Opinions on Fallout 4?

[fred2]

For one why does there need to be a radio?

I think that the radio was a great design choices for such game. It can be used as an interactive way to show that your actions actually impacted the world, give vital information to the player and lead them on quests, and yes pass the time as you wade through all the stuff that populate an open world game.

Post war music if there needs to be a radio, maybe do something like what the Radio Free Wasteland mod does with the "Raider Station" and look into experimental music influenced by older trends, like Psychobilly and such. Maybe even have some random shit like a crazy dude with one of those homemade radios broadcasting electronic music he makes with an improvised Theremin made out of old pieces of technology and such.

Interesting choice:



Thank you, but that makes me much more appreciative of Bethasda design choice and happy that there are mods that suit everyone tastes.

 

[TorontoReign]

I think you are right. It has been one of the positive points in the new series, however in some ways it has focused too much on that aspect. I feel as if the ambient music has been downgraded while the radio has been pushed to the forefront. It isn't really a problem unless you play the game on the consoles, which would get very tiring after hearing the same 15 songs over and over again. I will admit, adding in a ton of Elvis Songs made Freeside truly come alive. That and a bunch of Elvis posters at the Kings base.

 

[Askorti]

I've come to really enjoy listening to the CONELRAD radio, which has both real-life atom-related ads and songs from the period. Great stuff, helps you immerse in the world based on the atomic scare.
And the songs on that station are great, even better than ones in the vanilla radio stations.

 

[TorontoReign]

I've come to really enjoy listening to the CONELRAD radio, which has both real-life atom-related ads and songs from the period. Great stuff, helps you immerse in the world based on the atomic scare.
And the songs on that station are great, even better than ones in the vanilla radio stations.

I just stole some of the songs/ads from it and tossed them into RACE.

 

[TheGreatCornholio]

THere is a different betwen Retro futurism and just making it the 50's with robots, specially because Previous Fallout games had never implied they never went past the 50's in culture, they weren't listenning to 50's music in the 2077, there are even references to Glam Rock, the Hippie movement and a lot of other things, Bethesda seems to have taken the "Retro" part of the setting and handle it with the subtlety and grace of a brick to the face.

Actually for the sake of the argument, if you were the director on Fallout project what music would you have put on the radio and how would you decorate the pre-war interiors? maybe a black president?

For one why does there need to be a radio?

I liked the concept of the radio, 3 dog was way too over the top but its a cool little extra feature that you can turn off if you want

 

[PossibleCabbage]

I liked the concept of the radio, 3 dog was way too over the top but its a cool little extra feature that you can turn off if you want

Three Dog was annoying, to be sure, but casting WAYNE NEWTON as Mr. New Vegas was inspired and wonderful. I mean, it's obvious, I'm just happy they pulled it off. It was one of the best things about a truly outstanding game.

 

[TorontoReign]

Most of my gripes about Fallout 3's radio are directed towards Eden and Three Dog. Three Dog especially.

 

[Millim]

I personally enjoyed the E3 Presentation, it blew expectations out of the window.
But I want to address something, and it's something I've just worked out myself.

I think Bethesda are trying to make Fallout their own, they want to create it in their own way by using the experience they've gained over the years. While this leads much in the way for mainstream success, it doesn't always translate well to older fans.
It's a lot easier to be a new fan and work backwards than to be an old fan and move forwards, afterall, most people here are used to a different system entirely, not the FPS hybrid that Fallout is known today.
And so I think Bethesda, I don't want to say don't really care, but I think they want to let things in the older games slide a bit. They aren't making these games for older fans. A number of them hate Bethesda for what they have done and I won't ever know why because I got into the series through 3.
But I think direction is a key word here, the direction of the series has changed. Has it changed for the best?
Well, that's up to the player.
For me, it's a different Fallout experience than the original games. That doesn't that one is better over the other. Gameplay and writing wise, they are very different. Yet there are many factors of F3 that feel very reminiscent of the original games, the tonne is one. It's a mixture of black comedy 50's America Sci-Fi.
They are still very pessimistic, (and I feel some of that Pessimism was lost in New Vegas).
Personally, I see Fallout 4 as a logical step forward, it's about rebulding, and what better way to do that than to have a character who has seen the pre-war days.
I believe that Fallout 4 will be more about Hope than survival.
Plus looking at E3 footage, there's still a lot of freedom in the game to look forward to and one to make your own.

But I will say I don't think my dream of playing a gay transsexual druggie pornstar in a pink dress with a fatboy will come true anytime soon.

 

[Walpknut]

It's as we say, they are bastardizing (that they didn't even create) the series they had no reason to bastardize to the detriment to the fans that put the series on the map. Only in the videogame industry is there any "ambiguity" about how bad this is. It's kind of weird.

 

[Gizmojunk]

...casting WAYNE NEWTON as Mr. New Vegas was inspired and wonderful. I mean, it's obvious, I'm just happy they pulled it off. It was one of the best things about a truly outstanding game.

I liked it, but they didn't seem to record even half enough lines for him. I found it way too repetitive.

 

[Millim]

But the thing is, the old school Fallout games have a very niche audience.
Bethesda took the project as they had an idea of what to do with it, and sell games (they are a business, profits come first).
If F3 hadn't come out, I may have never picked up the Fallout Collection meaning I was missing out.
There are plenty of other fans who are like that as well.
I'm sorry to say it, but you guys didn't put Bethesda's name in the industry. You made Fallout to be a minor hit on PC and gain a cult following.
So to take a game and market at another group of fans than the originals isn't something new.
I can safely say I've seen games been made to get a cheap buck, and I can tell you there's some heart in Fallout 3. Even if you can't see it, there was some effort to make a good game. I personally think Bethesda did well tbh.

And it could be worse, it could be a Star Wars situation where the big comeback is a cooperate sellout to make as much money on merchandise as possible.

 

[Walpknut]

Actually the situation with Fallout is just like the one with Star Wars, a corporate sell out to make as much money from the name while completely anihilating the identity and spirit of the originals. How can this be seen as ok with videogames?

 

[Askorti]

Actually the situation with Fallout is just like the one with Star Wars, a corporate sell out to make as much money from the name while completely anihilating the identity and spirit of the originals. How can this be seen as ok with videogames?

Because the new fans think it's changing the franchise for the better... Yea, I know, it's terrible.

 

[Millim]

It's mostly due to a drop in quality.
Games don't get away with this either, Silent Hill games have been doing badly for the last ten years because Konami are useless at publishing games.
The new Dungeon Keeper was considered a joke because of its micro transactions.
Many old school Call of Duty fans find the newer games to lose what made the old ones greats.
The difference between Fallout and those is that they are two different styles of gameplay, one is more about tactics while the other is more about action.
It translates well to a newer audience.
But to simply pass Fallout off as the same as what happened to Star Wars is bit silly to think.
Fallout came with the game and some DLC, the Star Wars prequels came to promote the toys, comics, novels, T-Shirts, Mugs, Cereal and so on.
Even now, I only see Fallout merch come in the form of shirts and Pop Vinyls (which I have no problem with).
It'll get out of hand when you walk round your local toy store and see a Super Mutant Action Figure with a "Collect them all" label printed at the back complete with the Master and Deathclaws while having an age range of 3+ plastered everywhere.
Bethesda have even given reasons why they won't make a film based on Fallout. Honestly, there is a lot more heart put in Fallout 3 than Star Wars Episode 3.

And when you talk why it is only allowed for other hands to take a game but it doesn't work well in any other media, well, this isn't always the case.
Remakes get shit on because they are trying to recreate the same experience, but audiences want something new.
The Star Wars and Planet of the Apes reboots are doing pretty well for themselves, and the new Daredevil show is miles better than the film.

 

[Walpknut]

Fallout 3 is even worse than the prequels, because while Star Wars was also kind of a dumb space fantasy story, the original Fallouts where much more complex so the switch to 3 is even more jarring. They even turned the BOS into some jedi knock offs who throw phrases like "Steel be with you", Like do the BOS now worship steel? Do they think Steel is a magic force? WTF?, and a completely rail roaded main quest with one dimensional characters and very binary and stupidly simplistic "moral choices". They have completely dumb it down so it's accessible to people who can't even bother to look at the previous games nor do they have any respect for them either, and a good number of these new fans are also very much against critical analysis or even discussion, so nothing good has been gained.
Daredevil is based on the comic, the movie wasn't the original, so kind of a weird example there. Star Wars does well because they are a corporate giant, even tho they haven't released anything decent tied to it people just keep buying, the new Planet of the Apes movies are pretty stupid; I had no idea they were doing well considering they have such bad CGI work, ridiculous plot where they expect you to take monkey drama seriously and hammy acting....

 

[PossibleCabbage]

But the thing is, the old school Fallout games have a very niche audience.

Here's the thing though. To appease the Fallout grognards Bethesda does not need to bow and scrape and beg for forgiveness. All they really need to do is to write a game that is intelligent, clever, well-thought-out, feature considerable opportunities to roleplay the character you want to play both through conversations and through quests with multiple solutions through which you can express your character, have memorable and interesting characters, and be consistent with the theme, tone, and lore of previous Fallout games.

All those things are pretty much prima facie good things to do anyway, and things they were probably already aiming to do. I'm skeptical that they'll do these things having played a few Bethesda games before, but I won't say that they can't.

I mean, New Vegas pretty much conclusively demonstrates that it's entirely possible to make a game that pleases the Fallout faithful without making it completely unlike a Bethesda game. If NV were half as good as it is, I'd still love it.

 

[Millim]

Maybe things just don't fit your standard of entertainment.
You can see flaws in a lot of things which take your enjoyment out of it.
I see a lot of flaws in F3 (I admit Steel be with you is a laughable line).
But when looking at the greater scale of it, BoS being Knights of the Waste sort of make sense.

The DC City was in shit, The BoS took it upon themselves to clear it up. There was a small group that didn't want this so they left, they are known as the Outcasts but are more alike the original BoS.

I can take flaws like what the Hell are the Mutants doing there?
But I can say that there was a different strain of the FEV virus which turned them into ruthless asswholes.

I admit the story is Fallout 3 fucking sucks. When people say it's a good story I slap them with facts, but it's the gameplay that to me, made it fun.
I would have liked there to be more side-quests, better characters and a smarter written game. (And we would get that in New Vegas which is an all round better game).
Yet what I got was a pretty fun game with a World I fell in love with. I liked how Depressing and Hopeless DC was. I liked playing it and finding random shit in the game.
Could it have worked well as a non-fallout game? Yes.
But what we got was a Fallout game never the less.

And considering Brotherhood of Steel was released only four years before it, I think it did alright. (Note: I do realise they are made by completely different companies and BOS is usually taken out of Fallout retrospectives).

 

[Walpknut]

First it doesn't make sense for them to be there, and second it doesn't makes sense because the BOS was never the wasteland protectors. You know if they actually followed the original games and all...
Fallout 3 just rehashed soulessly elements from the first 2 fallouts, they retconned a lot of things with very little care into actually thinking it through, it's like when the new Star Wars anything just throw the "I have a bad feeling about this" "THat's not moon" and such lines into completely unrelated situations to try and pander to nostalgia.
Was it a Fallout game? I guess, but only because it had that name on the box and and the title screen, it didn't have any of the sensibilities in the story, mechanics or the setting as the original ones, and it was made by a completely different that ACTIVELY rejected the help from people that made the original Fallouts. That speaks volumes of their approach to it, they are just bastardizing it.

 

[Askorti]

No, it does not make sense for BoS to be the saviors. Up until F3 they were always portrayed as selfish, fanatic technology hoarders who didn't give one flying f-word about the people of the wastes. They had their codex, their rules and they would die for it, or even better, kill for it. So to make them into some selfless defenders of the wastes angels makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's simply laziness on Beth's part because they didn't want to put any effort to make a complex gray-area faction that is not entirely good or entirely bad. And here we are, with cartoonishly good BoS and cartoonishly evil Enclave with cartoonishly stupid Super Mutants.
Good thing we have FNV where BoS is back to its roots. It is not smart, but it makes sense for them to be in a lock down and focus on technology. That's what they are, technology hoarders.

Edit: Damn, took me so long to write this that Walp ninja'd me.

 

[Millim]

Yet Fallout 3 makes point of the fact that the BoS aren't meant to be savors of the Wastes.
Also, I thought that the BoS wanted to expand across America, this isn't anything new as we've seen with games previous.
But I do agree with you on there being too elements rehashed from the previous games.