Please stand by for the Fallout 4 GOTY (game of the year) edition.
‘Game of the year’ editions, or GOTY for short, are odd, aren’t they?
No industry body decides that something is the ‘game of the year’. Sure, it might’ve got a few real awards, or more likely meaningless rosettes from gaming websites, but there’s no process to it. There’s no universal recognition, or peer review, or anything else that makes something a ‘game of the year’.
Ostensibly, a ‘game of the year’ edition means ‘including all the extra stuff and DLC that everyone else had to pay for in one box’ (but that’s obviously not as catchy). And to confuse matters further, the ‘game of the year’ edition might not even release in the year that the original game was supposedly ‘the game’ of.
They’re a bit like those ‘product of the year’ awards, that companies essentially pay to win. Not familiar with them? Check out season 3, episode 8 of Dave Gorman’s Modern Life is Goodish for a primer, about 30 minutes in.
So, in essence, we’ve established that the term ‘game of the year’ is meaningless. It’s just marketing speak for a bundle including the DLC, and it doesn’t even have to come out in the year the game is supposedly the game of.
What was I saying again? Oh yes. Right. The news: Introducing the Fallout 4 GOTY edition!
I jest, of course. I absolutely adore Fallout 4 and spent hundreds of hours rebuilding the wasteland failing to build beds and saving the Commonwealth looking for Dogmeat. I’ve even written lots of handy instructional things, either around the specific issues above, or just general guides to playing the game. This Fallout 4 tips and tricks guide is a great place to start for new and old players alike.
But let’s be realistic. This is an enormous Bethesda open world video game, after all. Early adopters get bugs. They get issues. And they don’t get the whole thing until the DLC cycle has finished, which they ultimately pay more for.
So for those of you who’ve had the patience – or perhaps, haven’t had the inclination strike you yet – then the Fallout 4 GOTY edition is the perfect time to get into the wasteland.
The Fallout 4 GOTY edition launches on September 26th, 2017, and rumour has it there are even a few extremely rare PipBoy editions lurking about, in North America at least.
