When I was a little kid I always loved picking up sticks, rocks and whatever else I thought of as cool laying in the sand, be it on a beach or in a sandbox in kindergarten. Picking up things that adults would consider “trash” and going on small adventures that felt big a-la Rugrats was liberating for a very young Me. Later I stopped going outside and so did stop those adventures…
The reason why I’m even talking about them is Fallout 4, a game that I did not care about when it came out, a game that I tried to play once and bounced off of so hard I didn’t try to play it till this year, a game that was unplayable for me until last week, a game that I’ve spend 40+ hours playing the very same week I fixed it.
Although I do have unhealthy gaming habits where I throw myself into the game, play it as much as I can and get burned out on playing it ever again, this is not what happened here.
I legitimately enjoy my time playing Fallout 4.
I enjoy going to many different places, having my little adventures in many little locations spread out throughout the map of the world, collecting all of the necessary items for crafting better items, going back to the base and then repeat.
It’s a loop.
A loop that I’ve experienced so many years ago as a kid: go to place, find some trash, play with trash, go home.
Even when I was a kid, I knew that it was just a fantasy, that it was just me playing out something I’ve read in a book or seen in a cartoon that I liked, that I was going to do the same thing with the same props again and again… and I still let myself be immersed.
The only difference between my childhood adventures and Fallout 4 is that I get to keep the trash in Fallout 4.
