First impressions of Fallout 4: Nuka-World

Pull up your Pip-Boy and bang on it once or twice, just to knock the dust off. Spin the dial to the new Nuka-Cola Family Radio frequency and listen in on the advertisement for: "Quench your thirst for adventure at Nuka-World!" The ad features the voices of the dopey Cappy and Bottle mascots for Nuka-World.

Nuka-World is, of course, Fallout 4's version of Disneyland. Which is more like Fallout's version of Banksy's version of Disneyland. Like all things Fallout, it's broken-down early 20th century Americana. Welcome to the final piece of season pass content.

After tuning into the short radio ad, the Nuka-World Transit Center pops up, just past the western border of your map, beyond the freeway overpass that crosses in front of Lonely Chapel and the Federal Ration Stockpile. It takes you across a load screen to Nuka-World, operating much like the Far Harbor DLC did, firing up a chunk of map separate from vanilla Boston Commonwealth.

Up in those Yao Guai-covered hills to the west, past the leafless stick forrest, sits the Nuka-Cola Transit Center. A bunch of Gunner knuckleheads in Army fatigues beat you to the spot. Their orders were to track down and locate a Sergeant Lanier’s missing recon team. Well, they’d be able to carry out those orders if I hadn’t just murked every last one of them. They started it, though.

Empty Nuka-Cola cups with straws litter the entire place. It’s a look at the sugary soda-fueled diabetes situation in the Boston Commonwealth. I head down into the transit’s subway system. There’s someone on the ground, clutching his stomach. He's not looking so good. Offensively cheerful Nuka-World music plays over a PA. This music just might make me lose my mind. [More after the jump.]

Harvey is his name. He took a bullet while escaping Nuka-World. His wife and kid, though, are still back there. So, here’s the familiar hook from the Fallout universe: save a family member. Or two, in this case. I bite, though, since the guy is bleeding out to Nuka-World's themepark equivalent of "It's a Small World." Harvey refuses to take a Stimpak from me, no matter how much I insist. Sadly, I see a first-aid kit about 15 feet to his right. There’s another Stimpak in it. Anyway, there are skeletons all around, too. People had died here, clutching their Nuka-Cola bottles.

I hop on the tram to Nuka-World proper. The games begin when I arrive and half to deal with the world’s longest gauntlet of tripwires, traps and turrets. Your ticket into Nuka-World is paid for with guns, grenade bouquets and gored human bodies. It’s the bloody price of entry.

The games begin with the world’s longest gauntlet of tripwires, traps and turrets. Your ticket into Nuka-World is paid for with guns, grenade bouquets and gory corpses. It’s the bloody price of admission. So you run a gauntlet, sponsored by an MC with a hint of Barnum & Bailey in his voice, and a bit of The Running Man in his intentions.

Nuka-World is where you enter the game inside of the game. All of Fallout 4’s gaminess is laid bare. It’s combat for sport. So, if you’re not comfortable with that proposition, then you won’t be comfortable with this capstone to Fallout 4’s universe.

They don’t add another settlement for you to build up, thank goodness. There are plenty of armor and weapon modding tables around, but that’s the extent of your junk usage. At least as far as I’ve gotten. I’m glad I’m not toting around 200 more pounds of junk. The vanilla campaign does enough of that. But I believe it’s added fireworks? Use adhesives, cloth and fertilizers to build red, white and blue fireworks. I’m not sure when or why I should use them, but they take up adhesives, so building fireworks is on the backburner until I feel like I’ve maxed out all the armor and gun modding I want to do.

There are weather-change shells too. Change the weather to clear, rain or radstorms. They require the same ingredients as fireworks, with the recipe additions of gold, silver or nuclear material, respectively. Again, I’m not in a position to waste those materials on fireworks or to screw with the local meteorology. I’ll get to it.

Minor spoiler alert, here, but it’s basically the entire premise of Nuka-World: You run the gauntlet, you kill the current raider overboss, then you become the new overboss. That’s right. You’re the captain now. You can’t even get on the tram back to the regular ol’ Commonwealth until you don the crown. So now what? You have to figure out how to get three separate raider clans all on the same page. The last overboss couldn’t do it. But you better be able to.

So they show you to your new raider estate. The former boss had eclectic tastes. Mannequins have their faces down on podiums. Abstract art lines the walls. Nuka Cola has the run of the place. I guess there's no escaping that. And from his headquarters—your headquarters now—you get a full panoramic view of the park.

Mannequins, by the way, are the new teddy bears; the new gnomes. They're the silent, one-panel comics of Nuka-World. Just like the teddy bears were in the Automatron DLC. Just like the gnomes were in the Far Harbor DLC. The mannequins tell sad, or grotesque or boastful stories about the people surrounding them. You’re in raider land, however, so there aren’t too many thoughtful, touching stories from the heart.

The park even has its own radio station, complete with shock jock deejay at the helm. Redeye is his name. “Because his eyes are bloodshot as hell.” Really uneven sound mixing in-game, though. When it moves from segment to segment during DJ Redeye’s set, the sound goes from having a radio crackle to an overly voluminous swallow-the-mic-while-talking time, and then back again.

There's even Nuka-World’s biggest fangirl. She gives you a walking tour of the park, and helps embed the entire place with a sense of place and history. Even if it’s a commercialized history. That's something the vanilla Fallout 4 campaign never tried doing on a large scale, but this smaller-scale location allows for such indulgences.

Couple that with the guitar-playing storytime-telling DJ Redeye, Nuka-World, despite its entirely fictional premise (it is just a theme park) adopts something of a rich heritage for itself. There's a real sense that this themepark exists and has always existed alongside the rest of the Wasteland.

The protagonist—at least the male protagonist, since I’m playing one—takes on a goofy lilt in his voice. It’s like a “Well by golly gee you betcha” kind of voice. It makes me want to adapt the angry conversational choices because the nice-guy dialogue just sounds naive and goofy.

So you meet the sub-bosses running the three raider camps. There are the Operators, who are all about turning money into a religion, more or less. Caps are the only thing that matter to them. Their symbol is a bleeding heart with three bullet holes in it. They wear moulded metal armor pieces over checkered suits. They look like they’re starring is a Wasteland remake of Cruel Intentions.

The Pack are all about establishing a pecking order. They dress like color-blind animals, they make animals fight in an arena, and they cage up other people like animals. They dress up a theater real pretty, though, and their boss looks like he woke up on the Fallout side of Skyrim.

Then there are the Disciples. A real sick bunch. They dress cool in D&D-looking metal armor, but they have chopped up bodies laying all over the place. Heads on pikes, of course; torsos in sinks; arms and legs just sorta kinda everywhere you look. The Disciples give mutants a run for their money when it comes to feng shui.

I feel like Lucius Vorenus in the second season of HBO’s Rome. I'm thrust into the position of mob boss, I have to keep these gangs from killing each other, and, in the end—who knows?—I might just come out sober, smarter and with a resolution to strengthen the Wasteland and its people.

Of course, I have no qualms, in this context, becoming the “bad actor.” So much of my time in Fallout 4 has been spent, more or less, playing the paragon. Be the good guy. Do the right thing. But not here. Not in Nuka-World. If the game is going to excuse some of my bad behavior, then now is the time for me to take advantage. Sorry, Longfellow. I’m sending you back to your cabin in Far Harbor. The raider Gage is my companion now. He seems to know how to get stuff done in Nuka-World.

Everyone appears to want a piece of this place. Well, at least the small portions I’ve visited so far. Robots and turrets rule the world over in Galactic World. The future, as far as Galactic World was concerned, was to be manned and managed by automatons, protectrons and the like; a cold, calculating place. All the while, Gunners pick away at the fringes of Nuka-World. Not causing too much of a problem, but enough to remind you of their presence.

There’s a lot to digest here. I’m only getting started. Stay tuned as I plow through my full review within the coming week.