Anyone else disappointed with Fallout 4?

[WolfThomas]

I'm enjoying the game. But I guess what I dislike about all the new Fallouts (3 + NV) too is that people are still leaving in squalor, shacks and wearing dirty clothes. It's 210 years post the War. The say it was because they were nuked more than the west coast. But it's the time from now until Napoleon. It's a long time.

In Fallout 2, earlier then the current game society is rebuilding itself. Some towns were ramshackle from poverty or notoriety (Klamath, Gecko, New Reno). But take the NCR captial it has adobe or red brick buildings, paved roads, electricity, wood fences. NCR constables wear new blue police uniforms. It's a functioning new society.

The same for bottle caps. They were currency in Fallout 1 because they were a scarce commodity back by the Water Merchants of the Hub, the reason they were money is that they represented so many litres of pure water. Later they were replaced by NCR minted coins containing gold.

New Vegas actually explained nicely why they have bottlecaps again in Vegas. After the gold mines at Redding ran dry, the Government printed money, but inflation drove them up. The Water merchants restored the old cap machines and started trading with them again. That stabilised the economy and is why 5 NCR paper dollars buys 2 caps. The legion has access to gold and silver mines so they mint there own currency, 4 caps to a silver piece, 100 to a gold piece.

I guess as much as tramping around the Wasteland is fun, I'd love to see a game about the new society and a bigger picture.

 

[Telefonegun]

Fallout 4 isn't so bad when you think of as Skyrim with guns because it isn't Fallout game. Fallout 4 dialog system? The dialog system.. what am I talking about there is no such thing. It would just probably confuse the console players thinks Bethesda. UI that works with mouse and keyboard? What are these things you are talking about? :says Bethesda. We used Xbone pad to code and test this thing says Bethesda.

There are only 2 Fallout games and both of them had nothing to do with Bethesda. The consolitis is just so bad that with 3 and 4 that they aren't even playeble without mods on keyboard and mouse. Also Nvidia Gameworks titles are nightmerishly bugged on AMD cards. I'm still having graphics issues even with the latest hotfix driver. It seems lately even Nvidia users have been getting short end of the stick with many Gameworks titles(Batman Knight, Fallout 4, Just Cause 3) with no Sli support even if Nvidia is advertising such options.

 

[Post Tenebrae Morte]

I find it funny people try to say that fallout 3 and those released after are not true fallout games, when, if I remember correctly, Chris avellone himself stated that if he could, he'd erase the first two games.

 

[Telefonegun]

I find it funny people try to say that fallout 3 and those released after are not true fallout games, when, if I remember correctly, Chris avellone himself stated that if he could, he'd erase the first two games.

It isn't uncommon to great minds to think that the masterpieces they have created aren't worth anything. For example even Stanley Kubrick didn't overly like many of his masterpice movies and though that they are bit rubbish. Mona Lisa is layers and layers of paint showing that Da Vinci wasn't overly fond of it either.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

My main disappointment was the lack of large settlements. I get that some of the areas of the map were designated for custom player built settlements, but having Diamond City be the main, almost exclusive city in the game was disappointing. It's not even that large, and certainly doesn't feel even as big as the structure the city is built in. That's pretty much the problem with the map as a whole. It's honestly not that big. It's a decent size when you factor in everything as a whole, but when you're just standing on the outside, or walk by the same exact buildings multiple times, it doesn't feel large.

And I'm referring to top-side areas that are visible on the wasteland. I know there are a lot of areas to explore that require separate loading screens to get to, but I was expecting a much larger world in my "Next generating of gaming".

I like my game worlds huge, even if I don't use all that space right away. It's just nice to know that if I come back to the game for another play-through, there's potentially areas I have yet to explore.

I do enjoy the refined combat however. It's still not up to snuff compared to other shooters, but it's much more fluid than the previous 3-d games.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Overall I like the game a lot, there are some things related to the Main Quest and the Institute that has me confused, spoilers in tags below

Spoiler: The Institute and Main Quest spoilers

For the first half of the game the danger of Synth infiltrators and people being abducted and replaced by Synths is played up. We find out that the attempt to unite the settlements of the Commonwealth in some sort of provisional government ended when a Synth infiltrator massacred all the people in said provisional government and we get to hear about and see ourselves that Synths can be anywhere and can be dangerous.
Then, we finally get into the Institute and the whole plot thread about Synth infiltrators just vanishes. Father handwaves away that it was "necessary" to destroy the provisional government, but no explanation is given as to why the Institute still replaces people and in fact Father seems to hint that the Institute doesn't do it anymore since he claims the Institute "doesn't interfere" with the surface and a large plot point is that they once more will take an interest in surface matters. We are also not told what happens to those abducted, some of them, we can learn, were used in Virgil's FEV experiments but that doesn't tell us what happened to all those abducted after Virgil sabotaged the FEV experiments and they were shut down.

Then there's the problem with the Gen 3 Synths and their similarity to humans. We know that Gen 3s are "made" from organic parts and have all the internal organs of a human but also some "synth" parths that makes them machines. Yet we are not told why you'd waste resources mass-cloning organs for all your robots when we are also told that resources and power are scarce for the Institute. We are also never given any explanation for why you'd us Gen 3s for stuff like gardening or maintenance jobs when a Mr. Handy or Gen 1 can do those jobs just as well and with less resource expenditure.
Father also states that Synths are machines and have no sapience, free will and no emotions and that any semblance of such is just "very advanced programming". This flies in the face of the Railroad quests where it is made clear that Synths are sentient, have a free will and exhibit strong emotions (all of this must be true since they are apparently so afraid of being "re-programmed" or decommissioned that they flee for their lives from the Institute). This issue is never explored further and it is frankly baffling that these supposedly brilliant scientists haven't even once considered where programming end and sapience begins in terms of machines and AI, you know, stuff that we are discussing already today. Never mind that the game clearly establishes that robots and machines can have advanced AIs that are self-aware and sapient (Curie is the most prominent example but Nick Valentine also qualifies), yet no chance is given to call Father on this or to discuss it with anyone in the Institute.

All in all, the entire Institute portion of the game feels severely underdeveloped and a lot of earlier plot points are just dropped in favor of trying to awe the player into favoring the Institute by putting the affable Father/Shaun in charge of the Institute. This is despite the fact that his gentle demeanor and seemingly benevolent goals stand in stark contrast to the de-facto fascism, xenophobia and racism that the Institute exhibits. None of those things can be discussed with anyone in the Institute and none of the other factions really bring it up in favor of the other factions just going "let's murder the Institute". It feels as if Fallout 4 tried to go the route of New Vegas, but had a writing staff that wasn't up to the task of properly fleshing out the games most important faction.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Overall I like the game a lot, there are some things related to the Main Quest and the Institute that has me confused, spoilers in tags below

Spoiler: The Institute and Main Quest spoilers

For the first half of the game the danger of Synth infiltrators and people being abducted and replaced by Synths is played up. We find out that the attempt to unite the settlements of the Commonwealth in some sort of provisional government ended when a Synth infiltrator massacred all the people in said provisional government and we get to hear about and see ourselves that Synths can be anywhere and can be dangerous.
Then, we finally get into the Institute and the whole plot thread about Synth infiltrators just vanishes. Father handwaves away that it was "necessary" to destroy the provisional government, but no explanation is given as to why the Institute still replaces people and in fact Father seems to hint that the Institute doesn't do it anymore since he claims the Institute "doesn't interfere" with the surface and a large plot point is that they once more will take an interest in surface matters. We are also not told what happens to those abducted, some of them, we can learn, were used in Virgil's FEV experiments but that doesn't tell us what happened to all those abducted after Virgil sabotaged the FEV experiments and they were shut down.

Then there's the problem with the Gen 3 Synths and their similarity to humans. We know that Gen 3s are "made" from organic parts and have all the internal organs of a human but also some "synth" parths that makes them machines. Yet we are not told why you'd waste resources mass-cloning organs for all your robots when we are also told that resources and power are scarce for the Institute. We are also never given any explanation for why you'd us Gen 3s for stuff like gardening or maintenance jobs when a Mr. Handy or Gen 1 can do those jobs just as well and with less resource expenditure.
Father also states that Synths are machines and have no sapience, free will and no emotions and that any semblance of such is just "very advanced programming". This flies in the face of the Railroad quests where it is made clear that Synths are sentient, have a free will and exhibit strong emotions (all of this must be true since they are apparently so afraid of being "re-programmed" or decommissioned that they flee for their lives from the Institute). This issue is never explored further and it is frankly baffling that these supposedly brilliant scientists haven't even once considered where programming end and sapience begins in terms of machines and AI, you know, stuff that we are discussing already today. Never mind that the game clearly establishes that robots and machines can have advanced AIs that are self-aware and sapient (Curie is the most prominent example but Nick Valentine also qualifies), yet no chance is given to call Father on this or to discuss it with anyone in the Institute.

All in all, the entire Institute portion of the game feels severely underdeveloped and a lot of earlier plot points are just dropped in favor of trying to awe the player into favoring the Institute by putting the affable Father/Shaun in charge of the Institute. This is despite the fact that his gentle demeanor and seemingly benevolent goals stand in stark contrast to the de-facto fascism, xenophobia and racism that the Institute exhibits. None of those things can be discussed with anyone in the Institute and none of the other factions really bring it up in favor of the other factions just going "let's murder the Institute". It feels as if Fallout 4 tried to go the route of New Vegas, but had a writing staff that wasn't up to the task of properly fleshing out the games most important faction.

Part of me feels likes the Institute was not intended to be a faction you could side with early in game development, and all of the questions you (And me, for that matter) want to ask aren't available because the answers would shoehorn anyone who's not playing a complete sociopath into a Power Armor fueled Fatman empowered murder spree before faction lock-in is even in sight.

However...

Spoiler

-They still replace people so they can run science tests on the surface and so they can keep an eye on whats going on. You can get some quest to make science supply runs to Synths.
-Some walk by overheard conversations imply that the Gen 1 and Gen 2 construction lines have been completely shut down. We also see one of the Gen 3 assembly lines, and it's remarkably small and fast (One medium size room and about 40 seconds per Synth). Since the place in underground, perhaps its a size issue?
-Father quite obviously doesn't give a crap about the surface, and most of the scientist in the Institute don't seem to care either. I always just viewed his claims of morality to either be outright lies, or a sign he's so far removed from reality that he honestly doesn't think much about the ruin he inflicts on the surface.
-The Institute's refusal to acknowledge sapient AI rings hallow, and Father's claims of such are completely undermined when he...

Spoiler: Non-Institute Faction Ending Spoilers

sends you a synth boy to raise as your own.

So I always just read Father's insistence that Synths are not sentient as the desperate reasoning of bigots and slavers, no better then real world slavers who insisted enslaving other races was ok because they are 'less than' your own race. You just can't say it in game, because it's pretty hard to side with a 19th century slave owner, even if he is your own son.

So... yah. I think the Institute was supposed to be the Enclave of Fallout 4 - An organization you could maybe somewhat sorta empathize with, but which you would gladly destroy because they're balls to the wall evil. I would not be surprised if the majority of the last portion of the game was from an extremely late re-write.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Spoiler

-They still replace people so they can run science tests on the surface and so they can keep an eye on whats going on. You can get some quest to make science supply runs to Synths.
-Some walk by overheard conversations imply that the Gen 1 and Gen 2 construction lines have been completely shut down. We also see one of the Gen 3 assembly lines, and it's remarkably small and fast (One medium size room and about 40 seconds per Synth). Since the place in underground, perhaps its a size issue?
-Father quite obviously doesn't give a crap about the surface, and most of the scientist in the Institute don't seem to care either. I always just viewed his claims of morality to either be outright lies, or a sign he's so far removed from reality that he honestly doesn't think much about the ruin he inflicts on the surface.
-The Institute's refusal to acknowledge sapient AI rings hallow, and Father's claims of such are completely undermined when he...

Spoiler: Non-Institute Faction Ending Spoilers

sends you a synth boy to raise as your own.

Spoiler

Thanks for the answers! At least the first one I never bothered with since the Radiant Quests had gotten to me at that point (so many Settlements that apparently can't do anything to protect themselves) and the only ones I did were the DIA caches because they contained good loot. The second I must simply have missed and the second two just speaks about how oddly written Father is. It is as if they are trying to smash two separate characters into one and the end result is that he comes off as a compulsive liar instead.

 

[Comic Sans]

Overall I like the game a lot, there are some things related to the Main Quest and the Institute that has me confused, spoilers in tags below

Spoiler: The Institute and Main Quest spoilers

For the first half of the game the danger of Synth infiltrators and people being abducted and replaced by Synths is played up. We find out that the attempt to unite the settlements of the Commonwealth in some sort of provisional government ended when a Synth infiltrator massacred all the people in said provisional government and we get to hear about and see ourselves that Synths can be anywhere and can be dangerous.
Then, we finally get into the Institute and the whole plot thread about Synth infiltrators just vanishes. Father handwaves away that it was "necessary" to destroy the provisional government, but no explanation is given as to why the Institute still replaces people and in fact Father seems to hint that the Institute doesn't do it anymore since he claims the Institute "doesn't interfere" with the surface and a large plot point is that they once more will take an interest in surface matters. We are also not told what happens to those abducted, some of them, we can learn, were used in Virgil's FEV experiments but that doesn't tell us what happened to all those abducted after Virgil sabotaged the FEV experiments and they were shut down.

Then there's the problem with the Gen 3 Synths and their similarity to humans. We know that Gen 3s are "made" from organic parts and have all the internal organs of a human but also some "synth" parths that makes them machines. Yet we are not told why you'd waste resources mass-cloning organs for all your robots when we are also told that resources and power are scarce for the Institute. We are also never given any explanation for why you'd us Gen 3s for stuff like gardening or maintenance jobs when a Mr. Handy or Gen 1 can do those jobs just as well and with less resource expenditure.
Father also states that Synths are machines and have no sapience, free will and no emotions and that any semblance of such is just "very advanced programming". This flies in the face of the Railroad quests where it is made clear that Synths are sentient, have a free will and exhibit strong emotions (all of this must be true since they are apparently so afraid of being "re-programmed" or decommissioned that they flee for their lives from the Institute). This issue is never explored further and it is frankly baffling that these supposedly brilliant scientists haven't even once considered where programming end and sapience begins in terms of machines and AI, you know, stuff that we are discussing already today. Never mind that the game clearly establishes that robots and machines can have advanced AIs that are self-aware and sapient (Curie is the most prominent example but Nick Valentine also qualifies), yet no chance is given to call Father on this or to discuss it with anyone in the Institute.

All in all, the entire Institute portion of the game feels severely underdeveloped and a lot of earlier plot points are just dropped in favor of trying to awe the player into favoring the Institute by putting the affable Father/Shaun in charge of the Institute. This is despite the fact that his gentle demeanor and seemingly benevolent goals stand in stark contrast to the de-facto fascism, xenophobia and racism that the Institute exhibits. None of those things can be discussed with anyone in the Institute and none of the other factions really bring it up in favor of the other factions just going "let's murder the Institute". It feels as if Fallout 4 tried to go the route of New Vegas, but had a writing staff that wasn't up to the task of properly fleshing out the games most important faction.

To add to that, the game doesn't do a very good job of giving the factions proper backstory. In New Vegas, even without spending a lot of time with them, by the time I got a short way into the main quest I knew from both reputation and personal interaction what the factions stood for, what their upsides were, and what their downsides were. It all felt very organic for the most part. I knew where they all stood in the world and felt like I could take a side. With Fallout 4 the factions felt like they were painted only in very broad strokes and the only way to get to the interesting information is to work with them continuously. When almost all of the factions have mutually exclusive goals, if you wanna actually favor one like you did in New Vegas then the world building suffers massively. The game expects you to do everything on the first try which feels like it defeats the purpose of faction picking. And as you pointed out, what you do get isn't necessarily well explained. The game spends ages building up the Institute in the world, and then when you can finally get answers to counterbalance what you've seen they don't even address it. You can only continue to interact with them and get some degree of answers if you work with them, which one might not want their character to do. The game doesn't juggle faction gameplay well at all, and actively punishes players for roleplaying their group by not presenting information well.

 

[IceForce]

Spoiler

-Some walk by overheard conversations imply that the Gen 1 and Gen 2 construction lines have been completely shut down. We also see one of the Gen 3 assembly lines, and it's remarkably small and fast (One medium size room and about 40 seconds per Synth). Since the place in underground, perhaps its a size issue?

Spoiler

One of the quests in the Institute questline involves you chairing a heads-of-departments meeting, and during the meeting you're asked if you want to either increase synth production, or focus on weapons research (because apparently they can't do both).
I dunno what, if anything, the outcome of this choice has, however, all I know is that when they asked me if I wanted to increase synth production I was like "FUCK no!". It takes like 40 seconds to make a new synth, and that's still not fast enough? What do they DO with them all?

So... yah. I think the Institute was supposed to be the Enclave of Fallout 4 - An organization you could maybe somewhat sorta empathize with, but which you would gladly destroy because they're balls to the wall evil. I would not be surprised if the majority of the last portion of the game was from an extremely late re-write.

I think you're right. I think part-way through development, Bethesda suddenly remembered that a significant number of Fallout 3 players complained that they couldn't do a 100% evil playthrough and couldn't side with the Enclave. (Or more specifically, you couldn't tell the BoS to fuck off. You had to side with them whether you wanted to or not.)

Not wanting those same complaints to pop up again, Beth decided to make the Institute a playable faction, ... and this is the result.

 

[IceForce]

Speaking of the Institute, have any of you used X6-88 much as a follower? If you have him hanging around a while, and you do things that please him, he'll start to open up with some of his opinions. One of the random lines of dialogue he says is "The sooner the surface-dwellers all die out, the better." or something like that.

I mean, Jesus, it's like listening to John Henry Eden all over again (only without the option to convince him that the wastelanders are good people). It kinda puts the kibosh on the Institute claiming that they're not bigots or sociopaths and that they're not here to 'interfere'.

 

[The_Lost_King]

I'm not disappointed. All I expected was for the gameplay to more fun than 3 and Vegas, and for power armor to be awesome. I expected the main story to be ass, and the other quests to be eh. I got exactly what I expected from gameplay, power armor, and the quests. The main quest was much better than I expected. So, overall I am very happy with my purchase. $60 for 70 hours, plus once mods come out is a great deal.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

$60 for 70 hours

Gah damn.

My play through took 130 hours.

WTF was I doing all that time?

 

[Zenn3k]

I've beat the game once and I'm playing through it again with another character style (1st run was rifles mostly, run 2 is pure melee). Easily 100+ hours of play, still haven't seen but maybe 1/3rd of what the game has to offer me, having a great time.

I have nitpicks and things I don't LOVE, but otherwise, its a solid video game that I'm not ashamed to have purchased day 1.

 

[DefunctTheory]

I've beat the game once and I'm playing through it again with another character style (1st run was rifles mostly, run 2 is pure melee). Easily 100+ hours of play, still haven't seen but maybe 1/3rd of what the game has to offer me, having a great time.

I have nitpicks and things I don't LOVE, but otherwise, its a solid video game that I'm not ashamed to have purchased day 1.

Why not have a rifle and melee character? I got bored, and had 14 points sitting around that I couldn't decide what to do with, so I said screw it and dumped into melee. Now I'm running around, chopping people to bits with an Axe.

Lvl 69 and I can do anything! Whee!

 

[Pete Oddly]

Update: 113 hours in, level 48, STILL haven't been to Diamond City.

Also; jetpacks are fucking AWESOME.