Before we get started, in order to get past the carry weight limit in the game, you can open the console (~) on PC (sorry console, there is no helping you), and do the following:

player.modav carryweight 20000

That can be any number you so desire. The command "tgm" for God Mode also makes you immune to encumbrance from having too much in your inventory. Now, on with my opinion:

Let's get something straight - the fact that most players I know use cheats to get past the carry weight limit in Fallout 4, Fallout 3, Skyrim, and many other games (Witcher included), is just showing how dated the idea of carry weight is. I think carry weight should be an opt-in thing, especially as games add more and more things to jam your inventory full of. Actually, there is probably a bazillion other ways to handle carry weight, and using Fallout 4 as an example, here are some off the top of my head:

  • Only armor and weapons impact weight.
  • Weight limit is for what you can physically wear, restricting better armor and gear to higher strength characters.
  • Weight limit that increases as you progress through the game, providing a limit to the amount you could loot at the start of the game, and progressively bringing it to an almost unlimited capacity later on.
  • Automatic handoff to a companion.
  • Automatic storage of all workshop materials in a workshop.
  • Not having carry weight or making it toggable for "realism."

Video game carry weight is something that RPGs had a long time ago as a translation of Dungeon & Dragon's carrying capacity system. In D&D, what equipment your character starts with, and keeps, is completely dependant on how much you can carry. You can have a bag of holding, but that takes a movement action to utilize, depending on the rules, but expands your carry weight. This was translated into 3D games as sort of a translation of the system.

Yet in a 3D game where you can literally loot EVERYTHING, it seems kind of pointless to enforce such a restriction. You're not planning your character out at the start and trying to min/max bringing a light, fragile weapon along with extra potions or a heavy weapon in the place of them, you're basically spamming the loot, loot, loot button as fast as you can. Because you need almost everything you can loot for your settlements, crafting, and just for some people the collection aspect.

Staying true to the D&D heritage is becoming less and less reasonable, as we no longer need the D&D ruleset to define games. Sure, we should all remember it, and continue to take ideas from it, but expanding past it is critical. Look at Vampire: The Masqurade - Bloodlines. It's not based purely on D&D, but another ruleset involving vampires. People are still modding, and playing, and talking about this game today across forums, comments, and more. It has a completely different battle system than other games, unique mechanics, and more, and that's what makes it so cool and desirable - even for non-VTM fans.

The point I'm making is that, yeah Fallout 4's inventory weight limit is part of the game and has been for a long time, along with many, many other RPG titles, but I think it's time we start moving away from the comfortable problems, and expanding into more comfortable solutions. You can't add a bazillion things to loot and not address carry weight. What fun is there in investing perks or points into the idea that you can carry more tin cans? That's not fun - that feels like an exercise in ugh.

This is a rather small nitpick, easily solved on PC, but console users will have to keep making trips back to store things, or offload their junk to their companion. I think Star Wars: The Old Republic had a clever solution to the limit inventory in letting your companion, in an MMO setting, run things to town and sell them. In some ways, it'd be nice if your Mr. Handy stayed with you the entire game, providing you with a means of selling and storing things in your inventory with ease.

Of course, I could just be crazy and everyone loves having to mod their game to get rid of an artificial limit to their fun.


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Fallout 4 Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.

Comments