It is the fourth main game in the Fallout series and was released worldwide on November 10, 2015, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

The game is set within an open world post-apocalyptic environment that encompasses the city of Boston and the surrounding Massachusetts region known as "The Commonwealth".

The player assumes control of a character simply referred to as the "Sole Survivor", who emerges from a long-term cryogenic stasis in Vault 111, an underground nuclear fallout shelter.

The player explores the game's dilapidated world, completes various quests, helps out various factions, and acquires experience points to level up and increase the abilities of their character.

Fallout 4 received positive reviews from critics, with many praising the world depth, player freedom, overall amount of content, crafting, story, characters, and soundtrack.

While using V.A.T.S., real-time combat is slowed down (instead of stopped entirely as in previous entries), and action is played out from varying camera angles in a computer graphics version of "bullet time".

Any companion present besides Dogmeat will react to certain player actions in one of four ways (love, like, dislike, or hate), which either raises or lowers their "affinity".

The game takes place in an alternate version of history that features 1940s and 1950s aesthetics, such as diners and a drive-in theater, while design and technologies advance in the directions imagined during the era.

The player's character (voiced by either Brian T. Delaney or Courtenay Taylor) takes shelter in Vault 111, emerging exactly 210 years later on October 23, 2287, and assuming the name of the "Sole Survivor".

Dogmeat, a loyal German Shepherd, is the only mandatory companion, but six others must at least be encountered; Codsworth (Stephen Russell), the Sole Survivor's robot butler; Deacon (Ryan Alosio), a Railroad agent; John Hancock (Danny Shorago), the mayor of Goodneighbor; Nick Valentine (Stephen Russell), a synth detective; Piper Wright (Courtney Ford), an intrepid reporter; and Preston Garvey (Jon Gentry), a resilient member of the Minutemen.

The other six possible companions are Cait (Katy Townsend), an Irish-accented cage fighter; Curie (Sophie Simone Cortina), a robot scientist turned Synth; Paladin Danse (Peter Jessop), a Brotherhood of Steel member, MacCready (Matthew Mercer), a mercenary; Strong (Sean Schemmel), a human-sympathetic Super Mutant; and X6-88 (David Paluck), an Institute Courser.

Seven of the companions become romance options once they idolize the Sole Survivor, regardless of the gender of the player character: Cait, Curie, Danse, Hancock, MacCready, Piper, and Preston.

[11] In the Commonwealth during the year 2077, the protagonist and their family—consisting of their husband Nate (Brian T. Delaney) or wife Nora (Courtenay Taylor), depending on the player's chosen sex, and their baby son Shaun—escape into Vault 111, gaining entry due to a Vault-Tec representative signing them up for it immediately prior to a nuclear attack.

The life support system malfunctions at a later date and unfreezes the protagonist, who leaves their pod to find the remaining residents of Vault 111 deceased, gaining the nickname of the "Sole Survivor".

They return home and reunite with their former robot butler Codsworth (Stephen Russell), who reveals that a total of 210 years have passed since the nuclear attack.

After rescuing android private detective Nick Valentine (Russell), the Sole Survivor uncovers the identity of their spouse's killer as Conrad Kellogg (Keythe Farley).

The Sole Survivor steals a cybernetic device from Kellogg's brain to access his memories with the help of Dr. Amari (Meher Tatna).

With the help of the Railroad, an underground movement aiming to free Synths from the Institute, the Sole Survivor retrieves a chip and has it decoded.

The Sole Survivor meets a much older Shaun (Tony Amendola), who is revealed to have become the Institute's director and explains that his abduction 60 years ago was part of a Synth experiment due to his pre-war DNA.

Meanwhile, development on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim had Bethesda's full attention, and after that game was released in 2011, the studio continued to regularly support it until 2013 with updates and DLC.

[15] For the first time in the Fallout series, the player's character, the Sole Survivor, is fully voice-acted, including all decision-based dialogue options.

Howard stated in the E3 2015 Press Conference that the updated Creation Engine allows for next-generation god rays and advanced volumetric lighting.

[vague] The engine features a variety of visual effects not present in previous Bethesda games such as motion blur, temporal anti-aliasing, height fog, dynamic dismemberment, screen space reflections, filmic tone mapping, an updated material system—for wet textures—among numerous others.

In detail, the new character creation system introduces a new, freeform, slider-free facial editor controlled via a dynamic, real-time modeling interface.

The trailer was released when the countdown timer expired,[4] and the game was confirmed to take place in Boston and its surrounding Massachusetts countryside, as suggested by earlier rumors.

The update was released on April 25, 2024, alongside stability improvements and fixes for existing platforms, ultrawide support for PC, and additional free Creation Club content.

[54] However, it also introduced a host of problems for players, including broken mod support and UI issues in ultrawide mode on PC.

[58] This was followed by Wasteland Workshop on April 12, 2016, which introduces new build options for settlements and the ability for the player to put captured creatures or humans in a cage, and adds new decorations like neon lights and lettering.

GameSpot's Peter Brown awarded it a score of 9 out of 10, saying "Fallout 4 is an argument for substance over style and an excellent addition to the revered open-world series."

Brown praised the "thought-provoking" narrative, "intuitive" creation tools, the large amount of content, the overall combat, and the overall freedom the player is given.