Fallout 4 actually starts before the war. You play as a civilian turned vault dweller, literally frozen in time via cryogenic stasis, only to awaken hundreds of years later in this terrible future. At the outset, you have only one goal: find your kidnapped son. This directive pulls you across the entirety of post-war Boston, an area known as The Commonwealth, and, in typical Fallout fashion, into a story that expands to encompass more than just your personal struggle. You’ll deal with familiar groups, including the technology-obsessed Brotherhood of Steel, as well as new entities, like the mysterious and feared Institute. You’ll engage in massive, multi-faction battles and travel to a literal radioactive sea. In most games, this kind of epic quest is an assumed part of the genre, even if it’s not exactly believable or motivated. But in Fallout 4 it makes total sense: who wouldn’t travel to the end of the world to save their child?

Fallout 4 builds upon the familiar to create something new and strange

Initially Boston doesn’t feel all that distinct from previous locations, like Fallout 3’s Washington, DC. It’s styled in brown and grey, sewn with burned out cars across crumbling highways. If you venture into an abandoned shop, you can bet it’s filled with zombie-like ghouls and lots of useless clutter. The city’s currency is, as always, discarded Nuka-Cola bottle caps. But Boston is also a great place for Fallout to revel in its own particular brand of Americana. It may be a few centuries (and nuclear bombs) later, but the passion for baseball hasn’t died, and the region’s biggest settlement can be found in the remnants of Fenway Park. Security guards are dressed up like umpires crossed with Mad Max, and the Green Monster helps save lives. Mercifully, serious Boston accents are few and far between.

Like the repurposed ballpark, Fallout 4 builds upon the familiar to create something new and strange. Chief among these new elements is the hardboiled detective vibe: one early line of quests has you partnering with a stereotypical gumshoe named Nick Valentine in the search for your son. These were some of my favorite parts of the game. Most Fallout quests are primarily about going somewhere and killing a bunch of people (or monsters), but the detective element is a welcome change to the familiar format. Similarly, Fallout 4’s narrative has a strong emphasis on synths, human-like androids that were only briefly touched on in past games. Their inclusion raises some expected but still fascinating questions about what constitutes life and sentience, things that will feel familiar to Blade Runner fans.

Neither of these additions are especially original on their own, but feel fresh within Fallout. They also help contribute to arguably the best story in the series to date. One moment you’re decorating a small home in the corner of the suburbs, the next you’re making decisions that will impact what remains of the world. The Fallout games always give you the option to align with particular interests, whether it’s a technologically advanced squad like the Brotherhood or the mysterious Railroad, but it feels more pronounced and important here. I spent most of Fallout 4 trying to play it safe, working with all sides, but as the climax approached I was forced to pick a side, and I genuinely struggled with my choice. This is Fallout, so it’s never really clear who is good and who is bad, and no matter what you’re forced to betray someone.

Of course the main story of a Fallout game is just the beginning of its adventure. Players will spend dozens if not hundreds of hours discovering what else the wasteland has to offer. Fallout 4 plays a lot like its predecessors, blending elements of FPS and RPGs into something that’s not quite either. You explore the world from a first-person perspective (you can switch to third person, but I wouldn’t recommend it) and attack as you would in any other shooter. But the returning VATS system also affords the option to play Fallout 4 like a pseudo turn-based game. VATS slows time, so that you can zoom in on enemies and determine the best shot to take. Your ability to do this is limited, and recharges over time, but it’s really the best way to play since Fallout isn’t the most capable shooter, with its frustrating aiming. The poor feel of shooting is most obvious when facing a swell of enemies without enough VATS points to guide your shots.

For the most part, the moment-to-moment action is very similar to Fallout 3 and New Vegas. You’ll wander the wasteland discovering new locations, and split your time between fighting, talking to other characters, and customizing your own. The streamlined perk system works well and simplifies character creation. I began by focusing on my character’s charisma, which let me talk my way out of a lot of sticky situations; as someone who isn’t so into the combat, this was the perfect solution. Later on I beefed up my battle skills in preparation for some big final scrimmages.

This familiarity largely benefits the game — Fallout is beloved for a reason — but it can also make it feel frustratingly dated at times. This is particularly true with the quests. Generally interesting from a narrative perspective, a quest’s action is often predictable and repetitive:

Go to a location

Kill monsters

Collect an item

Return home

After a while killing feral ghouls switched from scary to annoying. Occasionally the game puts an interesting twist on this structure — one highlight has you travelling through a life’s worth of memories from a dead raider — but those moments are rare, and so the quests can often feel like a list of chores more than anything else. It’s better than in past Fallout games, but in comparison to recent RPGs like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, it can feel archaic.