Why I Love Playing Fallout 4's "Survival" Mode
One of my methods of escape is to play video games. So I’m playing a lot right now.
That game is usually Fallout 4. But before I talk about the topic of this post, I need to talk about Skryim first.
I recently started another playthrough of Skyrim this week and it got me thinking about something. In Skyrim, the main difficulty level is modifiable via an in-game slider. This difficulty system is broken up into six levels: Novice, Apprentice, Adept, Expert, Master, and Legendary.
Each level modifies the amount of damage the player takes and the amount of damage the player dishes out. At Novice difficulty, the player takes a multiplier of x0.5 damage and dishes out a multiplier of x2 damage. At Legendary difficulty, it’s x3 and x0.25.
In other words, Skyrim’s lower difficulty levels allows the player to deal more damage while receiving less and gradually reverses this as the difficulty levels are increased.
I don’t like this. At all.
What happens, in my experience, is the player becomes made of glass bones and paper skin while even the lowliest of bandits might as well be wearing Ebony armor. Enemies become tanks. They become damage sponges.
I don’t find this playstyle to be particularly fun, so I simply leave it the game at its Adept difficulty which features a multiplier of x1 for both damage received and damage dealt. A fairly normal balance, I suppose.
While playing Skyrim for the fiftieth time, I was thinking about this and how it differs from Fallout 4.
Fallout 4 actually incorporates a similar difficulty system, wherein you become a wet napkin that can disintegrate if you’re so much as farted on and enemies become an unkillable abomination.
That is, however, until “Survival Mode” was introduced and later patched to where it stands now.
I. Love. Survival mode. Just love it.
It’s my favorite way to play Fallout 4 and, after my initial first playthrough many moons ago, is my only way of playing.
Survival mode does four main things that I love:
- Hunger, thirst, and sleep are essential game mechanics instead of being an afterthought
- Diseases, illnesses, and ailments are ever present in the post-nuclear apocalypse
- Carrying capacity is massively reduced
- Damage is, for a video game, immensely more realistic
In normal mode, things like hunger, thirst, and sleep aren’t exactly required mechanics to understand and utilize to your benefit. In normal mode, hunger, thirst, and sleep aren’t even present. There is food you can eat and drinks to drink, sure, but they aren’t required. Meals like a Deathclaw egg omelet or a grilled Radstag are craftable and provide nice little buffs. However, I never found extensive use for them. The game is already easy as is. If I take damage I just pop a Stimpak. Water is practically useless at this difficulty level as a Stimpak can do a better job. Likewise, I only ever slept to pass the time or skip the night (though the Well Rested perk is a nice, though not essential, bonus).
In Survival mode, however, all of the above are necessary mechanics to survive the Commonwealth. Those buffs I talked about earlier? Wonderful to have in a pinch. Water? Guess what, stimpaks induce thirst (and thus negative effects), so having a few bottles are a must. You also get tired. After all, exploring the Commonwealth, fighting enemies, and lugging around three-hundred pounds of loot is tiring work. Plus, the only way to save game is by sleeping. And you better watch out, the type of bed you sleep in matters. Did you sleep on a shitty-ass sleeping bag out in the Commonwealth? Whoops, you now have an illness to deal with. Good luck.
As mentioned above, diseases, illnesses, and ailments all affect you in various ways. A simple bloatfly can inflict radiation disease. Drinking dirty water can give you parasites. All of these need to be managed and incur negative effects. It’s up to the player to cure them with antibiotics or, if they’re not extraordinarily harmful, by just riding it out.
My favorite aspect, however, is the reduced carrying weight.
For some reason, I never enjoyed carrying fifteen different weapons, ten different armor pieces, fifty-five pieces of Radroach meat, and five-thousand rounds of ammunition. With Survival mode, carrying capacity is massively reduced. I find it makes the way I play more realistic. I only carry the absolute necessary: only two or three weapons, the armor I’m currently wearing, a few bits of food and bottles of water, two or three Stimpaks, and enough ammunition to carry me through the day. And as someone who enjoys scrapping, modifying weapons and armor, and building up settlements, that extra available carry weight goes to trinkets and resources found in the Commonwealth.
And the final aspect of Survival mode is the damage modifications. You can die by lowly bandit with a pistol in about three shots. It’s happened to me more times than I can count. However, that lowly bandit with a pistol can also die in about three shots. Better yet, headshots are insta-kills. No more shooting someone in the head five times and them still shooting back. When you can die easily and when everyone is dealt the same hand, it makes fights so much more visceral and fair.
In normal mode, a group of bandits is no problem. In Survival mode, however, it’s a life-or-death situation. More often than not, it’s simply not worth it. I don’t have enough ammunition left or only one stimpak. The surrounding environment doesn’t provide sufficient cover. I don’t like the weapons I’m currently packing. I haven’t slept (saved) in an hour and I’m freaking out over the prospect of losing all that progress and I’m oh so close to home and a warm, comfy bed. And- well you get the idea.
As an aside, Survival mode also makes settlements and supply routes actually matter. In normal mode, I never bothered with settlements or supply routes. I could fast travel where ever I wanted to carrying hundreds of pounds of resources. In Survival, however, a base of operations with supply routes connecting different bases to a resource pool is necessary for my scrapper playstyle. I like to build up my communities, attract settlers, and restore the Commonwealth one settlement at a time.
Anyway, Survival mode is my favorite, and only, way to play Fallout 4. I find that it makes the game all the more exciting. We’re in a post-nuclear apocalyptic wasteland and it feels like it. Death lurks just around the corner, licking its lips wherever you step out of the comfort of your own home. I wouldn’t play it any other way.
Sorry for any typos... too lazy to edit right now