The game doesn't just have settlements that constantly need help.
Recently, Bethesda writer Emil Pagliarulo spoke with GamesRadar+. He talked about why, for him, Fallout 4 is the most replayable installment in the franchise.
The thing is in the interaction of factions:
An interesting feature of Fallout 3 is that the game doesn't have faction quests. In Fallout 4, we first said, "You play Skyrim and go through faction quests, but they are not connected to the main storyline in any way. They are on their own. But let's intertwine everything together in Fallout 4." And that was the first time we did that.
According to the writer, all these intertwined questlines are "probably the most difficult" thing that he or the Bethesda design team has ever done:
I once gave a presentation on this, and as a slide I just used a big bowl of spaghetti. Because that's exactly how it felt - all these threads and bundles, representing complete chaos.
