The Truth About Fallout 4: Must SEE

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This game bothers me. For everything it advances, it has taken a step back in the areas players would enjoy. On one hand, I am overwhelmed by the improved gunplay, the settlements, and the improvements to familiar monsters. But this game fails to deliver on player expectations for the series. We didn't buy fallout for gunplay and monsters, or to play minecraft. We bought fallout to experience a world, to lose ourselves in the story, and feel immersed in the wasteland - and fallout has not just taken steps back, they've fully disengaged from this immersion.

The immersion breaking is the hardest part for this game. NPCs you encounter can be summarized by the dialog wheel: [Tell me your Backstory in 3 sentences] [Give me a quest] [Give me extra money for this quest] [I'll do this quest later.] The deepest an NPC might get into telling you their backstory is two or three choices to get told a little more vague details about them. Even iconic factions with rich lore, like the Brotherhood of Steel, give you barely any backstory or information. Ask them about what values the Brotherhood holds? "Most of that should be evident by the fight we were just in. Also, we value honor and truth. And stuff."

As a final nail in the coffin, the game handcuffs you to the Father/Mother story. If you enter this game expecting to have freedom to ignore the story, then, don't go near any important NPC anywhere. The more interesting an NPC seems on the surface, the more likely they are going to force you into the worst kind of dialog imaginable: The No Choice But Yes. Without spoiling anything, my first encounter in Diamond City was a cool young lady, reminescent of Moira from Fallout 3. Eccentric and fun, I was hoping for some Moira-style quests, but, her first dialog is an interview where she tells you that you are a vault dweller instantly without asking and puts you into a question about your character's son that gives you four choices: [Stop Asking me] [Vague Answer] [Why are you asking me] [Son] - Except, each time you choose, she says, No! Choose [Son]. NO! CHOOSE [SON]. NO!!!! DO YOUR STORY! NOW!


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Fallout 4 is a good game, it just isn't a good Fallout game.

They've completely neutered the SPECIAL system since with enough time and leveling up, you can get all stats to 10, all perks and become the almighty God of the Commonwealth which means you can no longer build your own unique character since you can become the master of all trades.

They also changed the dialogue system to be Mass Effect-style dialogue wheel, restricted to four choices: Yes, Yes, No (Yes), and a Question. There is no problem with going for a voiced protagonist and restricting the available speech options to four (five if you count Speech checks which almost always boil down to "Pay me more and then Yes") if you can back that up with a solid story and good writing. Things Bethesda seem to be lacking. They give you a pathetically short intro in which they introduce you to your family, and whisk you off to a Vault. Why do I care about these people? I don't, but my character does, which leads me to my biggest problem: the lack of roleplay.

You aren't your character, just along for the ride. You can no longer play as an Evil character, or anything resembling such. Diplomacy? Out the door. Guns solve the problems now, and to their credit, the gunplay is a big step up from Fallouts 3 and New Vegas but that's not why I play these games. Gone are the days of playing as a massive idiot who solves all problems with his fists or as a Diplomat who can resolve problems by talking them out whose only skill with weapons is knowing which way to hold them. Or even a compulsive gambler. Want to tell Garvey to go screw himself? Well, you can decline but the quest will not continue until you say yes and get in the damn Power Armor. You can run away but that breaks story progression.

Overall the game feels less like Fallout 4 and more like Borderlands 3 to me.
I didn't like it. That doesn't mean you can't.

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A baby is drowning in the lake:

-Fallout 1

Ask for more information
Agree to help
Decide not to help
Accidentally say something that pisses the NPC off, failing the quest
Reveal too much information about yourself, causing the Super Mutants to track your vault more easily

-Fallout 2

Ask for more information
Agree to help
Decide not to help
Accidentally say something that pisses the NPC off, failing the quest
Pop culture reference about the baby

-Fallout 3
Yes, I will save the baby
Depends on the caps
I will not save the baby
[Intelligence] The baby is drowning

-Fallout New Vegas
I will save the baby
I will not save the baby
[Barter 30] Double the caps and I'll save the baby
[Medicine 30] Thanks to my medical knowledge, I will easily be able to save the baby
[Survival 15/30] Uh... yeah, I totally know how to swim

-Fallout 4
Yes
No (Yes)
Sarcastic (Yes)
Hate babies


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As a huge fan of the Fallout series, I was extremely excited to get this game. I have them all, even Fallout Tactics. As much as I want to love this game, as much as I want it to be an awesome step forward for the series, the truth is: this game is a massive letdown.

The game immediately dips you headfirst into one of the basic flaws of the game: your character is already decided for you. Want to be the empitome of evil that clears out entire towns for caps? Nope, you're a concerned father. Want freedom in dialogue choices? Nope, you're just allowed to straddle shades of being a concerned father. There is literally no room for roleplaying with the choice of a voiced protagonist. Within the opening minutes, the heart of a Role Playing Game is taken from you and never given back. You cannot be a character of your own creation, you just get to change what your concerned daddy looks like. That's it.

The second glaring abortion of this game: skills are gone entirely. Just let that sink in a bit, we're talking what's supposed to be an rpg here and an established system from 5 previous games. Bethesda decided to trash it quite literally. No more intelligence beefing up your skill point gain each level, no more needing to tag skills or focus on what you want to be. Instead it's just completely gone, with tiny slices of it shoe horned into the perks system. You get a perk every level instead, and spend it on the new perks sheet. Perks even feel that much more watered down because of it. It's the only slice left of character specialization in the game, and it doesn't do nearly enough. It's cute looking, but also hides the ridiculous nature of leveling in this game.

Leveling up makes character building pointless anyways. In all past Fallout games, your starting attributes were absolutely vital. It was who you were going to be. Melee oriented? Here comes the strength + endurance. Sneaky sniper? Grab that perception & agility. Then Fallout 4 comes in, and lets you learn that attributes are now nearly pointless from a build standpoint. You can add a stat literally each level, until you're perfect. Gaining stats in previous games was like a holy grail, extremely rare to find, expensive to do, but dear goodness you raised that 1 point in agility. Now you can just eat up extra attributes like popcorn, until you're a jack of all trades and builds.

Another glaring thing that bothered me 8 and a half hours in: I'd already explored half the map quite literally. And I play this game slow, with a terrible side of being a pack rat. I take my time and pick up everything. Heck, I spent an hour and 10 minutes in the tiny Vault 111, just making sure I didn't miss anything. And that's my biggest issue with this game so far: it's absolutely tiny. I later looked back at the map and realized most of the rest I haven't explored was the ocean. You will discover all the locations in the game absurdly quickly, and getting to them is fast. I personally liked the massive empty spaces of Fallout 3. If that's not your cup of tea, New Vegas did a more compact map extremely well. It felt more like an unpopulated wasteland, not to mention journeying there was half the fun. Now you can get anywhere with no planning, and do so in seconds. The worst part? This tiny space is pretty empty. Random encounters are very rare in the time I've played. There's not much of a sense of danger or worry, you'll get there in one piece and most likely never run into anything on the way.

One last tidbit, companions are all in god-mode. They cannot die, ever :/ They also join you with zero effort or next to no dialogue. The game washes your face with this too, 3 minutes into it you're probably already the new general of the Minutemen. You almost never took charge of a faction at all in the previous games, much less this easily.

The 3 things that have changed the most in terms of additions: are gunplay, settlement building, and weapon modification. Let's take a look at them.

Gunplay is most definitely the best improvement 4 has to offer. And when it really comes down to it, that's what this series has now become. It's barely an rpg anymore, it's much more of an action fps now. The controls are tight, the action in shootouts is intense, and vats is no longer a pause button. Bethesda made some right moves here, but even so missed a few basic things. The ai also isn't terribly suited to the new gunplay either, you'll either be up against someone firing out in the open, or have to chase enemies behind a slice of cover. Once in a while they will crouch behind sandbags, or lean from a corner. On the plus side, enemies on the whole are much tougher, especially the legendary ones. There are some great fights to be had, some can last minutes and require you to pull out the last bits of melon or stab a stimpak in while you run away. It's sad, there was some serious potential here.

The weapons look much more like what you'd expect in a post apocalyptic wasteland. The vast majority are put together from pieces of pipe, springs, anything you could grab. I like this compared to the mysterious numbers of pristine pre-war weapons in previous games. The modification system is pretty fun, and it's nice you can tailor guns to whatever you need from them. The same pipe rifle you use to snipe from a distance can totally be remade to churn out armor piercing rounds automatically. Unfortunately, there's 2 big downsides to this new system. First, you can usually find better modified weapons off of enemies than the ones you can make. Secondly, you will have the most powerful weapons early in the game. There's no sense of scaling here, everything you can ever operate is there from the get-go.

Finally, let's talk about settlement building. You can finally manage and run settlements in the wasteland, not to mention build them to the smallest minutia. I've spent hours into this alone, just building up the right amount of crops, beds, etc. It adds some serious meat to an otherwise bare game, and in my mind is the 2nd best change this game did. But even so, it was rather poorly explained to the player. Trying to figure out supply lines, looking around on foot for your workers so you can re-assign them jobs... there's just far too much frustration and wasted time figuring this out. Not to mention the entire mechanic would have benefitted immensely from a freaking menu. How is everything else in the game viewable from your pip-boy, and yet you can't look up what your workers are doing & where? It's really rough around the edges the way it's implemented, I'm hoping modders fix this up, because it has extreme potential for fun.

So when it comes down to it, Fallout 4 is not the masterpiece the hype would have us believe. It's pretty stripped down, well past the point of being an rpg. The game can still be good fun, but I can't honestly recommend it at full price as it is right now. Down the road when it's on sale, and modders have saved Bethesda's butt it could turn into the experience it should have been initially.

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>> Everything wrong with Fallout 4 as a Fallout game
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Because who the hell likes to work for things? (Character progression)

I really like the challenge and immersion behind becoming the General of the Minutemen, getting some of the most dangerous equipment avaible in the Wasteland (Power Armor, Minigun, Fatman) as well as killing a Deathclaw and joining the almighty and sealed Brotherhood of Steel in the very first hour of the whole game. (not)

Apparently the new targeted mass audience is too overexerted with free choice and complex dialogue options

NPC: Will you help me?

Character:

Yes
No (Still forced to do it)
Sarcastic (Yes)
Huh? (Explanation that leads back to the above options)

Speech check = Yes, but for 50 caps

The FPS purpose-built overworld and quests

No longer is the wasteland a coherent and authentic post-apocalyptic world. In between the separated main settlements like Diamond city there's nothing more than FPS purpose-built locations, enemies and quests. There are many settlements that don't seem to be able to take care of themselves in the slightest. There are random hordes of raiders and super mutants inhabiting places that are only there so you have something to shoot at and then loot the chest located in the center. Brotherhood members have no valid patrols or outposts anymore (other than the Hub-like police station and airport base), they just spawn in random locations, attacking random locations until the moment they die. It's so freaking meaningless, only there to fullfil the purpose of making the world seemingly filled with life and action.

I really don't care for these BOS members, I don't care for this dungeon-like places to explore only to find one legendary enemie and a loot chest. The world doesn't feel like a world anymore, it's just a level to explore. Also I don't care to make randomized fetch quests for generic settlers mostly without any backstory or character, like "Go there, kill that, take this, bring back". Why in the name of god should I care other than having something to shoot with my weapons?

Everything is meaningless.

Roleplaying is 2000 and out

Who wants to be an evil character anyway? Be the good guy concerned father and General of the Minutemen, don't try to kill the invincible Essential NPC's inhabited everywhere and most certainly, don't try to make any choices that could change the world surrounding you. Also you have to see the reduced dialogue options mentioned above in correlation to the possible solutions/outcomes of a quest. For that, just check out the very first quest in New Vegas and how you could solve it with the following actions:

- Quest starts with Joe Cobb (a bandit) intimidating a townsfolk for handing them over a person which they hide and that the bandits will attack the place

- Help the townsfolk:
- - Optional: Kill Joe Cobb the very first moment you see him arguing, so the Bandits will have one member less when attacking
- - Optional: Recruit several people living in the town to help you out with their presence and supplies when the bandits attack
- - - For convinving them you'll need various skills like Barter, Medicine or Speech i.e.
- - Prepare for the attack and then defend the city
- - Every of your allies who dies will stay dead
- - Don't let the bandits win, or the quest will fail
- Finally you've done it and became friends with the townsfolk and claim your reward, unfortunetly the powder ganger bandits will now shoot you on sight

Help the bandits (powder gangers):
- First, kill the person hiding in the town for the bandits
- Then you need to get some supplies for the bandits from the townsfolk
- - Optional: Convince the shopkeeper to supply the bandits with leather armor using the Barter skill
- - Optional: Obtain medical supplies from the doctor:
- - - Lie to him, buy the supplies, steal them or simply kill the doctor and take everything you want
- Proceed to occupy the town with the powder gangers and kill all residents
- Don't let Joe die, since he's the one who promised you a reward
- Finally the town will be taken over by the bandits and you claim your reward. The townsfolk stays dead and you're free to join the powder gangers by traveling to their main base

Or you could kill the townsfolk on your own in between or go the psychotic way and just kill both. Also at this point you could still betray either the town or powder gangers. Regarding the bandits for example you could just spy their main base and hand the information over to the NCR military, then you could join to exterminate these criminals.

There are even more complex solutions like defending the town but still joining the Powder gangers etc.

TL;DR = Compare the possible decisions and consequences of the first quest of New Vegas to the first Quest of F4. There's not a single decision to be made in the latter.

Dumbed down and streamlined for the target audience masses

Karma system gone
Faction reputation gone
Traits & Skills gone (RP)
Special/Perk trade gone. If you wanted to improve your Special stats, you had to pass on a Perk or find a rare Bobblehead. Now you can just max out everything eventually (It's really just a level & loot shooter as of now)
Freedom of choice gone (dialogue wheel, invincible Essential NPC's, concerned family father predefined character, no choice to be evil, simplified quest decisions)
Weapon condition & Hardcore mode gone without any alternative
Consequences gone (Not even the choices that are still there do really matter. You've literally no influence to the environment anymore other than siding with a faction, which doesn't have many consequences either)
In addition to above, companions really are just a invincible meat shield by now
Interesting locations and characters gone, everything is purpose-built for a little FPS action or for some linear main quest and the world is filled with generic characters (although there are exceptions)
__________

Let me clarify a few things last: This is NOT a hater review. I love the Fallout franchise with at least having 300 hours into F3 and FNV. Also I'm not trying to trashtalk this game per se, since I really love the new Power Armor, shooter mechanics, modifications system, Workshop and I'm actually enjoying the game for what it is. Also I don't mind the graphics, stability or bugs, it's questionable but fine imo. And the main story isn't any worse than previous games.

But what I most certainly do dislike is how they are draining the essence of the original games out of this installment. Also advertising it as a RPG and Fallout succesor while it is really just an Exploration shooter with some sanbox elements is not okay in my eyes. And the worst thing about this: It works out for them. With the new normie casual target audience they'll probably make a lot of money with F4 while dissapointing most original hardcore fans.

And that's just bull-sh-it. Also it could eventually backfire at them, since I've seen quite a few games and franchises failing hard because of too hard monetization attempts, just like casualizing or recycling too much. (How old is the F4 engine again? Also they've clearly reused assets from previous Bethesda games)

Further clarification

Why I liked the package of Special, Trait and Skill points as well as connected perks more than the simplified F4 system: I liked the old system way more because it just felt more natural and realistic that way. Choosing you characters Special foundation, then building onto that with Traits and skill points as well as having different perks avaible every level because of the given build made my character feel dedicated. He wasn't an almighty allrounder being able to do everything he wants but there was a much clearer character progression in my eyes.


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Fallout 4 is a huge leap backwards from Skyrim in every regard. Its not a bad game per se, but keep your money until next year's christmas. The modders will have to work double shifts to finish this console port.

With the exception of the first ten minutes and what you saw in the trailers, this review is spoiler free.


The Pro's:
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* there's a lot of Fallout in here
* modding support should be decent since its based on the Skyrim engine
* the combat feels fluid enough for a RPG
* ironsights for most guns
* VATS now slows down time instead of pausing the game (I like it)
* so far no gamestopping bugs except for constant crashes when I exit the game
* borderless fullscreen mode
* Apple/Android app is a nice touch for people who like to have the map open at all times, it works for me
* animated hair (PhysX?)
* not a single CTD so far
* Achievements not working (one of the stupidest reward methods ever conceived), Steam Overlay not working either so probably connected (Edit: Achievements suddenly started working, possibly because I started Steam in Admin Mode or they fixed something, Overlay still not working)

* Dogmeat is kinda useful now, he pins down opponents, occasionally finds loot piles and won't die five minutes after you found him (like he did in Fallout 3)
* Dogmeat goes into "sneak mode" when you do, looks very cute
* Dogmeat generally behaves like a "real" dog, he runs away from you to sniff at things, runs ahead or stays back for a bit ... he's no DD yet, but close

* conversations are much more natural than in previous Bethesda games (more than 2 actors involved, actions happening, etc,), but they're bugged to hell, more on that below
* you can move the camera arround freely during conversations and even run arround, the talker will continue to talk and wait until you focus him again to present your four response options, no more being tidally locked to a single NPC

* interesting armor system (you can strap armor on top of your armor, like shoulderpads)
* you can use the Minigun from the Power Armor without actually using the Power Armor (weird, but its Fallout)
* Ghouls have become semi-zombies, some are laying arround like a corpse until they notice you or continue to crawl when their legs are gone, try to jump & bite you without arms
* talkative enemies taunt you during combat while you fight your way to them, making the shooter part a bit more organic
* tinkering with your Power Armor feels like working on your own car

* I was sceptical about the voiced protagonist, but the female does a decent job, it will make modding quite a bit harder though
* If you play the standard female player character (the one shown in the trailers), Piper looks almost exactly like you. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but for RP-reasons I will pretend that she is my grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-niece.


The Con's:
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* boring but also rushed prologue/tutorial in the most ugly environment imaginable
* yes, even more boring than the doctor's questions in F:NV
* the main plot quickly becomes completly redundant
* the forced straight marriage spouse and the baby fail to create any emotional attachment to either of them (How could they in the rushed 5 minute prologue?)
* getting the iconic Power Armor ten minutes into the game is an odd design choice
* no food/water required, a step back from F:NV
* "Survival" difficulty has nothing in common with survival games, not even F:NV
* Stimpacks heal limbs again, and you don't even have to target the broken one, just pop a Stimpack into your arm to grow a new foot
* not having to train skills to improve in them feels wrong

* the village building is vastly oversimplified (I demolished 3 buildings in 10 seconds, imagine woodchopping in Skyrim without ever swinging your axe) and feels like its been rushed on top of the game for feature creep
* the village building quickly becomes a chore thanks to the ridiculous UI
* still the same outworldy "hacking" of computer terminals (guess 4 times, then get locked out, although this time you can retry after 10sec), reminds me of Sudoku

* C-movie quality conversations, at least during the first hours, it gets better the moment you meet Piper but they continue to feel forced and out of place
* Bethesda took the easy way out of the problem with followers stabbing you in the back, get a perk that disables friendly fire damage, no need to teach Piper *not* to use that Fat Man next to you
* after spending a few hours with my protagonist, its beginning to feel like she has a split personality, mine (during normal play) and hers (during conversations), extremly limited conversation options are not helping here either

* holstered weapons disappear from existance
* enemies fall out of the sky, Dragon Age 2-style
* enemies regulary get stuck, jitter arround, generally bug out
* legendary enemies are pretty meh ("Legendary Bloatfly" ... uh-huh)
* cars still got built-in nukes that go off if you look at them funny (it's okay if you like it, I don't)

* extreme loading times even for small buildings, SSDs are a huge help, but still
* tons of loading screens in general, an engine out of its time
* ugly, washed out graphics, it could be my imagination but I remember Fallout 3 to be prettier and less cartoon'y for its time
* FPS rollercoaster, even though my Skyrim runs at constant 60 FPS with 2K textures
* don't even try to compare Fallout 4's landscape to Skyrim, it will make you weep (not talking green meadows, just detail and atmosphere)
* wax museum character models

* gigantic, oversized console UI (as usual)
* literally the most unintuitive UI controls for a PC game of all times, Bethesda tried really really hard to pi** off PC players this time, this goes especially to the Pip-boy handling
* EVE Online character creator with bonkers Gamepad-turned-into-Keyboard controls
* dialogs only offer four responses with one trying to be extra-witty, like those dumbed down Bioware RPGs
* talent tree looks pretty and funny, but also unnessecarily bloated (pro tip: you can scroll down!)
* most weapons take up a quarter of the screen, I'm not even talking about rocket launchers, just pistols

* loot menu pops up everywhere and ruins immersion, no more opening boxes to see what's inside, especially distracting in combat
* talking to sleeping people sometimes makes them stand up immediatly, instead of waking and getting up
* NPCs happily block your way in the best of Bethesda's tradition
* NPC AI seems to be from the 90's, melee's happily run into minigun fire with a pocket knife, grenades are generally thrown at walls in front of them (incinerating themselves instead of me), animals blindly charge avoid of all fear, etc. pp.


Edit: Figured out the console keys on the german keyboard. Its AltGr+Ö.


About the missing ACHIEVEMENTS, you may want to google it before falling back to kindergarten insults. My Steam Overlay is not working either and its a known problem. One of many.


About the marriage paragraph, let me quote one comment:
"Kaiser Fred VIII
The fact that you are forced to have a wife isn't a problem of social justice or whatever, the problem is that it forces a backstory on your character. It isn't yours anymore. You can't be a socially recluse engineer living alone, or some widowed businessman or whatever. You *have* to be a married vet with a son. It is not *your* character, it is Bethesda's character. That, combined with a voiced protag, pretty much killed any prospect of replayability and RP in this game to me before I even got my hands on it."



I think I will stop playing Fallout 4 soon and wait for the modders to eventually fix this console port. Thanks for all the comments, especially the kindergarten-level haters. You guys have inoculated me against anything the internet can throw at me for the next 100 years! :)


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Pros
Better shooter mechanics. There's no denying this. F3/NV suck in comparison.
Weapon customisation. When you get your head around it, it's a fun system.
Sound and Music are really great, both in terms of content and their implementation
Graphics are great, both technically and thematically
Animations are much improved from earlier Bethesda titles
No more "Arrow in the knee" repetition, random NPCs comments are nicely varied. They even have special lines for certain dates (like December 25)
The vertibird and artillery additions are Bethesda seeing popular mods from earlier Fallouts and implementing them into the core game in a way that fleshes out the world. Whilst one could argue both are pointless, they add a nice bit of life to the world.
I prefer the new power armour system, I think if the original Fallouts could've done something similar, they would have. It fits their presentation in the game lore more accurately.

Neutral
Settlement system is interesting, but the explanation is nearly non-existent and the tutorial is a joke. Some serious changes to the game world as you setup dozens of prosperous, populated and linked settlements would've been a nice touch to reward the effort. Occasionally seeing a minuteman patrol or a inter-settlement supply caravan is not much. As it is you mostly do it for its own sake.
The junk to build system is interesting, it also helps to serve as a cap sink. It can lead to frustrating amounts of junk hoarding though and there are a illogical breakdowns.
The factions and their motivations are interesting. It's clear the BOS in this game is a direct response to all the criticism Bethesda got for changing their ethos in Fallout 3. Neutral point because it's never really fleshed out in any interesting way for any faction, just a stream of glorified "clear the building" quests.
The game is buggy. But this is an open world game, so it's to be expected and can't really be held against the game.

Cons
Reduction of every single stat and skill down to the perks system, effectively kills the fun of character customisation. Allowing the rapid acquisition of SPECIAL points makes initial character creation feel meaningless and kills replay value.
Dialogue is almost pointless now, options are severely limited and you don't know what you'll actually say. The walking conversation system leads to lots of bugs with NPCs ending conversations mid-stream or you having to jerk the mouse around to get them to continue.
Quests are all rail shooter quests. On the rare occasion you get a choice it's almost invariable a black and white choice at the very end of the quest chain. Really crap in comparison to New Vegas's brilliant branching quests (not that it too didn't have its fair share of rail quests, but here that is all we get).
Companions are really shallow. I've barely said a dozen sentences to Piper and now she's in love with me? There is no real character arc for any of them and they all join you on a dime.
The two characters you're meant to care for the most, your son and wife, are in the game for all of 30 mins and you never develop any connection. I've seen 10 mins cinematics do a better job. The main quest line feels forced as a result. I felt more for the Vault Tec sales guy turned ghoul than my son.
The radiant quests are painful. When a settlement has a settler captured for the fifth time, by the same pack of raiders in the same school I've cleared out five times, it gets a little tiresome. They also clog up your quest list, especially if you join BOS, Minutemen and the Railroad.
Bethesda still don't seem to understand that Fallout is set centuries after the nuclear apocalypse. There should be some semblance of a rebuilt society. Exploring the weird way in which societies have rebuilt themselves is half the fun of Fallout 1/2/NV. 200 years and the "jewel of the commonwealth" is a shanty town with 20 people? In this world it seems like the bombs dropped 20 years ago, not 200.

Summary: it's still worth the money and it is a good game for what it is: an adventure FPS. This review would be positive if they'd just remove Fallout from the title. As they won't I will judge it as a Fallout game, in which case it is a disappointment.

Fallout was all about meaningful character development, fun interactive conversations and varied interesting quests, this game has none of these.


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*sigh*

Lemme start out by saying that I love Fallout. My first Fallout game was 3 and I enjoyed it, and I loved New Vegas even more (it's pretty high on my favorite games of all time). I also enjoyed skyrim a bunch.

I expected Bethesda to take what Obsidian did with New Vegas, bring it in and make it better. I didn't see much of it in the trailers, and honestly the disappointment started to sink in... starting with the shoddy development of the dialogue wheel. I also noticed how skills were absent, but I still had hope that the rest would be just fine and that there was good reason.

I purchased the game on release, downloaded it, and started it up. Immediately I had concerns about graphic customization, being that it was far less sophisticated than what I could do with New Vegas and Fallout 3. Still, I pushed on with hopes that it would all work out fine... Then I started my game and saw the opening video, which in my opinion was excellently done and really hooked me. I also loved the idea of being someone who existed in the pre-war era who experiences the apocalypse 200 years later. While it was rushed, I realized that it was to keep the pacing. The face creation system is as good as it's ever been, but it's a bit vague.

From there on to exiting the vault, I was in love... that love sunk faster than the Titanic shortly after. Now I'm going to break the game down...

Visuals and Sounds: This is as good as Fallout has ever looked, but we all knew that they were re-using the same engine, so it wasn't exactly top notch. It basically looks as good as New Vegas with ENBs and a ton of texture packs. The faces are also as good as Fallout has looked, along with some of the better animations I've seen Bethesda crop up. Soundwise it was spot on, music again was nicely done kind of resembling Fallout 3. This is the game's best part

Combat: This is arguably Bethesda's biggest improvement... Gunplay is as good as ever, and the power armor system is awesome. The weapon modification system is solid AF, wonderful job there. Sadly this seesm to be where Beth devoted their time. Armor modifications do make sense, but I am disappointed by how they got rid of damage threshhold.

Gameplay: Now this is where it goes wrong. Immediately I notice that there's no option for hardcore mode, one of my favorite additions to New Vegas. Also, the karma/reputation system is absent.... This arguably one of the biggest sins I've seen.. Karma was flawed, but it was a system that made sense in an RPG, and reputation was another great addition by Obsidian. With those gone, I feared for how RPG mechanics in general would turn out. This also came through in leveling. Perks are now purely combat, and half of them are as useless as the ones in Fallout 3. It's clear, also, that you can max everything out fairly quickly with no trouble, and that's what frustrates me about an RPG as it eliminates the idea of playing to a certain style.

Dialogue: I dedicated this entire section to my frustration with it. The dialogue wheel is one of the worst additions to Fallout. While it worked in Mass Effect, it's poorly done here. All you get is 4 options in every conversation with the same results: Yes, No, Sarcastic/Info, Maybe. It's disgraceful, and we don't even get to see what we're about to say, which forces us to rely on the voice action. The dialogue writing as well is completely one-dimensional, boring, and almost cringeworthy. When I heard the whole crap of "destiny" from that stoner grandma, I knew I was in for another cliche-ridden crap fest.

Story: And here's where I continue. Having the motivation ofl ooking for the player's son is good, but that motivation is gone when presented with a bunch of crap from other characters. The characters are clearly another step down, reverting to the black/white dilemma of good versus evil. I know it gets into the whole idea of synths versus humans and morality, but at the moment the momentum is just dead. Oh, and if you notice, it's practically the same story as Fallout 3, and Skrim, and a bunch of other Bethesda games: find what you los I know, Bethesda isn't known for crafting great stories, but that's what Fallout is all about: the great story of the apocalypse. You're the next chapter. Also, you get the power armor at level 2... What kind of game design is that? Power armor used to be a reward, something you aspired to get. Practically, you're playing Bethesda's character at this point, not your own...

RPG: This doesn't even deserve a section because this game has shifted from RPG with shooter mechanics to Shooter with RPG mechanics. Instead of innovating, Bethesda gutted what I loved about Fallout and took the Role Playing out of RPG. You can trace this back to after morrowind though that they've been doing this. This actually starts at the well-written beginning, because you're railroaded to be either a useless wife or a vet whom both are parents and are "WERE ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY I MUST DO THIS CAUSE ITS NECESSARY FOR MY KID" in every conversation no matter what you do thus creating a split persona between you and the character you're playing, which nullifies the idea of "being whoever you want". The fact that you get your own faction in the span of 30 minutes is another insult... If my character gets follows that quickly no matter my Charisma, then I must be Hitler. Additionally, Pretty much every quest is fetch this, shoot that, go there. This continues my rant about dialogue in that we don't get to use attribues (special) for dialogue, nor any skills. All that affects dialogue is charisma, instead of using other attributes to affect what we say (Intelligence for smarts, strength for bruteness, etc). This goes hand in hand with the lack of the awesome reputation system from New Vegas, which made you want to get in bed with some people and kill others. You could almost call this false advertising because RPG values are like ghosts here.

Companions: I like how fluid the dog works and moves, but I'm missing the companion wheel because it was so convenient and effective. A lot of what you can do with the dog is useless and distracting, so it's just there to run around and chew on ♥♥♥♥. The problem is that having a companion is annoying because it's hard to track them and they end up doing dumb stuff, like before, which you can't prevent.

Crafting: A great idea, but this exposes a HUGE mechanical flaw... bethesda forces you to use the arrow keys rather than allowing you to re-bind them. Clearly, this shows the game was ported from consoles. Poor move

There's so much more I want to touch up on, but my frustration with the game can only be put into so many words. I already got my re-fund, and will not re-purchase Fallout 4 unless it goes on a huge sale and there are mods to fix this. All in all, I love Fallout, but this is a huge bummer. Not a bad game, but it's definitely mediocre and easily the weakest fallout game. If I can find a word to describe it, it's disappointing. If you want to play this game, I highly recommend doing the same and waiting for a sale.

EDIT: For those of you who are downvoting me merely because I'm downvoting the game, I'm sorry that I didn't give your game the obligatory 420/69 because it's fallout. I forgot I'm supposed to blindly accept whatever Bethesda throws my way.

And for those of you who are saying 4 hours isn't enough time, believe me it was. If you can't get a solid opinion on a game in that timeframe then you just have issues. And even if I played longer, I guarantee you that you all would be like "DERR THEN WHY DO U PLAY IF U DON LIKE IT" can't have it both ways. But to satisfy your rage, I watched a few more hours worth of videos on the game, and I still was not impressed. I even watched my friend play it on the PS4 and we both realized the truth: Fallout 4 is an utter disappointment

Please enjoy the show in the comments, because the ragers have arrived.

[Lebowski]

Bethesda really became lazy this time on this game, and instead opted to hype it so they can get rеtards to buy this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ game. Skyrim was great, but this? ♥♥♥♥ no.

[Khloros]

Skimmed over it, honestly this boils dow to the same thing i have been saying every since the game dropped.

The game is good, from a gameplay perspective. Its made leaps and bounds in the fallout gameplay aspect. Mechanics are great, enviorment is wonderful. As i have said, fallout 4 is basicly fallout 3 expect with all the really good mods added as actual content not mods.

Where it falls short is the story and the RPG aspect, which is something bethesda has not been able to do right since oblivion. Bethesda cant make an RPG or a good story to save their life, but they make great games.

So the game is fun, no argueing that for me, i love it. But a lot more peole need to see this game not as a fallout game, but what its going to do for the next fall out game. This is going to be the starting point for the next one, this will be what fallout 3 was the new vegas. All the technical stuff is done, at this point its just a matter of time before some other company, Hopfully obsidian or the original creator, pick it up and make an amazing story, because all of their time and resorces will be able to focus on that, and not makeing the base of the game.

[Barsik_The_CaT]

Fully agree. Feeling same. ♥♥♥♥♥♥ dialogues, lack of quests, small map, Borderlands-Diablo bosses and legendary loot (every times I see a "legendary" enemy I'm about to vomit), settlement building which is barely working and does not really allow you to build something cool, and the existing quests narrowed to "go to point X and kill everything there" with optional item retrieval. Sneaking, stealing, hacking, moral choice in quests? Nah, who needs that in an RPG, right?

[Barsik_The_CaT]

Originally posted by HCG_BackSpaceHacker:

Skimmed over it, honestly this boils dow to the same thing i have been saying every since the game dropped.

The game is good, from a gameplay perspective. Its made leaps and bounds in the fallout gameplay aspect. Mechanics are great, enviorment is wonderful. As i have said, fallout 4 is basicly fallout 3 expect with all the really good mods added as actual content not mods.

Where it falls short is the story and the RPG aspect, which is something bethesda has not been able to do right since oblivion. Bethesda cant make an RPG or a good story to save their life, but they make great games.

So the game is fun, no argueing that for me, i love it. But a lot more peole need to see this game not as a fallout game, but what its going to do for the next fall out game. This is going to be the starting point for the next one, this will be what fallout 3 was the new vegas. All the technical stuff is done, at this point its just a matter of time before some other company, Hopfully obsidian or the original creator, pick it up and make an amazing story, because all of their time and resorces will be able to focus on that, and not makeing the base of the game.

Well, that's what I'm usually saying - the game wouldn't be bad if it wasn't a Fallout game. Right now for me it seems like Borderlands - with those boring perks +n to that parameter, legendary enemies and randomly generated loot, 90% of the world filled by enemies and, well, no dialogue system. While all this look kinda normal in diablo-styled games, that's not something I want to see in Fallout game.

[Kyros]

Game is good, but with concerning issues, notably the fact that you can just ask a single question and not many like you said. In Mass Effect you could ask a question THEN you could chose others too. Here you're stuck, what bothers me is if you compare the dialogue with companions in Fallout 4 and look at the backstory and alllll the questions you can ask Veronica or Boone, I just don't understand how it came up to this? Voice protagonist? I don't think so.

It's exactly like you said : weak writting.
Story is over once you meet Father. They don't even let you ask important questions : such as why is there a FEV lab, after YOU explored it. Not a SINGLE question about this or the kidnappings. Nothing. I meet really, how ?

Also some characters are good, Tinker Tom for example, he's funny and stuff but most others... well nope.
I even do remember Vulpes Inculta, I mean he appeared a few times in New Vegas yet I remember him and his last name ffs. Can't say much about the characters in FO4.
Joshua Graham, Lanius, Caesar, Ulysses, General Oliver, Mr House.
Extremely rarely I found interesting characters in FO4, Cait had a decent backstory and Piper too. The rest is so easily forgetable it's kinda sad.
If they have to make DLCs I hope they'll ask Obsidian for help in the writting department because there's something that is lacking. Sure they copy/pasted the morally grey factions from New Vegas, because obviously playing the white-knight good VS bad is boring to no end. But they didn't took the rest, such as true Hardcore difficulty.

[Drakken]

Kind of Mass Effect.

[Ark]

A hell of a lot of the game feels like they just couldnt be bothered expanding on it after alpha/beta.
The base building is fun, sure, but it's also really badly designed. The interface is clinky as hell and prone to glitching out at random if you open the steam overlay. trying to place some things is nothing short of an exercise in stopping yourself from murdering someone, when you need pixel perfect accuracy to snap things together, for no other reason than the game seems to think you should aim a floor panel 8 feet away from anywhere close to where you'd think it should actually go.

You hit the nail on the head about the dialogue. It's painfully shallow and 99% of the time you end up in the exact same situation, no matter which options you select. I went to the brotherhood and acted like a massive ♥♥♥♥ the entire way through all the dialogues when I first went on the zeppelin. They still gave me all the quests despite telling them to bugger off and calling them nuts at every opportunity.

What's really killing it for me, is how they dont seem to have updated a lot of things since fallout 3. The NPCs being some kind of hivemind with an all seeing eye, makes me want to skin my eyeballs off. Trying to steal something in a friendly or passive camp, even when completely hidden and even steal boyed up, somehow still triggers them to all act hostile. Noone saw me steal some duct tape in a closed room 10 metres away from the nearest person, yet when I walk into visual range, suddenly they all turn in unison and start firing.

I tried to act like a massive ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to everyone, but the net result is that nothing changed. I'm still the good little vault dweller who's come to be the Commonwealths new messiah.

So many things like these have added up to make the game experience feel like a shallow experience, and I don't think they're ever going to fix it moving forward.

[Michel deFarmer]

This is about the 5th or 4th "truth about fallout 4" topic i've seen throughout the month that has passed since release.
*sigh* People just won't give up,it seems.

[Barsik_The_CaT]

Originally posted by -FF- Michel deFarmer:

This is about the 5th or 4th "truth about fallout 4" topic i've seen throughout the month that has passed since release.
*sigh* People just won't give up,it seems.

Well, me, OP, and quite a lot of people don't like bethesda ruining a great game series turning rpg into wolfenstein with some kind of dialogue system and free-roam mode.

[Kyros]

Originally posted by -FF- Michel deFarmer:

This is about the 5th or 4th "truth about fallout 4" topic i've seen throughout the month that has passed since release.
*sigh* People just won't give up,it seems.

if that can help the devs to make steps into the right directions, I don't see the harm in it.