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

[Trunkage]

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.

Just going to point out that in Fallout 1 you are GIVEN A LOCATION OF ANOTHER VAULT TO CHECK OUT IF THEY HAVE A CHIP.


It's certainly not 'volition'. Or any exploration or talking to people. The Overseer gives you the lead before kicking you out. Its a direct lead that is way more useful than in Fallout 4. The lead in Fallout 4 is 'go talk to the detective because.... he's a detective. You know, a person who investigates crimes and missing persons.' What a lead...

Anyway, here's your start in Fallout 2. Way more obscure. But at least you told of the potential location but you need a map off a trader


Where as the people you send you on your way in Fallout 4 have no idea your son is in the Institute and just send you to Diamond City to find out

 

[Neuromancer]

It's certainly not 'volition'. Or any exploration or talking to people. The Overseer gives you the lead before kicking you out. Its a direct lead that is way more useful than in Fallout 4. The lead in Fallout 4 is 'go talk to the detective because.... he's a detective. You know, a person who investigates crimes and missing persons.' What a lead...

Yes. And Vault 15 is a dead end. If you go there first things first (and manage to get through it), you have no idea what to do besides explore and eventually find out about Necropolis.

 

[laggyteabag]

I never finished it.

From what I remember, I didn't mind the shooting, and I enjoyed the weapon modification system... but that is really all I can say that I enjoyed.

There were a few standout moments for me, like an abandoned shopping mall, with barely any light seeping through the boarded-up windows, with dozens of sleeping ghouls that I needed to navigate around, but mostly, I just found the side content to be... distracting.

The game starts with your partner getting murdered, and your baby getting stolen, but once you are out of the vault, you are free to wonder around doing anything, the baby be damned. The game lost its focus immediately, and I stopped caring. Admittedly, this is an issue that a lot of open-world games face, but I feel like this was particularly bad in FO4.

The base building was also clunky garbage.

Im sure mods can turn this game into something amazing - like the rest of Bethesda's catalogue - but It wasn't a game that I particularly enjoyed when it first came out, and I haven't revisited it, since.

 

[Dreiko]

I never finished it.

From what I remember, I didn't mind the shooting, and I enjoyed the weapon modification system... but that is really all I can say that I enjoyed.

There were a few standout moments for me, like an abandoned shopping mall, with barely any light seeping through the boarded-up windows, with dozens of sleeping ghouls that I needed to navigate around, but mostly, I just found the side content to be... distracting.

The game starts with your partner getting murdered, and your baby getting stolen, but once you are out of the vault, you are free to wonder around doing anything, the baby be damned. The game lost its focus immediately, and I stopped caring. Admittedly, this is an issue that a lot of open-world games face, but I feel like this was particularly bad in FO4.

The base building was also clunky garbage.

Im sure mods can turn this game into something amazing - like the rest of Bethesda's catalogue - but It wasn't a game that I particularly enjoyed when it first came out, and I haven't revisited it, since.

The game really isn't about the main quest, it's like 90% side content, it's more about just exploring the world and finding out cool things about it while having fun adventures and becoming powerful. The plot is just how they kick off the adventure. You can legit play for 200 hours without even touching the main quest.


It's not the game you wanna play if you want engaging story, it's more about the ambiance, the feeling of being in a post apocalyptic wasteland with your dog and your robot suit blasting mutants at the sound of 1930s music while paying for guns with coke caps.

 

[meiam]

The game really isn't about the main quest, it's like 90% side content, it's more about just exploring the world and finding out cool things about it while having fun adventures and becoming powerful. The plot is just how they kick off the adventure. You can legit play for 200 hours without even touching the main quest.


It's not the game you wanna play if you want engaging story, it's more about the ambiance, the feeling of being in a post apocalyptic wasteland with your dog and your robot suit blasting mutants at the sound of 1930s music while paying for guns with coke caps.

Hell the game is way better if you ignore the main quest. I'd honestly consider the game better if they drop the baby main plot and just had your main character wake up from cryo and just goes on adventure with no real goal.

 

[Dreiko]

Hell the game is way better if you ignore the main quest. I'd honestly consider the game better if they drop the baby main plot and just had your main character wake up from cryo and just goes on adventure with no real goal.

For me the main plot was fun because the institute was my faction of choice to begin with, since I figured if there's a way forward for humanity theirs has the best chance, so seeing how the main story tied to that (as well as the whole process of getting to them and whatnot) was quite a bit of fun but yeah beyond introducing some cool NPCs to you like the robot detective it's definitely not worth much. I think it's in the game cause some players feel the need for direction in these games and can't just start the game and decide "I'm going west today" and make a session out of that lol.

 

[Piscian]

I only got an hour in. My position is unique in that I only recently beat Fallout 3 last year. I was very unhappy with the Fallout 3 experience. Unlike morrowind, Fallout 3 was a largely empty experience. You could spend all day wandering through the desert in Fallout 3 and not find shit. No quests no nothing. I started Fallout 4, but it felt near identical barring updated graphics. I keep meaning to go back and give lit another shot.

 

[sXeth]

Basic Bethesda stew.

Big open world, only a bare handful of places memorable within it whatsoever.'

The story would work well enough if it wasn't thrown in a sandbox where you're often incentivized to completely ignore it.

Little if anything seems to have lasting consequence on the world.

A handful of side quests amidst it all are probably the highlights of the game.

The moment-to-moment gameplay and mechanics are loitering just underneath the average bar. Most of the interesting perks in the levelup system are gimmicky at best or useless at worst.


Throw in a tacked on settlement building system that seems to have promise, and would probably have made a better storyline arc for this type of game. But they're too lazy/cheap/incompetent to actually create an engine that would support that properly so its all clunky and half-assed.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I think it is the 2nd worst Fallout game ever made. Shallow, pointless, with broken systems and a broken questing system. All on top of a story that doesn't make any sense.

To me, writing is the most important part of an RPG. A good story is REQUIRED for me to get into a game where choices are supposed to matter. But Fallout 4's story is stupid and makes absolutely no sense, which pulled me out of it completely. Top that off with the pointless Preston Garvy "another settlement" garbage and it's clear that Bethesda doesn't care about their work anymore.

Fallout 76 proved they don't care, though the warning signs where there in 4.

 

[happyninja42]

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.

Yeah this is basically my thoughts. I really enjoyed FO3, found NV boring as fuck, along with most Obsidian titles. I enjoy FO4 a lot, it's a fun game.

I think the hate for bethesda FO's is overblown, and the fanatical worship of obsidian is overhyped.

 

[SilentPony]

I like it. I like the base building, though I wish it was more streamlined, and there was some auto stuff. Like if I bring enough material, I'd like to see some of the citizens take some initiative and build like a house, or defenses or shit even just plant some veggies while I'm out. It almost feels like all the characters were meant to be synths with no survival instincts and you're supposed to baby them.

Also I'm not sure what happened to the difficulty, but its not hard at all. Guns and ammo are everywhere. Other Fallout games had like weapons hidden behind perks or stats, and so you couldn't just use a laser pistol from the word go. But Fallout 4 is like sure, its early game, you have a handful of rounds and two guns, here's a full suit of armor and a minigun, never look back! At a certain point, I'd say about 3-4 hours before you get to Diamond City and are just pimping around the Commonwealth you basically break the game's difficulty over your knee like its Batman's back.
Like the problem with Skyrim, there's all this in depth tactics, cocktails, scopes, trait and talents, and nothing is as effective as just having a sniper rifle, shotgun, and stimpacks. Between those 3 items you can beat 99-99.99% of all enemies easily.
Maybe throw the molotov cocktails in there to, I often found those useful for zombie crowd control, and keeping bandits behind over while I reload.

 

[Samtemdo8]

I think it is the 2nd worst Fallout game ever made. Shallow, pointless, with broken systems and a broken questing system. All on top of a story that doesn't make any sense.

To me, writing is the most important part of an RPG. A good story is REQUIRED for me to get into a game where choices are supposed to matter. But Fallout 4's story is stupid and makes absolutely no sense, which pulled me out of it completely. Top that off with the pointless Preston Garvy "another settlement" garbage and it's clear that Bethesda doesn't care about their work anymore.

Fallout 76 proved they don't care, though the warning signs where there in 4.

Does the game actively acknowledges that the player character is a person from the Pre-War Era and was frozen in time? And that he or she knows first hand what life was like in the Pre-Nuclear Apocalypse?

Does anyone recognize him as such other then the antagonists that kidnapped his or her child. Does the Brotherhood recognize that fact?

Because you think a character like that in the Fallout universe would be a bigger deal?

 

[meiam]

Does the game actively acknowledges that the player character is a person from the Pre-War Era and was frozen in time? And that he or she knows first hand what life was like in the Pre-Nuclear Apocalypse?

Does anyone recognize him as such other then the antagonists that kidnapped his or her child. Does the Brotherhood recognize that fact?

Because you think a character like that in the Fallout universe would be a bigger deal?

Never, at most it'll be played as a joke.

 

[stroopwafel]

My impression of FO4 was a game where you played the garbage collector in an open world semi FPS filled to the brim with fetch quests and a story even the developers openly didn't care about with some clumsily imitated minecraft component. It also looked butt ugly.

 

[Samtemdo8]

So far the best thing about Fallout 4 is that it is a step up from 3 and New Vegas in terms of technical performance and details.

Guns shoot and feel VASTLY better then they were in Fallout 3/New Vegas.

Character models are far better, and feel more alive and animated instead of standing around.

And I don't mind the idea of the player character being voiced and what not. Provided of course the choices of dialog and the tone of the actor are up to snuff. Especially since I feel a voice protagonist works in a Fallout setting given the world has far more personality then other RPG settings which leaves far more wiggle room for how your character would act and this would be enhanced with a voiced protagonist.

These tiny details makes Fallout 4 feel like a far bigger leap.

Which is why I hope that Fallout 4 New Vegas mod remake happens


The best of both worlds, Fallout New Vegas' rich RPG gameplay depth and story combined with Fallout 4's Gunplay, Character Models, and probably voice acting.

 

[Dalisclock]

I think it is the 2nd worst Fallout game ever made. Shallow, pointless, with broken systems and a broken questing system. All on top of a story that doesn't make any sense.

Fallout 76 proved they don't care, though the warning signs where there in 4.

For a second I thought you were gonna bring up Tactics or Brotherhood of Steel as the 1st worst game.

But then I remembered most people don't remember those were even a thing, let along played them.

 

[09philj]

For a second I thought you were gonna bring up Tactics or Brotherhood of Steel as the 1st worst game.

But then I remembered most people don't remember those were even a thing, let along played them.

I know one singular person who has played Brotherhood of Steel. He also paid full price for 76, poor sod. I'm not aware of anyone having played Tactics. I own it because it was in a bundle but have never touched it.

 

[Dalisclock]

I know one singular person who has played Brotherhood of Steel. He also paid full price for 76, poor sod. I'm not aware of anyone having played Tactics. I own it because it was in a bundle but have never touched it.

I played Tactics back when it released but not BoS. I've heard BoS was actually a worse version of Tactics and Tactics was one of those "Good Idea, Poor execution" games. Like, it's a fallout game only really in name and the idea of having your own little squad of BoS troops to do combat missions with sounds kinda cool, but it's a discount version of XCOM at best and despite the fact you have much the same skills as FO1 and FO2, only the combat skills are remotely useful so it's unclear why they bothered including the others.

The plot also directly contradicts a fair bit of the other games and while there are vehicles in the game you can use, they're fairly useless for the most part. Like the Car in FO2 had purpose and reason to get and use it, while the vehicles are useful in like 1 mission each and that's it. What really sucks is that while the game is built around this idea of the BoS builds an empire in the midwest by offering protection in exchange for resources, recruits and loyalty (thus justifying your expanding pool of who can be recruited into your squad and better weapons) it doesn't really feel like it's used to any real extent beyond that and even XCOM had base building which this game sorely lacked.

So if you haven't played it, there's no real reason to unless you just have to play every Fallout game for completist sake. Keep in mind I played the first two FO games multiple times but played FO Tactics all of once and never bothered to reinstall it again.

 

[Agema]

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.

What Bethesda needs is a storyteller. Someone with a vision for an overarching plot and worldbuilding, an idea for how things can develop. In Fallout 1 & 2, the NCR is busy rebuilding civilisation. A new civilisation. Fallout 3 & 4 (let's skip NV, as Obsidian made it) is just returning you to the original Fallout of trying to rebuild civilisation, but somewhere else. And what you get is the detritus of the old world replayed ad infinitum, and still nobody's made anything new. The Institute was perhaps a ray of light, except for being totally stupidly excessive tech and kind of fascists so you had to nuke them. So, an Enclave replacement, except with a more utopian inclination. Meh. And I would guess Fallout 5 (which will be in about 10 years, when Fallout Online finally reaches the end of its shelf-life) will be much of the same.

Likewise, Elder Scrolls is kind of garbage - it is a series of the most baseline cliche fantasy claptrap. There's this place with several kingdoms and an empire, and stuff happens, and every once in a while stuff gets shuffled around a bit, a threat to the world appears, someone gets out of prison to save the world, blah blah blah.

As you say, what keeps them going is their ability to create scale and art. Oblivion was a bit dull. Skyrim had that massive cave place, or that city in the Dwemer ruins. But like your average Hollywood starlet, it's pretty but dull: some superficial enjoyment, and nothing to really hold your attention. I mean, it would be nice to have some in-depth interactions. Unfortunately, it's not much there: for instance if I remember rightly in Skyrim, you pretty much marry someone by giving them an amulet and they say yes. Fallout 4 gets slightly more complex by doing some quests with the character and not being an obvious arse. Surely, the stuff of true love. This should really be what makes you care: instead, it's token game mechanic.

I'm sure at some point part of the tension is between open world a linear narrative. It's hard to give so much of a shit in an Open World, because it intrinsically leans to the generic.

 

[Samtemdo8]

Likewise, Elder Scrolls is kind of garbage - it is a series of the most baseline cliche fantasy claptrap. There's this place with several kingdoms and an empire, and stuff happens, and every once in a while stuff gets shuffled around a bit, a threat to the world appears, someone gets out of prison to save the world, blah blah blah.

Brah, you clearly never played Morrowind and how weird and out there Dunmer lore is. And the land itself is alien.

Bethesda is just fucking lazy in advertising this series by making it look like your safe and typical fantasy kingdom with Oblivion and Skyrim.

Michael Kirkbride gave the series a unique flavor and identity when he went all out in Morrowind, Redguard, and Battlespire.