Fallout 4 Is Better Than You Think

[FalloutNV]

Yes Fallout 4 Is great Game & Overall I would put It 3rd Best in whole Series if Only There's Was Better Role playing In Fallout 4 It Could have Been up with Fallout NV.

 

[Copey]

I think it's kind of hilarious that I actually love Fallout 3 and think its one of my all time favorite games but think of Fallout 4 as having lost most of what made that game great.

The Fallout 3 hate is so great here, people react to said statement as me stating that the Joker is much worse than Bullseye.

They don't see the differences so I can't explain why Fallout 4 pisses me off so much.

Fallout 3 was my intro to Fallout at large, definitely love it for that, but Fallout 4 doesn't seem to loose much over 3. Honestly really curious as to what really gets to you about Fo4 in direct comparison to Fo3. Unique settings? Strong art direction?

 

[CT Phipps]

Fallout 3 was my intro to Fallout at large, definitely love it for that, but Fallout 4 doesn't seem to loose much over 3. Honestly really curious as to what really gets to you about Fo4 in direct comparison to Fo3. Unique settings? Strong art direction?

Generally, if I had to explain it, it's the fact the game is so damned half-assed in its storytelling. I know people complained about the fact you couldn't join the Enclave and were railroaded into being a goodie two shoes with the Brotherhood of Steel but at least that was a finished storyline and they fixed the biggest issues with Broken Steel.

Here, the game has the illusion of four factions and four choices but there's really only "Destroy Institute" and "Side with Institute" as the dialogue from your companions is almost identical even if you side with the Brotherhood of Steel or Minutemen when it's someone like Hancock who will be killed by the BOS.

It's much the same with dialogue. Do you hate newspapers? I mean, it's a stupid question but why give the same goddamn response to either one? Why ask the question if it's not going to have any effect whatsoever. At least blowing up Megaton versus saving it results in different dialogue.

It may well be the fact that I'm a huge Blade Runner fan but they have the Synth premise and never do anything with it beyond a certain Paladin that makes no real sense and is not part of the main quest. Why is the Institute making Super Mutants? Why are they releasing them on the surface? Why did they kill all of the people in your vault? The institute is the DUMBEST villains of all time and they're up against Wasteland Nazis.

I mean, they don't even HAVE a bad plan. "Rebuild society underground where there's no mutants or radiation by tunneling around like morlocks because you have a 1000 year nuclear reactor" is not a BAD plan. It's however something I had to piece together because no one actually says what the Institute's plan is.

1. Build army of incredibly humanlike androids.
2. Replace large numbers of locals
3. ???
4. Profit

Everyone's motivation is insane too! I mean the Brotherhood in Fallout 3 is maybe being dumb but you understand why they fight Super Mutants--Super Mutants are bad. The Brotherhood of Steel has made itself existentially focused on wiping out AI. Except for ALL THE OTHER AI that is everywhere like Mr. Handy's and Robobrains. Those are fine.

How did Arthur Maxson learn about Synths? Why is the Singularity his biggest concern when AI has existed since 200 years ago? Does it relate to John Henry Eden? Did a robot scare him as a child? Why is THIS the focus of the BOS now? Why bring back the Capitol BOS if you're not going to do any ties to the Lone Wanderer or Sarah Lyons?

Why are the Railroad so focused on helping Synths that they're large enough to have an enormous resistance group? How many Synth runaways could there actually be? Why do the Minutemen dress like Revolutionary War soldiers and carry around laser muskets? What's a fucking laser musket? At least the weird wacky tribes were usually played for humor. This is played dead straight.

Its not even plot holes. It's just stuff that's thrown at you that makes no sense, gets no explanation, and then moves onto the next thing.

Say what you will about "blow up Megaton because it's blocking my view" but at least it's a REASON. Why release Super Mutants? Because EVIL.

 

[Gizmojunk]

NV did the best job overall, having a story, choices and consequences and a great gameplay - a hybrid of Classic Fallout and Fallout 3.

I'll never play FO4, and NV is just making the best of what they can do with a game based upon FO3 as its foundation.

They did an impressive job with what they had to work with, IMO.

Spoiler

However, They are all examples of the wrong game —without the right gameplay; regardless of how good that new gameplay might be.

It is simply that Mortal Kombat Mario is never going to be a proper sequel to Mario Bros; no matter how good or viscerally fun it is. So too with FO3, 4, and even NV. It's the wrong gameplay for a sequel.

*Though NV was not pushed as one; the others have no excuse for how poorly apropos they are.

 

[Atomic Postman]

I'll never play FO4, and NV is just making the best of what they can do with a game based upon FO3 as its foundation.

They did an impressive job with what they had to work with, IMO.

Spoiler

However, They are all examples of the wrong game, without the right gameplay; regardless of how good the new gameplay might be, it's simply that... Mortal Kombat Mario is not going to be a proper sequel to Mario Bros; no matter how good it is. So too with FO3, 4, and NV.

*Though NV was not pushed as one; the others have no excuse for how poor they are.

I think there's some merit to exploring the world of Fallout in a first person perspective but even if you agree with that premise, Fallout 3/NV are awful first person shooters in terms of gameplay.

I think the fundamentally biggest problem with Fallout in the first person perspective is it removes the divide between Character Skill/Player Skill in that any PC is moments away from having the shooting capabilities of John Wick, but that being said I've actually got several mods set up for New Vegas that make it so your aim, reloading speed and sway are heavily affected by Skill in a way that's both believable and not as unimmersive as something like Morrowind whilst also providing strong incentive to boost your combat Skill. So it's doable. But I imagine general audiences would complain endlessly about their Small Guns 15 protagonist aiming like a grandma at the start of the game.

 

[Gizmojunk]

I think there's some merit to exploring the world of Fallout in a first person perspective but even if you agree with that premise, Fallout 3/NV are awful first person shooters in terms of gameplay.

It's a fine example of spin-off territory. I would have loved a Bethesda style Fallout spin-off having combat comparable with SuperHot.

I would have even been fine if they'd copied KotOR2's FPP close examination feature, or Nocturne's [night vision] FPP goggles. Where both games were normally TPP/iso.

Even Troika's demo had FPP, but not as the principle presentation.

 

[laclongquan]

I can agree with the rest and what you're saying makes sense, but I think you're making a mistake conflating the settings of FO4 and the FOB. Fallout is set in a retrofuturist world. It takes (how the people of the 90s saw) how the people of the 50s saw the future, sets that as the cultural and technological baseline, then develops a world around that by imagining how that world would work (then collapse to see how it would work then). It's not the 50s, it's the future shaped through the lens of the 50s, then elaborated.

There's a difference between the 50s' idea of the future after a nuclear war, and the 50s after a nuclear war and there's robots and stuff, which is what Bethesda and FO4 in particular uses. There are literally mobsters in post-apocalyptic Boston. Slacks, bowler hats, letterman jackets and suits are everywhere. Ect ect. That's what makes the narrative so boring, because it's not actually creating anything new in terms of considering how society and people could develop, it's just jamming tropes into a dead, static, soullessly unimaginative world. And then they jam even more shit in for no good reason and like you say none of it fits together and you have to take everything with a metric ton of salt up the arse.

You made good point but you came to a wrong conclusion.
Mobsters , Slacks, bowler hats, letterman jackets and suits are not that much of a problem, not in the sense of thematic style they took for Fallout 4 (which is not retrofuturism which is for another article).
No, they did nothing for Fallout 4 because their Beth writers sucks sooo much they can write nothing worth reading or listening about.
You know how it is: take a story of how a parent chased after the stolen child through a post apocalyptic world and they can make everything seems more important than that. Fuck a freaking duck. We are seeing Obvilion level of writings here~ Worse, actually, because Oblivion story is a bit separate from personal story, but Fallout 4 should have been something very personal. Just how bad they can be to ruin that?
Leaving aside the idea to make players listen to some PTSD mental patient whine about his problem on RADIO!!! :Expletive: Their art/writing director is off his meds for Fallout 4, I should think.