"Your not allowed to have a opinion of Fallout 4 if you didn't finish the game!"

[Crni Vuk]

Most Bethesda Fanboys go more for the "You can't have an opinion of Fallout 4 unless it's bathing it with praise" Line of thinking than anything.

It's surprising how anti criticism they are. Even worse then we are of anti-praise (unless it's well deserved)!

Part of the problem might be that an individual enjoying a game like Fallout 4 who's also believing strongly in the hype, might experience contradictory beliefs. As a result they simply can't admit any mistake, no matter how clear or obvious it is. They strive for internal consistency, as they don't want to feel the disconfort of beeing confronted eventually by new informations that are in conflict with their perception and/or belief - that the game MUST be awesome, because they bought it after all, admiting a flaw might eventually lead to the idea that the game is actually not as great as they thought. I think it's called cognitive dissonance.

*Edit
I am not saying that players can't or shouldn't enjoy Fallout 4. Infact, I think if you get in to it with the idea of playing a shooter, you will have even a lot of fun with it - possibily. However, if they feel that they're playing a deep role playing game with great writing and someone tells them that it simply isn't, even giving examples, they might not accept it. And Bethesda is always very anxious at selling their Fallout games as true RPGs, never getting tired of reminding the player that he's also not only playing a typical RPG, but also at the same time a true Fallout experience. It got Super Mutants, Vaults, Powe Armor, and also the BoS even. How could this not be a Fallout game?

 

[Earth]

I played Skyrim for a hundred hours. (I wish I could take those hours back) but I never completed it. Bethesda's main plot lines are almost impossible to push through. With Skyrim I barely even began either the dragon or civil war questlines. They were so tedious.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

It is depressing since people unironically used this line of argument as defense.

As is common with the human species in general, its stupidity knows no limits.

I wonder why they and Bethesda expect other people to fix up their mess for them.
When a game that is otherwise well designed but has a few flaws because the development team had only so much time and such a budget it is somewhat a labor or love or curiosity for a modder to find out if they can fix these last few rough edges, making the gaming experience even better.

When a game is released that is rather broken from the start because the people behind it had little interest in fixing it up, instead just continuing forward with adding stuff that works well or now, and then later on announce that they expect fans to fix these mistakes (and perhaps sell these fixes with a percentage going to the publisher of these) then I say 'Fuck off'.
Bethesda half assed it on the design part, doing quantity over quality, could barely be bothered to think up a good campaign, removed the speech skills mostly because having multiple options would risk that the player would get off the designated path/might do stuff that clashes with Bethesda's philosophy what a Player Character should be like, and in general just made a sandbox with loads of random stuff that serve little purpose.
Now modders need to make sense of that because Bethesda doesn't want to?

 

[Shardik]

I am of the belief that any kind of game should be able to entice the player to continue forward/get involved in the first few hours to be considered a good game.
It is this first part that can really make or break a game for a gamer as they at that moment are still open for impressions.

If it becomes clear that a game is rather slow and feels unrewarding it doesn't matter if it 'gets better' later.
It needs to be good at first, it can then have a quiet period to allow the player to get their bearings and then build up the pace/world/involvement, enticing the player only more and more to continue to the end.

Saying "It gets better later but first you have to pull through several boring hours" is not a good way to sell a title to a new or existing gamer, especially when they are not in the mood to have to do boring or repetitive stuff in the first half or quarter of the game.

With me and novels, if they haven't gotten me wanting to continue reading by the time I'm 100 pages or so in, they usually don't get finished. It takes me a lot less than 20 hours to read 100 pages. Any game developer who demands the player spend 20 hours of treating the game as a chore before it starts getting interesting needs to find another line of work.

 

[Aaron Burr]

I am of the belief that any kind of game should be able to entice the player to continue forward/get involved in the first few hours to be considered a good game.
It is this first part that can really make or break a game for a gamer as they at that moment are still open for impressions.

If it becomes clear that a game is rather slow and feels unrewarding it doesn't matter if it 'gets better' later.
It needs to be good at first, it can then have a quiet period to allow the player to get their bearings and then build up the pace/world/involvement, enticing the player only more and more to continue to the end.

Saying "It gets better later but first you have to pull through several boring hours" is not a good way to sell a title to a new or existing gamer, especially when they are not in the mood to have to do boring or repetitive stuff in the first half or quarter of the game.

I know the first Witcher game is infamous for having a really slow opening, but I thought the first area worked really well to build atmosphere. I'm fine with a slow beginning if the game has the writing and atmosphere building to make it interesting but I've not really seen that from 4.

 

[TheRippaMan]

It's just fanboys being fanboys. I'm a middle of the line kind of guy. I can say good things about Fallout 3, and I can say that I've enjoyed New Vegas very much, but on the same token, I'm not a fan of Bethesda games anymore, not since Morrowind. I use to frequent their boards, and I've been criticized for this line of thinking, especially preferring the original Fallout to Fallout 3. They just cannot fathom that others may have differing opinions. Not only that, but you must be prepared to place a <imo> tag before and after every sentence you make. It's as though everything you say, you're saying as fact, which is simply immature and fanboyish.

Not every big game draws these type of people in my experience. I can say the Half-Life community is pretty decent. The Fallout community and Elder Scrolls community, for the most part, simply isn't.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

I know the first Witcher game is infamous for having a really slow opening, but I thought the first area worked really well to build atmosphere. I'm fine with a slow beginning if the game has the writing and atmosphere building to make it interesting but I've not really seen that from 4.

That is what I mean with the first hours are the ones that make most of an impression on a player. It doesn't need to be head into action immediately but rather that it entices the player to continue forward with the game as they see promise for more instead of turning off the game, deleting it, and asking for a refund.

I guess Bethesda thought by introducing Power Armor in the first few hours would overwhelm the player, giving him or her an epic battle moment that will give the player the idea that there will be many such fights later on.
That works for a shooter I guess, but when used on a series which is build on the idea that there are more options than just shooting enemies it is underwhelming.

 

[randy Mc rupp]

This is the excuse I have been seeing a lot on YouTube. Apparently those that have only played the game for a few hours but returned the game because they didn't like it are not allowed to have a opinion of the game or are they allowed to say that its bad because they didn't finish it. This excuse is so bullshit that I am at a lost for words. If the game is so bad that the player couldn't finish it and they returned it then shouldn't the player be allowed to voice their opinion?

I bet those people haven't even tried Fallout and Fallout 2 yet let alone finished either of them. Yet all they can say is the old games are shit.

Laughable.

 

[5545Trey]

It is laughable, seeing these people reveal their narrow-minded thinking and judgement. However, they have at least one valid reason why they would give negative opinions about the first two games without playing them: turn-based combat does not appeal to them.

 

[Oppen]

What bothers me more than this statement is looking at the Bethesda forums and seeing how many people are applauding the voiced protagonist and dialogue system because the old system had "too much text thrown at you at once" and because its "more realistic." Those are actual things I read that a human somewhere thinks. Basically they've come up with an excuse for every complaint one might have regarding the new game.

A) Of course the dialogue system is realist, don't you see the dialogue wheel in front of you as you speak?
B) The dialogue system is realist, there is a dialogue wheel in front of you as you speak.
C) This dialogue system is great, all with that dialogue wheel in front of you as you speak.
D) Dialogue wheels are great. I'm hungry.

 

[raynor009]

What bothers me more than this statement is looking at the Bethesda forums and seeing how many people are applauding the voiced protagonist and dialogue system because the old system had "too much text thrown at you at once" and because its "more realistic." Those are actual things I read that a human somewhere thinks. Basically they've come up with an excuse for every complaint one might have regarding the new game.

A) Of course the dialogue system is realist, don't you see the dialogue wheel in front of you as you speak?
B) The dialogue system is realist, there is a dialogue wheel in front of you as you speak.
C) This dialogue system is great, all with that dialogue wheel in front of you as you speak.
D) Dialogue wheels are great. I'm hungry.

That fucking dialog wheel is confusing me sometimes and I had it happen to choose the wrong response so I had to reload the fucking game at earlier state(auto-save don't work for me) and play the whole thing again.

 

[Oppen]

It's just fanboys being fanboys. I'm a middle of the line kind of guy. I can say good things about Fallout 3, and I can say that I've enjoyed New Vegas very much, but on the same token, I'm not a fan of Bethesda games anymore, not since Morrowind. I use to frequent their boards, and I've been criticized for this line of thinking, especially preferring the original Fallout to Fallout 3. They just cannot fathom that others may have differing opinions. Not only that, but you must be prepared to place a <imo> tag before and after every sentence you make. It's as though everything you say, you're saying as fact, which is simply immature and fanboyish.

Not every big game draws these type of people in my experience. I can say the Half-Life community is pretty decent. The Fallout community and Elder Scrolls community, for the most part, simply isn't.

I guess the kind of game it is expected to be shapes the kind of people and argument that will appear around it. Half-Life is a great FPS with a decent story thrown in. It doesn't try to be an art of literature or an RPG. It is hard to assert that a game is a shooter and be wrong about it. Either you shoot things, or you don't. Thus, Half-Life fanbase will be less conflictive, because there isn't a person in the world that thinks Half-Life is not an FPS. The story is probably the only possible point of conflict.
With RPGs, it is harder to know, specially when you focus in semantics. "Oh, but you play the role of someone" has been heard a million times, AFAIK. But you play the role of Mario Bros in the homonym game, and I never heard someone claiming it is an RPG. "You have stats". But pretty much every game can be thrown in stats, at the very least as an implementation detail and something that you don't have a say about. The list of properties that could make or not make a game an RPG goes on and on. What should we focus in? Mechanics? Setting? Writing? RPGs are simply hard to catalogue, an IMO are not a binary thing. I don't think there is a clear line between RPG and not-RPG, but it is instead a spectrum. Beth's Fallout, fanboys wanting to admit it or not, is every day less of an RPG. This doesn't mean it won't be enjoyable (beauty has always been in the eye of the beholder), but you can't infer that because it is enjoyable for you it has good writing or is a good specimen of what an RPG is.
And since dissonance of beliefs is a thing, and nobody wants to be wrong, once you made up your mind you'll hardly concede to a differing view.

 

[Crni Vuk]

I agree, it seems the way how a developer names his game and brings a product to the market changes a lot. I am pretty sure people would be a lot less toxic - on both sides! If for example Fallout 3 was created and named as Spin Off by Bethesda, calling it Fallout DC and the Sequel to it Fallout Boston, instead as a Sequel to Fallout 1 and 2. At least that way you can always name it what it really is. A Spin-Off.

 

[LiveOnTheEdge]

...However, if they feel that they're playing a deep role playing game with great writing and someone tells them that it simply isn't, even giving examples, they might not accept it...

And even then, different flavors and all that. To some of them Fallout 4 might be the deepest thing they've played, and even if given counter examples they probably won't be familiar with them.

Or they might have lower standards and aren't bothered by the same kind of things.

 

[Oppen]

To some of them Fallout 4 might be the deepest thing they've played, and even if given counter examples they probably won't be familiar with them.

I don't know, if The Witcher series is as good as they say (I haven't played anything from the franchise to be able to judge), they probably have played something deeper to understand the comparisons, as it is a mainstream and newer game. I'd understand if they can't compare with Baldur's Gate and the classic Fallouts, but most gamers nowadays had a taste of The Witcher at least, right?

 

[Dr Fallout]

To some of them Fallout 4 might be the deepest thing they've played, and even if given counter examples they probably won't be familiar with them.

I don't know, if The Witcher series is as good as they say (I haven't played anything from the franchise to be able to judge), they probably have played something deeper to understand the comparisons, as it is a mainstream and newer game. I'd understand if they can't compare with Baldur's Gate and the classic Fallouts, but most gamers nowadays had a taste of The Witcher at least, right?

Well actually... Witcher isn't that popular though it's great certainly.

 

[Neldot]

To some of them Fallout 4 might be the deepest thing they've played, and even if given counter examples they probably won't be familiar with them.

I don't know, if The Witcher series is as good as they say (I haven't played anything from the franchise to be able to judge), they probably have played something deeper to understand the comparisons, as it is a mainstream and newer game. I'd understand if they can't compare with Baldur's Gate and the classic Fallouts, but most gamers nowadays had a taste of The Witcher at least, right?

Actually, in the comments to FO4 reviews, I've seen a lot of Beth fanboys that bashes the Witcher 3 preventively in their posts, even if no one mentioned it before in the thread, and clearly without having even bothered to play it.
It seems that the majority of them hates TW3, probably for being a better open world RPG than Fallout 4 is. Or perhaps because they still believe/hope that FO4 could be GOTY, and see the Witcher 3 as a competitor.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

Actually, in the comments to FO4 reviews, I've seen a lot of Beth fanboys that bashes the Witcher 3 preventively in their posts, even if no one mentioned it before in the thread, and clearly without having even bothered to play it.
It seems that the majority of them hates TW3, probably for being a better open world RPG than Fallout 4 is. Or perhaps because they still believe/hope that FO4 could be GOTY, and see the Witcher 3 as a competitor.

I suppose it's a good thing that I haven't completed Witcher 3 yet, at least this way it can only get better for me in role-playing games. I stopped reading Fallout 4 reviews because everytime someone says something like "the previous games had too much reading" or "Fallout 4 cured my Destiny addiction" I slightly die inside.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

To some of them Fallout 4 might be the deepest thing they've played, and even if given counter examples they probably won't be familiar with them.

I don't know, if The Witcher series is as good as they say (I haven't played anything from the franchise to be able to judge), they probably have played something deeper to understand the comparisons, as it is a mainstream and newer game. I'd understand if they can't compare with Baldur's Gate and the classic Fallouts, but most gamers nowadays had a taste of The Witcher at least, right?

Witcher series was not well known because the first game was on a modified Aurora engine (if i remember correctly) and was a very low key title. That was the same engine as Knights of the Old Republic - an older (but good) way of playing RPGs but not for the inexperienced. So it was a very different way to play compared to The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings which was so graphically demanding that only those with the highest end PCs could enjoy the full experience at the time. Witcher 2 didn't even release on consoles for a long time and Witcher 3 was the first one that got some mainstream attention because CD Projekt Red was doing some great things with their game but even that was not near the level of hype as Fallout 4.

The main difference being that while Bethesda was telling us how great Dogmeat is, how great the crafting is, how great the character creation screen is, CD Projekt Red was focusing on things that actually matter in a game such as the story and character interaction. And in my opinion that explains why Fallout 4 targets a younger audience and Witcher 3 is a more mature/adult experience.

 

[Dr Fallout]

Witcher 3 provides, Fallout 4 doesn't.