The Memory Den | Fallout 4's Missed Opportunity

Everyone who played Fallout 4 ended up at the Memory Den at some point in time or another. A staunch touch on the world of Inception, where people would rather live in memories/ the past instead of the present, it was one of the few instances that made the world of Fallout 4 feel as overwhelming and oppressive as it should have felt. Strange that a game about holding on to life and liberty at the end of the world manages to not make it feel as if any of those things are terribly important, or even at risk.

While I've already more or less touched on what made Fallout 4 anything but enjoyable in my last post, I'll emphasize further here with what I felt was the most overlooked opportunity within the latest installment of one of Bethesda's most beloved franchises.

If you haven't played the game and plan to, I think it goes without say that you ought to stop reading here lest you be exposed to a myriad of spoilers.

We already know that we know next to nothing about our Fallout 4 character. Mr. (or Mrs.) Lone Survivor is about as blank of a canvas as can be painted, with the exception of having a known spouse and child at the beginning of the game. (And a robot butler). From that, and the name that you yourself give your Fallout 4 character, that's it.

Cut to hours later in the game, and you're still looking for your son. Finally, the Lone Survivor catches a lucky break! You not only find out your son is alive, but you get to cap the bastard (Conrad Kellogg) that put a bullet in your spouse at the beginning of the game. Double win! Turns out, this guy is also a cyborg, or as close a combination to a human and synth as the Fallout 4 franchise will ever get.

Turns out that this Institute mercenary was actually kept alive well past the standard expiration date by his employers, and after ganking him you get to take his brain cybernetics to the Memory Den, where you get a literal look inside of his mind, telling you all about him, and more importantly (but arguably less interestingly) about the current location of Shaun. This is the last action you partake of in the Memory Den. Any return to attempt to utilize the hardware of what is likely supposed to be a sort of mock, post apocalyptic version of an opium den, is denied as Irma informs you that all of the Memory Loungers are in use. They are not.

I learned after some research that if you come here before your initial quest with Nick, you can access a memory in the Loungers, but only the one of your spouse getting shot and Shaun being taken. There is no alternative memory that delves into your Lone Survivor's past to hopefully flesh out your character more. This is a major problem as a player, because if we were not going to experience the pre-fallout world of Fallout, why show it to us in the first place? If you're not going to show us much in the beginning, why install an element in the game to access memories, but not give us story through that installment? What is Bethesda playing at here by only sort of giving us game play and story driven elements but not following through with them?

It was kind of a cock-tease. I'm not sure what's going on here, and as far as I can tell there's no confirmation on what any upcoming DLC is going to consist of, though I certainly hope its something more involved than "go here, shoot this, rinse, repeat" type of game play. Bethesda has shown us all for years now that they're capable of more than this, and yet they did not deliver here. Fallout 4 has no depth while trying to assure us that depth is there. Make the Memory Den useful to us! Let us use it to connect with the world we lost as the Lone Survivor, or use it to connect with the romantic partner of our choosing. Store memories of past users so that we can employ Kellogg like techniques to hunt down bounties, and let's make some mini games for this thing that aren't the level of crap that they were in Oblivion maybe?

Since the Memory Den is obviously a psychological opium den for the people of the Commonwealth, add an addiction factor to it. Make it so that when your player sleeps they have flashbacks/nightmares that hinder their stats, or in game hallucinations that screw with dialogue. This could have gotten really fun if Bethesda had bothered to explore it at all! How about some F.E.A.R. style hallucinations that really mess with you as a player. Have your dead spouse come back to guilt you into not doing your job and protecting your family when they needed you most!

Hell, have that be a side mission if your character spends too much time in the Memory Den! Let's break the shooter game play up with some horror elements! You tried that in the puzzle basement, Bethesda, but I wasn't buying it.

How's this: After weeks of hallucination based withdrawals from the Memory Loungers, you're inspired to return to Vault 111, because now you're not sure your spouse is dead. You go back and are sealed in. The corpses in their pods are animated and trying to get out, and a few of them do. You are required to shoot them and kill them, which piles on the trauma of the Lone Survivor's experience, because you are now killing people that you knew from the past.

You come across your spouse who is the only one not animated, and after finding nothing turn to leave only to hear them call out to you. Turning reveals them standing in the corridor. After some dialogue they attack you and disappear into smoke.

Cue some Dead Space/F.E.A.R. style game play for a few minutes, hunting down your revenant husband and neighbors. Chase him all through the vault, and maybe even get into some air ducts so as to strain the player's movement and create some high stress environments. After about ten or so minutes you get your final encounter with your spouse.

I don't normally advocate for quick time events, but tying those in with skill based conversation with your dead spouse based heavily on the memories accessed by the Lone Survivor can wrap up the after effects of this encounter. It can leave the Lone Survivor at peace and coming to terms with what has happened (especially if you've completed the main quest of the game). Perhaps there can be a negative effect as well if the Lone Survivor does not perform as well, and perhaps there can even be some lingering after effect if you haven't found your son yet.

I think another bonus action that might have been nice, perhaps changed how you ended your relationship with Shaun, would have been to play the holotape of your spouse talking to you with baby Shaun in the background. Maybe that could have changed things, even though seventy year old Shaun was a bit of a hard ass by the time you got to him.

It's just that, for a game that emphasized the importance of family reunion, it all seemed to fall by the way side when it could have been made more important somehow. But that's just me. Perhaps the DLC will add more, but I'm not going to bank on it.

Please try harder next time, Bethesda. This is not to just satisfy old fans, but to obtain new ones. Give everyone a little bit of something and honor a larger fan base and draw obtain a bigger one. That's what good game design is all about!

This was a series of letdowns wrapped up in one giant letdown. This was also my first big introduction to the Fallout franchise, and I'm only going back and playing the others because I loved Skyrim so much. I really don't want it to continue down this road. I know you can do better, Bethesda. I've seen it!