I may find myself in the minority here, but I dislike it when RPGs place character creation inside the game proper, after your guy or gal already has an actual presence in the world. It just feels… weird.

And that’s not to say it can’t be done well… I believe it was Mass Effect 3 where you’re asked to tell the doctors what you (Shepard) looked like before the explosion. At this point, you create your characters appearance in a menu, and it at least makes sense within the narrative.

Choosing what you look like when you are fifteen-seconds ex-utero (Fallout 3) or willfully morphing your face in front of your spouse (Fallout 4) make a little less sense.

It’s hardly going to hinder my enjoyment of the game, but it just stands out as odd to me.

In all other resepects, Fallout 4 looks like it’s going to be pretty awesome. I’ve long laid to rest any hope that Fallout will go back to the isometric glory days of legitimate turn-based RPGs, and I’ve now had that void more than adequately filled by Wasteland 2, so I’m able to get on board with Fallout entirely for what the series is now.

And while I don’t think that the game is quite as visually appealing as I would have hoped for a 2015 iteration, it is easily a step up from 2008’s graphics, or as I call it, the ‘Bethesda Play-Dough Face Era.’

More than anything right now, though, I want to commend Bethesda for keeping this thing a fucking secret as well as they did. While there have obviously been regular “is it coming?!” rumors for the past couple of years, there was zero concrete information until Bethesday revealed it shortly before E3. And on top of that, they’re aiming for release this fall.

More developers need to do this, as far as I’m concerned. I understand that you have to announce a game early enough to build some hype. That makes sense to me. You do not, however, need two years to build hype. I’m tired of seeing games at E3 that look amazing, only to be told they’re a year or two away, if not more (because that early on you can hardly rule out potential delays), and will likely still go through some significant changes in that time.

So it’s nice to be made aware of a game and only have a few months to wait for its release.