What's the opinion on Fallout 4 now that its been out for a long while?

[Samtemdo8]

Now I wanna give this game a try putting behind the elitist RPG attitude I had back in the day.

But it all depends if I can still enjoy Fallout 4 on its own merits, last time I tried that, it was with Dragon Age 2, and that game was still awful.

 

[Neuromancer]

Fallout 4 is an open-world shooter with RPG elements first and foremost. It has terrible writing, both in terms of main story and side content. There is maybe one good companion (the synth), the rest are either middling or annoying. The shooting is passable. The building mechanic very badly done, offering no overhead view and requiring you to move around on foot to build things. Speaking of, you have to pick up all kinds of useless trash all around the place to disassemble them to build the buildings and such. Weapon modding and power armor modding are also a thing, and they follow the same rules as buildings, i.e. pick up useless stuff to disassemble into craftable material.

It's an alright way to waste time. It offers nothing of substance. That's about it.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Take my opinion with a grain of salt because I have not played Fallout 4, but when the game was released my interest in it tanked because of a couple of things. So I'm not sure I'm allowed to have an opinion on the game as I have not actually played it, but I will give you the reasons I've never bothered playing it.

1. I had no interest in the character motivation. We get told that our character has a baby and the baby has been stolen and we need to find it. I understand that the character is supposed to care about the baby because it's their baby, but I really don't.

2. The very reduced dialogue options hinder the way that you can play the character and have the same problem as mass effect in that your character will often not have the dialogue option available that you would actually want to choose, or something even close. This is a problem overall in RPGs were everything is voiceacted, and I had a similar problem in Cyberpunk as well. It's less of an issue for me in other IPs that use that system, but for Fallout it makes it feel like a step backward to have fewer dialogue options.

3. The base building looked like a complete mess.

These were my immediate problems at the outset, and nothing that I have heard about the game or the story since has alleviated any of those problems (and actually from what I've understood of the main story it's quite stupid and poorly written).

 

[Samtemdo8]

Fallout 4 is an open-world shooter with RPG elements first and foremost. It has terrible writing, both in terms of main story and side content. There is maybe one good companion (the synth), the rest are either middling or annoying. The shooting is passable. The building mechanic very badly done, offering no overhead view and requiring you to move around on foot to build things. Speaking of, you have to pick up all kinds of useless trash all around the place to disassemble them to build the buildings and such. Weapon modding and power armor modding are also a thing, and they follow the same rules as buildings, i.e. pick up useless stuff to disassemble into craftable material.

It's an alright way to waste time. It offers nothing of substance. That's about it.

Elaborate on the writing of the main story and why its terrible?

 

[Gergar12]

Mods, Mods, Mods. Oh, and the endgame is okay.

Spoiler: Fallout 4 EndGame

Other than the DLCS, it consists of you fighting enemies from the factions you didn't side with while your winning faction tries to repair the APCs, tanks, and other gear from vehicles cluttered in Fallout 4, Great gear, but needs more dept, also settlements

 

[Neuromancer]

Elaborate on the writing of the main story and why its terrible?

For a start, it makes the fatal flaw of giving the main story a sense of urgency where the game incentivizes you to run around and look at everything. The story hook requires you to give a shit about finding your son, when you only see him for 2 minutes as a baby. Across the way you meet with different factions, who have no real depth to them. The first impression you get of them is all you get in terms of characterization. They are all extremely shallow. There are interesting segments, I will give it that, but those have more to do with the location rather than the writing.

TL;DR the story is thinly written, cliche, shallow and lacking in interesting characters. Even worse, you barely have any roleplaying to do. You mentioned DA2, and it's basically along the same lines (snarky, serious, nice) without any of the actually witty dialogue or any of the charm. The story feels more like an excuse to be in the game and do everything besides it rather a selling point.

 

[Agema]

Now I wanna give this game a try putting behind the elitist RPG attitude I had back in the day.

But it all depends if I can still enjoy Fallout 4 on its own merits, last time I tried that, it was with Dragon Age 2, and that game was still awful.

It's pretty good.

It's a perfectly functional FPS/RPG. I don't much like the base-building and community management gameplay (I think they were probably eyeing up Fallout Online and wanted to test it out). The gameplay is fine, it's entertaining enough, everything works okay.

I think the main problem is that Bethesda don't really have an idea what to do with Fallout, so it doesn't really do anything new. By which I mean the series has become a bit sclerotic: the same set-up, the same humour, the same factions, the same stuff. Okay, the Enclave were replaced by a new bunch of dodgy powermongers, but even still. It's still enjoyable in ways, but there's a sense it's getting old: the Fallout world has stopped going anywhere, and just become a set of cliches to be repeated in slightly different forms.

 

[09philj]

It's pretty good.

It's a perfectly functional FPS/RPG. I don't much like the base-building and community management gameplay (I think they were probably eyeing up Fallout Online and wanted to test it out). The gameplay is fine, it's entertaining enough, everything works okay.

I think the main problem is that Bethesda don't really have an idea what to do with Fallout, so it doesn't really do anything new. By which I mean the series has become a bit sclerotic: the same set-up, the same humour, the same factions, the same stuff. Okay, the Enclave were replaced by a new bunch of dodgy powermongers, but even still. It's still enjoyable in ways, but there's a sense it's getting old: the Fallout world has stopped going anywhere, and just become a set of cliches to be repeated in slightly different forms.

Fallout and The Elder Scrolls have kind of ended up in the same place, where they're fine but nothing spectacular and mostly defined by their scale. The amount of stuff to do in them, and the little loop of going to a place, getting a job, and finding more places on the way is what holds them together. I think that's fine, but as a CRPG fan it is a shame that there aren't that many examples of things like New Vegas which mix that core open world action game design with some slightly more sophisticated RPG elements.

 

[EvilRoy]

Its basically fine in as much as, if you liked Fallout 3, then you'll like Fallout 4 because its just 3 again with some more stuff and updated graphics. If you really like Fallout New Vegas then you will probably find Fallout 4 lacking, because they really didn't keep running with those design concepts.

 

[Samtemdo8]

For a start, it makes the fatal flaw of giving the main story a sense of urgency where the game incentivizes you to run around and look at everything.

This has been a thing in Fallout since the beginning.
Fallout 1,Find the Water Chip or your Vault will die of thirst.
Fallout 2, Find the Geck or your village will starve and die.
Fallout 3, Find your dad who abandoned you.
Fallout New Vegas, Find the Guys who shot you in the head.

Across the way you meet with different factions, who have no real depth to them. The first impression you get of them is all you get in terms of characterization. They are all extremely shallow. There are interesting segments, I will give it that, but those have more to do with the location rather than the writing.

Examples?

 

[Samtemdo8]

It's pretty good.

It's a perfectly functional FPS/RPG. I don't much like the base-building and community management gameplay (I think they were probably eyeing up Fallout Online and wanted to test it out). The gameplay is fine, it's entertaining enough, everything works okay.

I think the main problem is that Bethesda don't really have an idea what to do with Fallout, so it doesn't really do anything new. By which I mean the series has become a bit sclerotic: the same set-up, the same humour, the same factions, the same stuff. Okay, the Enclave were replaced by a new bunch of dodgy powermongers, but even still. It's still enjoyable in ways, but there's a sense it's getting old: the Fallout world has stopped going anywhere, and just become a set of cliches to be repeated in slightly different forms.

Perhaps its time we set a Fallout game in a completely new setting.
Considering the ENTIRE WORLD went up in smoke, how about a Fallout set in Europe or China?

New factions, new people, new takes on how people all over the world are living in the Post-Apocalypse.

 

[Hades]

Fallout and The Elder Scrolls have kind of ended up in the same place, where they're fine but nothing spectacular and mostly defined by their scale. The amount of stuff to do in them, and the little loop of going to a place, getting a job, and finding more places on the way is what holds them together.

I think that's sorta Bethesda's problem these days. It used to be their selling point. Skyrim blew everyone away because the Elder Scrolls were the only series doing such giant worlds where you can go anywhere and do everything. But these days such gigantic worlds are the norm. Bethesda isn't special anymore and now it has to compete with the rest of the industry who I personally think handle their open worlds a lot better.

Bethesda worlds always felt really artificial. Just a few scattered towns with 5 buildings and 10 NPC's, and the other 99% of the map being a giant wasteland populated exclusively by bandits and monsters. Skyrim didn't struck me as a world where people actually live, unlike Temeria where you frequently came across little villages. That the player can become the leader of every noteworthy factions even if these factions oppose each other, and leadership of them typically not meaning anything further highlight how artificial everything is.

 

[meiam]

Fine open world RPG bad fallout game.

Gunplay is fun with a all kinds of different weapon, there's a good variety of monster and location, looting is decent because there's good reason to grab stuff around the enviorntment (junk can be used to upgrade weapon/armor). Some side quest have fun story/set piece. Build options are pretty varied.

Base building is pretty pointless and feel tacked on. Main story just plain suck, its built around the institute and them making synth but there's no resolution to the mystery,

Spoiler

some character just point blank tell you you just can't understand their goal

. You also sorta have a personal goal of finding your kid, but in an RPG where you're supposed to decide your character personality/motivation this just doesn't work. Whenever you go in a conversation you always have 4 options which are: Tell me more (aka repeat what was just said), Yes, sarcastic yes, No (actually yes). The game also only has 2 towns in whole world, the idea is that you're supposed to rebuild the towns with the base building but you can't make anything that has personality.

Overall it's a fun game most of the time but is never that amazing, Play it if you feel like exploring a world while gathering loot, don't play it for the story.

 

[Trunkage]

All you guys are talking about the base game, so I'm going to talk about the DLCs
Far Harbour is better written than the original F4. The factions are a bit more fleshed out, it has a better atmosphere.... although I dont know if you want one atmosphere across a base game, as it may get boring.

Automaton leads up to a massive dungeon that pushes you. And a clever little side track... but needs to be free. This isnt worth money. Even worse for the Vault-Tec one

Nuka World is kinda interesting but suffers from New Vegasitis. Vapid factions that are meant to stand in conflict. Very distinct areas of fun play that area separated by vast stretches of nothingness. Just utterly bland NPCs. Porter is interesting though.

As to the base game. God damn the 'dungeons' are really good and creative. Car stacks, quarries, freeways, ships are turned into dungeons.... its a breath of fresh air after the usual Vault-tec/ industrial or cave dungeons. Quincy is still my favourite place to go back and retry. There is a level of interactivity that I hope they build upon. Also, verticality. And they are getting better at providing a variety of ways get through the dungeon.

Base building was a fun little waste of time. The factions had some people having tense moments... that weren't fulfilled on, making it pointless. Oh, and we get a factions that doesn't go up its own arse with the fake nostalgia normally scene in Fallout. There are only so many greasers, pretend air force tribes and knights in shining armour I can handle. Try create something new, ANYONE, whose had the Fallout licences. Same with you, Wasteland. Cutting of arms based on train based on pretend nostalgia is utterly moronic and all game could learn from trying something new. I've just been watching Battlestar Galactica and WHY WOULD YOU CALL IT NEW CAPRICA. CALL IT SOMETHING NEW.. Sorry, rant over.

The writing is okay. Deacon was interesting with his shapeshifting depending on area and spy craft tricks to through you off from discovering his background. Danse was so mechanical, with a clever twist.... that doesnt make up for it. Everyone else was bland. Maxon was the first person I've seen in the whole franchise that spoke with any passion. More of that in the future please. I really liked how the ending missions was different based on the faction you were trying to take out and who you sided with.

My biggest complaint was you either had to destroy the Institute or everyone else. It wasn't good in F3. It wasnt good in NV. Please stop. Also, where was the creative interactions with the dungeon in these quests? It's so jarring. Like, in the Diamond city DJ quest, you can shoot the DJ when he is capture instead of helping him. The gangers are spooked and run off. Why not have something similar, an assassination, threatening action or political intrigue that defeat them? I did like how many of the gang across the commonwealth were interacting with each other, at least behind the scenes. Reading terminals lead to how certain gangs broken into separate factions.... it does give the world a more lived in feel, even if its really fake. Maybe some put this in gameplay somehow.

After playing New Vegas.. F4 allows so much freedom of way to play it. It's designed for exploration. I'd put F4 on the same level as NV quality wise (and OuterWorlds, which had some really great moments but was just 4ish combat dungeons with side quests), but for VERY different reasons. And probably have it at similar levels as other people because I don't pretend the normal 'it's either the best thing in creation/ destroying the Fallout franchise' mentality that many in the fanbase have. If I was going to play one again, it would be F4. Even though I played it most recently.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Honestly? I love quite a bit about it and if Bethesda keeps half assing their games like they did with Fallout 76 then it may end up being the last truly good game they ever make. It has the same issue that all Bethesda games do, because Bethesda focuses on making larger and larger worlds rather than more populated worlds there's a few things that are absolute gold, but most of the content is middling at best and bad at worst.

But let's leave aside the issues that every Bethesda game has. Generally I love most of what it brings compared to what came before. The Settlement system is excellent and makes all that random junk all around everywhere actually worth bothering to pick up. The Armor and Weapon modding means that a single weapon or armor can remain viable for a long time by continuously upgrading it. The voiced protagonists make the story have infinitely more depth and emotion than they ever did without it. The combat system is smoother by far, the enemies are more intelligent (they can actually FIND a stealth character sometimes now!) and the leveling system is deep enough yet cuts out a lot of the fat. People say it's less of an RPG, but come on, more shooter less RPG was always the route that Fallout was going to go down. All they really did anyway was got to the point more with things.

Probably the only thing about Fallout 4 that I didn't like was how they handled Power Armor. Stepping in like Iron Man? That was great but everything else was terrible. Power Cores needed to use them for a couple minutes or so and making them OPed and thus able to shrug off practically anything... it was bad. Not only is the cores lore breaking but Power Armor is supposed to be late game equipment you use to be able to stand up to things that would tear you to shreds if you didn't have it and probably could even with it. They've functionally rendered Power Armor completely useless as you probably don't have it on hand when you actually need it because of the cores, it's overkill for nearly everything and by the time you've got enough cores on hand to pretty much use Power Armor all the time anyway you don't even need it for anything anymore.

I got 2 mods that weakened Power Armor significantly and made it not require cores more or less specifically to get rid of these issues.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Nuka World is kinda interesting but suffers from New Vegasitis. Vapid factions that are meant to stand in conflict. Very distinct areas of fun play that area separated by vast stretches of nothingness. Just utterly bland NPCs. Porter is interesting though.

Not to mention you have to play as an evil raider to even be able to access the vast majority of the DLC's content. It's either that or spend a while slaughtering every raider in the place and it's over. I understand wanting to give players an evil option after complaints that you pretty much have to be good in the base game, but there is no good option to choose which is just making the same mistake in a different way.

On the subject of choice, make them matter! Oh, the nice noble Brotherhood of Steel that we fought to support in Fallout 3 is still around! Great! And they've... basically turned into the Enclave that doesn't shoot everybody on sight. Geeze, I've heard of IPs changing hands and invalidating what happened before those guys had it, but invalidating one of their own game's plots? Fallout 4 made everything that occurred in Fallout 3 pointless. The Lone Wanderer's father sacrificed his life to keep a bunch of power hungry psychopaths from using his research... just for it to end up in the hands of a bunch of power hungry psychopaths.

My biggest complaint was you either had to destroy the Institute or everyone else.

And for some reason you still have to destroy the Institute even if you singlehandedly kill every last Institute member and Synth in the place. Why not just take the place for yourself or turn it over to your allies?

I also would've preferred if you were able to get most (there has to be at least 1 faction to fight against after all) factions on the Institute's side somehow rather than just destroying them. It would've made for a lot more interesting of an endgame.

 

[Asita]

1. I had no interest in the character motivation. We get told that our character has a baby and the baby has been stolen and we need to find it. I understand that the character is supposed to care about the baby because it's their baby, but I really don't.

I'm going to give a variation on this one: Here's what happens in the first few minutes of the game: You create your character, walk around your home for a few minutes, then run with your spouse and baby to the fallout shelter just as the bombs come down. You are immediately put into cryo, and then at some undisclosed point in the future you and your family are defrosted, your spouse is killed, and your baby kidnapped. You are then promptly refrozen and then unfrozen again at another undisclosed point in the future. No points for guessing that more than a few years have probably passed between these incidents, because the game probably couldn't have telegraphed it any harder even if they'd used an actual semaphore.

Here's where it loses me, however: Your character still firmly believes that their baby is still...well, a baby. Stupid, but not wholly surprising. From their perspective, only seconds passed between seeing their spouse get killed and getting released from their stasis pod, even if in actuality years had passed between the events. So the cognitive dissonance makes sense in-character. What doesn't make sense is that the devs took this premise - a survivor who just lost their spouse and is desperately searching for their kidnapped infant - and decided to make an open-world game out of it, with a heavy emphasis on base building and developing alliances.

Why??? Just why? What dolt decided that a game structured to be a sandbox should be tied together by a story that by all rights is driven by a desperation that should outright give the protagonist tunnel vision? And on a similar note, what tone-deaf buffoon decided "Hmm, you know what this game needs? Romanceable companions!" The player character only just lost their loving spouse! If you check off the romanceable companions box like that, the only thing it accomplishes is cheapening the already featherlight emotional weight of the tragedy you started the game with! It's so damn frustrating from a storytelling perspective.

Point being that it's not that I don't care about finding the baby, it's that the game seems to be trying its damnedest to convince me that I shouldn't care because evidently the protagonist doesn't.

 

[Neuromancer]

This has been a thing in Fallout since the beginning.
Fallout 1,Find the Water Chip or your Vault will die of thirst.
Fallout 2, Find the Geck or your village will starve and die.

Sure, but the way those storylines are structured exploration is organically integrated to the game's core. You don't know where the water chip or GECK are, you don't have anything besides a couple of pointers to go. Finding the things requires you to explore of your own volition, and across the way find out more about the world. Hell, the first game even has a time limit, and many people hate it, but it works well make you feel the pressure and get invested in your quest. As opposed to F4, where you are basically given your lead from the start, and all you have to do is follow it.

Not to mention, both of those are 20 year old games at this point, and one would expect VG writing to progress rather than regress

Fallout 3, Find your dad who abandoned you.

And Fallout 3's writing is terrible, so no surprises Bethesda didn't even bother to improve on their already shit formula. But hey, you got more time with your Dad at the start of F3 than you do with your baby for almost the entirety of F4, so it's actually gotten worse, not better.

Fallout New Vegas, Find the Guys who shot you in the head.

I mean, isn't that good enough? A guy shooting you in the head while taunting you isn't enough of a personal motivation to get to Vegas and shoot him in the head back?

Examples?

Brotherhood - Synths bad, destroy synths.
Railroad - Synths misunderstood, help synths.
Minutemen - "A settlement needs our help"

I may sound reductive, but take for example the Legion in NV, who though largely being almost cartoonishly evil, you get to talk to Caesar and listen to his grand plans, and though his idea of dialectics is completely false you get something a lot more sophisticated than just a roving band of roman LARPers. Hell, let's not even go with a major faction, let's take the Great Khans for example. At this point, after having their shit kicked in for generations, the Khans are reduced to a small band, making drugs to survive. Their great raider past is long gone. What do they do now? Do they join the Legion and survive individually, even though it means their "death" as Great Khans? Is there point in sticking to their tradition if it leads to a dead end and their deaths in general?

Not to mention that all of the factions stories tie in to a greater theme of old world nostalgia building something new instead of repeating the mistakes of the past.

Fallout 4, meanwhile, has no real characterization or themes to it.

 

[Dreiko]

I always liked it, it felt like an evolution from fo3 in every way outside of the storytelling and rpg elements. The only issue I had with the game was the way they handled multiple choices and dialogue options and so on. It's more a game about gameplay and ambiance than story for me though, it's more about the feel of playing it, so I enjoyed it a bunch.

 

[bluegate]

Got distracted by the game's base building, then promptly forgot about the plot and dropped the game.