Fallout 4

New Vegas just goes tits up first chance it gets. I also recall the saves suffer some serious bloating issues and other problems for Vegas as well.

Hopefully those particular issues have been addressed or at least a built in save file cleaner of some sort.

New Vegas save bloating does not cause the save to go tits up though.

It is caused by the game having to remember the location of every object you have ever encountered.

Skyrim on the otherhand, is like that person who keeps reliving every mistake they have ever made until it destroys them.

Put in that sort of poetic way, Bethesda games sound like they have some pretty serious psychological conditions.

I can only hope Bethesda doesn't include some similar kind of fatal technical flaw in Fallout 4.

And the Vegas Save bloat is one of the causes of various in game performance issues and is one of the known causes of the endless load screen of doom.

I really hope FO:4 has a more functional save game function then Vegas or Skyrim. Both have some problems but both seem to benefit nicely from some of the save game cleaners.

If the engine running Fallout 4 is just Gamebryo 3.0 Super Whizzy Edition, (which it is - there's no real denying it and any attempt to do so ends up being rather foolish, rather quickly) you can pretty much bet on save game bloating. Script errors. Random crashes. Etcetera, etcetera. It comes with the territory.

The thing is, I don't know of many other high-profile engines out there in the market place that would be capable of doing all the stuff that Fallout 4 is going to have to deal with. It isn't an easy job, running all the details of a game-world the size of the one we're going to get. Never mind all the mods that folks will be running with the thing.

Gamebryo does have the advantage of being supremely moddable, but a hell of a lot of that goes to fixing shit Bethesda left wrong with the original game. It's got plenty of other disadvantages too though, to the point where it's an open question as to whether they outweigh the benefits.

And we've seen other open-world games before, made by other developers. None of them are quite as open and systems-oriented as Bethesda's games are, sure, but I'm not quite sold on the idea that there's some great thing their games do that other dev's games don't. Do you have any kind of insight to share about how the game handles technically that enables certain features that don't appear elsewhere?

edited 1st Aug '15 1:09:57 PM by Gault

Unsure if it's been discussed yet, but you can romance every human NPC in the game, regardless of gender. That's pretty cool, although it'll probably be about as barebones as Skyrim's was.

edited 1st Aug '15 2:00:20 PM by CassidyTheDevil

I don't recall many of the rpg games exactly having much in terms of depth for romance to begin with. I find it kinda meh. Unless it serves some unique purpose like say a quest option or possibly unique event I don't see it as being all that important.

Is it every NPC or just companions?

I would be more excited about the possibility of romance with all NP Cs in the world if it wasn't so likely to come down to a choice between two male and two female voice actors reading the same script, with pauses in for your pre-recorded name.

The beth games have to account for a lot of little things that add up. Did you leave an item in this chest? You dropped this thing here, there's 12 raider corpses in this ruin with X loot placed at Y coords, you have 37 unresolved quests with some at X stage meaning flags T,Y,U are tripped so NPC #4520 is now at L location.

This is before even taking into account mods or intentionally fucking with the game i.e. dropping 5000 individual watermelons in your tiny shack.

Most games are designed to greatly limit the depth of play while not appearing to do so. Dragon age only lets you keep items in a certain place, just cause only allows you to damage certain items and keeps a basic there/not there tag on them, etc.

@Cassidythedevil: Doubt it would be "bare bones".

Especially since there are just 10 romance options this time.

@Mukora they were talking about companions when theu revealed romance. And the exact words "romance any human companion".

So just companions.

edited 1st Aug '15 4:51:19 PM by Cortez

I'm digging Piper's reporter accent or whatever that type of accent is called.

@Gault, while I was away trying and failing to get to sleep, thatguythere pretty much covered anything I'd want to say about what Bethesda games in general, and ones like Fallout 4 in particular, have to deal with, that other open world games don't.

The insight I have comes from playing all of them since Morrowind, including most of the DLC, and paying attention to what I do in each game and what the game does in response.

Wait, where did you hear her accent? Is the showcase up yet?

Nah, heard the audio of the presentation though.

While I'm glad you can apparently romance companions regardless of gender, I still wish you could pick the gender of your spouse in the beginning of the game.

I wonder what we'll see at Gamescom.

Hopefully Piper. And some other companions. I'm thinking an even 5/5 split Male/Female of the rest

Yeah, i hope they showcase Piper and that they introduce more of the companions.

If we can't make sweet tender love with our ghoul or super mutant companions then Fallout 4 is not an rpg.

edited 1st Aug '15 10:14:31 PM by Spirit

Don't Ghouls count as humans? Since they are humans that were mutated radiation.

edited 1st Aug '15 11:44:47 PM by Cortez

I always found it strange that in Sci-Fi, mutants tend to consider themselves separate species. I'd imagine it'd be hard to get people to stop identifying as humans.

For example, ghouls see themselves as just ghouls, rather than humans, as opposed to seeing themselves as both of these things. Same with the Super Mutants.

edited 1st Aug '15 11:56:37 PM by SilentColossus

The whole thing about the Super Mutants is that they were created to be a "Master Race." They don't believe they're human because the Master brainwashed them into thinking they weren't.

True enough - but even the mutants whom have largely fought against the brainwashing seem to not consider themselves humans. Like Marcus.

Edit: Then again, many of them have forgotten their previous life.

edited 1st Aug '15 11:58:08 PM by SilentColossus