Opinions on Fallout 4?

Millim said:
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.
Click to expand...
I don't speak for the whole forum, but I personally don't have a big problem with the game mechanics. I accept change there, even though I do prefer the older style. It was nearly ideal for some aspects of role playing, but I can live without it. My focus with the Fallout series has always been with story and the likes, and it's there where I feel Beth does a poor job.

I won't ever know why because I got into the series through 3.
Click to expand...
I was introduced through 3 too, so I think you could do a bit more effort. I don't *hate* Beth, though, I couldn't really judge them just for Fallout, and I never played any other of their titles. My opinion on Fallout 3 is that it is a moderately good game, provided you don't expect a moderately good Fallout game.
On a different note, I've got high hopes on their take on Doom, another series I love.

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.
Click to expand...
There are two issues with this: the first one is that you really don't need to rebuild the pre-war world, but to rebuild *some* world, so really there isn't anything there that means a better way is by involving someone who's seen the pre-war world. Also, why not a ghoul? Some creativity is not forbidden, you know. For example, there are several factions that wouldn't want the new world to look like the old world. Remember, the pre-war world is what led to the war, after all. The second issue is that it really isn't the "next logical step". In 200 years, the old series showed you that the world was pretty much rebuilt. It wasn't in all of its glory, that's true, but there was already civilization, there was some basic development. In Fallout 1 there was already relatively modern medicine, chemistry and weapons manufacture, just not scaled to industrial level.
 
Crni Vuk said:
Doom as far as I understand isn't made by Bethesda though, it is just published under their name.
Click to expand...

Bethesda Game Studios is the developer who made Fallout 3 and the Elder Scrolls games. Bethesda Softworks is the publisher operated by ZeniMax Media that publishes games by Bethesda Game Studios, Arkane, id Software, etc.
 
Crni Vuk said:
Doom as far as I understand isn't made by Bethesda though, it is just published under their name.
Click to expand...

Hey, let me at least think they aren't completely incompetent! :P

PossibleCabbage said:
Crni Vuk said:
Doom as far as I understand isn't made by Bethesda though, it is just published under their name.
Click to expand...

Bethesda Game Studios is the developer who made Fallout 3 and the Elder Scrolls games. Bethesda Softworks is the publisher operated by ZeniMax Media that publishes games by Bethesda Game Studios, Arkane, id Software, etc.
Click to expand...

I think this clarification should have been pointed directly to me, as I'm the one who made the initial mistake. Thanks, anyway :)
 
I dislike Bethesda's design philosophy. Skyrim needs so much modding to be bearable or even interesting in the least is waaaaay too high, and the quests remain shit even after modding so you have to make up your own fun with that game.
 
Millim said:
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.
Click to expand...
This would have been okay by all, or most of us; not you personally, but en mass, the whole lot of false fans ~for false it is. Bethesda has packaged strawberry syrup labeled white lightning, and duped a generation into thinking they like RPGs, when most haven't a clue what they are; and wouldn't like them if they did.
 
So far, my general opinion of F4 is very negative.

- Skills being turned into another checklist of Perks, if we go by the lack of a Skills tab yet the existence of them during crafting in the E3 footage, is what I dislike most. It robs Perks of their uniqueness, and Bethesda already has an issue of giving them out each level in both F3 and Skyrim, further affecting their uniqueness. (If my guess is correct, they'll cap at 10 if they still exist somewhere.) Plus, it takes the series further away from its CRPG/tabletop roots.

I've heard mostly new fans complain about the skill challenges and the Lockpicking/Hacking minigames being locked to 0/25/50/75/100 ranks, but I have to wonder in turn if they ever had a plan in mind for their character build versus building on what they needed most over the last level. (This said, if they're speaking in reference to Oblivion's Lockpicking game, I fully understand their frustration. I loved that system, even though picks were so very wide-spread so as to be an easy replacement.)

- Going further into FPS - This ties into the Skills bit and I don't like either; it pulls the new take on Fallout's gunplay further away from being an ARPG/CRPG in the vein of Deus Ex 1, which I was fine with for F3 and NV, even with the NV iron sights in play. Hopefully, this is not as bad as I think it'll be.

- Fully-voiced MC/Dialogue Cross - If there was ever any proof that Bethesda wanted to ape Bioware, it's this. The Dialogue Wheel was mostly hated in DA2/Inq., and not well loved in Mass Effect either; LA Noire is one example I personally dislike. It doesn't detail enough of what your character will say if you use certain buttons/actions, which is a HUGE issue in RPGs. Plus, voice-acting takes up an insane amount of room on a disk -- 768kb per minute on average -- versus text, and if the tone, accent and etc. are not up to snuff, the performance becomes a mess. Case in point: make a male Argonian in Skyrim, then listen to the tone of Hadvar's question towards you.

I doubt it'll hinder mods very much, if said modders can plan around only four options for dialogue, but still...

- Invincible Dogmeat - Someone will mod this out I'm sure, unless it comes to light that he is as important to the game as your pet dog is in Fable II. Otherwise, it's taking an element of challenge out of the series that isn't really necessary.

- System Overhauling - Hated it in Skyrim for what it did to mages and the skill system. Really dislike the idea here, even considering the perspective shift from 2 to 3.

- Lore/Atmosphere Tweaking - I'll admit to not being someone who digs into each detail of the Fallout canon, but speaking through my own writing/author sensibilities, I found it odd that the staff of Bethesda would claim they "didn't want to step on [Black Isle's] fiction", https://youtu.be/Lr5olzm9jXg?t=1m27s, and yet throughout the Main Quest and beyond, that's exactly what was on display. Hell, F3's main quest reads like Fallout fan-fiction, taking plots and elements from F1 and 2 and melding them into one story. (The Master = John Eden, the need to acquire a GECK is a major even spanning several quests, water and its importance is again a plot-centric theme, and the process of leaving and then returning to the Vault only to leave it once more for good = Escape! and Trouble on the Homestead.)


Unless Bethesda releases enough info to sway my view, I'll wait for a used XBOX One copy to try this game.


Walpknut said:
I dislike Bethesda's design philosophy. Skyrim needs so much modding to be bearable or even interesting in the least is waaaaay too high, and the quests remain shit even after modding so you have to make up your own fun with that game.
Click to expand...

The game's hype hid a lot of those issues; I got snagged up by it and didn't notice how bad it was until after I rolled a pure mage and played through a chunk of the faction/main quest lines. Two other issues were how Bethesda does dialogue, and the Quest Markers. Have you tried playing Skyrim with those off? The Journal is so sparse that you'll be lucky to ever find most of what the game asks of you during play without them.

Makes me miss Morrowind even more, with how detailed that Journal system was.
 
We will suck the cock that is Fallout 4, and after a while we will realize they didn't bother to shower after we have fellated them. But it won't matter, because our breath will already smell bad.
 
I am not buying it, I'll watch youtube videos from my usual selection and if I do buy it it will be on a heavy discount with all the expansions, so uhmmm 2018?.
 
I am one of those people who were "brought into the fold" by Fallout 3. It was my first Fallout game, and I loved it. It wasn't hard, since I was not yet acquainted with the first two games, and the only thing I had to compare it to was Oblivion. Fallout 3 was more open-ended, complex, and had a superior skill and leveling system compared to the last mixed bag Bethesda had released. At first I liked the whole intro sequence, but found the capital wasteland to be somewhat disappointing the first time I entered it. Having come out of Vault 101's sterile bliss, I found the entire scene to be entirely depressing, and could not see how my character, with the background that the developers forced on him, could have any goal other than to get back into the vault, or join a similar society. That is, unless I played as a complete psychopath. Talking about psychopaths, whose brilliant design idea was it to make the vast majority of people in the game exactly that? I had no motivation to explore whatsoever, having figured out that there's practically nothing to find outside the settlements but grey places filled with raiders or super mutants. When I first reached Oasis, the immersion was once again broken because there was no fathomable reason for most characters to ever leave it and get back into the wasteland. But again, since the closest thing I could compare it to was Oblivion, it was still great.

And then came the DLCs. Operation Anchorage - I still don't know why that one happened. The same goes for Mothership Zeta. Broken Steel was good for practical purposes - being able to play after finishing the main quest (although by the time it was released I already knew not to finish the main quest unless I want the game to be over - but it was still nice not to get retarded excuses from Charon or Fawkes). The Pitt and Point Lookout were my favorite parts of Fallout 3, and I can't understand why the game itself wasn't made to be more like them.

There was also a mod I found to be most entertaining called Real Time Settler. And from what I saw in the Fallout 4 trailer - it worked exactly the same as the new settlement building option. I found it to be a welcome addition.

Between 3 and New Vegas I played the first two Fallout games. I loved both, but I felt that Fallout 2 added as many bad things as it did good. My biggest problem with it were the pop culture references and the 4th wall shattering, I hate it in games almost as much as I do in movies. I also feel that it often sacrificed immersion for the sake of comedy, resulting in a world that didn't feel as cruel and unforgiving as it should have.

By the time New Vegas was out, I wasn't the least bit enthusiastic. I expected another Fallout 3, and my opinion of it got significantly lower having played the first two. But I decided to give it a shot anyway, and wasn't the least bit disappointed. Playing without a forced background, the return of traits, a world that actually feels like the war was 200 years ago instead of 20, companion quests, colors that aren't grey, hardcore mode (although this one should have been done a lot better), super mutants which aren't mindless beasts, raiders that make sense, and most importantly - a story worthy of a Fallout game! The Real Time Settler mod was also available for New Vegas, but I never used it because the world felt complete and it just wasn't necessary.

What I've seen from Fallout 4 thus far:

- Forced background. The same problem as in 3 - how can anyone with such a background feel anything but severe depression upon waking up in a wasteland? It's even worse, 3 limited you through the character of your father, this limits you through your own.

- Dialogue wheel. I really don't need to explain why this is bad.

- Voiced protagonist. Why? Why can't they just leave it to the imagination. No RPG where you make your own character works with a voiced protagonist. It was one of the biggest mistakes in Dragon Age 2. I also highly doubt that you can pick a voice, since that would increase their voice-acting expenses immensely.

- Yet another world where plant life doesn't exist.

- Settlements still seem to be small junk forts.

- Generic raiders and super mutants.

- Power armor seems to function like walkers from Red Faction Guerrilla. Not being able to wear them as clothing doesn't bother me, but they seem far more overpowered than in any of the previous games. Also, jet packs? Seriously?

- Crafting. It seems too easy, and taking into account how it turned out in Skyrim, probably overpowered as well.

And that brings us to the biggest indicator of what the game is going to be like - Skyrim. The game that removed RPG elements essential to its predecessors (birthsigns, classes), was smaller than any of its predecessors, and made the same mistakes as Oblivion (level-scaled enemies and random generated loot - the Daedra quest and DLC items were practically the only unique ones, and unless I'm mistaken, they were level-scaled as well). And it turned out to be one of the best-selling games of all time.
 
Voiced protagonist. Why? Why can't they just leave it to the imagination. No RPG where you make your own character works with a voiced protagonist. It was one of the biggest mistakes in Dragon Age 2. I also highly doubt that you can pick a voice, since that would increase their voice-acting expenses immensely.
Click to expand...
Depends on how much the character has to say in F4 ;)



They just have to make it simple enough.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Walpknut said:
I am not buying it, I'll watch youtube videos from my usual selection and if I do buy it it will be on a heavy discount with all the expansions, so uhmmm 2018?.
Click to expand...

I bought Skyrim after the "Legendary Edition" went on sale for around $25. Only took about two years. I would recommend this approach for any Bethesda game.
 
>GET FOOD
PC: What? Food? I need time to think.

Just a reminder of why the dialogue cross is a piece of shit.
 
LordAshur said:
- Forced background. The same problem as in 3 - how can anyone with such a background feel anything but severe depression upon waking up in a wasteland?
Click to expand...
Where did the idea that they are not supposed to ever come from?

When Fallout was in development Tim says he got a call from their marketing department, questioning his choice of music for the game; describing it as 'depressing', and Tim says, "Have you played the game? Everybody is dead..." (with more to it that I don't recall verbatim). Fallout ~when done right, is bitterly and brutally depressing; the dark humor is just little enough to bring a smile amid the desolation and ruin. In a way, it's a bit like drinking Tonic water; and you get so that you have a taste for it.
 
Last edited:
Gizmojunk said:
LordAshur said:
- Forced background. The same problem as in 3 - how can anyone with such a background feel anything but severe depression upon waking up in a wasteland?
Click to expand...
Where did the idea that they are not supposed to ever come from?

When Fallout was in development Tim says he got a call from their marketing department, questioning his choice of music for the game; describing it as 'depressing', and Tim says, "Have you played the game? Everybody is dead..." (with more to it that I don't recall verbatim). Fallout ~when done right, is bitterly and brutally depressing; the dark humor is just little enough to bring a smile amid the desolation and ruin. In a way, it's a bit like drinking Tonic water; and you get so that you have a taste for it.
Click to expand...

The reasons why you leave the Vaults at all, or begin your journey across the wastes, are part of the reason why certain games feel depressing at the outset, or with certain revelations.

- Fallout 1: Hunt down a water chip so your Vault can live on. You leave the vault to find something and then return, which, like Majora's Mask, is depressing in how if you don't achieve your goal in time, you're screwed and so is everyone else you're trying to save. The end is when it does get depressing, no matter the route you took.
- Fallout 2: Find and rescue your kidnapped people. Your character grew up in the wastes, so there's little that is depressing beyond the kidnapping itself.
- Fallout Tactics: Follow a line of missions into the wastes with your squad. Not really depressing material.
- Fallout 3: The Vault you've lived in for most of your life turns hostile with the departure of your father. Somewhat depressing, since you're forced out of the Vault and into the wastes, but after you're told you were not born in the Vault but Rivet City, the impact weakens.
- Fallout: New Vegas: Follow the trail left by the man who shot you, and slowly become involved in the coming battle for Hoover Dam. Unless you find cowboy and mafia stories depressing by nature, this game's structure doesn't touch that particular nerve.
- Fallout 4 - Emerge from your Vault after 200 years pass to find the world you knew torn apart. This would be depressing, but there's one huge question mark hovering above the whole thing: How did YOU survive for 200 years? Given the Vault closes behind you, the answers are likely inside.

Plus, if we're playing the skeptic with the Beth-canon of Fallout, there's a second question: Why does everything look like it has suffered less than fifty, or even twenty-five, years of decay, despite a nuke going off less than a hundred or so miles from Boston?

A hundred-year-old abandoned town looks pretty good with just a forest around it to affect decay. (Can't post the URL links I have to one such town.) Buildings/areas blasted apart by kilotons of explosives? Nuh-uh.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top