Those moments when you wish you were in a Black Isle (or Obsidian) game... [Spoilers]

Mods will fix it.
Mods will fix it.
Mods will fix it.
Mods will fix it.

 

I think Fallout 4 might end up not having many mods. Morrowind has an endless supply of them because it has a fanatical following. Skyrim allowed Steam Workshop for the first time and there was so much hype around that game so modders went to town on that. New Vegas and Fallout 3 were huge successes with modding communities. I just don't see Fallout 4 having the kind of following necessary to have such an extensive modding community. Maybe I'm totally wrong though, but it looks like this is the game that will end up breaking that tradition due to its total shallowness and failure to deliver.

The lack of dialogue options and alternate paths along with the fact that the game demands that you play every quest and experience the whole story in one run means there is little to no reason to replay Fallout 4 after the first play-through. That will also limit incentive to mod the game because who wants to dive back into Borderlands singleplayer after doing it even once?

 

That's what skeletons are there for.

 

It won't make it any less of a boring slog.

 

To me, the point where I wished and started daydreaming about being in a proper RPG and a fallout world was pretty much after all the flaws of Fallout 4 sank in me properly to the point of depression. To illustrate how I felt.. well, I felt something like that:



In my case it was my T-51b helmet that I threw on the sands of the wasteland, then I threw Winchester P94 Turbo at an incoming gecko impaling and killing it, then grabbed my Alien Blaster side arm and getting ready for more hostilities but there was no one else but that one dead gecko at that moment, threw my blaster at the impaled gecko, kicked the gecko, stomped the gecko, walked a few ways further. Fell to my knees, roared/screamed from frustration into the empty wasteland skies and when finally exhausted I looked down and saw Todd Howard raping the Vault Boy.. the sight was too horrid to the point of pure madness, saw a glimmer of red and black light behind me, a sort of vortex, a strange portal it was. I was so enraged and so depressed and so desensitized to everything that I just entered it and what came next was chaos incarnate for I had drawn the forces of chaos forth with my sheer rage and emotion. Brutally tore Todd to bits and gibs and puddle with some sort of metal claw arm and poor Vault Boy almost escaped before my berserker senses kicked in and the blind lust for blood autocannoned him to shreds.. after realizing what had happened and what I had become I calmed down. Took a walk and kept on walking.. still walking in a metal shell of doom that has a dual cannon for a right arm and a razor claw arm for a left arm and myself stuck inside and pretty much devoid of what's sane and what's insane.

Now that I have wasted your time with this metaphorical take on my reaction and the inner machinations of my mind. I shall now shut up and ask myself "What the actual fuck am I doing with my life!?!"

 

"And I walked through the wastes on a quest with no brains."

Sorry. Bad pun. Also, if that was your reaction, you need anger management.

 

Amusing pun though! And nah, I've tried regular anger management but thanks to my chemical imbalance in the brain due to flawed genetics I'm having real hard time every time when dealing with anxiety, hype, disappointment, stress, anger, etc. It's like being on a rollercoaster from Hades and my brain tends to wander into very dark thoughts, or overly positive thoughts which in turn can end up back in horrible negativity. Already mentioned it a few times a bit in the past in this site but not in this detail I guess. It's like having cancer but instead of cancer it's something to do with mental disorder of emotions and the strongest of them has always been rage because when it shows up, shit happens and been to doctors and hospitals tad too many times with it and even they have given up on me. So yeah, been finding and or trying to find ways to deal with my own condition.

Anyway, enough about me.

 

I think silent pc and dialog menu mods will be essential and almost everyone who plays with mods will use these two.

 

They don't change anything for me.

 

I won't play with either because I like the voiced protagonist and I don't want to know how bad the dialogue is. Remember, I'll be playing F4 as a Borderlands game.

 

I dislike the voice but it doesn't change anything for me.

 

For me, it was repair. That one stat dominated most of my New Vegas playthroughs and roleplaying. Pouring points into repair, scavenging repair items, taking the jury-rigging perk, smithing my own ammunition (ESPECIALLY this), selling repaired scavenged weapons for caps, and being able to dump enemy weapons I picked up into keeping mine pristine -- they were all so fun to me, and the game feels hollow without them. Part of that, of course, is the weapon mod system and the lack of variety in base weapons. Gun Runner's Arsenal alone makes FO4's weapons look like trash in quality and quantity, and all the mods are basically better versions of themselves so at the end you only really have a choice of type of scope, full auto, or suppressor. It makes the "oh shit!" moment from Todd Howard advertising 38051805701351 weapon combinations even more pathetic.

In terms of game balance, too, Obsidian did a way better job. Getting your anti-materiel rifle was a huge milestone and it was decently hard to obtain before a certain part of the game, and it was powerful as well. FO4 just inundates you with shitty pipe weapons that you will never, ever use again, and if you get lucky, you'll get a bona fide sniper or laser musket. It's a problem because the premise is that you can upgrade these weapons to be lethal, but even if you try, the .50 sniper feels INCREDIBLY underpowered (even with the sneak 3.0x multiplier) and the pipe weapons? Don't make me laugh. They're completely useless against the bullet sponge enemies. New Vegas was so, so much better balanced in this department and it reinforced the lore.

God I miss New Vegas.

 

And New Vegas was developed in 18 months, meanwhile FO4 supposedly took 7 years but every aspect of combat balancing and gameplay feels put together at the last minute. Did you know that some High level enemies even have LESS health than their low level counterparts? The base health of a Raider is 30hp, but the base health of a kid is 40hp. Some raiders and gunners even have perks set up wrong that NERF their own damage....

 

Yeah, that topic was hilarious, pretty obvious that who ever was responsible for the design of it either didn't cared enough, or was runing out of time. And yet ... people defended it, like LULZ! It's singleplayer, what do you care?

 

Good God just imagine Bethesda trying to make any sort of multiplayer game. People would complain about balancing issues and their fans would tell those people "you're just not playing that character right" or "you're bad at the game scrub".
Though at this point I'm surprised Fallout hasn't turned into "Fallout Online".

 

Didn't that happen? Isn't it called Fallout Online: Singleplayer?

 

There are people that made Coop possible for Skyrim. Considering that Bethesda is inspired by mods ... who knows what their future games might ... have. No clue. I mean look at F4, Skyrim and Oblivion. Bethesda is always going for the generic stuff, looking at what is popular right now, and throwing it in the bucket. Does it make sense? Does it even work together? Who cares! Steak? Watermelon? Ice-Cream? Sushi? It's all popular! It goes all into the same pot, and people will eat it. I think the ideas they have, are not necessarily bad, but I feel it is very often more of a distraction, than really giving the gameplay more value. Our game is about exploration! No wait! There is settlement building! Oh! No, no wait! It is about dialogues and endless radiant AI quests. NO! WAIT! It's about shooting and killing stuff and finding random loot! Can't find @Gizmojunk 's awesome image with the 3 targets, but it perfectly describes Bethesdas design goals. Go for everything, hit nothing.

 

Trying to place in three competitions at once, instead of trying to hit the bullseye in either. This makes [business] sense when the prizes for placing [at all] in each exceed the prize for placing first in either.

 

Ah yes, the all but nothing design philosophy Bethesda have.