Of course, you have the option to just barrel on through story missions until you reach the game's conclusion, but the time that approach would take you can just as easily be eaten up by base building or taking on side missions. You'll probably first notice that when you realise that you've clocked your first fifteen hours of playing time, but haven't spoken about your main quest – finding your abducted son – for at least fourteen of them. Sure, your Pip-boy will show that you have eight or nine available missions in progress if you click through to view your objectives list but aside from that, there's nothing that jumps out as it would in other open-world titles to push you toward a specific approach. During those walks, the sheer amount of choice you have never presents itself obviously. When you emerge from the safety of the underground bunker, the post-apocalyptic setting is sparse enough for you to wander around for a decent amount of time without seeing another soul and despite that, is bristling with enough interesting features to prevent that walk from place A to place B ever feeling like a chore. So much so, that it's almost disappointing when that inevitable dust cloud rushes at you over the horizon to wipe away the social bliss and indirectly cast you into cryogenic unconsciousness.
The preamble leading up to your entry into Vault-111 – complete with the much-ballyhooed character creation system - is nicely detailed and believable enough to draw you in. Let's make no bones about it, it's clear from the outset that with Fallout 4, Bethesda have created a wonderful thing.