I like it. The trouble with skills in Fallout 3/NV is that they were largely an illusion. Most skills worked on skill checks with discrete steps, so that there was no difference between having your speech skill at 50 or at 74 - if you didn't have enough points to reach the next cut-off, you might as well not have added any at all. Weapon skills were more continuous but amounted to little more than small incremental improvements to damage which isn't exactly interesting, and for the most part it was a system with a limited number of discrete picks pretending to give you more choice. Having you choose from actual discrete picks isn't much of a change in practice, it just makes it much more clear that that's what you're doing.
The other problem is that it was too easy to max out your skill in whatever you wanted, with your SPECIAL attributes being largely irrelevant (although they were important in other ways). Someone with low charisma and intelligence really shouldn't be able to pass every speech check in the game. Tying skill improvements to your actual attributes makes the customisation and roleplaying much more sensible, since your genius hacker will actually need to be a genius first. It also makes choices much more meaningful; if every character has the potential to do everything, there's not much point in making any choices at the start since they won't change the gameplay or outcome. It's the difference between "this character can't open this lock, so I'll come back later when I can" and "this character can't open this lock, and will never be able to because I'm not playing the role of a sneaky thief". Choice and roleplaying means choosing to do some things and not others, it doesn't mean simply doing everything in a different order.
That's partly why the whining about it "not being an RPG" really doesn't make a lot of sense at all. RPG does not mean "must include lots of ultimately meaningless skill sliders", it means that you play a role. Forcing you to make actual choices about what your character will be able to do results in you playing a specific role much more than allowing everyone to do everything no matter what. It's exactly the same problem WoW had and has tried to fix - you used to have big talent trees that looked like they should allow lots of customisation, but in reality were just three or so options disguised with lots of extra clicking when you levelled up. The new system allows the same amount of choice, it just doesn't pretend to be giving you more choice than there actually is. That's exactly what this new Fallout system looks like - you still have just as much room for customisation and roleplaying as before, possibly even more, it just doesn't try to pretend there's more than there is by hiding limited discrete choices behind continuous sliders.
Genocidicles said:
It's confirmed you're playing as one of the parents. I mean Fallout 3 was bad enough by giving you a childhood and a father, but now you have a spouse and a child. Coupled with the voice acting It doesn't feel like my character, it feels like Bethesda's.
Have to say I'm even more confused by people complaining about this. In Fallout 1, you played a specific person with a specific background, a specific task and a specific story to follow. You could change your name, appearance and skills, but that was it. In Fallout 2, you played a specific person with a specific background, a specific task and a specific story to follow. You could change your name, appearance and skills, but that was it. In Fallout 3, you played a specific person with a specific background, a specific task and a specific story to follow. You could change your name, appearance and skills, but that was it. In Fallout New Vegas, you played a specific person with a specific background, a specific task and a specific story to follow. You could change your name, appearance and skills, but that was it. In Fallout 4, you will play a specific person with a specific background, a specific task and a specific story to follow. You can change your name, appearance and skills, but that's it. But for some reason the fifth time around everyone gets all upset because it's "not their character".
And of course, we can always look at some of the classic RPGs to see how a real RPG does it instead of Fallout which apparently isn't one any more. In Baldur's Gate, you are a specific person with a specific background, raised in a specific place by specific people with specific companions, then sent out with a specific task and story to follow. You can change your name, appearance and skills, but that's it. Neverwinter Nights 2? Same. Knights of the Old Republic? Same. Dragon Age? You pick one of six different backgrounds. Dragon Age 2? You choose nothing except class. Mass Effect? A couple of choices for background and class. In Planescape: Torment, you are a specific person with a specific background, and you can't change your name, appearance, or anything else. Also you have a voice. In fact, the only one of the Infinity Engine-style games in which you can choose everything about your characters is Icewind Dale, notable for being the game that focussed almost entirely on combat and hardly at all on actual roleplaying. But for some reason it's bad when Fallout 4 does exactly the same as some of the best RPGs ever made, including every previous game in the series.
