Pipboy a bust?
Like many of you I assume, I too have been caught up in the immense wave of hype that has been building since the announcement, and now impending release, of Fallout 4. That wave is reaching its crest point, with review copies of the game now in the hands of both the larger games outlets as well as prominent YouTubers.
With that, we’ve seen a gamut of unboxing videos drop showing off the much anticipated Pipboy-edition of the game, which sold out completely just mere hours after becoming available to pre-order. Now I won’t get into the argument about not pre-ordering games right now, because clearly I completely ignored my own advice in this case and immediately jumped on the Pipboy Edition bandwagon the moment I could.
The first I spotted was from the Australian Official PlayStation Magazine. They were clearly as excited as I was; they tore through the packaging like a kid on Christmas day. Sadly, my excitement was swiftly subdued from the moment I saw the Pipboy itself.
“Maybe it’s the lighting or something?” I said to myself, wondering how I could possibly be disappointed in a freaking real-life Pipboy. “Surely it’s better that that, right?”
It wasn’t.
YouTuber ChampChong, being the Fallout super fan that he is, showed off the Pipboy in a little more detail in his unboxing video, and it sealed the deal for me. Between the awful ‘poo brown’ colour, the high-sheen plastic and the general look of the construction, I wasn’t at all convinced that this would be the cool piece of wasteland tech that I wanted it to be.
I decided there and then to downgrade my pre-order.
Now, let me just say first of all that it’s not like my expectations were super high to begin with. I mean, it’s not like they can just put out something made from super high quality materials, lest the retail price goes through the roof. I suspect that to get it down to the A$200 price-point, a few concessions had to be made. But, this?
This is obviously a case of my own hype getting the better of me – I wanted the Pipboy to be something special. I wanted it to be the kind of thing I gladly show off on my mantle piece and to stick on my arm like like a moron while wandering the wastes of Boston. I’m sure that, for some people, it will be that kind of special, and that’s great. For me though, I’ll stick to taping my smartphone to my arm for that second screen experience.
Fallout 4 releases on November 10th for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
James Swinbanks
