This is just a thread for you to vent your good and bad feelings towards Fallout 4. I have not bought it yet, waited to see what it was actually like.
How is it? Tell the world here.
I haven't played it yet (in 2 hours I'll do) but from what 8I've heard and seen,it's a bad fallout but a good game.
It's made by Bethesda, you tell me.
IMO, that could mean a lot of things...both good and bad...
It's made by Bethesda, you tell me.
IMO, that could mean a lot of things...both good and bad...
Modern Bethesda games are crap. Fallout 4 is a perfect example of that. It's literally just Call Of Duty: Fallout.
Well, the writing of the main quest is a lot better than previous Bethesda games. That's not saying a whole lot given how inane most of them have been, but it's actually at a level where it doesn't feel disruptive. Factions actually have some depth (well, most of them...) and you need to make some choices. There are no clear black and white hats this time around, so you have a lot more room to pick a faction based on philosophical view rather than just good/evil. On the flip side, it feels like the side-quests are worse. I say feels like because there are some good ones, but there are also a whole lot of clearly generated quests, e.g. "we're having problems, I'll mark the location on your map, now go kill the type of enemy I wrote down in your log", which gets very repetitive after a while. Perhaps worse, there are quests that feel that way but also hints at leading to something else, so ignoring them makes me feel like I might miss out on something that may or may not come later.
Speaking of the writing, the dialogue wheel is as inane as it is in every game featuring dialogue. Like boxes of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get. Although at the end of the day, it also doesn't really seem to matter what you pick as the difference is generally one or two lines of dialogue, and then it goes back to the pre-determined path. In the cases where that is not the case, it's usually painfully obvious which option is the "right" one, especially since the game is kind enough to highlight options that require persuasion, which is generally what you get rewarded for doing successfully.
Gameplay itself is rather disappointing. If you expect an RPG, don't. It's more of an FPS with RPG elements. The world is a shooting gallery basically. If you see something moving in the distance, the RPG-player in you may be tempted to check if it's an interesting character to talk to that might give you a quest. Don't bother. It's an enemy. Every time. If you're outside a settlement and see something that lives, make it dead. They've "streamlined" the character development further, and overall I feel it made it worse. There are perks that are clearly superior to others, and many are also badly explained and may seem better or worse on paper than they really are.
The inventory system is... I can't find a word to express how much I hate it. It's a complete mess. It's not so much that it's different from previous games, because it's not. It's actually the exact same. What has changed is the weapon/armor modding options, which is pointlessly complicated. You have a number of mods that are unlocked with perks, and each one change the name of the item. Since Bethesda still haven't learned to name items in such a way as to make them sort naturally, that means that if you have several items in your inventory/container, finding the one you want is a chore. And mods are important. You don't have different plasma weapons any more, you have one. You can mod it to make it a sniper rifle, or assault rifle, or pistol. Sort of. Exactly what the mods do is somewhat unclear in some cases, especially since the stats shown for the weapon are incomplete and those that are are pretty much just arbitrary numbers that says nothing anyway. I understand what they tried to do, but they didn't do it very well and just ended up with a confusing weapon modding system. And god damnit Bethesda. Are you ever going to learn to implement some kind of keychain and note/message log instead of having a separate item for every note/holotape/key you pick up?
A big new feature is settlement building. In theory it's a nice idea; everyone likes buildings things, right? Unfortunately, it's not as great in practice. First of all; cheat to get the materials. The alternative is to go around picking up every single object in the world so you can break it down into building materials, which is not fun in the least. Doing simple things is fairly easy, but doing complicated things is frustrating. Just something as basic as making a building with interior walls is next to impossible, and unless you plan on sticking to the 4-walls-and-roof concept, you'll probably be wrestling with and swearing at clipping and snap-to building mechanism for quite some time. It's a shame, because while it's a relatively minor part of the game, it's something you may be spending a lot of time on because there are a lot of settlements. It's also a shame that it's so limited. If you dreamed of building that perfect safehouse, well, sorry, but at least I couldn't make something I felt happy with since the buildable objects are relatively few and getting everything placed as you want is a pain as described above. That's not the end of it though; once you've built your settlement, people start moving in. They are dumb as a doorknob and usually just seem to end up all standing in one spot doing nothing. However, they do bring us to the next point, which is settlement management. You'll have no idea what the different settlers are doing and what you need them to do. They are not smart enough to pick an available job that needs to be done, you have to do it for them by finding them, selecting them, then go select the resource/thing you want them to work with. It makes me want to kill someone when I'm forced to do that, and I can't understand why Bethesda didn't just make a menu where you can assign generic workforce points to generic jobs to satisfy generic demands. It'd have been easier on both them and the player.
The world is about the same as Fallout 3. There's more color to it than the boring green filter, but overall it still feels like Bethesda can't decide if the bombs fell 2 centuries or 2 days ago. Plant life or the lack thereof is disappointing. People have had time to make proper buildings, yet still live in something that looks like the treehouse I build at the age of 8, that they'd freeze to death in the first winter that comes. Apparently the art of using a broom and waste basket was also lose during the war and 200 years laster has still not been rediscovered. Nor has proper burials, since there are skeletons everywhere. Overall the world doesn't really feel populated, and where it is populated, it doesn't feel like people live there as much as they happen to stand around in a particular spot temporarily.
Feral ghouls are everywhere, and this is something that bothers me. I'm not fond of the feral ghoul concept at all, since the original games basically made it clear that ghouls were just more or less regular people that looked different. To Bethesda, they are zombies. I mean, they are good as far as zombies go (of the fast variety), but come on. There's even a loading screen hint about how ghouls are often confused with zombies. Really, Bethesda? You think? Maybe it has something to do with how you made them hang out in graveyards, crawl out of the ground, and lie seemingly dead on the floor until you get close after which they try to eat you. At least the generic raiders are not quite as overt about their cannibalism, though it's still there. I eat meat. I love a good steak every now and then. But that doesn't mean I keep beheaded, rotting cows on hooks around my house.
Central Boston is just full of buildings and things to kill though, which is actually a bit overwhelming. I'd have preferred if it was at least a little more spread out. Especially since it's quite difficult to keep track of where you've been and what you've done. Doesn't help that the locations are built like mazes either.
It's made by Bethesda, you tell me.
IMO, that could mean a lot of things...both good and bad...
Modern Bethesda games are crap. Fallout 4 is a perfect example of that. It's literally just Call Of Duty: Fallout.
laughs
falls over out of chair
laughs even harder
Vomits up blood from laughing too much
As a fan of the previous installments of the Fallout sries, It's terrible and doesn't feel like the RPG First-and-Third Person shooter I know and love. Feels way too god-dammed simple and the drastic change on how you chart and build your character makes it rather uncomfortable to people who have put more than +1k hours in the game. it's another of that "If it wasn't apart of the series it would be rather good" thing many "Bad" games seem to get. It's like I go to a burger join and order a hamburger and fries and the waitress comes out with a taco and some onion rings. Is it was I ordered? No. It it what I wanted? No. Is it really that bad if I wanted a taco and onion rings? Probably not but I didn't want tacos and onion rings, I wanted my yummy chemical burger. I got marked something I expected to be yummy and filled with Lettuce, Tomato and Meat and I got that. Not exactly how I expected but I got it. Fallout 4 was rather simple for my taste, The talking MC broke all connection I felt towards the MC, The Dialogue Wheel made making choices so so so much harder on me because I didn't want the same thing that happened when I played LA Noir to happen where I think it's one thing and it's another. For example, I'm someone that wanted to yell "I HATE NEWSPAPERS" at the little newspaper lady but didn't do it, Why? Because I was afraid that my character would have shoved his fist through her face and riddled her corpse full of bullet holes when I honestly just wanted him to say "I really don't like newspapers". I guess it's still the other FPSRPG Fallout instincts kicked in and just made me want to play it like that but now I can't. There isn't the same exact mechanics that I learned and loved from the others and were rather carried over from the other games.I feel that the biggest sin was probably no skill system that the whole Fallout series revolved around. Go look at Fallout 1, 2, 3 and New Vegas, They were all based on the "GURPS" RPG system and Fallout 4's removal of stats really set it away from that origin. It honestly felt like they took the base game of Fallout 3, Striped all people know how to play the game then loaded it down with the top 100 mods of all time for the series. I just can't get over it but I will keep playing for the fix of Fallout I need.