Bethesda Game Studios’ long awaited Fallout 4 has finally arrived, and the game has already broken the record for the most concurrent players on Steam (not including Valve Corp games), a record that had once been once held by the studio’s previous game, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, until it was overtaken by Grand Theft Auto V.

While there are plenty of comparisons to be made between the new game and Fallout 3, one of the biggest ways the new game has departed from its predecessor is the way its leveling system works, particularly the way players unlock perks.

In Fallout 3, perks were special abilities that players could unlock every other level. The perks that they could choose from were dependent on their character’s level, attributes, and skills, and while that is still mostly true in Fallout 4, the new system differs in a few important ways.

Rather than making perks mostly dependent on skills as they were in both Skyrim and Fallout 3, the system in Fallout 4 ties them solely to a character’s SPECIAL stats (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck). While SPECIAL stats were always important, Fallout 4‘s system focuses even more heavily on them, primarily because individual skills like Energy Weapons, Science, Explosives, and so on have been either converted into perks or removed entirely.

Fewer options, more choices

Although it could be argued that this change is a dumbing down of the old system, it actually gives players more choices in how they want to build their characters.

In Fallout 3, there were certain stats that were universally important to all builds (Intelligence), and there were others that were almost useless (Charisma). This led to relatively cookie cutter character builds, with many players lowering Charisma to 1 and raising Intelligence almost to max so that they could have the most efficient build.

With Fallout 4’s system, however, all stats are useful in one way or another, and there are no longer any “dump stats” that can be reduced in favor of increasing other attributes.

Of course, the new system is not perfect, and there are a few perks that are more or less required, especially the Lockpicking and Hacking perks, which allow players to unlock certain doors and computer terminals.

Screenshot by Eric David | SiliconANGLE