Fallout 4 vs Concept Art (The Fallout that could have been)

The thing that I'm noticing most about these pieces, is how much they remind me of things like A Boy and His Dog. A man and his mutt, wandering through empty ruins and desolation. It's all quite atmospheric. And it does make me wonder if they were going for a completely different game early on. I imagine the rustle of wind, debris tumbling down an empty street. A more empty, grim world where everything seems quiet and remote, until someone lines a bead on you or some feral ghouls spring out of a ruined building.

 

I swear it actually looks like they were 50% of the way into every concept they gave - characters, locations, quests, equipment - but they had to stop for some reason. It feels too much like interrupted development to be a coincidence.

I honestly, honestly think they were planning to make the game exactly like the excellent concepts, yet they focused too much on the settlement buildings and making it work. That's having to make sure the particular cells don't reset, making sure the cells that don't reset don't impact performance, making sure nothing clips, breaks, freezes, and setting up which resources can be used for the building, and that's just to start.

Then after finishing that they realise they don't have the time nor budget left to go on to anything else. I wish they had just gave up on publicity, made a good game, and released settlement building after as free DLC, which would've resulted in even better PR. Game developers these days don't look to long-term benefits.

 

Id say a lot of the issues are from Creation too, their Gamebryo 2.0 is not capable of making Mama Murphys design form that art concept work. Or it is but the performance takes a hit.

I say the same for Vertibird concepts too...

 

http://imgur.com/Eliu0A7 - Concept of Super Mutants.

 

There's really a thing I don't get about Super Mutants in the Commonwealth. Their combat AI roughly implies that they were originally created as equally intelligent to humans. Why would they cut it halfway through? Couldn't get dialogue done in time? It's not even a case of "gotta have dumb ogres" because the way they fight strictly shows that they are not dumb at all. So what's with the sudden turn? Did they decide making Super Mutants smart would be a drop in consistency following Fallout 3?

 

Not sure who at BGS decides what gets cut, but they need to find a new line of work.

 

Hey, hey, no. The right stuff got cut. I mean, we gotta make all the space for the raider and super mutant camps you have to clear out, again and again! And who can forget those lovely settlements? They can't defend themselves? Oh, that's immersion! And realism!

No, pal. Fallout 4 came out perfectly! There's explosions, power armour, airships, and Vertibirds! Who could ask for anything more?

 

Of course Combat Zone bets and fights got cut, what's the point of trying to get caps in an arena type of thing in FO4? Caps are pretty much useless in this Fallout.

Now on a different note Bethesda games have had the player be part of arena battles since I can remember until Skyrim (Morrowind had something kinda like a few arena fights, Oblivion had arena fights, Fallout 3 had The Pitt arena battles).

 

That's because the escalation is just too fast in Fallout 4. It bumps you up from zero to hero in such a swift rise the game is only fun early-game. Late-game, it becomes all boring grinds, just cleaning up random quests you haven't found, and maybe a couple of fun discoveries.

New Vegas takes forever to get you into the thick of the situation that surrounds the Mojave, and even then it's all build-up to the final battle. There's no suspense, build-up or anything in Fallout 4. But it doesn't feel like an intentional power fantasy - it feels like they attempted to capture the NV spirit and didn't have enough time or resources to complete it because they were busy with settlements and balancing the combat.

It's like if a TV series reaches its peak by the second season and has the main character beat the big bad right there and then, and the remaining three seasons is just filler and closing up the plot holes. And even the plot holes aren't completely closed up and the last episode is a thin cliffhanger that doesn't really provoke interest. New Vegas spends like six seasons building up to the main plot, then takes another three seasons to build up to the final one which ends on a bang. There's no sense of story pacing in Fallout 4, at all, as if they dragged a whole chain of plotlines out of the game, and now its a body that's missing several organs.

 

some of these bits of concept art are really nice, they have a feel of them that actually reminds me of Fallout... So, what happened

 

Too fallout-y for Fallout 4, said Bethesda . Joking.

I have no idea, maybe too much effort to make things look like in the concept art? I don't even know why they have concept art anymore .

 

As if at some point someone decided that Fallout 4 should be much more goofy.

I fell in love with this concept concept of Diamond City: http://imgur.com/Or9EUNb . It actualy feels like a post post-apocalyptic city. Why they chose to go with current retard Disneyland set, i'll never know.

 

The more I see and hear about what this game could have been, it just irks me, and it's not some bs what if scenario it's right there.

 

You keep talking about the "Grey, Stormy Skies", but I don't think the game should have a constantly dark and foreboding atmosphere. That was kind of where Fallout 3 went wrong(Well, one of the many ways). The fact that there are sunny days makes it more realistic. It should feel like a realistic apocalypse not a cliched one.

I do think that the buildings were too goofy though. The original games had a very bland, very Gothic style of architecture, a thing that Fallout 3(And the concept art of Fallout 4) was able to capture quite well.

I was also quite unimpressed with how many buildings were still standing, despite it being 200 years after the war, the concept art looks a lot more rubble like and would be better in this sense.

 

I still believe this was an actual scenario. They took a look at the concept art a second time and thought it felt too Fallout, and that they wanted to make a unique art style to not remind the players of New Vegas, and create their own unique feel.

Unlike how DX:HR successfully used the Post-Modern Renaissance theme to set themselves from the original cyberpunk Deus Ex, Fallout 4 failed to do this and ended up with a remarkably boring world despite the vivid and vibrant visuals. Goes to show that colours and saturation doesn't solve everything.

I think that's the point. A good mix would've done fine. The urban areas with the Vault-Tec and science skyscrapers with all the smooth, curved, colourful architecture we saw in Fallout 4 were fine if they didn't repeat them everywhere there was an urban area.

They had good ideas, but they failed to mix it up enough, so it felt repetitive. It's not a contest between whether gloomy and dark or positive and vibrant is better. A good design team can make either one work just fine, or even combine both to make something fantastic and one-of-a-kind.

So enough of the "gloom is good" or "saturation is superb", any art style concept can and will be much worse in practice under poor world design.

 

If you look at any other Fallout game it has Gothic architecture. I'm not pissed about it not being gloomy enough, it's just that they completely changed the style for no good reason, and I'm worried that the change might be permanent.