The First Fallout 4 Details Revealed - Update

[vallorn]

November 11th? That feels a bit to soon for some reason. I thought it wouldn't be out till 2016.

I agree with you, the animations look a little too stiff still and they need a lot of time to remove this beta feature of a dialogue wheel from the final game I'm sure.

Also that iOS game makes me wonder what the heck is going on, the Vaults are supposed to be dystopian social experiments with horrible things being done to the residents... And instead it's just smiling and marshmallows... MY BRAIN.

 

[bfgmetalhead]

I am on the fence at the moment some of the things shown seemed very unfallouty or gimmicky like the rebuilding and the mech suit, but I am sure I will warm to them eventually.

The weapon crafting looks pretty cool, just hope it is as expansive across all weapons and not a select few.

Voiced protagonist is a bad move...Not sure why they went with this.

I wrote a more expansive overview but I accidentally pressed back button on my browser and lost it...
I'm tired.

 

[PhantomEcho]

As much as I can see people getting worried about the idea of a voiced protagonist somehow taking 'their' character away from them... I find it infinitely more satisfying to have a character who actually interacts and behaves with the world around them. I'm not opposed to the silent protagonist either, lord knows I've been playing them long enough, but a good voiced protagonist is capable of changing to reflect the actions of the player UPON that character in a much more organic way than hollow scripting and a bunch of talking heads explaining WHY you should feel X way about Y thing.

It's the difference between playing a camera carrying a gun... and playing a HUMAN BEING with thoughts and feelings and emotions which actually have an impact on the gameplay. Assuming it's done right, we may very well see our hapless survivor from Vault 111 slowly devolve into a profanity-sputtering drug-addled psychopath. Or maybe the Vault Dweller become a cold, cynical, mercenary wastelander willing to do whatever dirty deed it takes to get by. As a writer and a reader, I find that the most compelling characters for me are the ones which write themselves regardless of how the author intended they turn out. A certain thing happens when a good character gets away from you and takes on a life of their own... they begin to feel like a PERSON instead of a fictional being. They begin to behave more naturally, more believably, and the story itself tends to become a little less predictable and adherent to convention.

So while I understand why people want to cling to control of their characters, and their narratives... and I definitely understand the complication that arises for modders who wish to create content for the game who cannot simply go out and 'borrow' the voice actors... for me, the voiced protagonist means that I am going to GREATLY enjoy the vanilla game experience, probably even more than I did when I first started playing Fallout 3.

I just hope they've considered the implications of this change, and left enough room in the narrative experience for player agency to really shape the behavior of the protagonist and his/her dialogue.

 

[Objectable]

HYPE! the Hype machine is making me HYPED!
See this guy?
http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130208154754/prowrestling/images/c/c0/Mojo_Rawley_4.jpg
I AM FAR MORE HYPED THAN THIS GUY

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

It was alright. I must say what shot any chance of me taking the presentation seriously was this delightful little bit:

"Offering his own thoughts on gimmick second-screen apps, Todd Howard described them as "usually just stupid gimmicks," but said this "is the best f**king one I've seen."

Howard, you're a middle-aged man in 2015, it's okay to say that second screen apps are fine it's not like there is an actual geek card people can take away from you. There is no point in trying to play frat boy when you're more than twice that age

 

[Hazy]

While I kind of agree that a voice protagonist will kind of take you out of the immersion, I would like to believe we, as gamers, can finally move past the Heroic Mime trope.

Why? There's literally nothing wrong with it, especially for a game like this. I want to be able to hear my voice inside of my head when I'm reading my character's dialogue.

 

[Brian Tams]

Really disappointed with voiced protagonist.

Anyone who's played a fallout game with max strength and no intelligence will understand. Seems impossible with a dialogue wheel to pull off.

 

[Tar Palantir]

I wonder how the writing and story will hold up against Witcher 3.

 

[Strazdas]

Crafting and settlement building sounds very interesting. Maybe my collection of 3000 Tin cans (1 cap worth each) will finally be justified the hours i spent hauling it back to my house. yes im sadly an obsessive collector.


Sadly, no android app, so get on it bethesda.

I'm not going to lie, when he said we see the nuclear blast but make it into the vault and then reemerge 200 years later, I was hoping we put all that time into customization only to play the whole game as a ghoul.

As fun as that would be, its actually possible to see the blast and survive. Provided you have a long clear distance ahead of you, you could see the blast many kilometers away and the blast energy would not even reach you. Your danger then would be the so called "Fallout", so basically if the weather is good you got perhaps even as much as a few days (very optimistic view) to get into the vault.

Here's hoping theirs some actual vegetation seeing as it's 200 after the apocalypse.

Actually, i didnt think about it before you said it, but wouldnt 200 years be enough to pretty much start rebuilding civilization already. I mean yes people got nuked but not everything got destroyed. we dont start from scratch. heck, in F3 they even had a functioning ship. Some local government setups would definitely happen within 200 years.

As far as vegetation goes. If it was a true nuclear winter, no vegetation survives. as in, it would ALL be dead except things that can survive for years without light. and that would mean pretty much no bushes or trees anywhere, perhaps some grass survives. Interetingly enough, perhaps somone could re-populate the vegetation in 200 years, surely some seeds have survived in vaults.

Capcha: Outlook not so good

It appears you are confused, capcha.

 

[ThreeName]

I have a few problems with it. They're not numerous, but they're big ones:

-Voice acted protagonist makes it impossible to self-insert. It's no longer YOUR character -- you're just controlling some random guy.

-Protagonist starts out as married, giving you a pre-conceived notion of how he acts before the game even begins (again, not your character anymore).

-Dialogue wheel limits the number of dialogue options available.

-Pip Boy animations. Those Goldeneye 3D models for objects look horrendous and the pop-ups are going to get annoying very, very quickly.

Everything except the last ones are exactly my complaints. I fucking hate family bullshit. I hated it in Fallout 3, and that at least let you make your own character to a degree.

Either the family is relevant in the later plot and it's going to piss me off, or it isn't going to be relevant and thus SHOULDN'T HAVE FUCKING BEEN IN THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE

YES I'M MAD

 

[Hazy]

I have a few problems with it. They're not numerous, but they're big ones:

-Voice acted protagonist makes it impossible to self-insert. It's no longer YOUR character -- you're just controlling some random guy.

-Protagonist starts out as married, giving you a pre-conceived notion of how he acts before the game even begins (again, not your character anymore).

-Dialogue wheel limits the number of dialogue options available.

-Pip Boy animations. Those Goldeneye 3D models for objects look horrendous and the pop-ups are going to get annoying very, very quickly.

Everything except the last ones are exactly my complaints. I fucking hate family bullshit. I hated it in Fallout 3, and that at least let you make your own character to a degree.

Either the family is relevant in the later plot and it's going to piss me off, or it isn't going to be relevant and thus SHOULDN'T HAVE FUCKING BEEN IN THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE

YES I'M MAD

Blows my mind, man. They only had to lose by making a design choice like this and they did it anyway.

 

[Ryan Minns]

Just let one of the towns I make a huge slaver town with all of the slaves I catch actually being part of the world and I'm happy... and I don't have problems I swear!

Edit: Wait... if they're forcing you to be in a relationship at the start wouldn't that kinda go against Bethesdas super inclusion thing? Oh hey look you're in a heterosexual relationship straight off the bat for example?

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

The player is asked to design a pair of parents, who then enter their vault and their child exits the vault 200 years later? Woohoo! Ghoul playable characters!

 

[dangoball]

Man, I still have to finish New Vegas and this comes out in November? Luckily I don't tend to have money to buy games new so there's till time, but I look forward to the crafting and base building. Making use of what little the wasteland has to offer to create a safe place to live is something I wanted to do since Fallout 2.

The funny thing is I never actually used late game power armor. x3 Measured its sheer weight against its damage resistance bonus and, given by that time in the game I'd be all manner of butt-kicking, decide '....ehhhhh, don't really need, IN THE CLOSET YOU GO!' That and I was a sucker for a cowboy hat and Regulator Duster, because Wasteland Cowboy Bounty Hunter ahoy.

I guess you haven't played the original Fallouts, otherwise you would understand how healthy Power Armour is in the wasteland. Though it's true they are not half as good/necessary in 3/New Vegas as they were in 1&2. They became more of a lore item and a status symbol. In 3 I stuck to Railey's Combat Armor myself and still got max damage resistance.

What is important is that Bethesda showed clearly that Fallout 4 can handle racial and gender diversity responsibly. See? Not really that hard after all, is it, CD Projekt?

People like you are the reason we can't have nice things. Why do you have to drag stupid scandal into a Fallout 4 hype thread? And why do you refuse to acknowledge such basic concepts as geographical settings and different cultural heritage? Fallout is in the USA, therefore it makes sense the way it is. Witcher is fantasy medieval Polad, therefore it makes sense the way it is. If you want your superficial diversity just imagine all the elves as Asians and all the dwarfs black, there you go.

And it's people like me giving people like you undue attention. Meh.

 

[jklinders]

Is this what it feels like to be an old grumpy fan who doesn't like change? I feel like a lot of these things should make me giddy but they don't.

The voiced protagonist while cool seems really limiting and jarring considering fallout was still one of those RPGs you could be the character and immerse yourself and not just watch and control some other dudes story.

snip

Do we actually know that there will be a voiced protagonist or is that something they tossed into the trailer for some odd reason? It's not just odd in terms of Fallout, it's really odd for Bethsoft too. I see Bethsoft doing sorts of stupid shit, up to and including making a game engine that crashes at the drop of a hat and blaming the users for it but a voiced protag was a line I thought they would not cross for these types of games.

Edit: never the fuck mind. they are going there. Doesn't bother me that much as I typically don't do the whole self inset thing anyway but a lot of people are gonna be pissed./edit

Now for my issue. what the squalid fuck is it with designing the character's parents and having the PC put together from that? That is a gimmick that just screams "we're trying really hard to one up that pointless birth and early childhood scene from Fallout 3.

IF I trust Bethsoft with this game (Fallout 3 was easily the most boring and uninspired installment in the whole series, 1, 2 and New Vegas outperformed it in every respect IMO) the first mod I get will be to skip that shit in favor of a proper character creator.

 

[JemothSkarii]

Crafting and settlement building looks neato (Use to just constantly run merchant caravans in Fallout 1 and 2 so I am fucking HYPE that you can run Brahmin in this). Dog companion is cool... Voiced protag... still makes me feel uneasy, limits dialogue, limits options ('dynamic' dialogue aside, which I trust about as much as 'Skyrim's new engine'). Also didn't like the look of the BoS possibly being the main bad guys unless it's like New Vegas in a 'pick who you want to hate' kind of deal. But at least they didn't go with the utterly awful East Coast Brotherhood of Steel.

Pretty excited though.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

The player is asked to design a pair of parents, who then enter their vault and their child exits the vault 200 years later? Woohoo! Ghoul playable characters!

Nope. The character will have spent most of it in some sort of stasis or be subject to one of the many crazy Enclave experiments. So you can forget the ghoul thing right away.

Yeah, unfortunately we see the vault dweller to be fully human in the reveal trailer. Shame.