Fallout 4

Sure, I give up.

I was right. It does stink. And no worries. It's how I feel.

I said before I don't know who Bethesda were trying to attract with this game - for example, its depiction of the Brotherhood is straight up the alley of those folks in the No Mutants Allowed board, but they look on all Bethesda games like they have radioactive cooties, so they ain't going to buy the thing anyway. And if you're a fan of the previous two games there's pretty much nothing there for you. No explanation of what happened to the Lone Wanderer, and the Courier only exists in terminal entries I probably haven't found yet.

Oh yeah, your favourite Bo S gal from the previous game? Dead. I reckon murdered either by or on behalf of that fucker Maxson. I covered why I think that in previous posts.

Mc Cready from Little Lamplight? Who I actually liked, btw. Grew up, had a kid, had a life, had a wife or girlfriend - offscreen and fridged before you could see her.

All your pals in Megaton, Rivet City, the Underworld (if you had pals there, of course)? No word either.

edited 22nd Sep '16 4:35:39 PM by TamH70

I think I know roughly where they were trying to go.

First, they wanted to rectify their mistakes in 3 by bringing the game more in line with what New Vegas did and tying it in a bit more into the lore and making it more accurate. Then they put their lead writer from Skyrim on board, who was obviously internally employed by them, but has expressed in the past that he's not a big fan of high-narrative games or continuity, and proceeded to undermine that goal. And that's how you get Pre-war Jet in 4.

Second, you had the programmers told "go hog wild, come up with cool shit" and they invented 20-30 new mechanics, minigames, and features that individually are pretty cool, but absorbed so much programming time that actually working on the main game itself was probably only for the 9-5 hours and any over time was put into things like Pip Boy Minigames, or the occasional side quest like the USS Constitution or Silver Shroud, but main factions like the Minutemen don't get enough story-based screen time that isn't ridiculous (railroad, Institute) or offensive (BOS, Institute).

Third, you spend so much time focused on details (again, Todd Howard's we figured out every blinking light speech), that you fail to see the forest through the trees. On a small scale, Fallout 4 is brilliant. As a whole its a jumbled mess with no focus.

TL;DR: Lots of little things that on their own aren't bad, added up and ruined it.

Rivet City was destroyed to make the Prydwen. We heard that at least. And Megaton created a cult that's murdering people up and down the wastes (lord knows what started that shit), as far as Underworld, probably gone for good if the BOS is lording over the Capital Wasteland like fuedal lords. Honestly its like they recognized the fan hate over 3 and decided to have a hate boner over their previous work.

edited 22nd Sep '16 4:44:23 PM by sirboulevard

What fans? MOST of the players who bought Fallout 3 and loved it never played the games that NMA spends so much time eulogizing. Or think they're shit. Appealing to a tiny, tiny, proportion of loud people who hate your previous work like it's radioactive cooties (hey, I like the phrase) over the vast majority of players who really dug your previous work is baffling to me.

Okay the game sold lots of copies. It's Bethesda, it's first party, so that's always going to happen.

But what happens next? There's folk in this thread who haven't bought the DLC yet, or there was last time I paid attention. And they're not alone.

I was specifically talking about those fans, since at the time of Fallout 3's release, the many new players weren't fans at the time. Sorry I wasn't more specific.

I agree it was a massive misstep. The eastern BOS changing was basically justified after NV's release when we saw the Western Branches near death. Its like Bethesda heard "the Brotherhood are supposed to be dicks!" and went "OK!" and then promptly destroyed their own creation. And it worked too well at making the Brotherhood from downright unlikeable to straight up evil, which is a massive character shift. Sure the BOS in 3 had issues with Ghouls and Mutants, but damn, they weren't at "KILL EM ALL!" level.

The fact is, I won't be able to respect what they're doing to Fallout until they finally just decide what they want Fallout to be.

x4 Not trying to exactly placate the rather... aggressive sounding discussion going on, but I kind of agree...

Fallout 4, in a lot of ways, feels like a reboot of a kind. It shows us the big defining event of the entire series in full and gives us everything to acclimate new players to the series. Compare that to Fallout 3 and New Vegas which, while still explaining things to you, usually the PC is expected to know what radroaches or the great war or what a dozen or so other things are. More so in New Vegas because said PC didn't live in a Vault up until the player took control of them.

Fallout 4 kind of takes a lot of shots at what F3 did and then copies other parts. Say what you will about Lyon's version of the Brotherhood, but I think the idea of the Brotherhood being split over how things should be run is an interesting plot point... and one that was solved off screen and any development that the Brotherhood might have gone through in F3 was tossed. Meanwhile it brings back Liberty Prime to... do exactly the same climax it had in F3.

Admittedly, I don't HATE the idea of Liberty Prime coming back and everyone trying to do the same thing again because, hey, if it worked the first time, why not try again? But I'm bothered that it was played so straight. Liberty Prime works again (again) and doesn't break down or malfunction and try to kill you or anything really. Its just the same climax again.

Heck, the Capitol Wasteland in general would have been really cool for a Broken Steel-esque DLC that's in the post-game.

But, back to my point, I can't tell if Fallout 4 resents or loves Fallout 3, but either way it feels like a very inconsistent development between games.

edited 22nd Sep '16 5:07:05 PM by InkDagger

Personally myself, I feel like the fallout 4 hate-boner is reaching the point that people are becoming as toxic as the No Mutants Allowed people every one is complaining about.

The game has issues, like coppying the dialog wheel, but then lowering it down to 4 choices instead of 6, railroading, and less RP potential, but it also did a lot better then the previous ones too.

The handling of power armor? The gun-play? That crafting that keeps getting derided? Due to all of that, it is fucking painful to go play NV or FO 3 again, even if the story is so much better, they just don't play near as well.

Some of these points I fully agree with, with things like Settlements could have went and burned, and too much stuff got cut, but I also feel people are not apreciating the things it did better.

Nah, not being aggressive. Though I think Aggressive is appropriate descriptor for what changed in 4.

Wait, I think I get it! 4 is Tsundere to the older Fallouts! It wants to be 1,2, and 3, but not because I like you or anything! It wants to establish the world the way 1 and 2 did, and tries to do away with the changes the crusty old fans hated in 3 but it also wants to pay tribute to 3 as a direct sequel. And up until Nuka World it didn't want to draw attention to New Vegas because it was gonna redo its pick who rules the wastes arc again.

Essentially this game is trying to go Northwest, Southwest and due East all at once, and its just tearing itself apart.

I don't hate 4, for the record. I just spent the last week binging it again, but I do say its not a good Fallout game. Gameplay is fun, but its all towards nothing. The game feels best when you're either building a settlement or wandering aimlessly. Quests feel like distractions, especially the reliance on radiant quests. Fallout 4, is honestly best when played as Sim City + Murder Simulator.

edited 22nd Sep '16 5:13:51 PM by sirboulevard

Derp, I also forgot to say, that I think the factions were handled very well in an overaching way.

I have many issues with my inability to bring up points with them, but none of them really feel like.... a bad call per say.

The game defined villians actualy have good intentions.

The player defined villians are actualy the best chance the region has for stability.

The good guys dont have the capibility to actualy run the place and just let it devolve into anarchy.

And the player faction is full of niavity and unstability given it already got its ass kicked once.....

And it feels like a legitimate choice and no option is the best or the worst.

Like what? Honestly, I'm interested in what you think is better apart from probably the shooting mechanics. There's better folk than me on the net who've criticised other aspects, like the dialogue mechanics and so on, in videos and articles, so I'll not go into those.

And I don't agree I hate the game either. I bought the thing, it's still on my hard drive and I still play it occasionally. Games I hate I purge all traces of from my system and sell if at all possible.

I just don't like it as much as I love Fallout 3 and New Vegas. And I'm still puzzled why that happened. When I played the Max Max game (to switch franchises for a bit) when it came out, I played it for a far shorter time than I've played Fallout 4, according to my Steam library's time thingy. But I enjoyed it far more. I was Mad Max, that's probably why. I never really felt like I was the Sole Survivor.

edited 22nd Sep '16 5:21:31 PM by TamH70

The problem with me is after having the shooting mechanics in Fallout 4 I could never go back to any of the previous games in the series. For me, I don't care if you've got the best story ever conceived in a video game. If your shooting is terrible and you spend the majority shooting and getting shot at, then you've fucked up in my eyes. So right now, to me, Fallout 4 is the game that I find the best to play.

That right there is how I feel.

While it is hard to put into words, outside of the dialog, the overall gameplay is just SO much better in 4, the shooting, the animation, the movments, the fluidity, it all just works SO much better as a gameplay-game.....

The earlier comparision to Skyrim was spot on.

edited 22nd Sep '16 5:36:07 PM by Imca

x3 Shooting mechanics are #1 and probably the biggest deal. I do actually think Settlements was a good idea that spiraled out of control, if it was like 4-5 settlements, with 2 of them being Minutemen military outposts and the other 3 were Sanctuary + 2 major towns ala Novac or Primm in New Vegas it would have worked better.

I also think introducing the Vertibirds as an alternative fast travel option was smart since it not only works well it also gives me the opportunity to jump out early and explore a place we just flew over. But again, wasted potential since no Verti vs Verti battles.

The Power Armor system was perfect. I just wish there had been more paint jobs.

The Weapon system was a great idea, but it was executed badly. Instead of giving us the option to have a customized weapon for our playstyle that was roughly equal, we got basically a leveling progression tree for our guns. Lets be honest, each gun has an ideal build for each one. For instance, the Combat Rifle: you want either Advanced or .308 receiver, Long Ported Barrel, a Marksman Stock, and whatever scope is appropriate for how you plan to use it (Sniper or Generic rifle).

The Armor upgrade system, however, was just useless. It came down to basically, do you want layered armor with stat increases or layered armor with carry weight increases, or ballistic weave clothes? Ultimately, Ballistic Weave Mk 5 clothes won, but not every item could be upgraded with it like Kellogg's Armor or the Silver Shroud Costume.

Finally, the last bit I loved: the redesigned Pip Boy. This is more of a personal taste thing, but the original 3000a Pip Boy made me want to puke. It was terribly designed and didn't make sense how it worked. All I want for New Vegas is someone to reverse mod the Mk IV into it.

That said, I still play New Vegas more than 4, only because I can't handle the bad bad bad writing and I'm not that fond of the Commonwealth as a world. Honestly, I preferred hanging out on The Island in 4. That was a cooler world imo. And I wish Downtown was bigger. The urban options ran out pretty fast.

edited 22nd Sep '16 5:42:58 PM by sirboulevard

Hmm. I get what you guys are saying about the shooting being better and that being important and stuff. But if I want to play a game with good shooting, I've got all three S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games and both Metro titles, and they're far better at that aspect than Fallout 4 is, if I'm being brutally honest. Their stories are more railroaded, that's true, but the amount of real actual freedom in those games is far higher than a lot of folks give them credit for.

And I hate to say this, but they're better written too. The events in the games fit what would happen if you put those particular people in their respective environments. And I cared what happened to them. Clear Sky's ending, in particular, gutted me. But it fit the game like a glove, since it was, from the beginning, set up to be a prequel. And it had to end that way to fit with the ongoing narrative.

I'm still scratching my head as to what story I'm meant to be playing through in Fallout 4.

Interesting perspectives. Thanks.

edited 22nd Sep '16 6:37:30 PM by TamH70

I tried the whole Stalker series, I can't get into it, people claim the shootings good, I can't hit anything and if people say Bethesda games are buggy then they haven't yet experienced good ol Russian jank.

Really I think that Fallout 4 is an excellent base to build further games in the series off of. Now that the shooting has been fixed and Bethesda knows what works and doesn't work I honestly think they can make huge improvements in whatever the next entry in the series will be. Far Harbor in fact had a really great story and I think doesn't get enough praise.

edited 22nd Sep '16 6:24:31 PM by evilface

Far Harbor was great, but do NOT expect that to be the Standard of Fallout 5, because most of the team was working on Skyrim Remastered at that time. Also Nuka World, while fun, didn't live up to those standards either.

Right now, I'm just hoping Obsidian gets to do a sequel in the dead zone between now and 5. I actually talked to JE Sawyer at PAX briefly and he said they're hoping for another contract with Bethesda and have put the feelers in the water and even have a pitch for it (We'd be going back to the LA Boneyard because its a good fit for 4's engine)..

I loved Far Harbor. It's thoroughly enjoyable throughout, and I loved the story and the characters. The plot twists were well handled too. But... You have to go back to the Commonwealth to finish the main story, and I've not made it to the ending since I bought the game. I mean, not any ending.

I've not done that before for a modern Bethesda RPG, not since Morrowind. Or Daggerfall, I mean, since I got the ending for Morrowind.

Trust me, when I first played Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl, I couldn't hack it at all, as they say over here. I wasn't ready for it and it steamrollered me in terms of how difficult I found the thing, so I stopped playing. Uninstalled it, sold the game, did something else. It took years, and I mean years, for me to give the game another chance and I got hooked. I learned to play it on its terms, squished some of the bugs that got me down before, and beat the thing like it was a piñata. I then bought the next two, finished both and to this day hate that there isn't a proper S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 because reasons. As for janky games? Nothing's worse than the single-digit framerate I got finishing the Hoover Dam battle in New Vegas on the PS 3.

edited 22nd Sep '16 6:42:38 PM by TamH70

Well, there have been rumors of a "Fallout: New Orleans" coming from Obsidian and using the Fallout 4 assets. So, it'd basically be the New Vegas to F3's Fallout 4.

And, honestly, I'd be down for that. They could even reuse the Gator-Claws from the Nuka-World.

I just hope if Obsidian does do another Fallout Interqual, they don't completely ditch the settlement building mechanics. I know a lot of people hate it but it is very therapeutic to me and I can go in a Zen state building shit for hours.

Based on how the Obsidian guys were talking at PAX, I'm pretty sure that's 100% a fan rumor just because New Orleans also starts with "New" like New Vegas did. Sawyer when I talked to him was pretty clear that their pitch was to revisit LA (He also expressed that the rest of the team did NOT agree with Avellone on the "Nuke the NCR in Lonesome Road" approach and was sympathetic when I mentioned that the "if the NCR should die, it should die with dignity approach" many of us had in the old Vegas thread) OR they would do it somewhere else but away from the East Coast to not tread on Bethesda's toes. Deep south is highly unlikely as a result.

I just hope they don't do the 30 something settlements of 4. Give us like 3-4 towns and maybe 2-3 spots for us to homestead for ourselves.

edited 22nd Sep '16 6:40:47 PM by sirboulevard

I'm still hoping for a Toronto game. It would be the perfect choice if they wanted to show the state of Canada. (Plus it's my home town)

In Into The Pitt, Ashur mentioned a place called Ronto in the same line as the Commonwealth and the Capital Wasteland, so there's some basis for it.

edited 22nd Sep '16 6:44:53 PM by Yinyang107

A bit. Aren't L.A and California in general strictly speaking part of the South already? Seeing as how if you go too far south in that state y'all are going to be in Mexico?

I'd be down for 3-4 towns if they let us build them bigger then is currently possible in 4. I like having all those settlements cause it gives me the feeling I'm personally making the Wasteland a livable place with safe farms and taking part in uping the defenses. If it were 3-4 settlements that were the same size as the ones in 4 with the limit of 20 guys I'd be pretty bummed. Less but bigger settlements with more functionality and citizens would be a good compromise.

I'd like to be able to give the guy that made me leader of a faction to actually go and do stuff himself rather than send my fat ass to do it all for him while he necks back the Nuka Cola or Gwinnett Pale. Settlements I kind of liked, but there's way too many of them, they're all over the map, literally, and there's always some peon or other wanting their family member rescued. Even more egregious when I walk into an enemy base to do the rescue thing, and all that's there is a bound hostage, because I've just slaughtered all the enemy forces just minutes previous to getting the alert about the kidnapping. That happened to me so many times it stopped being silly and started being surreal.

Fewer settlements, more focus, more things to do in them that aren't scut work, and a realization in-universe that somewhere with a couple of dozen turrets of all shapes and sizes bristling on almost every roof ISN'T a place where a Raider can go.

Um, the Deep South in the US is on the East side of the nation, its states like Louisianna, Alabama, Georgia, Mississipi, the Carolinas, etc. California is considered "West Coast." Anything west of Texas isn't considered "The South." Basically anything that was a State during the Civil War and part of the Confederacy is "The South."

As far as Settlements and the Minutemen go, I can't help but the reason for mass amount of farming settlements is a retort to The Shadification of Fallout. What do people eat? All these farms, ****ers!

As far as Preston go, I just make him my paperwork junkie. I get to have fun. He gets to file papers. Bite me.

I'd basically ask that we'd actually turn existing towns into settlements. Imagine if we had to fortify Goodsprings against the Powder Gangers. People already settled here and are doing ok, but they need help to make their town better.

Besides that, I'd like some Settlement areas that can't recruit people because they're meant to be private residences of the player with a massively extended build capacity.

edited 22nd Sep '16 7:04:16 PM by sirboulevard