I do believe it is time for me to whine mightily about Fallout 4.

[Zhukov]

Well, credit where it's due, Bethesda did come closer to making a great game then they ever have before. They finally abandoned the half-shitty-RPG/half-shitty-action-game formula of their last few games and went full action gameplay with RPG elements.

Problem is, they ended up making the most average, flavourless, unremarkable shooter I've ever seen. If Fallout 3's gameplay was the awkward, clunky Mass Effect blend then Fallout 4's is the blandness of Mass Effect 2's gameplay minus any of the little flares that dragged it over the line of average. Beyond choosing which weapon to shoot there's bugger all variety or options in a firefight and absolutely no nuance. You just sort of stand there chipping away at health bars while enemies chip away at yours.

Or I suppose you could play it as the world's simplest melee brawler. Stack stats, move forward, mash attack. Maybe block once in a while, if you really feel like it?

Ohhh, ohhh, or you could play the world's least polished stealth game. Would you like to know how well concealed you are right now? Ha ha, fuck you, you'll find out when the bullets hit you. Also, enjoy having to use the walk button to sneak until level 31 I think it was.

The difficulty levels do nothing to help. Easy and normal can almost be played with your eyes closed. Hard requires you to open your eyes long enough to find the stimpacks in your inventory every so often. Then survival difficulty comes along and delivers a breath of sensibility by slowing down the healing rate, preventing you from just rapidly medicating all your problems away. Sadly, it also turns all the enemies into dreary bullet sponges, making the already tepid and torpid combat into an utter slog.

The loot logistics are woefully unbalanced. In the opening few hours of the game I got a brief, precious glimpse of something engaging when I was having to juggle ammo types while stimpacks and radiation meds were in desperately short supply. I was having to shoot and cook wildlife just to keep myself going and radiation was actually something to worry about while exploring a post-nuclear war wasteland. Fancy that! But then Bethesda Syndrome inevitably set in and now I have more munitions than I can carry and well over a hundred stimpacks. Alas poor challenge, we hardly knew thee.

Similar situation with the power armour. I was puzzled when they gave me a suit so early. But then they introduced me to power cores and I thought I understood. "Ahh, I see, they're giving me a taste of power and now they're going to make me scrounge if I want another fix. Bravo!" Yeah, well, now I have over 30 of the fucking things, so so much for that.

I won't dwell too much on the settlement building business. Suffice to say, it feels like a gimmicky attempt to hitch their carriage to the Minecraft train, it's utterly disconnected from the rest of the game and the interface is a fucking joke.

Oh, and lastly there's the dialogue system. I was initially overjoyed at having a proper talking protagonist rather than a heavily armed fencepost and it feels like they made a genuine effort to provide some engaging dialogue every once in a while. Sadly they went and fucked it up by trying to copy Bioware's dialogue wheel while simultaneously not understanding the things that made it work and exacerbating its problems. Remember how with Bioware's dialogue wheel you always knew which options would move the conversation forward and which ones would draw it out based on their position on the wheel? Because Bethesda clearly fucking don't. But hey, remember how with Bioware's dialogue wheel the insufficient summaries would occasionally make you say something unintended? Well Fallout 4 has that shit by the barrowload... "Sarcastic".

On the upside it feels like there's more interesting and unique stuff to find and explore and more and better little stories to discover. But I really don't know if it's worth trudging through the mud and shale of pedestrian combat and mechanics to uncover the gems.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The overall feeling the game gives me is that I'm not working toward anything greater or impactful. I'm just activating the umpteenth 'go there, kill that' quest, and maybe find a cool new Legendary weapon or armor. None of this is helped by the randomly generated Preston Garvey bland quests. The game is like 'Oh, you just want more EXP, huh. Well, here's a grocery list.' There's no character or charisma to tie the world, its characters, or the quests they provide togeher. It's just a series of mundane EXP scarfing.

It's an okay game, but it falls into that trap of feeling like you're doing mindnumbing work.

 

[veloper]

I think the boys at Bethesda should be asking their annexed buddies at ID (it's all Zenimax) how to make a functional shooter and then start with a solid shooter as the basis for their next shooter-RPG.

Shit is still shit even if it's in an RPG and there's an awful lot of it in the recent Fallouts. There's no good reason why anyone still cannot make decent shooting mechanics in this millennium.

 

[pookie101]

stealth is badly implemented and not explained at all and took me a while to figure out the [ ] are the indicator further apart they are the more hidden you are.

there are so many features like that which are never explained. it took me looking at a video online to realise how cover works. if you walk up to something and your character points the gun down you are in cover. aim through the sights and they are leaning out.

yeah takes alot to upgrade your gear and especially power armour and keep it repaired. you really need settlements to do that especially farms devoted to producing adhesive although i am loving the second level of the scrapper perk ALOT makes it so much easier to find materials you need when they are highlighted

all that said im enjoying the game even with the issues.

 

[IceForce]

I think one of the most annoying things about the game is the holotapes tab in your pipboy. It's sorted alphabetically instead of chronologically.
It worked perfectly in FO3, because it was sorted chronologically, -- ie: the list of notes/tapes had the most recently picked up ones at the top of the list, and the older ones at the bottom.

In FO4? Well, when you're asked to read a note or holotape, I hope you paid close attention to what it was called before you picked it up! Because otherwise it'll be impossible to find in your inventory. And typically the quest objective is unhelpful and generic too, and just tells you "Read the note" or "Listen to the holotape" or something like that.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Fallout 4 is an FPS cover shooter akin to Far Cry (Crytek) or the campaign of Battlefield 4. The enemies constantly take cover and lean around corners. You lean around corners to shoot back. The AI isn't great, but it's not terrible.

Also, the dialogue wheel. Well, aside from some weird railroading writing, that dialogue wheel's basic concept was arguably created by Obsidian, whom New Vegas fans would have us believe can do no wrong, ever, for the game Alpha Protocol. Except Alpha Protocol's version was way more obtuse and confusing.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I think one of the most annoying things about the game is the holotapes tab in your pipboy. It's sorted alphabetically instead of chronologically.
It worked perfectly in FO3, because it was sorted chronologically, -- ie: the list of notes/tapes had the most recently picked up ones at the top of the list, and the older ones at the bottom.

In FO4? Well, when you're asked to read a note or holotape, I hope you paid close attention to what it was called before you picked it up! Because otherwise it'll be impossible to find in your inventory. And typically the quest objective is unhelpful and generic too, and just tells you "Read the note" or "Listen to the holotape" or something like that.

Yeah, the inventory sorting systems of Skyrim got a lot of flack, but it seems Bethesda just decided not to try at all with Fallout 4.

A cynical me would say that they are just relying a modder to come along and completely redesign the whole menu system to make sense, much like Sky UI, which is the most downloaded mod EVER from the Skyrim Nexus.

To be honest, that's the impression I get with a lot of Fallout 4: The mediocre rad storms, the problematic building system, the absolute lack of any and all optimization for PC - All things that Beth seems to have simply set up a rough framework and expected the modding community to step in and flesh out for them.

That said, I've played for over 20 hours, and while there are a pile of issues that if fixed would make the game outstanding, I have still had fun, and it's intrigued me so far. I'm a little bit worried the replay value will be much, much less as quests seem to be a lot more straightforward and factions don't seem all that fleshed out and important, but I suppose we'll see.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I agree with you on the sneak part, the perk is absolutely useless. I had maxed out my sneak perk, and it feels like they still catch wind of me easily.

I found the stealth to get broken very easily outside, yet inside dudes could be walking up to me till my face was in their crotch and still not see me. And this wasn't even at full Stealth perk. It also helped that I got rid of Dogmeat. It seems the more you deck out your companion the more likely you are to get seen.

 

[Erttheking]

I do enjoy it but I mostly agree with you. Minus a couple of points but I guess I'm just not at the points where I'm tripping over infinite ammo and stimpacks, and I'd like to run into easy enemies already, I'm getting tired of enemies that take a couple hundred rounds to kill.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

This is a trait inherent to all Bethesda titles (and New Vegas too, which is functionally a Bethesda title in all but name). You can pick them apart with startling efficiency, they're absolutely bursting with warts and flaws and poorly considered/balanced mechanics. That they still remain entertaining is either the industries most bewildering accident or evidence of secret genius. That, or they struck gold a while back, and it keeps people distracted from their towering incompetence.

One thing that should really be added to OP...inventory management, most specifically the MISC tab. What fucking mentalist thought it was a good idea to list keys in there?

 

[Barbas]

(Snip).

This is somewhat relieving; I fancied I might be going insane again. I do enjoy scrolling through the contents of the Library of Congress to find the one relevant holotape I need, but not as much as I enjoy a good book to the testicles. At least the menu in terminals is mercifully smaller. Some of the menus truly are woefully skeletal. Please, Bethesda, we are not automatons. We are fancy humans, we enjoy features.

OT: Not only do I have over 100 fusion cores, OP, but I'll soon be able to throw the depleted ones like grenades (presumably Nuka ones). The engine seriously needs changing up to something that doesn't struggle so much to meet the devs team's ambition or the player's simple navigation requests. And the Railroad treats Glory like a dead person, even though I can see her walking about (and sometimes in-between me and the person I'm talking to). Still, she won't talk to me or even say hello. Cow.

 

[Leon Royce]

Fallout 4 was great for the first 30 hours. Now I haven't played it in a week and can't bring myself to. Once you've seen the 5 or 6 different enemy types, the 5 or 6 building types and realized almost all quests involve shooting stuff the game loses all appeal.

The game would be greatly enhanced if their wasn't massive amounts of ammo and healing items lying around. Like OP said, I had a great time the first few hours, having to drink irradiated water to ration my stimpacks. Now I have thousands of rounds of each type of ammunition.

All inventory items should have weight. That would sort out the problem.

Also, the perks are boring. Since they gutted the dialogue/ choice system, there is nothing left for perks to do but increase your S.P.E.C.I.A.L, damage, sneak, carry weight etc... A full third of my points have gone to increase my gun mod, armor mod, science mod skills. That's 12 levels. It's padding.

I'm done with Bethesda games. Ever since Morrowind it's all been downhill. I won't be buying anymore of their games. Too bland, too afraid to take risks, too easy, they have little reason to exist. They create playgrounds and not worlds. Worlds don't revolve around the player in such obvious ways, and (seemingly, it's part of the illusion) exist for a reason beyond helping the player kill time. Bethesda games have become like Blizzard games in a way (minus the personality and polish): time sinks.

I would love for another studio to enter the FPMelee Open world exploration market. There is a lot of room for innovation and creativity.

 

[Zhukov]

In FO4? Well, when you're asked to read a note or holotape, I hope you paid close attention to what it was called before you picked it up! Because otherwise it'll be impossible to find in your inventory. And typically the quest objective is unhelpful and generic too, and just tells you "Read the note" or "Listen to the holotape" or something like that.

Oh yeah. I learned that lesson early on.

The inventory even has a "sort by" function, but bizarrely no "sort chronologically" option.

That they still remain entertaining is either the industries most bewildering accident or evidence of secret genius. That, or they struck gold a while back, and it keeps people distracted from their towering incompetence.

Uh huh. The massive popularity of Bethesda games is one of those things that continues to puzzle me. And I mean genuinely puzzle, not "I'm puzzled by how bad your taste is" kind of puzzled.

Perhaps the initial honeymoon period lasts a lot longer for other people. Or perhaps I would understand if I were more enthusiastic about open worlds. But as it is, "open world" is starting to feel like the next reincarnation of "brown space marine" or "modern shooter".

One thing that should really be added to OP...inventory management, most specifically the MISC tab. What fucking mentalist thought it was a good idea to list keys in there?

Ah yes, forgot about that.

Iceforce covered my major complain with the misc tab above. But I shall grant profuse sexual favours upon the first modder who gives me a decent armour equipping screen.

 

[IceForce]

In FO4? Well, when you're asked to read a note or holotape, I hope you paid close attention to what it was called before you picked it up! Because otherwise it'll be impossible to find in your inventory. And typically the quest objective is unhelpful and generic too, and just tells you "Read the note" or "Listen to the holotape" or something like that.

Oh yeah. I learned that lesson early on.

The inventory even has a "sort by" function, but bizarrely no "sort chronologically" option.

Yeah, what's bizarre about that is that a "sort chronologically" option would not be a new feature, -- it's a feature we used to have in a previous game, but now no longer have.
So yeah, it's weird. That functionality worked perfectly in FO3, which means that either Bethesda broke it and didn't know how to fix it, or it's a deliberate design decision.

More broadly, I was trying to think of all the things that FO3 did better than FO4 (ie: things they've made worse). Inventory management [1] would definitely be one of these things, and I think most people would also agree that the new dialogue system [2] is rather limited, especially with every speech check entirely based on Charisma and nothing else.
Aaand that's about it. Two things that FO3 did better than FO4? Not bad, I guess. In contrast, the improvements are numerous, such as better gunplay, better AI, better story (marginally), better companions, ...the list goes on and on.

But yeah, those Charisma dialogue checks. I'm not sure what they were thinking there. Because stat/skill checks of various different kinds have been a staple of Fallout games for quite a while.
The only thing I can think of is that they may have been trying to go with a more """""realistic""""" approach. ie: You can be the most intelligent and perceptive person on the planet, but you can still have horrendously bad people skills (poor Charisma, in other words).
And since dialogue is... well, dialogue, you still need semi-decent people skills to actually get through a conversation. (INT checks *are* present in FO4, but they happen in 'hands-on' situations and outside of dialogue, such as with repairing the USS Constitution.)

 

[IceForce]

I'm not sure where people are getting the idea from that the stealth is broken or doesn't work. It works fine for me.

If you're laden down with armor (or worse, wearing power armor) then it's not going to work very well. Likewise if you're firing a noisy weapon (ie: one that's not suppressed). Light levels play a part too; in interiors I can get pretty close to enemies as long as I stick to the shadows, (there has been more than one occasion where I've been able to sneak right up to feral ghouls playing dead, without disturbing them, and I get a 'pickpocket' option). Outdoors it's a slightly different matter; during nighttime I can sneak around fairly well, (for instance, I can sneak right under the catwalk in Lexington with the Fat Man Raider on it, and he won't even see me or know I'm there), but daytime is a completely different matter; outside in broad daylight there's no point in even sneaking at all.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

While i understand that roleplayers might see this as their last FO game or skip it this might be finally the Bethesda release i'm able to enjoy. From what i've seen this game is a shooter with a dialogue system, a bit of basebuilding, weaponcrafting and lots of exploration.
Now i only need a gaming pc. I highly admirer some of the modding work and the Bethesda modding community. I heard something about mods being released on consoles but besides some tweaks i can't imagine how this should work.

With my previous experience regarding Bethesda (Skyrim) I'm still not a 100%sure guess i'll rent it first.

 

[Benpasko]

I played it for a week, and haven't felt the urge to go back since. New Vegas and 3 might not be the deepest games in the world, but Fallout 4 redefines 'shallow'.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I agree with you on the sneak part, the perk is absolutely useless. I had maxed out my sneak perk, and it feels like they still catch wind of me easily.

I found the stealth to get broken very easily outside, yet inside dudes could be walking up to me till my face was in their crotch and still not see me. And this wasn't even at full Stealth perk. It also helped that I got rid of Dogmeat. It seems the more you deck out your companion the more likely you are to get seen.

I am pretty sure that the game includes your companion in the calculation for detecting the player character... and gives the companion its' completely own stealth rating instead of using the players characters. Once I ditched companions and went full solo it became ridiculously easy to sneak up on people, monsters, robots and what have you to deliver some odd ten shots from Deliverer into their unsuspecting faces. At that point difficulty was no more.