Does anyone else feel that the Fallout 4 universe is... well, too happy? As much as I love tearing a swath of carnage across its wide-reaching areas, I cannot help but feel a lack of intensity. It just doesn't seem like the foreboding world you would expect a post-nuclear wasteland to be.

I seem to have now remedied the situation, however, for myself at least. It may seem strange to some, but for me it works great. Try turning the music off. Completely. Wandering the wasteland and hearing nothing but the howling winds or the restlessness of a tempest brewing, the level of immersion is palpable. The ultimate is when a radiation storm descends, experiencing a ruin littered with the remains of the war's dead, the game is truly transformed. Immersion is further enhanced with enemies as there is no musical cue for when they attack and it is easier for you to be ambushed(imagine the only warning of an attacking Deathclaw being the pounding of its talons as it charges you from behind).

I personally don't care for most of Zur's work, even though some of the battle themes are quite epic. I don't think the music is bad, just not a good match with the gameplay imho, especially with the dungeon-crawling sequences(a place that should fell dangerous and unsettling simply feels quaint with the soundtrack). If you feel similarly, then try muting it, it makes all the difference.

But but.... I don't want to set the world on fire :'(

I've done this with Skyrim, too. Gotta say I love the soundtrack, but not enough people appreciate quality sound design.

Thanks for the suggestion! I don't know why I didn't think of this since I used to do it on all the other Bethesda games. Lol

yeh the score is excellent

i do this, but turn it back on when i RR areas as i like that, definitely has a blade runnery/dues exy/syndicatey feel

i think the problem is the background music is way too loud and there doesnt seem to be a volume control for it??

it needs to be subtler, its far too overpowering

always enjoy good foley artistry (yeah i know this is digital :'(, i miss foley and anologue) so really enjoy all the back ground sounds that you miss because of the high background music volume

also i find some convos are hard to hear when all of a sudden the background music peaks

Yup, started doing this with Skyrim over 6000 hours ago and have done it with every open-world type games ever since. I'm using a weather mod for Fallout 4 and the new audio for the storms are intense!

I agree, though I don't think the music is bad, it just doesn't fit. May fit better in TES imo. So I replaced it with a stalker music mod, and using xwm converter some choice tracks from the old Fallouts.

I always tend to turn off the music in game. Makes it a much better experience in my opinion.

I think the only game I ever turned the music off for is Stalker. It's always good to be able to hear distant audio cues when The Zone is out to murder you dead at every turn. I don't really play that game much anymore but ill have to try it for Fallout and TES atleast.

I am honestly the only person I know that plays every game with all music turned off.
In fact, if a game doesn't have an audio slider for me to turn off the soundtrack I tend to not play them very long.
In the very few cases where I would like some tunes to go along with my gaming, I prefer to make my own playlist to specifically match the mood I am in and/or the activity my character is doing...which in many cases ends up being the Kill 'Em All album by Metallica.

Without reading your post or anyone else's (yet)... I do not feel that FO4 is "too happy". However, just like a lot of people, I would be open to a hyper-bleak Fallout, (think of that movie 'The Road' for example.. or even the Walking Dead game)

But it should be kind of obvious at this point, that said "bleak" atmosphere in this game.. well, it's going to have to be much, much different in approach than FO4. A different engine, different type of survival, different gameplay, a huge focus on dialogue and story, (and especially a robust choice vs consequence one) But at the same time, nothing weighing you down with endless reading and text.

Literally EVERYTHING would have to be completely re-conceived from the ground up. Otherwise it would probably feel like a wanna-be FO3/ New Vegas.

10 seconds...

It would have taken ten seconds to know wtf you are actually posting about.


...just sayin'.

I'm on my 3rd play-through and have been trying a number of different things to keep it fresh. For play-through #2, I turned off the radio stations, even though I love the playlist, and went with the game's native soundtrack, which I also love. That's how I was doing play-through 3 until I saw this thread. So, tonight, I turned off all the music.

It's a subtle but noticeable difference. I wasn't aware how much I had been depending on musical cues. Oh, there's that music, must be enemies nearby. Oh, there's that music, I must have cleared the area. Well, tonight, I'm hearing things I hadn't really paid much attention to before. Footfalls. Stuff... rustling... It's quiet, and yet there are sounds everywhere. Eerie. I like it!

So, thanks for the suggestion, OP! I'll probably continue play-through #3 this way.

First thing I do with any game is turn off the soundtrack. Apart from the opening screens I have never heard the music for any Fallout game. Occasionally I'll turn on the radio for quest but mostly it's off.


I never understood all those people saying their immersion is broken because of this and that (see recent I holstered gun thread) yet keep the music on. You don't hear your own soundtrack in real life (unless you're constantly selecting scene appropriate mp3s on you music player I suppose).

So...turn the music off if you don't want to hear disembodied instruments playing from thin irradiated air?

Agreed somewhat I haven't ever had the feeling of the setting not being bleak enough but I've been playing with the music off from the beginning and the ambient noises really chip in for ambience/atmosphere. The story and personalities of many NPCs help a lot too.

Every game. Always. Fallout 4 has really blown me away with this too... There's like birds chirping, waves rolling in... Wind picks up a little bit and a you hear a distant rumble... Turn around and there's a green sky full of lighting rollin your way.

I got into a boxing match with a B.O.S. Knight, both of us in full power armor in a storm once... Easily will always be one of my favorite memories of any game !

I started out with the radio and everything always on. Then I started to keep the radio off and really enjoyed the background 'mood' music. But yeah I'm to the point I think were I may even turn that off and just go for the sound effects, which from what I've heard so far are really well done.

I've never played with any game's background music, I always cut it off. I seldom listen to my pip-boy radio, but I tend to have radios playing all over in my settlements. Out in the wastes, though, that blaring radio would draw undesirable attention and interfere with your own ability to detect enemies. Not the best idea to explore with music blaring.

There's a volume slider for the background music, even a separate one for radio stations.

I'm not sure what you're getting at lamenting the digital format... it's still foley.

Fall Out 4 takes place 200 years AFTER a nuclear war. I would expect or at least hope that 200 years after, there would be some improvement in quality of life.

A good example of how much time has passed is when you talk to Moe and he gives you the history of baseball. Hilarious.

Did Fort Hagen last night. New experience, there is a lot of ambient sound even inside. Humming lights, turret engines thru walls, and you can better hear the synth in the distance calling you out. I prefer DC radio in the worlds radios rather than in my head. The music masks all of that. without you get the more immersive feeling that you are actually dungeon crawling a ruined office.

Oh gods, my wife and I laughed our asses off the first time I talked to him. One of the conversation options was pure gold.

Yea I did that awhile ago.. cuz I had to.. My game has a glorious bug where the action music constantly plays like ur always in a firefight..lol so in order to hear ppl talk I was forced to kill the music..buggy ass game. . . .

aww how did i miss that

and no, recorded digital sounds are not the same as foley artistry

say you have a scene where someone is shooting a colt 1911 now think banging two bits of wood together to make gunshot sounds (foley artistry) vs just actually recording a real 1911 firing and using the sound (digital)

there is no artistry in that