Anyone else disappointed with Fallout 4?

[BloatedGuppy]

It's not just the presence of a back story though, it's how it's written. The more specific and illustrative the back story gets, the less options for believeable role playing you have.

This was one of the main issues I had with Fallout 3, the player character is shown to have a loving father, at least one close friend and a place in a caring community. The only difficulties the PC faces is a gang of bullies who are about as effective as Team Rocket seeing as the player can easily beat the crap out of them 4 on 1.
With this back story attached to my character I find it very difficult to roleplay an evil PC without simply resorting to making a mustache twirling villain.

Now on the other end of the scale you have New Vegas, where the backstory is practically non-existant. It amounts to "you're a courier, you've been shot in the face." This allows more freedom for role playing but requires the writers to add in the old, lazy amnesia plot device, or risk retconning a player created back story further down the line (like Lonesome Road can easily do).

I personally think there's a happy middle ground. Dictate the PC's back story to the character, but give the player significant influence on how it turns out. Dragon Age: Origins would be a great example of this, it goes above and beyond the call of duty by providing you a number of back stories to choose from. But even then, each back story in isolation gives you plenty of opportunities to establish whatever ground work you wish to role play on top of.

Oh certainly, some situations are going to require excessively more head canon than others to achieve suspension of disbelief, but I'm not sure the simple fact there was a voiced protagonist with a background is sufficient charge to condemn the game for its role-playing possibilities. You mention Fallout 3, which I (oddly enough) found to have one of the most evocative/conducive to role-playing openings I'd ever experienced in a game. Odds are it happened to align well with what I was going to do anyway, but at the end of the day the only real limitation is one's imagination.

Games like Planescape Torment or Baldur's Gate or any of the Witchers have extremely detailed character bios and backgrounds. I find it difficult to charge those games with being bad RPGs, or "not real RPGs", because I didn't have complete freedom to imagineer my character.

In my case, the issues I've found in Fallout 4 have been a casualty of bad writing and pacing, not the fact there was a backstory. I'm a suburban wife who was a lawyer and now there's been a nuclear holocaust and my husband is dead and baby missing? OK NP. I'm out of the vault for twelve minutes, people are shooting at me, I'm stomping around in power armor, a stranger is asking me to lead a revolution and I'm cracking wise about being 240 years old. Ooooooo...okay. I'm doing my best, game, work with me a bit here.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I disagree that the only real limitation is one's imagination, I think your limited by a number of factors including tone of the game, dialogue choices, player choice in general etc. It's no good role playing if the game doesn't respond to that role playing in any way.

Stuff like tone, dialogue, choice, etc can all make roleplaying more difficult, but there is nothing so bad that a good imagination cannot overcome it. Even Bethesda's best blank slate offerings have required a lot of mental gymnastics to make sense of, going straight back to Daggerfall and Arena.

The only game I'm familiar with out of those is Baldur's Gate and I definitely wouldn't call the character bio detailed there. It basically amounts to "you were an orphan, you've been raised in a monastery, now go," all detail outside of that is decided through dialogue choices.

I was thinking more of 2, specifically. Your parentage is pre-determined, your family/friends are pre-determined, etc. There's as much "set up for you" as in Fallout 4. In Planescape you're a named character with a rich history and a host of long time companions. All of it is a lot more limiting than "You're an ex army vet/lawyer with a dead wife/husband and missing kid". There's no snark at those games though, they're generally accepted as classics of the genre.

What I will say is that I feel they're straying from the spirit of RPGs if freedom of choice, if freedom to role play isn't considered a priority.

Unfortunately everyone has different ideas about what constitutes the spirit of the CRPG. I just want the damn things to be good at whatever it is they choose to do.

Like I said in the previous post, if the PC back story is written well it shouldn't limit role playing in any significant way, it's just Bethesda don't have a good track record of writing anything well.

No, Bethesda doesn't write well. If someone wanted to pillory the game for its writing, I would join them on the firing line. I'm frequently seeing the game being attacked for "the wrong thing" though. The fact there's a backstory isn't the issue, the often weird, tonally off and poorly paced story delivery is. The new perk system isn't the problem, improper integration of SPECIAL/Perks with the game world is. Etc, etc. And then, if we're going to snot at Bethesda for writing, we can acknowledge they've NEVER written well, so really...what were we expecting? Fool me six times Bethesda, shame on me. I feel like people should know what they're in for by now. Not that this excuses it, necessarily, but the venom on display is occasionally confusing.

 

[IceForce]

if we're going to snot at Bethesda for writing, we can acknowledge they've NEVER written well, so really...what were we expecting? Fool me six times Bethesda, shame on me.

I can only partially agree with this. Because I think a lot of it comes down to what individual given storyline we're talking about.

True, Bethesda has a bad track record for main quest line story writing. It was bad in Morrowind, it was horrendously bad in Oblivion, it was bad in Skyrim, and it was bad in Fallout 3.
However, if we consider some of the sidequest storylines, I would think a lot of people would hold a somewhat different opinion. Such as the Dark Brotherhood or Thieve's Guild questlines/storylines, and especially some of the DLCs such as Shivering Isles, The Pitt, Point Lookout, etc.

I guess what I'm saying is, it's a little unfair (and also untrue) to blanketly label Bethesda as poor writers across the board and in every facet, because they actually *are* capable of decent writing.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

Oh certainly, some situations are going to require excessively more head canon than others to achieve suspension of disbelief, but I'm not sure the simple fact there was a voiced protagonist with a background is sufficient charge to condemn the game for its role-playing possibilities. You mention Fallout 3, which I (oddly enough) found to have one of the most evocative/conducive to role-playing openings I'd ever experienced in a game. Odds are it happened to align well with what I was going to do anyway, but at the end of the day the only real limitation is one's imagination.

I disagree that the only real limitation is one's imagination, I think your limited by a number of factors including tone of the game, dialogue choices, player choice in general etc. It's no good role playing if the game doesn't respond to that role playing in any way.

My policy with role playing video games is that they should aspire to have the same freedom of choice, the same ability to role play a character of your choosing as table top role playing games. I realise that we don't even have the technology for that at this point, but I'm always dissappointed in games like Fallout 3 when they don't even attempt to push the envelope in that regard.

Yeah, I'm between the two opinions here. Yes, imagination is limitless; yes programmed games are going to be much more limited than non-programmed games (tabletop etc.). Anything that requires "excessive head canon" to work around is...bad - I mean if what you want is really not in the game, then the game can't take any credit for what people bring to it beyond what it can do.

Tone is a big deal in the voice acting, even beyond what's said - although what's said is also very important. The fact that my character is frequently weepy about the lost kid thing and oh my sad sorry state of being here when I was there and so on - regardless of what group I join or what I do with them - is pretty limiting as far as how I'm allowed to see her and thus myself in this role. If the game doesn't have some capacity to respond to the decisions I'm making in a way that makes some sense for what I'm doing then it really isn't allowing me to role play beyond the set constraints they've given me.

As has been mentioned a few times already in this post and others: they went between giving you a character and letting you make a character and really ended up doing neither and the play experience suffers for it overall.

I disagree that the only real limitation is one's imagination, I think your limited by a number of factors including tone of the game, dialogue choices, player choice in general etc. It's no good role playing if the game doesn't respond to that role playing in any way.

Stuff like tone, dialogue, choice, etc can all make roleplaying more difficult, but there is nothing so bad that a good imagination cannot overcome it. Even Bethesda's best blank slate offerings have required a lot of mental gymnastics to make sense of, going straight back to Daggerfall and Arena.

There does come a point where "more difficult" reaches "prohibitive" and I think Fallout 4 is walking that line. I am on my 3rd time through now (doing each faction to the bitter end for perspective) and I have to say that the limitations become more apparent on replay, not less. In other Bethesda games I've found opportunities to do it a little differently, give it another spin on each time around, but this game is really fighting me on that front as well - even with changing up my allegiances.

Bottom line - if I wanted to have to rely so heavily on my imagination that I'm contradicting large portions of the game play experience - I'm better off sitting in a chair with my eyes closed just imagining what it would be like to play a Fallout game. Which... yeah, you get what I'm trying to say here.

What I will say is that I feel they're straying from the spirit of RPGs if freedom of choice, if freedom to role play isn't considered a priority.

Unfortunately everyone has different ideas about what constitutes the spirit of the CRPG. I just want the damn things to be good at whatever it is they choose to do.

Like I said in the previous post, if the PC back story is written well it shouldn't limit role playing in any significant way, it's just Bethesda don't have a good track record of writing anything well.

No, Bethesda doesn't write well. If someone wanted to pillory the game for its writing, I would join them on the firing line. I'm frequently seeing the game being attacked for "the wrong thing" though. The fact there's a backstory isn't the issue, the often weird, tonally off and poorly paced story delivery is. The new perk system isn't the problem, improper integration of SPECIAL/Perks with the game world is. Etc, etc. And then, if we're going to snot at Bethesda for writing, we can acknowledge they've NEVER written well, so really...what were we expecting? Fool me six times Bethesda, shame on me. I feel like people should know what they're in for by now. Not that this excuses it, necessarily, but the venom on display is occasionally confusing.

The writing is quite bad on a lot of levels. I really can't imagine what the issue is in the writing department - maybe lack of inter-office communication, maybe lack of talent, maybe lack of understanding the property they are working with. They'd have been better served hiring competent fan fiction writers for their team - at least they know how to work with something existing and spin up something interesting from what they're given to work with.


There's lackluster which is what I would normal categorize Bethesda as, and then there is just plain poorly done and bad which is what I'm discovering this offering seems to be.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

if we're going to snot at Bethesda for writing, we can acknowledge they've NEVER written well, so really...what were we expecting? Fool me six times Bethesda, shame on me.

I can only partially agree with this. Because I think a lot of it comes down to what individual given storyline we're talking about.

True, Bethesda has a bad track record for main quest line story writing. It was bad in Morrowind, it was horrendously bad in Oblivion, it was bad in Skyrim, and it was bad in Fallout 3.
However, if we consider some of the sidequest storylines, I would think a lot of people would hold a somewhat different opinion. Such as the Dark Brotherhood or Thieve's Guild questlines/storylines, and especially some of the DLCs such as Shivering Isles, The Pitt, Point Lookout, etc.

I guess what I'm saying is, it's a little unfair (and also untrue) to blanketly label Bethesda as poor writers across the board and in every facet, because they actually *are* capable of decent writing.

Y'know I'm going to say that the concepts for what you listed off here were interesting and promising and fun to play and absolutely higher points in the game in general for most people -- but they weren't written much better than any of the other bits when you get down to what dialog you encountered, how events unfolded, ect. That they had quirky or neat or fresh subject matter and scenery were their main points of "wow" I believe.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Spoiler: All I could think about when the father said the sons name

I knew someone else was thinking it.

OT: I've enjoyed the game so far although I've been forced away from it due to a flood in my home taking my gaming PC out of the picture. Liked New Vega's dialogue and leveling better but the gunplay is a lot more fun in 4. Vegas isn't going anywhere though and once I'm done 4 I'm likely to finally get modding Vegas.

 

[Product Placement]

The thing that constantly annoys me is the fact that I can't properly clean up Sanctuary. I got a thriving community there now. Why can't someone be assigned to dig out all that accumulated mud off the streets or at very least sweep the floors. My OCD demands it!

 

[Vault101]

so far I've been pleasantly surprised..and I think that's because I love it for the reasons everyone hates it

Like I've never liked the way Bethesda do things and it's always pained me that Fallout has to belong to them (still does)

but the fact their sort of aping Bioware (well not really but that's just shorthand for the kinds of changes we've seen) I'm liking it a whole lot more

 

[9tailedflame]

There are certainly things i don't like about it as much as previous games.

I haven't gotten around to new vegas yet, but in 3, all the towns felt relatively distinctive. In FO4, every single town feels the same, and largely has the same stuff to offer. The main quest feels largely token and uninspired, and the world building feels scattered and unfocused. In FO3, i remember the abandoned nuka cola factory, i remember the vaults, i remember the town the kids made. I won't remember any particular part of FO4.

I actually more or less like the crafting elements. Weapon modding is fun, and while it contributes to the lack of distinction problem, i don't think the basic idea of town crafting is amyss, although it certainly could have been implemented better. I still don't know what benefit i'm actually getting from helping the minutemen, apart from the general sense that things are better. Plus, none of the radio stations have anything on the stations from FO3, again, lack of distinction, there's such a horrible lack of distinction in FO4, and that really sucks. As much as i hate to admit it to myself, i won't remember FO4 the same way i remember FO3. I'll forget all about it once it's done, and that's a shame.

The game also just burns itself right the fuck out in the beginning. It gives you power armor and dogmeat immediately, and instead of having any cool "oh wow look at this cool thing i found" moments, you largely just compare numbers to get very slightly better stuff after that, or just hunt for the elusive screws and adhesive to upgrade what you already have in a monotonous slog, like for hours and hours and hours you won't find anything particularly interesting in the game. Momentum is a huge problem, even the side quests, which i generally really liked about FO3, were several degrees shittier in FO4, and didn't do well in carrying me through the hours.

Companions, i like nick, he actually has a decent bit of personality, and there might be others out there with stories, but i still find myself missing faux, so i guess it's about equal there, but it still feels off, though i can't quite place my finger on it.

So after a few hours of playing, i find myself rather disappointed, but not horribly so. There's certainly huge room for improvement, but i still think the game is still fun overall.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I think the reason the venom is so much more potent in this case is that Fallout 3 and 4 aren't just games that some people don't enjoy, they're games that are a direct result of the games these people did enjoy not existing anymore.

Well, Interplay going bankrupt is the reason those games don't exist any more. Bethesda is the reason the're getting any Fallout games at all. I don't blame the company for using the engine they already had and a style of game design they were comfortable with, nor for buying a famous old IP and actually making games with it, instead of squatting on top of it like a malignant toad (cough, EA, cough).

Ask a long time Ultima fan what they think of Ultimas 8 and 9. They'll tell you they're an evil blight upon the planet and the most compelling reason for the extinction of the human race. Now the games are bad don't get me wrong, but the reason there's such bile and hatred for them is because EA bought Origin Systems, took charge of development of the Ultima games and ended up releasing two games that looked like Ultima games superficially, but were completely different in action and spirit.

Long time Ultima fan here, from the very earliest games in the series. I'm glad for your disclaimer, because comparing Fallout 3 and 4 to Ultima 8 and 9 is doing Bethesda a massive disservice. The new Fallouts have their problems (lord do they ever, I actually ran into something like nine consecutive broken quests last night), but Ultima 8 was a calamity, and Ultima 9 is a strong contender for the worst game ever made. And yes I include ET and Big Rigs in that. If all EA had done was change isometric games into over the shoulder 3D games, I'd have been perfectly delighted. And we might still be getting Ultimas today.

Fans of Obsidian's Fallout games are constantly reminded that the games they want aren't being sold and that a series they once loved has changed into something they dislike.

Old Fallout and Fallout 2 fan here as well. I'm super happy the series STILL EXISTS, and that I can still buy and play games set in that milieu. And to be perfectly honest, having recently played through Wasteland 2, I'm quite happy that I'm not still playing "old Fallout games". Do I wish Bethesda didn't make such a canned ham out of the writing and story delivery? Yes! But the original games were hardly titans of story delivery. Hell you could accidentally finish the main quest in the first game in less than two hours by traveling to the wrong spot. I got exhausted during Fallout 2 and never even finished it. Other than Planescape, I do think we occasionally overpraise the 1998-2001 crew for their story and content as compared to modern games. There's some serious rose colored glasses at times. People praise New Vegas as being a "true successor" to Fallout 1 and 2 (something we again wouldn't have if not for Bethesda), and I understand why (even if I don't necessarily agree with them), but New Vegas shares about 95% of its DNA with Fallout 3 and 4, and very little with Fallout 1 and 2.

TLDR, old Fallout fans are way too hard on the new games. They're grinding an axe.

 

[Nimcha]

I've played Fallout 2 this year. It's mostly crap! Yes it's very detailed but the gameplay is atrocious. And the bugs! Oh the bugs... And let's not forget the fact that over three quarters of the skills and perks are completely useless.

Yes there is some much better writing and world building but it's buried under so much nonsense it's almost not worth it. I ended up cheating my way through it and just enjoying the conversations and the general atmosphere. It may have been decent for its time but it's aged very very badly.

 

[IceForce]

So far, I also really hate the radio guy.

(Probably a spoiler, but) the radio guy's performance can change later in the game, depending on what you do.

the guy I asked to guard the settlement is just wandering all over the place

That's because they always default to 'patrolling' behavior when you assign them to guard duty.

my fences are suspended in mid air because they never took uneven terrain into account

That can be mitigated somewhat by putting down concrete foundations (which can be buried into the ground and placed at any height) and then putting your fences on top of that. Or just put the foundations as high as they'll go and use them as concrete walls.

Game works perfectly for me (as well as a Bethesda game can of course) I recently upgraded to a GTX 980 and I can run it on ultra with no real performance issues.

Same here. I'm also running on a 980, and the game is as smooth as butter. (Load times notwithstanding; I really need to get an SSD at some point.)

 

[LetalisK]

So, I just ran into a bug. My companion, Cait, has a texture on her face that is not her face. It looks like yellow and gray painting from a door or something metal. Anyone else run into this?

 

[DefunctTheory]

So, I just ran into a bug. My companion, Cait, has a texture on her face that is not her face. It looks like yellow and gray painting from a door or something metal. Anyone else run into this?

Well, that settles it. Cait is a synth.


On a serious note, can you screenshot it? Maybe you equipped her with something.

 

[LetalisK]

So, I just ran into a bug. My companion, Cait, has a texture on her face that is not her face. It looks like yellow and gray painting from a door or something metal. Anyone else run into this?

Well, that settles it. Cait is a synth.


On a serious note, can you screenshot it? Maybe you equipped her with something.

It solved itself by restarting the game. She did look like an android though.

"Sir, have you tried turning the machine off and then back on?" God damn it, I'm that guy.

 

[Benpasko]

FO:NV is one of my favorite games of all time, but I might already be done with FO4 (Until the DLC is out, since I foolishly picked up the season pass). There is so little content in it compared to previous Fallouts. I played the game for about a week, and was at the absolute pinnacle of attainable power (Level 50, full X-01 power armor with 55 fusion cores, fully modded legendary guns and armor). The weapon modding seems nice, until you realize the game has less than half as many guns as New Vegas, even with the different variants you can make.

Plus I hate the new 'improved' (aka 'pain in the ass') shooting mechanics where enemies move faster than you could possibly keep up with on the console version, with absolutely no aim assist. I wouldn't even have gotten as far as I did if I couldn't do 16(!) shots in a single VATS with the Deliverer. The new melee system is just awful, the total lack of combos makes swinging feel stilted as hell.

Curie is a pretty great follower, at least.

I was worried they'd Skyrim it, but at least Skyrim was huge. This is worse than that, they Mass Effect 2'd it.

Edit: I almost forgot, the main character! Fuck the main character! I hate them so much! Plus they removed my favorite hairstyle that I always roll on my male main character in these goddamn games aughhh

 

[andrewHayes]

Not disappointed because I expected the game to do little to outstrip what was already modded in 3.

I mean, come on, when Bethesda actually takes a fan's independent choice for a song and puts it in the trailer for the next game, you can guess rather easily where inspiration for the new features are coming from.

I'm kind of surprised the fans themselves didn't realize this.

 

[Ryotknife]

Overall, its my favorite Fallout game by far (granted i started at 3). Ive sunk almost as many hours into FO4 as FO:NV and more than FO3. It is pretty much superior to NV in almost every way.

I dont have companions that run off into the sunset, never to be seen again like NV. The companions are actually enjoyable, whereas i only brought Boone and EDE for their overpowered benefits. Boone himself looks like he was trying to audition for a CoD game and took a wrong turn somewhere. Veronica was the only interesting companion, and one of the few interesting characters in the whole game (the others being the Burned man and Ulysses). Meanwhile FO4 it would be easier to say which characters i didnt like.

Combat is much better in FO4, the enemies are actually threatening and enjoyable to shoot at. Ive probably died more times in FO4 than FO3, NV, and skyrim combined as even at level 30, a single grenade, missile, or fatman can kill me. Ive been randomly killed by a vertibird crashing on top of me. traps are harder to detect now due to lighting and i pretty much trip all of them which leads to very intense moments where i hear a grenade fall next to me and i have to book it or get gibbed. In other bestheda games i very rarely tripped a trap, let alone killed by one.

Oh, and actual FREEDOM in FO4, not unlike NV where you start off and the game goes "okay, you can go any direction, as long as its south". There is no area thats off limits, especially thanks to power armor. Granted, the only time i used power armor was in the glowing sea, and thank god for that. Ive sank dozens of hours in settlement building, which is probably the most fun ive had in a game in a very long time.

The setting itself i would put on par with FO3. NV setting is the very definition of boring, queue endless desert. Even red dead redemption was more interesting, and that too was in the desert.

now with the fellatio out of the way, there are some complaints. One, weapons. I feel like the roster is a bit lackluster. Add armor to that list too. Ive been using the same guns since level 10 (now at 30) and pretty much the same armor too. Doesnt help that i despise all pipe weapons. Im still using the vault suit and the starting pistol. The modding is nice and all, but still i feel a big lack of character progress.

Two, settlement system. It is surprisingly complex, which is a problem because they dont describe any of the important mechanics. My big complaint though is the lack of a universal measurement. For example, the corner metal prefab you can not put anything on top of it because the wall is slightly higher than the standard wall, it also sticks out more. Doorways also can not be used if there is something below or above the unit. Forget about placing doorways inside of buildings too. The only workaround ive found is the doorway prefab, but that has its own issues, namely that it wastes and entire unit and you have to design around it. Shops are slightly taller than a standard prefab unit was well, leading to the sign sticking through the floor the next story up. Ive actually restarted a few times because i learned about some new mechanic. That said, my settlement in Starlight is going to be my pride and joy. A medical center, workshop, apartments with private bathrooms, minibars, and children's room, and the masterpiece a massive rooftop restaurant complete with a wellstocked bar, kitchen, and a nice 5 story view of the surrounding area. It will even connect to the top of the movie screen, which i will turn into a cigar lounge. Course, i need to trick the game into letting me build a bigger settlement.

Three, i feel like i level way too fast, mostly due to crafting. Granted this one should be easily solved via mods.

EDIT: oh, and another thing. Someone needs to give the pipboy an update, because it constantly gets stats from settlements wrong. For example, on my pipboy map it said Tenpines ad 5 people, i get there and there are 14 people. You go to the workshop tab and it will constantly get figures wrong (like all of your food, defense, and beds are gone)

 

[sXeth]

Two, settlement system. It is surprisingly complex, which is a problem because they dont describe any of the important mechanics. My big complaint though is the lack of a universal measurement. For example, the corner metal prefab you can not put anything on top of it because the wall is slightly higher than the standard wall, it also sticks out more. Doorways also can not be used if there is something below or above the unit. Forget about placing doorways inside of buildings too. The only workaround ive found is the doorway prefab, but that has its own issues, namely that it wastes and entire unit and you have to design around it. Shops are slightly taller than a standard prefab unit was well, leading to the sign sticking through the floor the next story up. Ive actually restarted a few times because i learned about some new mechanic. That said, my settlement in Starlight is going to be my pride and joy. A medical center, workshop, apartments with private bathrooms, minibars, and children's room, and the masterpiece a massive rooftop restaurant complete with a wellstocked bar, kitchen, and a nice 5 story view of the surrounding area. It will even connect to the top of the movie screen, which i will turn into a cigar lounge. Course, i need to trick the game into letting me build a bigger settlement.

Three, i feel like i level way too fast, mostly due to crafting. Granted this one should be easily solved via mods.

Speaking of unknown mechanics, as a headsup, there's a limit to how many objects you can build in one settlement (bar "Size" at the top right), though you can reset it by dropping items (weapons, armor, etc) on the ground and storing them in a loop to fool it

Doorways are just a problem, I've never figured out an interior one, and the exterior ones stick out of every wall except one or two.

 

[EXos]

I can't put my finger on it but I just don't enjoy F4 as much as I did NV. In NV I liked to stay in a town and get every quest there but I just don't have that in F4.
It's not a bad game but it's not setting the world on fire.

Plus, I don't like sanctuary and all the other damn little villages and such. I honestly couldn't give a rats ass about those people.

NV had more character... Plus after I found Shaun it just fell apart for me.
I liked the over heading quests in TES and the other Fallouts, in F4 there is no antagonist or clear goal what you're going to accomplish or a clear direction where you're going.

So no, I'm not impressed.