ZeaLitY
First time out of the vault
There's just nothing to do once you get burned out on the settlement system, and somehow, there's even less replayability than FO3. This comes from someone who's had 6 full playthroughs of NV (3 with DLC, and 2 of those being full-blown junker runs collecting every item in sight).
Just wanted to collect my thoughts while they're still fresh:
I'm probably forgetting something, but I'm done. Nothing has made me miss New Vegas so badly as this game, as there have been so many steps back that it's mind-boggling. It's as if Bethesda was intentionally trying to spite every innovative thing Obsidian did with NV. And of course, it worked, because there are legions of morons who embrace this kind of mediocrity; they're the same people who get e-mails from Beth's store mailing list like "New Vault Boy Shitting Himself T-Shirt" and immediately purchase 8, and who think crawling the 500th raider-infested hole in the wall for a circuit so their shitty, ugly laser musket can have 5 cranks instead of 4 is more enriching than an actual well-written quest.
I thought I'd keep it installed to keep my fort settlement around (which I poured too much time into after figuring out how to bypass Beth's restrictive limits), but there's just nothing else to do in this empty shell of a world. So it's time to sign off FO4, with nothing left lingering except a deep-seated fear that the DLC will go west and ruin more of the canon. At least as far as the 3D games go, we'll always have...
Just wanted to collect my thoughts while they're still fresh:
- Too few base weapons. The diversity is actually less than NV's, and those pipe weapons barely even count because they're just utterly terrible (and visually ugly, too). They might have been nice as improvised, lore-friendly weapons, but they're just so totally useless against bullet sponge enemies.
- Too few base armors. Sure, you can mod to your heart's content, but like most of the weapon mods, it changes nothing about the appearance. Gone are the times of obtaining unique armor or clothing outfits with great base stats and even better aesthetics; now you just get some kind of ugly underpants or a vault suit with laughable armor pieces strapped over. I will say being able to add a ballistic weave to suits was nice; it finally let me use a reformed mobster suit-wearing character without having to fear combat.
- Too few quests. Good god, too few quests. I laugh at the people who call NV's world "desolate" when FO4's world is basically a crammed-together stitchwork of empty set pieces and soulless assets. Obsidian had to turn shit into gold given their limitations (especially in regards to cutting up Freeside into two world spaces and having the underwhelming strip), while FO4 turned a golden potential into shit. I'm with all those people who complain about finding interesting areas only to discover it's just another raider hide-out with endless respawns.
- Too few faction choices and quests. In NV, at some point, you received a quest warning you that you were about to piss off certain other factions if you kept doing their quests, and you also had the option of going for yourself. I suppose that's now the Minutemen option, except...you can't say no. You can't just walk away from Concord and tell them to fuck off, or kill Preston Garvey and the rest if it fits your RP. Everything's shoe-horned down an incredibly fixed path. The factions themselves are overall hollow; you don't even really get any meaningful Gunner backstory, other than "LOOK, IT'S TALON COMPANY!!"
- Too little fleshing-out of the main plot and motivations. In NV, if you got far enough in House's quest, he told you his grand ambitions, and they were not only interesting, but they were logically thought-out. Same with Caesar; even with the Legions' lack of quests, Caesar was written well as a villain and he also gave you clear intentions. People decry Avellone's tendency to give too much exposition, but at least it provided flavor and consistency to the world. With FO4, why should I go with the Institute? Are Synths really free-thinking entities? Why does the Institute do so many contradictory things? Why doesn't Shaun ever truly explain what they're trying to accomplish? The BoS, while more militaristic, still swings too far into caricature territory (especially with jarhead Paladin Danse who honestly strikes me as having an emotional disability that makes him live life completely through his fucked up honor code). The Railroad don't seem to give a flying fuck about the philosophical portents of what they're doing either, and the Minutemen are just so, so underwhelming, especially with Preston's endless radiant quests that make any accomplishment for their faction feel like a tiny, no-consequence errand.
- Too many lore-breaking elements. People have covered these well enough. I'm still debating if FO4's done more damage to 1 & 2's internal consistency than FO3. Sure, there are wacky references like FO2's stuff, but then there are straight up retcons that do no favors to anyone.
- Too little gameplay balancing. It was hilarious to me getting the Silver Shroud outfit and gun, and then trying to actually use the gun in the quest, only to discover that the Triggermen could absorb infinite .45 caliber bullets to the face. It was an absolute joke. I don't want to have to use God-Weapon #815 all the fucking time just to get through battles in a consistent manner. In New Vegas, if you built your character correctly, you could get by with the Silenced .22 and a host of other weapons. There was a curve to it on the crafting side as well; if you spent the points in repair, fixed your weapon condition, jury-rigged what you could, and made some hand-loaded ammunition, suddenly a shitty gun became a real contender that was fun to use and could fit with your character's style.
- Too many high-maintenance elements of settlement-building. And this is genius design, because there are no end of newly-minted Fallout "Fans" who will waste over a thousand hours of their lives scavenging and building shitty settlements that serve only to demand time to defend (through buggy events) or construct within the engine's shitty limitations and options.
- Too little meaningful junking. And I mean true junking, like collecting materials and crafting them or putting truly unique items (such as the counterfeit bottle caps in NV) in your player home. Now, everything (even the Jamaica Plains treasure) is just scrap for the settlement engine, and even the venerable gold bar (which was a wonder to behold in Dead Money) is basically worthless. Not being able to smith your own ammo (including junk or hand-load variants) is an incredible step backwards from NV and made the game feel less intimate.
- Too short an ending. Maybe we were all just spoiled by NV, which made an attempt to use 20+ quests and actions to sculpt ending slides that were almost never the same result, no matter what the playthrough. FO4 gets an honest-to-god terrible little blip of a sideshow that disappears as soon as it starts before you're returned to the after-game world, which, surprise, is pretty much the before-ending world. It's easy to enable post-ending gameplay when your world isn't that interesting or fleshed out to begin with; Obsidian had a MUCH harder task with NV.
- Too few interesting companions. Again, I guess we were all just spoiled by New Vegas, which, with the exception of a couple, had named quests for all its companions. Why would I want to travel with a standard-issue Mr. Handy, or sad sack Preston with his endless quests? FO4 had a couple good companions, but most were like FO3's: different shades of dull. It was maddening meeting someone who at least seemed to be well-written for a Beth game (Piper) and having nothing to do with her after the fact. I also can't understate how excited I was to get Hancock as a companion, only to realize he had fuck-all to do or say after the fact (even with affinity), because for all intents and purposes, his story was over the moment he joined my party. FO4's kindergarten companion writing honestly makes Boone and Raul look like fucking Tolstoy.
- No satisfying end battle. NV had a leg up on FO4 because Hoover Dam, while it could be visited before the end-game, nonetheless had most sections sealed off until the final battle begun, resulting in new combat areas to experience. The Legate's Camp was also nice as a new end-boss arena, and if you played Lonesome Road, you definitely got the experience of a final gauntlet dungeon. In FO4, if you take any faction's battle against the Institute, then you're covering the same hub area in the fight and it honestly feels like any other dungeon crawl fight in the game (except easier thanks to the unkillable Minutemen with you).
- Too few in-world mini-games. I'm becoming a broken record, but NV's few casino-style games were a blast to play (at least on the first playthrough), and got you tangible in-game rewards (such as the rare Brahmin Wellington or Rum & Nuka) and added to the game world through certain NPC reactions. FO4 shortcutted mini games entirely by borrowing some classics and retouching them to be Fallout-themed. FO4 only teased actual in-universe games such as the robot racing or Combat Zone before revealing them to be empty raider dungeons like everything else. Don't forget that New Vegas had the Thorn, which, while buggy, successfully did what Bethesda couldn't figure out how to do with the Combat Zone.
- Too few interesting characters. Long story short, JSawyer's writing in Honest Hearts alone for Daniel and the Joshua Graham featured more interesting motives and things to say and than the whole of FO4 put together.
- No Three-Dog. Now, hold on. Like many people here, I found Three-Dog mostly annoying and thought his GNR quest dialogue was literally written by the Chosen One on an INT 1 build (spoiler, it was likely written by Todd Howard). But I couldn't stop laughing when I found out that Bethesda hadn't included him in the game and was effectively snubbing his voice actor entirely. For a company that prides itself on rehashing shit and profiting off mediocrity, they couldn't even cannibalize their favorite character from FO3. What a missed "opportunity".
I'm probably forgetting something, but I'm done. Nothing has made me miss New Vegas so badly as this game, as there have been so many steps back that it's mind-boggling. It's as if Bethesda was intentionally trying to spite every innovative thing Obsidian did with NV. And of course, it worked, because there are legions of morons who embrace this kind of mediocrity; they're the same people who get e-mails from Beth's store mailing list like "New Vault Boy Shitting Himself T-Shirt" and immediately purchase 8, and who think crawling the 500th raider-infested hole in the wall for a circuit so their shitty, ugly laser musket can have 5 cranks instead of 4 is more enriching than an actual well-written quest.
I thought I'd keep it installed to keep my fort settlement around (which I poured too much time into after figuring out how to bypass Beth's restrictive limits), but there's just nothing else to do in this empty shell of a world. So it's time to sign off FO4, with nothing left lingering except a deep-seated fear that the DLC will go west and ruin more of the canon. At least as far as the 3D games go, we'll always have...
Last edited:
