Starting out, the intro is far different than what we've seen prior, starting pre-world going to hell. Character creation allows you to be a man or a woman, which I'm always appreciative of. You've got a spouse and baby, fancy house, and a lovely babysitting robot that comes with circular saw arms, clearly a necessity for child rearing.
This idyllic suburban lifestyle was not meant to be, and soon you're in the midst of a mad dash to make your way to the nearest vault which isn't quite what it seems. You were allowed in for reasons that are presently unclear. You're jammed in a stasis pod, your husband gets Tupac'd, and your baby gets nabbed. When you get out, the world's been shit for a while, and you gotta go from June Cleaver to Furiosa to survive and find your son.
25 hours in, I still have no idea where my son is. I don't really have any inkling, and therefore I've pretty much just been wandering The Wastes. One thing that's far different about this incarnation of Fallout is that starting out in your old stomping grounds pre-world-wide shit show, it's an obvious place to set up shop post-apocalypse, and for the first time, you can do that. After one of the first quests, you can return to this area with a group of people, and start a community.
Building up settlements is such a time suck, I love it. In any game like this, I always have the problem of picking up anything and everything that's not nailed down. I generally will be in a state of inventory crisis within 5 minutes. The beauty of being able to build things and create a settlement is that all this junk that's normally worthless is now valuable, and my hoarding nature is an asset rather than a burden. Each item has crafting materials that you can get out of it. If you scrap old desk fans, you get Steel, Gears, and Screws, Tires get you Rubber, piece of shit Lamps get you Glass and Copper. Not only can everything you pick up be scrapped, but if you're in the middle of one of your settlements, you can scrap most of the set decoration. Old cars, fallen trees, cinder blocks...it all can be scrapped, and there's something extremely satisfying about it.
In order to have a functioning settlement, you need people, and to bring in people you need a radio beacon to send out the message that you've set up a place that doesn't suck. You'll need a power generator to make this beacon run. These items and everything else can be built using what you scrap and find in The Wasteland. When people start showing up, you need enough food, water, and beds to accommodate these people, and the defenses to protect them. You'll need to assign settlers jobs for everything to run smoothly, some to tend the crops, some to man the guard posts, etc. Your defenses are a combination of manned guard posts and turrets. The bigger and better your settlement(s) get, the more attention they'll garner from unsavory raider types, which you'll need to dispatch with a nice personal face bullet.
This building mechanic is probably the biggest difference I've seen thus far. Everything else is the same old Fallout you know and love, and that's exactly what I wanted. I've got Dogmeat by my side and Roy Brown playing on my Pip Boy. I'm a happy Wastelander...except for that whole missing son thing. Don't worry, I'll get to it.
