What I liked
- crafting & customization: The weapon customization feature looks awesome. The ability to scrap materials will actually give a purpose to the random junk lying around. This was the best part of the presentation for me.
- concept art: As is usual with games, the concept art is usually much more striking than the actual game. It conveys both an exact depiction and an abstract thought of what the game could and should be like; It reminds us of our nostalgia for past titles and hints at the untapped and unlimited potential for future titles. The concept art was beautiful as usual.
- pip boy mini games - I like silly things like this.
What I disliked
- breaking the barrier of the myth of the past: Fallout 4 starts your character before the bombs fall. You see the report on the news that the end of the world is happening, and you make a sprint to your local vault, hoping you make it there in time. This breaks with the tradition of the other games in that it provides a real time experience of life before the fall. You get to see pre-war society in all its campy 1950's glory. I believe this to be a disconnect with the soul of the Fallout series. The pre-war past exists as a semi-utopia for the denizens of the post-apocalyptic wasteland, because we don't really know what happened before the bombs fell. All we have to go on are pre-war documents, videos, second-hand knowledge, and a bunch of pre-war paraphernalia. The pre-war era exists as a kind of myth to the people of the wastes - they don't really know what it was like and while some idolize the past and try to emulate it, others try to expunge all vestige of the pre-war era and try to go their own way, and most people of the wasteland don't know or don't care about it because it was so long ago and it should be relegated to distant memory. What Fallout 4 is doing is breaking the barrier between the perceived notions of the past and the cold reality of actually playing it. Mr. Handy, the protagonist, and his old neighborhood all serve as links between the pre-war myth and the cold hard reality of the post-apocalyptic present.
- combat: It does not seem like they improved the combat system at all. It looks exactly the same as in NV. They did not highlight the ability to use scopes/iron sights very much, suggesting that it will be underwhelming, and that the game will once again fall short of being seen as a FPS success.
- lack of new enemies / factions: It's the same old enemies yet again: supermutants, raiders, deathclaws, etc. The only mention of a new faction was the Institute. Other than that, no word on new factions/enemies.
What I absolutely hated
- dialogue: I especially hate the new dialogue wheel. Fallout is not Mass Effect. I don't care one bit about having a voiced protagonist or having the ability to do other stuff while someone is talking (walking away, looking around, shutting a door in someone's face, shooting them in the face) or even the ability to have scripted dialogue sequences, as in two characters walking and talking at the same time or one is hacking a computer during a conversation or lockpicking, or doing whatever.
First point: dialogue wheel a.k.a. Fallout is not Mass Effect. There is nothing "progressive" about the dialogue wheel feature. It is not the future of RPG's. It is a stylistic choice. I would rather see full sentences and paragraphs fully displayed on the screen, and have no doubt about what my character says or does. It gives you full control of your dialogue choices and explicitly shows what you say and do during conversations. With the Mass Effect style dialogue wheel, it cheapens the experience of having a dialogue and it introduces uncertainty with what your character will say or do. Furthermore, it appears to limit your options to four (4) dialogue choices, which reeks of console pandering. Hopefully I'm wrong about the 4-choice limit, but this one irks me to no end.
Second point: ability to disengage dialogue at any point. I can see this being interesting on a few small levels, but on the large RPG level, it stinks. It degrades the entire point of having a conversation with an NPC. It streamlines the game for action junkies who just want to press the required button to turn in the quest or to mark the trigger for the next event, and then they can take off running to do something else. This might be a difference between old-school RPG'ers and ARPG fanatics, so perhaps my point of view is a bit dated, but I don't care. I think it lessens the impact of an actual forced conversation.
Uncertain at this point
- graphics: models, textures, effects: I take it as a given that graphics improve over time with newer generations of systems. Whatever the final product is here, I won't be disappointed if the graphics are underwhelming and I won't be excited if they look amazing. Gameplay is way more important than graphics.
- writing: dialogue, story, descriptions, characterization: Not enough information at this time. I don't expect very much from Bethesda in the writing department but hopefully I'm wrong.
- sound: music, voice acting, effects: Not enough information at this time. I expect the effects to sound good, the music to be okay, and the voices to range from okay to terrible.
- building your own settlements: I don't know how this fits into a Fallout game exactly. I'll wait for more news and opinions about it.
- free mobile game: no opinion on it
Conclusion
I absolutely hate the direction that dialogue seems to be taking, but the rest seems fine. If the art, sound, and general atmosphere are similar to F3/NV then I will be pleased. I expect the writing to have improved over F3 and hope it's closer to the quality of NV. At this point, I'll probably buy the game a year after release after the bugs are fixed and a few good mods come out.
Last word - my opinion is based off the first viewing of the E3 release trailers, and could change as new information surfaces. Especially if it is true that skills are gone - if this is true, then the Fallout series is dead to me.
