My Thoughts on Fallout 4

[soltes.glenn]

Review Fallout 4: Missed Opportunities
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I will be the first to admit Fallout 4 has some charms, but to make something really worth the time playing and 79$, Bethsoft would have had to at least 3 times the effort into Fallout 4 that it did.

Where I come from:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Played Fallout 3 and disliked it never finished
Played New Vegas and loved it, played through twice
Tried to play Skyrim when it got properly modded a few times. After all these years it is sort of playable now. If I could excise the civil war and play it as a survival game it might be interesting, but there isn’t really any way to make it an interesting survival game due to engine limitations. Chesko made a good start though.
Played Fallout 4 for six hours, liked some aspects but not compelling enough to be worth the time. Maybe the modders can do something with it in 5 years.

Fallout 4 Summary
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Fallout 4 is basically a killing simulator with a few lighthearted attempts at tacking other things on. The combat is interesting enough if it was 1/10 of the game instead of 9/10. There really isn’t all that much there that wasn’t there already in New Vegas with mods.

My Fallout 4 Experience (on Hard)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I only play on hard because usually after this this level, the enemies become bullet sponges with little new added to the mix.
Played through the opening and liked it. Interesting, captured the feeling of the material well. I exited Vault 111. Liked what I saw. Graphics are more than good enough. Explored a bit ….. nothing the matter here. Hence….. There is nothing wrong with the world design except it is depressing and negative.
Started playing through quests and killing raiders and after a little while had so many guns I didn’t know what to do with them all. That’s problem 1, almost every Raider has a gun and tries to shoot you on sight. Boring and you take his gun if you win. Grenades are nice but New Vegas had that too with mods.
Then I got my own set of power armor that was crippled by unrealistic energy depletion rates. Power armour was exceptionally well implemented EXCEPT, nobody knows you are wearing it. Raider with a pea shooter still runs at you in a suicidal attempt to kill you when you have power armour and a minigun.
This was Beths first huge opportunity missed. The AI is still back in the 1990s and the enemies are totally unaware. If you approach a raider with power armour and a minigun, they should run or surrender.
The next missed opportunity was destructible environments. There has been proof of concept in the modding community for destructible environments since Fallout 3. In order to make combat interesting in 2016, really the only way is destructible environments. Take the deathclaw scene just after you get power armour. I just jumped down from the building fired a few shots at the deathclaw to get its attention and ducked into a nearby store. When it came I emptied the minigun into it to kill it as it couldn’t reach me even though there was only a few pieces of wood in the way. It was fun, but it would have been 20x more fun if the deathclaw started ripping the building apart to get me. Any type of gameplay mechanic like this is impossible with fallout 4 because the world is only very partially destructible.
Next Bethsoft took a huge shortcut in crafting with some advantages and disadvantages. In terms of building guns, armour and repairing armour it is a huge step forward. It terms of plot and gameplay it is a huge step backward. This is true because every item is just a collection of parts. This precludes any item being valuable for what it is instead of what it is made of. There are really no items in the game except, guns, armour and chems.
Settlement building is a huge step forward, but in Fallout 4 it is still in its infancy. The limited decision making of the AI means that attacks probably won’t be that interesting. If the modding community can bring this to full maturity it might be a reason to play Fallout 4, but they probably won’t be able because the engine infrastructure just isn’t there.

Combat
>>>>>>>
Since combat is 9/10 of the game (unless you really like settlement building) let’s have a look at that.
Here is a snapshot of when I attacked the Gunners on the overpass (Which as really cool world design I must say). At this point I stopped playing in power armour because it was just too easy. I approached the overpass and tried to judge whether I could talk with them, nope they seemed pretty hostile. The turret at the top was well placed and interesting to beat. Then I faced off with the Gunners who seemed to be a few levels above me, but with some finesse I got close enough for point blank shots to a head with no helmet on the Gunner. After 3 the gunner finally went down. I thought …. Same old Skyrim/Fallout.
The sad part is that Bethsoft was actually on the right track when they gave us power armour early in the game. I thought they might actually have changed things at first, but it was really business as usual. Even power armour is more than a little broken, with a damage reduction of 50, but little pea shooter guns still hurting you but not the power armour. Bethsoft should have given us the armour and allowed us to feel invulnerable for a while and then had a believable plot device take it away to give the player the feeling of vulnerability again.

Plot and Characters
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

In a balanced game a lot more should have been put into this aspect of the game. As it is there isn’t nearly enough beside combat to invest the player in the game unless they all they really want is an excuse to shoot stuff. The voice acting was good and there was nothing inherently wrong with the parts of the story I played, but it just wasn’t different enough or compelling enough to justify being in such as depressing place and time.
Development of RPG like games basically stopped after Mass Effect I. New Vegas made a valiant effort at an interesting story and may have succeeded, but there really wasn’t much new there, except really creative use of writing and situation (I still remember Rose of Cassidy describing the statue outside the NCR camp….. I can’t remember one line of Fallout 4’s dialog and I played it 2 days ago).
So why are RPG games so crippled? The problem is voice acting and player interaction. You can only go so far with a dialog wheel, leaving notes on terminal and a few lines on spoken dialog. Given this structure it is quite impossible for the player to really discover anything or do any rewarding “out of the box thinking”, or feel active vs passive, as every possibility is presented for the user to see as a response. This is a totally 1990s way to do things but big gaming refuses to improve.
What needs to be done is text (or voice) input (big limitation for consoles). The player should be presented with a situation and then given a choice to pick bottled responses or directly enter text. Type the right word and worlds of potential responses open up. My cell phone can already read and transcribe text very accurately (with help from Google) do this. My gaming PC should be able too since the game is paused anyway. This would allow the player to be active instead of passive and put the RPG back in gaming. What is more compelling: Seeing a choice that you can’t pick because your INT or CHR isn’t high enough OR doing some background detective work, assessing the situation, and entering a line of text that opens up whole new worlds of options? This was attempted 30 years ago, but failed miserably due to hardware and software limitations. Both are there right now ….. my cell phone can do it, and how hard can it be it Google is doing for the whole world at once in real time?
Also, I have already looked at the Fallout 4 ending and plot flows and they aren’t nearly compelling enough to spend the time on. New Vegas was. Moral ambiguity is getting so boring and predictable because big gaming wants to write only one story and fit everybody and every choice in. This guarantees a bland gaming experience! New Vegas wasn’t quite as bland as most games in this aspect.


Lastly ….. when is big gaming going to make a game world that I actually want to spend time in?

Fallout 3 and 4 Nope ……. depressing and Darwinian
Skyrim Nope …. who wants to be part of an ugly civil war? Civil war is the worst kind.
New Vegas …. Good writing made and impact it worth the ride
Witcher 3 …… Some good writing and excellent game world design made the game interesting, but it was so depressing and Geralt was so passive with some options but none I liked. I hated being in yet another grey morally ambiguous war forced to serve people I detested because really there was no other options …. So tiresome.
The last game where I felt the world was my oyster was Mass Effect I (with all its many flaws). Partially felt it in New Vegas.

[MaximumEffort]

Yes, you like FNV and Obsidian. use one of the other threads.

Someone should just pin - F4 vs FNV discussion and/or Bethesda vs Obsidian discussion.

[Konfusion with a K]

I read it all, but I still mostly got 'New Vegas Fanboy'. ;)

[Cyan]

Originally posted by soltes.glenn:

Review Fallout 4: Missed Opportunities
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I will be the first to admit Fallout 4 has some charms, but to make something really worth the time playing and 79$, Bethsoft would have had to at least 3 times the effort into Fallout 4 that it did.

Where I come from:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Played Fallout 3 and disliked it never finished
Played New Vegas and loved it, played through twice
Tried to play Skyrim when it got properly modded a few times. After all these years it is sort of playable now. If I could excise the civil war and play it as a survival game it might be interesting, but there isn’t really any way to make it an interesting survival game due to engine limitations. Chesko made a good start though.
Played Fallout 4 for six hours, liked some aspects but not compelling enough to be worth the time. Maybe the modders can do something with it in 5 years.

Fallout 4 Summary
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Fallout 4 is basically a killing simulator with a few lighthearted attempts at tacking other things on. The combat is interesting enough if it was 1/10 of the game instead of 9/10. There really isn’t all that much there that wasn’t there already in New Vegas with mods.

My Fallout 4 Experience (on Hard)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I only play on hard because usually after this this level, the enemies become bullet sponges with little new added to the mix.
Played through the opening and liked it. Interesting, captured the feeling of the material well. I exited Vault 111. Liked what I saw. Graphics are more than good enough. Explored a bit ….. nothing the matter here. Hence….. There is nothing wrong with the world design except it is depressing and negative.
Started playing through quests and killing raiders and after a little while had so many guns I didn’t know what to do with them all. That’s problem 1, almost every Raider has a gun and tries to shoot you on sight. Boring and you take his gun if you win. Grenades are nice but New Vegas had that too with mods.
Then I got my own set of power armor that was crippled by unrealistic energy depletion rates. Power armour was exceptionally well implemented EXCEPT, nobody knows you are wearing it. Raider with a pea shooter still runs at you in a suicidal attempt to kill you when you have power armour and a minigun.
This was Beths first huge opportunity missed. The AI is still back in the 1990s and the enemies are totally unaware. If you approach a raider with power armour and a minigun, they should run or surrender.
The next missed opportunity was destructible environments. There has been proof of concept in the modding community for destructible environments since Fallout 3. In order to make combat interesting in 2016, really the only way is destructible environments. Take the deathclaw scene just after you get power armour. I just jumped down from the building fired a few shots at the deathclaw to get its attention and ducked into a nearby store. When it came I emptied the minigun into it to kill it as it couldn’t reach me even though there was only a few pieces of wood in the way. It was fun, but it would have been 20x more fun if the deathclaw started ripping the building apart to get me. Any type of gameplay mechanic like this is impossible with fallout 4 because the world is only very partially destructible.
Next Bethsoft took a huge shortcut in crafting with some advantages and disadvantages. In terms of building guns, armour and repairing armour it is a huge step forward. It terms of plot and gameplay it is a huge step backward. This is true because every item is just a collection of parts. This precludes any item being valuable for what it is instead of what it is made of. There are really no items in the game except, guns, armour and chems.
Settlement building is a huge step forward, but in Fallout 4 it is still in its infancy. The limited decision making of the AI means that attacks probably won’t be that interesting. If the modding community can bring this to full maturity it might be a reason to play Fallout 4, but they probably won’t be able because the engine infrastructure just isn’t there.

Combat
>>>>>>>
Since combat is 9/10 of the game (unless you really like settlement building) let’s have a look at that.
Here is a snapshot of when I attacked the Gunners on the overpass (Which as really cool world design I must say). At this point I stopped playing in power armour because it was just too easy. I approached the overpass and tried to judge whether I could talk with them, nope they seemed pretty hostile. The turret at the top was well placed and interesting to beat. Then I faced off with the Gunners who seemed to be a few levels above me, but with some finesse I got close enough for point blank shots to a head with no helmet on the Gunner. After 3 the gunner finally went down. I thought …. Same old Skyrim/Fallout.
The sad part is that Bethsoft was actually on the right track when they gave us power armour early in the game. I thought they might actually have changed things at first, but it was really business as usual. Even power armour is more than a little broken, with a damage reduction of 50, but little pea shooter guns still hurting you but not the power armour. Bethsoft should have given us the armour and allowed us to feel invulnerable for a while and then had a believable plot device take it away to give the player the feeling of vulnerability again.

Plot and Characters
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

In a balanced game a lot more should have been put into this aspect of the game. As it is there isn’t nearly enough beside combat to invest the player in the game unless they all they really want is an excuse to shoot stuff. The voice acting was good and there was nothing inherently wrong with the parts of the story I played, but it just wasn’t different enough or compelling enough to justify being in such as depressing place and time.
Development of RPG like games basically stopped after Mass Effect I. New Vegas made a valiant effort at an interesting story and may have succeeded, but there really wasn’t much new there, except really creative use of writing and situation (I still remember Rose of Cassidy describing the statue outside the NCR camp….. I can’t remember one line of Fallout 4’s dialog and I played it 2 days ago).
So why are RPG games so crippled? The problem is voice acting and player interaction. You can only go so far with a dialog wheel, leaving notes on terminal and a few lines on spoken dialog. Given this structure it is quite impossible for the player to really discover anything or do any rewarding “out of the box thinking”, or feel active vs passive, as every possibility is presented for the user to see as a response. This is a totally 1990s way to do things but big gaming refuses to improve.
What needs to be done is text (or voice) input (big limitation for consoles). The player should be presented with a situation and then given a choice to pick bottled responses or directly enter text. Type the right word and worlds of potential responses open up. My cell phone can already read and transcribe text very accurately (with help from Google) do this. My gaming PC should be able too since the game is paused anyway. This would allow the player to be active instead of passive and put the RPG back in gaming. What is more compelling: Seeing a choice that you can’t pick because your INT or CHR isn’t high enough OR doing some background detective work, assessing the situation, and entering a line of text that opens up whole new worlds of options? This was attempted 30 years ago, but failed miserably due to hardware and software limitations. Both are there right now ….. my cell phone can do it, and how hard can it be it Google is doing for the whole world at once in real time?
Also, I have already looked at the Fallout 4 ending and plot flows and they aren’t nearly compelling enough to spend the time on. New Vegas was. Moral ambiguity is getting so boring and predictable because big gaming wants to write only one story and fit everybody and every choice in. This guarantees a bland gaming experience! New Vegas wasn’t quite as bland as most games in this aspect.


Lastly ….. when is big gaming going to make a game world that I actually want to spend time in?

Fallout 3 and 4 Nope ……. depressing and Darwinian
Skyrim Nope …. who wants to be part of an ugly civil war? Civil war is the worst kind.
New Vegas …. Good writing made and impact it worth the ride
Witcher 3 …… Some good writing and excellent game world design made the game interesting, but it was so depressing and Geralt was so passive with some options but none I liked. I hated being in yet another grey morally ambiguous war forced to serve people I detested because really there was no other options …. So tiresome.
The last game where I felt the world was my oyster was Mass Effect I (with all its many flaws). Partially felt it in New Vegas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqbtk-zyKAY