Is anyone else worried about the apparent lack of settlements in Fallout 4, especially after the QuakeCon demo? Hear me out.
In both the e3 footage AND the concept art, we've only really seen one settlement in Fallout 4 - Diamond City. And Diamond City? Looks quite small and underwhelming to me (looks a lot like Megaton), and yet it is probably the game's major city as the Commonwealth itself is probably just full of scientists and workers. Furthermore, the QuakeCon 2015 demo confirmed that Concord was the HQ for the Minutemen, and it also confirmed another location, Lexington, as a settlement that was recently taken over by ghouls. This has echoes of New Vegas, which is a worrying sign.
On your way to New Vegas, you passed a handful of settlements that had great potential, and would've made the game feel more alive and lived in. Primm was a shadow of its former self due to the Powder Gangers, Nipton was massacred by Caesar's Legion, Nelson was taken over by them, and Boulder City was recently destroyed.
I bet Bethesda consider Concord as a major settlement in the game, even though it only houses 5 or 6 Commonwealth Minutemen. And, with Lexington conveniently taken over in what seems like a few weeks or months before the Sole Survivor's arrival, it seems that they are following a similar path to their previous titles. Add that to the ability to create your own settlements (essentially doing Bethesda's work for them), and I think we have something to be concerned about.
I get that it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland, survival is rare, and the Commonwealth is supposed to have this reputation of a "quagmire of violence and despair", but I was hoping that Fallout 4 would improve in this regard. Bethesda has always had these epic open worlds, but the amount of settlements and the size of these settlements has always been disproportionately small in comparison.
Everyone remember Skyrim and it's major cities? Cities like Dawnstar, Winterhold (literally four buildings and a college), and Morthal? With the perk system now reflecting Skyrim's, I wonder if FO4 is going to reflect that game too closely (my personal least favourite in the TES series - although that's an argument for another day
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