The next generation of Bethesda Softworks' particular brand of open-world role-playing games has arrived, and the wait has absolutely been worth it. Depth, poignancy, excitement, mature storytelling. Fallout 4 has it all, and more. It's a rich, lengthy monster of a role-playing game that buries you with excuses to keep coming back, and the only real danger it poses is to your capacity to function as a socially adjusted adult. It's that good. While longtime fans may balk at some of the changes in store for the recently-revived franchise, there's just too much to love about this game to imagine anyone not being taken into its addictive, rewarding embrace.

Maybe it's been too long for me, but I remember the Capital and Mojave Wastelands overemphasizing the "waste" and de-emphasizing the "land." And while it's perfectly reasonable to expect a world ravaged by nuclear war to be covered with garbage, ugly chasms, and irradiated pools of God-knows-what, very little about Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas gave the impression that the ones in favor of rebuilding society were making any significant headway. Fallout 4 bucks this trend, and in doing so, allows the artists and engineers at Bethesda Softworks to really flex their creative muscles. The results are spectacular: their vision of post-apocalypse Massachusetts is shockingly optimistic for a Fallout game. Blue skies and blue waters aren't uncommon at all, and survivors who band together are capable of putting together some really amazing-looking buildings and settlements.

Inon Zur returns as composer, and his work is perhaps his best yet. The soundtrack can be bombastic and pulse-pounding when you're waist-deep in spent brass, but it's at its best when it's quiet and contemplative. Subtle militaristic themes pepper the music when you're dealing with the Brotherhood of Steel, while settlements are often accompanied by wistful, almost nostalgic pieces. Of course, it wouldn't be a Fallout game if you couldn't listen to lounge singers and barbershop quartets on the radio, and while that's definitely an option in Fallout 4, there's a lot of recycling in the song selection.

Fallout 4 is the first Bethesda game to be fully voice acted. By that, I mean your character finally speaks! You aren't allowed to choose your character's voice; there's one for the male and another for the female. That being said, both of the leads turn in amazing performances. The supporting cast is even better, however. John Cleese's performance as robo-butler Codsworth is a delight, and that's not even taking into mention the fact that he will refer to you by name if yours is common enough!

If the legend of Vault 101 is "No one ever enters and no one ever leaves," I shudder to think what will be said about Vault 111. Nestled underneath the Boston suburb of Sanctuary is the underground chamber you've been pre-selected for, should the bombs fall. And fall, they do, mere moments after you are notified of this precaution. But even though you, your spouse, and your child have been spared the horror of nuclear war, you've been roped into the workings of a shadowy organization whose goals are unclear and their methods... barbaric. After a rather difficult-to-watch introductory chapter, you emerge from Vault 111 two hundred years after the Great War. Your child has been abducted by this mysterious group, and it falls to you to find out why and to get him back. All that stands between you and your kidnapped offspring is a brave new world of monsters, factions, politicians, and warlords. Good luck.

Of course, this is a Bethesda Softworks role-playing game. You don't have to do any of that if you don't want to. Like its predecessors, Fallout 4 is a fluid, malleable game that adapts to and accommodates your preferred playstyle. When you leave Vault 111, the Commonwealth is your contaminated, irradiated oyster. You can go where you want and do what you want, as long as you're prepared to accept the consequences of your actions. Do you assist the settlers who are besieged by all manner of threats? Or do you fleece them relentlessly and rob them blind? Fallout 4 lets you do all of this, and everything in between. But in my opinion, the game is at its best when it is most focused, and that's in the questlines.

Questing in the Commonwealth isn't much different from questing in Washington D.C., Nevada, Skyrim, or Cyrodiil. You invariably come across someone who can use your assistance in a matter, whether it's personal, professional, legal, or otherwise. And then, through combat, exploration, writing, and voice work, amazing little stories play out. Fallout 4's exciting, rewarding gameplay model is brilliantly complemented by its strong storytelling and fantastic, diverse cast of characters.

Fallout 4's difficulty level and style of challenge can best be approached with two words: be prepared. Not that Scar from The Lion King would have survived the horrors lurking above and underground in the remains of the Commonwealth. Having a nice variety of weapons with special bonus effects is immensely important, given that the creatures and people who prey on everything and everyone else are smart enough to protect themselves from at least one method of assault.

Above all else, keep a steady stream of resources coming in. Collect all the valuable junk you can carry and sell it for ammunition and health items. You can never have too many Stimpaks or bottles of RadAway. In a pinch, you'll be burning through all of it at a frightening rate.

If you want to increase your challenge level and the rate at which legendary items drop, you'll want to make an adjustment to the variable level off the bat. It doesn't take long for you to level up and come into the possession of awesome weapons and armor. Hell, by level 25, I was exploding heads on my second shot with a 10mm pistol.

Gunplay in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas is middling at its very best. Combat is only truly exciting when you make use of the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, or V.A.T.S. The tactical, appendage-targeting combat paid off your patience with slow-motion showers of blood, bones, brains, and guts. And while this remains true in Fallout 4, the real-time shooting has been vastly improved. If your chances of landing a sneak headshot from long range are mathematically poor in V.A.T.S., simply trust your own judgment and the game will, too. Landing hits in V.A.T.S. comes with its own rewards, however. Critical hits are no longer random, and are instead relegated to a bar that fills as you do damage. From there, it's just a press of a button to execute at will. And if you invest in a particular perk, you earn the ability to "bank" a number of criticals, which comes in handy during tougher gunfights.

Leveling up. Leveling up has changed. Fallout 4 streamlines character growth in a pretty earthshaking way, and it's here that longtime fans may cry foul and return to playing Wasteland 2. Upon reaching the next level, you earn one point to invest in a special (see what I did there) seven-columned tree. Each column represents one of the core S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes; the perks located underneath the base statistic draw from that particular aptitude and increase in complexity as your level and base statistics rise. Yes, you can forgo a perk in favor of simply dropping an extra point into your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. On top of this, Fallout 4 does away with the level caps of games past, which admittedly takes a bit of the individualism and choice out of the process. But make no mistake: striving towards a "perfect" character is lengthy and rewarding in and of itself.

Character interaction has also changed in favor of relative simplicity. Instead of presenting the player with a handful of exact responses to choose from, Fallout 4 gives four options for every prompt, each of which offers a word or two that generally describes the gist of what the response will actually be. Options requiring Charisma checks are colored; the redder it is, the more difficult it will be to succeed.

With the advent of building timesinks like Minecraft and Terraria, it's easy to see how such a gameplay style could be adapted to fit a franchise such as Fallout. However, successfully executing such a plan can't have been easy. But Bethesda somehow made it work. Specific areas in the Commonwealth are viable for settling and farming, and you're allowed to build and put whatever you want (contingent on your pool of resources) wherever you want. Each project requires some kind of resource, be it materials, manpower, or electricity. And if you want to attract settlers and make them happy and prosperous, you'll have to round the bases in terms of food supply, furniture, power, defense, and more. It's a really engaging bit of metagameplay that really enriches the experience.

Nobody likes vendor trash unless it's worth good money. And let's face it, vendor trash is rarely worth good money unless it's piled up and bogging your weight down. With the introduction of a rather jaw-dropping mechanic, Fallout 4 not only makes vendor trash a non-issue, but actually manages to negate the concept. While it's true that keeping a steady flow of resources often means picking up things for the sole purpose of selling them later, you can do much more than that. Everything is made up of some elementary substance. Items can be broken down into core components that can be used for things you'll actually use. From weaponry to consumables to building materials, the possibilities are almost endless. And what's nice is that these components can be tagged for searching; if you need antiseptic to make Stimpaks, the loot system will point out that something as ostensibly useless as toothpaste has antiseptic properties. It's just another example of Bethesda going above and beyond to commit to its vision of true wasteland survivalism.

I could go on and on about what's over and under the hood of Fallout 4. But the fact of the matter is this is a game that's primarily about discovery, and having had the opportunity to go in almost completely unspoiled, I can't in good conscience deny anyone else that experience. All I can say at this point is that it's one of the greatest games I've ever played and it'll probably be one of the greatest games you've ever played.