If there’s one thing that Bethesda do as well as anyone, it’s building locations which sit long in the memory. Whether that’s the sprawling but beautiful map of Skyrim, or the desolate wasteland you quickly come to love in Fallout 3 to mention just a couple of examples, they know how to make some good locations.
Pushing that point further still is Nuka-World, the final big DLC for Fallout 4 which sends you to a theme park to try and build bridges between three factions of raiders. That’s right – you’re not fighting them, you’re joining them. It doesn’t really work out as nicely as it sounds like it could (as if we’d ever really think different raider factions could get along) but if you’re the kind who likes their characters to be a bit of a git, then you’re going to love this.
Nuka-World itself is a large, highly explorable addition to your map, with the theme park itself set within large, open areas to wander round and loads of different park sections to visit. Don’t expect a friendly afternoon on the rides though; each area has a tonne of enemies to get through with a mixture of old and new enemy types showing their faces for you to split open. In fact the whole DLC feels very fighting oriented – if you’re not a fan of Fallout 4’s combat and prefer the more conversational routes, you might want to turn round and go back home. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of people to chat to and you’ll need a few conversations to decide which of the three factions you’re going to support, but not much seems to have a lasting effect in terms of conversation choices. Nuka-World does look awesome though, and the wildly different zones certainly add some variety to the missions.
The closing stages has you making a tricky decision, between turning one of your previous settlements over to the raiders, and going all out to just wipe out the raiders from the park all together. The latter, while being the option some would prefer to stay friendly, does mean missing out on a good chunk of the really cool stuff in the DLC so it’s a tricky choice for those who have prided themselves on a healthy settlement setup. As I said, it helps if you don’t mind being a git.
So that’s Fallout 4 done and dusted. All DLC’s have been released, and were definitely a mixed bag. Nuka-World wasn’t a bad final hoorah by any means, and probably gives bored players something new to do by joining the enemy. New places to roam are always going to be welcome when you’ve already seen every inch of the wastelands, and with a decent story to go along with it Nuka-World might be the closure that some players are looking for before they sink another 200 hours into the upcoming remastering of Skyrim.
Just don’t be sad when your full collection of settlements don’t all belong to you any more…
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