Fallout 4

[arkhenon]

Just one little rant. How often did Skyrim sell? 20 millions,. 25, 30? Why couldn't Bethesda invest a little bit of that money into the technics.The graphics look (specially the character/face animations) extremely dated. Furthermore the game is full of bugs and glitches and ugly textures. It's like they knew the game would sell a lot anyway and didn't bother to spend money on this (and they are probabably right....)

Exactly the main point of my frustrations with the game and especially the company (Other than the dialogue tree and the skill/faction systems and missing survival mode). They are expected to earn around $750 million from F4. And knowing that they have less people working on the game compared to Witcher 3 just blows my mind with all those resources. Goes to show which company is more ambitious and passionate, spending a much larger percentage of their worth on their game. With those kind of numbers Bethesda could have easily hired an army of testers and the best engine designers/artists and writers in the business and make an absolute masterpiece.

It really stings as an old Bethesda fan (playing their games since Daggerfall). I am becoming more and more pushed away from them, and their - increasingly annoying - marketing talks ("Our most ambitious project!" Really Todd?.. That's... sad). Anyway, I should calm down before I get angrier

 

[macpeteo]

("Our most ambitious project!" Really Todd?.. That's... sad). Anyway, I should calm down before I get angrier

I suspect that the "most ambitious" deals with the settlement building, its Farmville, SimCity and Defense Tower all in one! People will spend hours just dinking with the "building" system.

This will keep people from talking too much about the story and once you are done (and I don't know for sure), I guess you go back and play more Farmville, SimCity and Defense Tower since the settlements do get attacked.

In that regard, I guess, the inclusion was a stroke of genius, and the environment (the Apocalypse) is the perfect environment for that type of game mechanic inclusion. But in general, I agree, Bethesda could have done a brilliant job of delivering state of the art graphics and story if they weren't so darn CHEAP/arrogant!

They are now just a run of the mill development house who happen to have a great stable of Intellectual Property that they can exploit.

 

[Arvuti]

I don't understand people saying Fallout 4 looks extremely dated, okay compared to what ? Witcher 3 ? Okay, is a game really dated just because it looks worse than one game ? Tell me an open world game roleplaying game that looks better than fallout 4 AND has such a densily populated open world.

(This is coming from someone who quite a few times had to stop just to admire the visuals of fallout 4)

 

[arkhenon]

@Arvuti Well I can't speak for anyone else, but I myself am not saying that it looks "extremely" dated. I just think that it looks "a little" dated. Like 2012-2013 or so (It even looks good in some places. "A little" dated doesn't mean it looks really bad). Slight improvements (mostly lighting) over Skyrim. And the reason that I'm complaining about this is two-fold: First of all, nearly all the glitches and bugs in all Bethesda games since Oblivion are because of the engine (Gamebryo - Creation Engine is the improved version of it), so by just writing a new engine they could have remedied that a "long" time ago. Second of all, a new engine would have helped them create a better looking game, with more recent technologies (People are talking about Physics Based Rendering as it is a new thing. It was around a long time actually, only Beth came by it now ).

And normally if this was a small company, I would not care actually. But just as I said above, if they sold more than 20 million copies of Skyrim, and about to earn $750 million from Fallout 4 as the news suggest, then I'd freaking expect them to use a little bit more of that money on the game to, I don't know, show their customers that they actually care about them a little... Like, think about CDPR's size and Bethesda's size. How can CDPR create Witcher 3's looks and Bethesda can't? How can CDPR employ 200 people more than Bethesda Softworks? I mean I know Poland's wages are lower, but with that capital difference that shouldn't even be a scratch for Beth. That's what my whole criticism is about. With that budget, if they actually care about their customers, they should be able to create a new engine (both to fix bugs and improve the visuals) easily. I don't think they have an excuse with those sales numbers. I hope I made sense

Edit: It doesn't look worse than one game, btw. It looks worse than "a couple" of games. Even if you only want to count games with big maps and "open-worlds", you have MGS V, Arkham Knight (I know bad example, performance issues, but at least it looks good), GTA 5 PC, Far Cry 4 (I'd give you that it's not that "full" though), AC Unity and Syndicate, modded Skyrim (which is ironic, you at least expect a company to do better than their modders ), and so on. Of course I'm not even going into smaller but better looking games, you have many in that regard. But I still don't think Fallout 4 looks "bad" per se (other than some really low textures). It's just a bit, old... Which makes sense because they are using an improved engine from 10 years ago...

 

[Mr. Newmark]

I'm about 30h into the game here are some likes and dislikes

+ Brotherhood is no goodie-two-shoes white knight faction anymore. They went more with a Space Marine feel (Kill the heretic, purge the unclean/Kill the synth/ghouls/supermutants)
+ Weapon crafting
+ The new armor system: in earlier installments it was just a slot for body and one for hat - now it has some underarmor with different stats and one for head and each limb
+ Art direction
+ Companion story this time they feel like real persons
+ Main story (so far)

- Dialogue: I don't mind the voiced protagonist or the dialogue-"wheel" what I don't like is the paraphrasing. At least 5 times I said something I did not want to
- Settlement: Too many perks are locked behind charisma. Why can't I craft a weapon station without Local Leader? With my 3 Charisma build I am now limited to one Power armor per settlement - And I already have 3. My plan was to build some sort of Iron Man headquarter above my Red Rocket home, but sadly I can't.
- Gamebryo/Creation Engine. Luckily I encountered almost no bugs (some dialogue loops and dogmeat falling through floors in an elevator that's about it), but I read really nasty stuff I you have above 60fps. My machine runs between 50 to 60 and I only have a 60hz monitor so crashing terminals and pipboy screens hasn't happened to me, but I can relate to people who have performance issues and bugs, because NV crashed hard on my second playthrough after I had every dlc and no mods installed.

And a point where I have not quite come to a decision if I like it. Power armor serving as a vehicle has it ups and downs. To my taste you get it way too early, but it is limited to fusion cores, so you cannot use it that often. I only used it two or three times so far, and will see how it plays out in late game.

I would rate Fallout 4 with a 8.5 as a game.

Not my rpg of the year and that down to a simple reason: The gutted rpg elements make it somehow feel like a game from the Far Cry series. You get some points and spend them when you level up, but there are only barebone roleplaying game mechanics left. I don't think it is a bad game, or a bad fallout game. It is just very light on some core aspects, and I hope Bethesda won't derail from the rpg core anymore than this.

I played their games since Morrowind and Fallout since it first installment, so anyone who isn't as passionate about them as me can substract a point from my rating.

 

[Engagerade]

So now i have completed the game and have some thoughts on it.

+Graphics: The game looks pretty good, sure it looks a bit dated but it's still solid.
+Gunplay: For once the gunplay is actually alright.
+World Map, for once i actually thought the map was to small but like in F3 it was very well designed.
+Power Armors feel great ^^
+Companions, i thought they were pretty good.

-Voiced Protagonist, i played with the female character and i was very happy with Courtenay Taylors Delivery and think she deserves serious cred for it, but that's beside the point, Fallout should never have even considerered having a voiced protagonist even less a fucking dialouge wheel -.-
-Oversimplification of perks and SPECIAL, for example now intimidation, black widow high intelligence/charisma etc does not unlock any additional options within dialogue.
-Lack of skills......................................what the fuck?
-Writing still Subpar.
-Bugs, it's unacceptable that a AAA developer releases a game with this many bugs.
-Way to many fetch quests.
-Crafting system, a good system at it's core unfortunately it does not make any sense.
-Factions, after New Vegas this oversimplification of factions does not cut it anymore and they still feel fairly onedimensional.
-Performance, game runs horrible.
-One of the worst, most unnecessary fucking twist i have ever encountered.

Fallout 4 can not even be considered an RPG it's an open world shooter with RPG elements with combat, while improved, falls short compared to other shooters.
It takes all the fantastic improvements Obsidian made to New Vegas and completely discards them for no apparent reason.
As a standalone Title Fallout 4 is a solid game but as a sequel to Fallout 3 and Particularly New Vegas it's nothing short of a massive dissapointment.

 

[octavian123]

I don't understand people saying Fallout 4 looks extremely dated, okay compared to what ? Witcher 3 ? Okay, is a game really dated just because it looks worse than one game ? Tell me an open world game roleplaying game that looks better than fallout 4 AND has such a densily populated open world.

(This is coming from someone who quite a few times had to stop just to admire the visuals of fallout 4)

I wouldnțt really call it dated. It looks really good at times but at other times some textures really pop out.

 

[BearScout]

I wouldnțt really call it dated. It looks really good at times but at other times some textures really pop out.

I have a feeling Bethesda really leans on the idea that modders will upgrade textures for their games rather quickly after release, and randomly pick and chose which textures have a high res or not for console, hoping the better textures will hide the bad textures.

Who knows.

Fallout 4 level design team did an AMAZING job from what I've seen...but yeah...many textures are dated...like I said though...mods will come out and this will easily become the best-looking game of 2015...probably 2016 too.

 

[sv3672]

- Dialogue: I don't mind the voiced protagonist or the dialogue-"wheel" what I don't like is the paraphrasing. At least 5 times I said something I did not want to

There is now a mod that fixes this. It displays full lines as a list instead of just paraphrases.

 

[Scryar]

I don't understand people saying Fallout 4 looks extremely dated, okay compared to what ? Witcher 3 ? Okay, is a game really dated just because it looks worse than one game ? Tell me an open world game roleplaying game that looks better than fallout 4 AND has such a densily populated open world.

(This is coming from someone who quite a few times had to stop just to admire the visuals of fallout 4)

Just to clarify: "Extremely dated" referred to the character- and especially face animations. The environments look decent, aside from some ugly textures.
Anf of course I'm comparing it to Witcher 3 in this regard. They are both big open world rpg's and there is no reason why Bethesda couldn't make the game as good looking as Witcher 3. It's just a matter of investing money and they obviously thought it's not worth it, for whatever reason.

 

[octavian123]

I have a feeling Bethesda really leans on the idea that modders will upgrade textures for their games rather quickly after release, and randomly pick and chose which textures have a high res or not for console, hoping the better textures will hide the bad textures.

Who knows.

Fallout 4 level design team did an AMAZING job from what I've seen...but yeah...many textures are dated...like I said though...mods will come out and this will easily become the best-looking game of 2015...probably 2016 too.

Which makes me think. Skyrim was limited to 32bit and so could only use 2.5 GB of RAM. Did they finally upgrade to 64 bit? It would be a huuuuuuge for modding, especially graphic mods.

 

[sv3672]

Which makes me think. Skyrim was limited to 32bit and so could only use 2.5 GB of RAM. Did they finally upgrade to 64 bit?

Yes, the game requires a 64-bit operating system.

 

[octavian123]

Yes, the game requires a 64-bit operating system.

This is a huge step forward.

 

[web-head91]

well angry joe's review is out:

and he seems to pretty much confirm what many of us thought.
also, fun fact: he thought Fallout 2 was brilliant , especially when it comes to dialogue.

all in all, i thought it was a fair review really, and i reccomend checking it out, along with Super Bunnyhop's review ^^

 

[iCeDMeTaL]

-Voiced Protagonist, i played with the female character and i was very happy with Courtenay Taylors Delivery and think she deserves serious cred for it, but that's beside the point, Fallout should never have even considerered having a voiced protagonist even less a fucking dialouge wheel -.-
-Oversimplification of perks and SPECIAL, for example now intimidation, black widow high intelligence/charisma etc does not unlock any additional options within dialogue.
-Lack of skills......................................what the fuck?

LOL.... literally the same complaints I had for TW3. Interesting. I had a problem with the dialogue too in TW3, but since the writing is good, I gave it a pass. Still, I was disappointed about the lack of choices for Geralt during conversations. FO4 new dialogue system is controversial, but at least I still feel a semblance of roleplaying when I pick a good or mean or sarcastic option.

As a standalone Title Fallout 4 is a solid game but as a sequel to Fallout 3 and Particularly New Vegas it's nothing short of a massive dissapointment.

That is your opinion and shared by some other people who waited 7 years for the game and was expecting something massive. The jump from 3/NV to 4 was nowhere near the scale of TW2 --> TW3, that much I will admit.

Fallout 4 can not even be considered an RPG it's an open world shooter with RPG elements with combat, while improved, falls short compared to other shooters.

Character building alone makes it more of an RPG than TW3. And I am a CDPR fan, I played the entire series and preorderd TW3 + season pass, before anyone jumps on me for being a troll or something.

 

[Sagitarii]

Character building alone makes it more of an RPG than TW3. And I am a CDPR fan,

I agree, The Sims is the best RPG I've ever played.

 

[KingHochmeister]

well angry joe's review is out:

and he seems to pretty much confirm what many of us thought.
also, fun fact: he thought Fallout 2 was brilliant , especially when it comes to dialogue.

all in all, i thought it was a fair review really, and i reccomend checking it out, along with Super Bunnyhop's review ^^

Got to say I was surprised with his review, after him giving Skyrim a 10/10 I expected at least a 9/10 from him for Fallout 4, guess I was wrong about him.

 

[web-head91]

Got to say I was surprised with his review, after him giving Skyrim a 10/10 I expected at least a 9/10 from him for Fallout 4, guess I was wrong about him.

i was surprised myself, he criticized its weaknesses pretty well while taking into account the expectations of the hardcore fans and new fans as well.
i still thought the score was a bit high and that the game is not worthy of 8/10. i still think from everything i had seen, it'd be around 6/10 or 7/10.

 

[randyrhoads]

Fallout 4 is a great action game and a really poor RPG.
I've experienced very few bugs and 0 crashes. That is a first for me with a freshly released BS game.

The bad:
Little to no improvement over what has been done before.
Side quests are few and far between, at least 70% of the locations on the map don't have any narrative to them except a few pre war memos on terminals. Game relies on the radiant quest system from Skyrim, which seems improved a bit but still pretty boring.
Dialog has been talked to death :smiling2:. Just plain boring, you rarely say what you mean to. Only charisma plays a role in dialog now and its a minor one, mainly for haggling for a higher reward and every now and then for a little snip of info. The other stats play no role in it.
Skills, stats, perks dumbed down.
Poor enemy scaling. At level 66 it takes 3 supercharged shots with my double shot (~780 without the supercharge) gauss rifle to kill a regular mercenary.
Few enemy types.
Radio sucks.
Choices follow the ME3 school of 3 different colors.
Very limited choice of guns, nothing remotely close to what Todd promised. Yes, guns can be modded to work with different types of ammo and be made automatic or semi-automatic but that's really it.
Was skeptical about the art design pre-release but it has won me over, it's quite fitting imo.

The good:
The game nails the exploration aspect for me, it's super fun to explore the world. It would have helped if there were more quests to give u further reason to go out and explore.
Worth noting human enemies behave better than before, they actually look for cover when in a gunfight. Ghouls ambush you quite often as well.
Crafting weapons and armor. Building settlements. Tinkering with power armor (very disappointed by how early you're able to earn a suit).
Factions have been improved from Skyrim, not by a lot but still.
The animations have been improved but they are still subpar for a 2015 game.

I don't remember the last time a game I was excited about before release bored me before completing the main story, I had that with Fallout 4.
Witcher 3's GOTY title is in the bag guys.

 

[Arvuti]

Radio sucks.

:what3: