The map is also the only thing in Fallout 4 to give you an in-game “mouse” cursor that you move around with your thumbstick. Icons all smush together in populated areas and become unreadable at a glance. Like everything else in the Pip-Boy interface, the map is crammed onto a tiny screen. Any open world game relies significantly on its map, and Fallout 4’s map is… just really spectacularly not good. You use the D-pad or thumbstick to move up and down in a given menu, but also use them to move left and right… through submenus.įallout 4 is defined by its huge, well-crafted open world. I think of that submenu as where sidequests go to die.) You use the triggers to cycle through the main menus, but can’t cycle “around the end” and quickly get to the other side, so you’ll often stall out and have to backtrack across every tab. (Take the “miscellaneous” quests tab shown in the screenshot up top.
FALLOUT 4 COLOR UI HOW TO
It’s a pain to actually use and navigate, and it isn’t always clear how to get into some of the nestled menus. I could spend another ten paragraphs talking about all the other ways the Pip-Boy is messed up. The time thing sticks out the most to me-why doesn’t the time display on every tab?-but there’s also the fact that health is represented two different ways (numeric and graphical) on two separate pages, XP is never presented numerically, and caps are denoted with an odd “C” logo. Looking at the bottom of each page, it’s striking how inconsistently the Pip-Boy presents information. Couldn’t the time have fit here? Whatever, I guess. Look at this (actually fairly generous) illustration:
![fallout 4 color ui fallout 4 color ui](https://blog-imgs-86.fc2.com/g/e/m/geme8810/9414-2-1454470788.jpg)
The Pip-Boy interface is just completely fucked from the very start, because it uses screen space so inefficiently. Like most things in Fallout 4, it is amazingly counterintuitive and difficult to use. It’s how you keep track of everything in the game, from quests to navigation to inventory to radio stations.
FALLOUT 4 COLOR UI PORTABLE
The Pip-Boy is a chunky portable computer that your character wears on his or her wrist.
![fallout 4 color ui fallout 4 color ui](https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1151/images/8504-2-1454508891.jpg)
In the interest of space, I’ve focused only on the controller interface, though I gather that the mouse & keyboard setup is just as confusing, if not more so.
FALLOUT 4 COLOR UI PC
This article is based on the PC version of the game. Still, there’s almost certainly something to be gained from taking a closer look at the many ways the menus and interfaces fail to perform even their basic presumed functions. I really like Fallout 4-I’ve played an ungodly number of hours over the last couple of weeks, and my feelings on the game mostly line up with Patricia’s review. In other ways, the game’s creators have tried to streamline various systems and menus in order to make them more appealing and user friendly… but they’ve mostly just made things more confusing.
![fallout 4 color ui fallout 4 color ui](https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/130/images/38360-5-1291473189.jpg)
In most ways, the new game uses the same interface as its predecessors, with the same problems carried over more or less intact. The fact that Fallout 4 has cumbersome, counterintuitive menus won’t come as a surprise to anyone who played Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas. You’ll spend just as much time fighting the game’s awful user interface. You’ll spend a lot of Fallout 4 fighting irradiated super mutants, giant killer cockroaches, and deadly cyborgs.