| Fallout 4: Far Harbor | |
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| Release | May 19, 2016 |
| Genre(s) | Action role-playing, Survival |
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Fallout 4: Far Harbor is an expansion pack for the 2015 video game Fallout 4, developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. Far Harbor was released on May 19, 2016 for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One as downloadable content (DLC). The game is set in the year 2287, in the aftermath of a nuclear war that destroys most of the United States. In the expansion, the player character is hired as a private investigator to search for a missing girl in the isolated seaside community of Far Harbor.
The game can be played in first-person or third-person perspective; in either case, the player controls the protagonist throughout their investigation on The Island, a landmass off the coast of Maine. Far Harbor's main gameplay consists of quests and puzzle sections. Upon completing the quests in the game, the player is rewarded with bottle caps from Nuka-Cola bottles (the franchise's main fictional currency), and experience points. The puzzles feature a variety of different game mechanics; some require the player to hit targets with lasers, and others allow building using blocks.
Announced in February 2016, the expansion was influenced by player feedback regarding the base game's dialogue system, which was not considered to be as successful as the other game mechanics. The development team also noticed the players' interest in releases that added large amounts of explorable territory. The price of Fallout 4's season pass was increased because of the expansion's size.
Far Harbor received generally positive reviews from critics. The addition of new quests was praised, but there were mixed opinions on the expansion's atmosphere and its use of fog. The main criticisms were directed at the puzzles, which reviewers thought were a waste of time, unnecessary, or overly frustrating. In July 2016, Guillaume Veer accused Bethesda of copying his Fallout: New Vegas mod, named Autumn Leaves, though Veer said that he was not upset even if Bethesda had deliberately incorporated material from Autumn Leaves in Far Harbor.