Fallout 4 will have no level cap and no hard finish

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Fallout 4

For many players, one of the gravest failings of Fallout 3 was that once it was over, it was over. Having saved the world from almost certain doom, players couldn't wander back into the wasteland to horse around at their leisure. Same deal with New Vegas: If you didn't do all your exploring before the grand finale, you were out of luck unless you loaded up a pre-endgame save. But Bethesda says that won't be the case with Fallout 4.

"To fans who’ve asked: Fallout 4 doesn’t end when the main story is and over and there is no level cap," Bethesda tweeted earlier today. "You can keep playing and leveling."

Being open-ended is cool, but the lack of a level cap is a surprise. Fallout 3 had a cap of 20, which could be boosted to 30 through the Broken Steel expansion. New Vegas peaked at 30 out of the box and could be pushed up as high as 50 via the four DLC releases, which increase the max by five levels each. Without that limit, I would think that Bethesda is opening the door to some potentially dicey balance issues. After all, scaling enemies will only go so far before they start to seem weird.

We'll see soon enough: Fallout 4 will be out on November 10.

Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.