Fallout 4: it’s your journey

The Wasteland is full of stories that await your discovery, it’s a world full of hardship and loss, a world built up by our individual stories, if you live in the Wasteland you are contributing a tale of some form and your story matters. For some this too much and their story is cut short, they can’t stand the mismatch of little stories littered by the world and they quit, the thing is it is okay, the truth is Fallout 4 is their journey, every decision made is your own. If these people choose to leave walking away from the game it all part of their journey they simply are closing their story.

The idea of the individual journey dawned on me while I was playing Fallout 4, primarily the game is a solo experience, which you do ultimately have nothing to do with everyone else. You wander the world dealing with your own goals, designing your own life path and setting yourself out into the world with your own ambition in mind. The question that came to my mind was all about what everyone else was doing, how my journey differed from them, but in the end did it really matter? Fallout 4 was not about everyone else it was about me and the path I chose, where it was about everyone else and their individual journey into the wasteland is in their own world.

The thing is although we are apart we also all on a similar journey we seek to attain our own goals, we have our own ambitions, we also all play differently, but we all exist in the same world, we may not see each other but we are all on this journey just exploring our own adventures. This is the great thing about non-linear open world games, we don’t need to be on the same path, the world is our oyster and we are free to choose what we wish to do, we all live under the same sky, it is all one world but each could not be any more different.

It is unlikely that two people will go on the same adventure in the Wasteland, our beginnings may start near enough the same but our stories could not be any more different. Our approach is as unique as our minds, we choose what we do, who we help and ultimately our fate, the world is open to us, it awaits our journey and it accepts the path we choose. Do we start and follow the main path, do we get lost in the small things, or does the world captivate us and urge us to explore, the way we choose to go is our choice and ultimately it defines our journey.

That’s the thing with Fallout 4 there is a major story going on but you don’t need to be part of it, you have no need to follow every direction given and you certainly don’t need to do what your friends are doing, you are your own person making your way through the journey of a lifetime. Every choice you make, every seemingly small decision is part of a greater end goal ultimately defining the person you are destined to become.

Even before approaching the halfway point of the game many have closed their journeys but this is part of the journey we all come for different reasons and make the choices we make and every decision is ultimately fine. Some of us choose to go down a dark and lonely path, we spurn the love and advances of others, and we choose to ignore those who could help us to become better people, in a world the Wasteland or the Commonwealth in this case it’s okay, that is your choice as we all know who can you really trust.

For my personal journey I took a different path, my life initially held no central goal I would just wonder doing whatever random mission I was given, this was my existence I wanted to help myself but also everyone else. Though this existence got tiresome, the world was ripe for deeper exploration, I stepped into the shoes of my character, temporarily displacing my sense of self and truly entered the world. My life was about living, about exploring the decaying ruins of a once lively and less desperate world and finding everything possible that could make me happy, this world was truly depressing but I considered myself a shining force out to help the little guy, out to uncover the secrets of this broken down world, this was my journey and I was going to make the choices was right.

Exploration, discovery, and being a hero this was my ambition, this was who I was going to become, in a world where most people would murder you without another moments thought I was going to fight against all odds to be the one who made lives better. Sure, my life was in danger and I ended more lives than I could count, whether good or evil these lives would forever weigh on my conscience but whether I broke down didn’t matter as long as I could say I did something, I saw the world and I made a difference, I mattered.

My life may have been set to end in a hail of gunfire but what’s life in you can’t help those in need, if you can’t save a life that is truly worth saving. It was my journey and I was going to do what my conscience, my characters conscience had to say, I was not another villain, I was not closed off to the world and its needs, and I was a small cog in the machine that made the world a slightly brighter place.

It’s my journey and my destiny to create, I chose my path, I made up mind and I leapt into the world to follow my own ambition, but this is just one example, every player of Fallout 4 has their own tale, their own agenda. We live out our lives and throw ourselves into the game truly becoming the character we claim to be, we leave behind the controller as merely a catalyst to control and we form a new identity, we start a new journey that is as original as our own lives. Open world games full of small stories offer many opportunities but in the end the greatest one they can offer is the one you create, the path you choose to follow, you can follow the trend of major plot points but in the end you are just making a decision and deciding whether you are a force for good, or a vessel for destruction. All that matters is that this is your journey, your adventure and to remember war never changes.

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