Can we honestly say Fallout 4 is better than Fallout 3?

[ZigzagPX4]

Fuck this crafting system and the leveling system, I am just gonna console command spawn a bunch of shipments, I am not hunting for 3 typewriters just to build a scope....

THe first time I played Skyrim, I grinded the shit out of the system to get smithing and enchanting high. I did that only once though. Beacuse honestly? I don't see the point anymore. Now when ever I decided to get back to he game, the first thing I did was geting to the console and just changing the level and skill of my character to create the stuff I wanted. Fuck this. I am not playing MMO crap in a single player game. So yeah ... the console can be really your best friend in a Bethesda game!

The console saved the game for me. If the game's purpose is to be a dumb shooter with limited RPG mechanics that gives the player godhood... well why go halfway?

Because there are better games for feeling overpowered, anyways. I really think that if you need the console to enjoy the game at any point, you should definitely skip out on all future Bethesda instalments. This is how Bethesda games were, have been, is now, and always will be.

 

[TheGreatCornholio]

Ive defended fallout 3 on various internet forums over the years partly because I thought it was a decent game and partly because I like playing devils advocate. That said there is absolutely nothing to defend in FO 4. Its just bad from start to finish.

Boston looked abandoned, not the victim of a nuclear war. At least DC looked like it had been heavily shelled by artillery and maybe some conventional WW2 style bombs. Boston was almost completely intact with no explanation given (that i found anyway). The companions ranged from uninteresting to bad. The main storyline was awful. The settlement building was cool for 10 minutes and it had no impact on anything. You would think that building up Minutemen settlements would strengthen the minutemen faction and that it would pay off down the line if you were sticking with them until the end but no, it didnt matter

Its good to see that harsh criticism is coming from everywhere it might encourage Bethesda to get it right next time or let someone else (obsidian) do it for them

 

[ElderMaxson]

Fallout 4 is in so many ways inferior to the complexity of Fallout 3 (I cant believe I just said that sh*t) that it cannot be considered better in any way. Even the combat overhaul people speak so nicely of doesn't seem all that overhaul-ish, but more like finally learning to rip off the right things...

 

[RangerBoo]

I was reading reviews on Metacritic when one of them brought up a good point that has bugged about the player character which I will post here:

Quote:
"The background given to your character if they are male is that there a war veteran, while if your female you're a lawyer, and yet the story progresses exactly the same. Despite most of it involving killing people. Come on since she is voiced and a Lawyer; I expected her to be a little upset after killing somebody the first time, but... nope. She didn't even react to facing a Deathclaw, which also happens in the first 20 min. Why they didn't Just have whoever YOU choose be the ex soldier, I don't know, It would have made more sense. Especially since you get your first power armor within the first 20 minutes, and know how to work it, something a lawyer turned housewife should not know how to do. "

This has always bugged me. There was a good opportunity to roleplay here. For instance the male Sole Survivor will understandably be indifferent to death and killing due to his past in the army but the female Sole Survivor, who up to this point has lead a very cushy and picture perfect life, should have reacted differently to killing and death then the male Sole Survivor which of course could have been up to the player. Like for instance, after killing the raiders for Gravey the female Sole Survivor could have been horrified and disgusted over killing other human beings or she could have indulged over the power she felt in deciding the fate of the raiders. Also she shouldn't know how to use power armor right away and would have to learn how. But NOPE! RPGing in what is suppose to be a RPG would get in the way of the power fantasy and also Tumblr and Anita would be outraged and find the game sexist because the female Sole Survivor would be played differently then the male survivor.

 

[khain]

Well, yes, this was rather a slap in the face.

You make her background be a profession that requires eloquence, a certain dose of charisma and an ability to persuade and sway (in court or otherwise). By jove, isn't that great for anyone who wants to roleplay a pacifist run, based on speech skills and talking themselves out of pretty much anything.

Aaaand you just make her a killing machine.

It's another one of these situations where Bethesdurr dangles something in front of you, like "Hey, it would have fit nicely, wouldn't it?", to then snap it away and hand you a power armor and a minigun instead. It's just insulting.

Not to mention the stupidity of forcing a profession being the background, allowing you to have a combat veteran who's really smart but a total whimp, or a lawyer with the charisma of a week-old oyster but can punch her way trough a concrete wall. Your game hasn't even started, you're already in retcon land just due to internal inconsistencies.

As for the question in this thread, no, FO4 is not better than FO3 as far as I'm concerned. FO3 at least managed to give me SOME enjoyable moments, and overall still managed to feel like some sort of RPG, albeit a shitty one in many ways.

I've never played BoS, but FO4 is just the bottom of the Fallout barrel for me.

 

[MercenarySnake]

This is what happens whenever a role and background is forced onto a playable character. If you expect to roleplay as someone with a background of being a lawyer you can't expect that character to run out of the vault and start splattering guts all over the place. These characters are devoid of emotion, you would've mistaken them both for synths with the way they kill everything carefree, the way they sound when engaged in any conversation, the animations don't help either.

I read up on a comment from a thread on the Bethesda forum stating something along the lines of "playing three separate characters each with a different playstyle", okay please tell me how the hell you can have a different playstyle when everything has a certain level you must wait for before putting another perk point into the perk to rank it up? Don't forget that a lot of the perks are just useless and by the time you get to a certain level you start putting points into things you don't even use.
If I don't use VATS then I end up using NO perks in the Luck perk tree besides Bloody Mess to shoot things better.

Here's the link to the comment I was talking about, your sanity is at risk so you have been warned http://puu.sh/m7ZWf/431d542867.jpg

 

[khain]

This is what happens whenever a role and background is forced onto a playable character. If you expect to roleplay as someone with a background of being a lawyer you can't expect that character to run out of the vault and start splattering guts all over the place. These characters are devoid of emotion, you would've mistaken them both for synths with the way they kill everything carefree, the way they sound when engaged in any conversation, the animations don't help either.

I read up on a comment from a thread on the Bethesda forum stating something along the lines of "playing three separate characters each with a different playstyle", okay please tell me how the hell you can have a different playstyle when everything has a certain level you must wait for said next level of perk to rank up to the next sneak perk.
If I don't use VATS then I end up using NO perks in the Luck perk tree besides Bloody Mess to shoot things better.

Here's the link to the comment I was talking about, your sanity is at risk so you have been warned http://puu.sh/m7ZWf/431d542867.jpg

It also contains my favourite argument of "content" being "space" - there's content because I've spent 100 hours in this, and there is still stuff to do.

The fact that said 100 hours were spent in the most repetitive and debilitating manner must of course be ignored.

 

[MercenarySnake]

One of the best parts about that comment was the "the modding community awaiting for the creation kit we will finally have more mods to enjoy this game for many more years to come"(not word for word but you get the point). I can't even finish the game because its interface is fighting with me every second I'm attempting to use it, the pipboy screen for inventory management looks like it was ported from a smart phone, without a mod have fun killing even a simple raider without wasting all of your ammo in your weapons, enjoy entering 90% of (buildings, ruins, ect.) and expecting a fun quest or maybe an underground hidden village like the farm from Fallout 2 because you will be killing anything that cross paths with you unless it's immortal or not trying to skip rope with your intestines.

Mods can't possibly salvage this mess nor will any DLC hope to bring redemption to this..this thing. They had a template with New Vegas, sure it'll never be as good as the first two but it was so simple. Instead it looks like they were so pissed off that New Vegas shit on Fallout 3 from so high that they started off with Fallout 3 as a template and from there bolted on features to the game which made the engine run like shit. Funny since Obsidian took only around 18 months and made something WAY better than Beth could ever hope to achieve.

Sorry for the long rant, TL;DR: Bethesda can't create a good Fallout game and not even mods or DLC can redeem it now. Oh and Fallout New Vegas proves you can do something good with that dinosaur age engine.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Well, at least I think Fallout 4 made people apreciate New Vegas more. Even some of the Beth lovers that didn't like NV say quite often that NV is more of a Fallout game than F4, or that it at least contains more RPG inside.

It's just what I guess. I could be completely wrong. But I think if Bethesda stays on their current path, they will loose a large part of the player base in the future. Even if what they did in the past was the bare minimum you require for something to be called an RPG, they lost it this time completely with F4. It is for all purposes, a shooter. Not an RPG. Even if that was not their intended target.

 

[MercenarySnake]

You may be right, I have to admit the shooting has become better and it seems this part of the game got the most love out of all of it. Well a couple of the areas in the game are not just copy and pasted(still doesn't help that around 80% still feels copy and pasted) and the weapon modding aspect(I still think it's half assed but most things in this game are) but that is where the positives seem to end. I feel as if they're lacking creativity with this Bethesdian Fallout and now some of those fans are starting to have those doubts about it. Even some of their hardcore fans were complaining about the voiced protagonist and the dialogue/dialogue wheel, that should say something.

Maybe it's starting to subtly plant seeds of doubt into their minds, if Bethesda slips up big time in this next title then it could break this "dumbing down" cycle and give them a wake up call hopefully. Though if they start hearing that even some of the fans are considering Fallout New Vegas more of a Fallout title then 4 then it might infuriate them enough to avoid letting Obsidian make another spin off title again out of jealousy.

Lets just hope it doesn't come to that.

 

[Spacemunkey]

if Bethesda slips up big time in this next title then it could break this "dumbing down" cycle and give them a wake up call hopefully. Though if they start hearing that even some of the fans are considering Fallout New Vegas more of a Fallout title then 4 then it might infuriate them enough to avoid letting Obsidian make another spin off title again out of jealousy.

Lets just hope it doesn't come to that.

Assuming TES is the next BGS big release it will simply be a rinse and repeat of Skyrim, because at the end of the day TES is their spoiled baby while Fallout remains the step-kid that's always yelling that you aren't my real dad.

 

[MercenarySnake]

I wouldn't say that, it seems even Skyrim was helping turn TES into what Fallout has become with the release of 4. They can get away with some of the magical things in TES because "magical world", it's harder to pull it off in the Fallout world since it's not some magical fantasy like TES so their only excuses when you find a healthy 200 year old kid in a fridge is "It's what we do best" and "We don't like discussing about realism with talking ghouls and super mutants".

 

[TheGreatCornholio]

This is what happens whenever a role and background is forced onto a playable character. If you expect to roleplay as someone with a background of being a lawyer you can't expect that character to run out of the vault and start splattering guts all over the place. These characters are devoid of emotion, you would've mistaken them both for synths with the way they kill everything carefree, the way they sound when engaged in any conversation, the animations don't help either.

I read up on a comment from a thread on the Bethesda forum stating something along the lines of "playing three separate characters each with a different playstyle", okay please tell me how the hell you can have a different playstyle when everything has a certain level you must wait for said next level of perk to rank up to the next sneak perk.
If I don't use VATS then I end up using NO perks in the Luck perk tree besides Bloody Mess to shoot things better.

Here's the link to the comment I was talking about, your sanity is at risk so you have been warned http://puu.sh/m7ZWf/431d542867.jpg

It also contains my favourite argument of "content" being "space" - there's content because I've spent 100 hours in this, and there is still stuff to do.

The fact that said 100 hours were spent in the most repetitive and debilitating manner must of course be ignored.

90 of those 100 hours were spent wandering about trying to find something worthwhile

 

[Irwin John Finster]

Fallout 4 was the game that caused me to join NMA.

 

[MercenarySnake]

I joined NMA to talk with surly, bitter, grumpy, cynical people with similar views as me. I'm also bitter, cynical, ect too if any of you haven't noticed by now.

 

[PossibleCabbage]

I'm not personally a fan of saying one game is better than another, since people usually just use that as shorthand for "I liked that one more."

So in light of that I think there are a lot of dimensions in which Fallout 4 is improved over its numerical predecessor. Combat, visuals, coherency of setting, etc. But I can't shake the feeling that I kind of don't like it as much as Fallout 3. Probably a good part of this is that I place a high value on "roleplaying opportunities" when evaluating games that profess to be "RPGs", and a good part of this is that Fallout 4 doesn't really show me anything I haven't seen before (a lot of times having seen it done better before.)

 

[GlutinousRice]

I joined NMA to talk with surly, bitter, grumpy, cynical people with similar views as me. I'm also bitter, cynical, ect too if any of you haven't noticed by now.

I'd rather trust someone who bash on everything, than someone who praise everything. NMA and the Codex are the closest to that criterion, I don't want to read people writing as if they were marketing department salaryman. I'm using 10 gazillons adblock for a reason.

 

[MercenarySnake]

I'd rather trust someone who bash on everything, than someone who praise everything. NMA and the Codex are the closest to that criterion, I don't want to read people writing as if they were marketing department salaryman. I'm using 10 gazillons adblock for a reason.

Ah so true, I also don't have to worry about comments like "You're wrong, you have to roleplay through everything", "Well quests are overrated", "It's Bethesda so it's okay that the quests and dialogue suck", and my favorite "If you can't roleplay situations everywhere then you must have a poor imagination and you're a sad person" just because I stated criticisms about your shitty excuse for a Fallout game. Whoops...

 

[Doomfullord]

I joined NMA because it's the only place I feel my hours of looking at numbers will be appreciated.

As for what I think Fallout 4 maybe did better than 3 was probably weapons. I haven't actually played the game, but at least they added in custimization to Bethesda's lack of weaponry from 3. 3 has basically no weapons I actually even care for out of the like 5 there are in each set of weaponry. There's like one rifle and a few energy weapons that are worth using, at least here you are able to put some thought into what you want out of a weapon so there's an excuse to have only 3 weapons in the whole game. Is it a better game or fallout? Probably not, and definitely no. But it did something that peaked my interests for a moment.

 

[MercenarySnake]

No the weapons aren't much better, they look like shit. While it has a modding system(which makes you carry 4 typewriters, 10 gears, 16 military duct tapes, 3 hot plates, ect since you can't scrap them immediately) at the end of the day you're modding poo to make poo slightly better by slapping whipped cream and a cherry on top.