Addictive Than Previous Fallout Games

Bethesda's Fallout 4 may have been made with some controversial design choices — who can forget the reception of the game's voiced protagonist, a first for the franchise? — but it also pushed forward with a raft of fun and cool features that enhanced gameplay across a wide range of areas. Open world exploration is a core feature of Bethesda's classic RPGs, and Fallout 4 is no different.

In many ways, Fallout 4 ups the ante and delivers a classic experience with some all-new flavors. In some cases, it's building on tried-and-true design elements to give us something more polished, but in others, it's innovating new-to-the-series features that proved popular enough for inclusion elsewhere. Together, they add up to make exploration in Fallout 4 more addictive than ever before.

10 Varied World Design

There's Always Somewhere Different to Visit

Fallout 4 and its DLC featured numerous different kinds of areas to explore, spread out across the Commonwealth and across the DLC locations. From forests in Far Harbor, the urban ruins of what used to be Boston, the irradiated mess of the Glowing Sea, and even a theme park, Fallout 4 made me constantly ask, "What's over there?"

It gets memed on, but when Todd says, "If you can see it, you can go there," it's true in Fallout 4. Because of that, we've got so many different places to explore that we can pick a direction and find something new. Sometimes it's weapons, sometimes it's a quest, sometimes it's a unique story, but wherever you go in Fallout 4, there's always something to find.

9 Random Settlement Attacks

A Reason to Keep Coming Back

After you've built up a settlement, it can be attacked by all sorts of enemies — creatures, super mutants, the Institute — and you've got to rush back to defend it. Although some players find this annoying, it does provide a good reason to come back and explore places you've already visited.

It makes the world feel more alive and more reactive, like there are still things happening even though you've cleared the whole map already. The type of attacks you get are pretty cool too, as they change based on your choice of endgame factions — if you side against the Institute, you get synth attacks, but if you side against the Brotherhood, they'll attack you instead.

Everything's Better With Friends

Fallout 4's companions were much more fleshed out and reactive than the followers from previous entries in the series. They came with their very own likes and dislikes, personal quests, and even romance options. While their quests are fun, and romancing them gives you a nice XP boost, it’s the little moments that make them truly shine.

That’s because all of the companions have comments that they can trigger during certain quests or when visiting certain areas. Each one gives a little insight into their personality, and makes you want to learn more as you travel through the Commonwealth together.

7 Random Encounters That Make the World Feel Alive

The Commonwealth Feels Like a Place Where People Live

Random encounters have always been a high point for Bethesda's open-world RPGs, but Fallout 4 builds on their prior success to deliver something that feels rooted in Fallout 4's lore and worldbuilding.

Synth replacement encounters help us feel connected to the world and part of its story, like when we find two identical men named "Art" arguing over which one is a synth. Or wandering Minutemen and Brotherhood patrols, random settlers, and traveling merchants. You never quite know what you're going to find when wandering the Commonwealth, although like everyone else, I've had enough of crashing vertibirds to last a lifetime!

6 Settlement Building

New Reasons to Explore

Although Fallout 4's settlement-building system is controversial among fans, many praise it because it encourages all new exploration loops and behaviors. I spent hundreds of hours building settlements, so I'm probably biased, but I'd spend hours working on a settlement, running out of resources, and then heading out into the Commonwealth to find more in places I hadn't already cleared out.

On my first few plays, I'd spend extra time looking for new places to build, too. With settlements, I felt like there was always a reason to get back out into the Commonwealth, even if I wasn't doing a quest.

5 Extensive Environmental Storytelling

Never a Dull Moment

Bethesda's open-world RPGs are known for their environmental storytelling, and Fallout 4 pushed that forward to deliver a collection of funny, sad, and surprisingly poignant moments across the game and its DLC. These scenes tell all sorts of stories, whether its pre-War moments frozen in time to scenes from the chaotic modern Wasteland.

From skeletons in bathtubs, a postman dead on the road, conveniently placed notes and audio logs, to teddy bears arranged into increasingly psychotic poses, Fallout 4 rewards us with little moments encountered as we schlep from one end of the Commonwealth to the other in search of junk, Legendary equipment, and our next quest.

A Story Around Every Corner

Some quests or stories in Fallout 4 don't have anything really pointing you towards them. If you go there and find them, that’s great. If you don’t ever walk up that hill or look inside that cave, that’s okay too — you just won’t find them. These locations reward your dedication to exploration — you get the quest because you wandered in at the right time, or scoped out the right place.

One of the creepiest examples is the Dunwich Borers, a seemingly run-of-the-mill marble quarry location. When you delve deeper, though, you uncover a story about pre-War cults, complete with creepy visions and weird whispering. And the best part? It's unmarked.

3 Looting/Scrapping/Crafting Gameplay Loop

It's a Circular Economy

Fallout 4's looting, crafting, and scrapping loop is a masterclass in giving players a concrete set of tasks to do to fill their gameplay without feeling boring or like work. In Fallout 4, you can clear a location and pick up as much junk as you can carry (and let's be honest, most of us pick up way more than that).

Instead of selling it for caps like in previous entries, though, you can scrap it at a workbench or a settlement. This is great news, because all the items you get back from it can be used in crafting — for settlement building, for weapon and armor modding, or for power armor enhancements. When you run out, you can just go out and find some more. The need for resources keeps you out and about in the Commonwealth, always looking for somewhere new to loot clean.

2 Legendary Enemies

Big Bosses and Big Prizes

Fallout 4 didn't feature as many special or unique weapons and armors as other Bethesda games — much to many fans' frustration — but it did include the concept of Legendary enemies. These enemies were beefier and more dangerous variants of standard enemies, but they all dropped Legendary weapons and armor pieces with special effects on them.

Since it was randomized, you might get something amazing or something that's a bit of a dud. You can encounter Legendary enemies at all sorts of locations in the game, hence the system gives you a great reason to look for new places and new enemies to loot.

1 Survival Mode

Exploration Is a Literal Necessity

Survival Mode was Bethesda's answer to fan complaints about difficulty. As well as enhanced enemy damage and squishier player characters, it introduced a bunch of cool mechanics like hunger and thirst, illnesses, no fast travel, and crucially, new save mechanics that meant you could only save by sleeping.

The need for food, water, medicine, and beds made exploration a necessary part of gameplay — especially since you had to walk everywhere. In Fallout 4's harsh world, it could be hard to find clean water or food without Rads. Survival Mode meant you had to explore more to find hidden item caches, sleeping bags for crucial save points, and even entirely new approaches to quests and points of interest to avoid buffed-up NPCs.