So I saw the E3 videos, and I, like many, was blown away by many aspects of the game as seen so far. The character design, the crafting and settlement building, the general atmosphere that seemed to be present, the great creature animations (deathclaws and bloodflies, anyone?), and the promise of a large open world all seem to indicate that FO4 will be amazing.

And yet as I watched, I experienced a growing sense of disquiet. Many many aspects of the game seemed driven by the requirements of consoles and their players. Dialogue and the UI seem geared to consoles. Much has been discussed here about the limitations of a four-button dialogue option that I won't re-hash. At least I know that mods will soon take care of the UI.

I also found the graphics very strange. Very detailed and in many ways very pretty, while at the same time appearing very oddly low-res and grainy, somehow. Maybe a trick of the video viewer, but again indicative of the need to keep the texture size low to adhere to the needs of the PS and XBox. At least I know that like the UI, we will be inundated with hi-res mods and re-textures and ENBs shortly after release, so not the end of the world.

But the biggest issue for me was the combat showcase video. Barring the neat VATS demo with the molerats, and some uncontextualized (in that we don't know if that was a cutscene, or special animation tightly edited) deathclaw bits, most of the first-person combat looked, well, arcade-ish. Super frenetic pace, lots of rounds zooming around, and the occasional exploding meatbag. One of the things I loved about FO3 and NV was that it was very possible to pace combat. While it sometimes did feel rushed, one could generally apply some tactics apart from hosing the landscape and hoping for the best. It seemed like an arcade game, and that's not what I want to exclusively see in a Fallout game.

And then the inclusion of gunships, and the jetpacks. That screams three things to me, and all are signs to me of an arcade style game. The first is boss battles. I hate them. I think the last game to do boss battles well was Half-Life, and that was quite a while ago, and even then it was not ideal. Tied into boss battles is the concept of railroading. I would hate to see in a game touted as being open world and open option, to have to do a jetpack section in order to proceed to a critical point. Even worse if you have to fight a gunship at the end of it. The third thing is gimmickry. Check out the cool jetpack! It's limited in use, and doesn't really do anything except force you to use it to get to the boss battle with the gunship, but it's super cool. Again, if I am right, facile design intended to appeal to a console crowd.

Some may say that I am jumping the gun, and having a knee-jerk reaction based on only a few minutes of video. And I do hope my disquiet is shown to be unfounded and that FO4 is the rich, immersive game that so many want. But I know that Bethesda experienced great success with Skyrim by designing for console first, so no reason to change the trend on their part. And I've also learned to trust my gut over the years, and right now my gut tells me to temper my excitement on this one.

The things you see m to be complaining about would have nothing to do with what platform the game is on.
All of those things exist in PC games.

And I can't see anything wrong with making the action/combat feel faster and more fluid, instead of static.

I agree. Combat needs to feel faster, more kinetic, more in-your-face.

Meh, Beth has been dumbing down games for years (don't care about the graphics though). Is it because of consoles? Don't know, don't really even care, just tired of the cutting to appeal to action gamers and people that don;t even like RPGs in the first place.

I really don't like that term. "Dumbing Down". It's such a loaded statement. Like the developers actually look down on the consumers like they're too dumb to comprehend certain mechanics.

And people use to too often, and wrongly, for the silliest thing. They remove one or two things, and immediately, the game is dubbed "Dumbed Down".

It's like people are more wrapped up in the system, than they are the experience and what's being added.

...Been around since Arena. Tired of the dumbing down.

Oh let's be honest, Skyrim was awesome in ways Arena could only have hoped to be. The medium evolves, and old methods gotta be left behind. People to gripe about dumbing down to me, make me think of ancestral farmers getting their first look at the Tractor.

Arena was extremely linear. You couldn't even have a custom class. I mentioned it to say that I've watched the D&D (for brevity's sake, is that better?) throughout Beth's history. Oblivion, Sky's D&D, etc.

It's a mountain, not a decline and arguably Morrowind was the pinnacle. And even though I'm talking ES, it does carry over to the very ES like contemporary Fallouts. You'll notice Obsidian didn't cut anything, they in fact added. Why? Because it's not only in their nature, apparently, but also because they would have received a [censored] storm of criticism if they were to, let's say, hypothetically cut skills or remove this or that.

Well, this is Fallout, not a D&D-centric setting. Entirely different monster.

For many PC gamers the consoles are their bogey men. An easy scapegoat for any and all problems they face.

I am a PC gamer. I think consoles actually benefit PC gamers in ways most overlook.

Bethesda is a great example of what I am about to propose. Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim all released on the same generation of console. Skyrim looks the best and is technically superior in many ways. Bethesda learned how to better utilize the hardware and optimize their engine. Allowing us PC users to push the game even further than anything we previously could do with Oblivion or Fallout 3.

Also console players are not stupid or ant less core gamers than PC player. What they lack is the technical expertise or funds to build a decent PC.

COD and other mainstream dumb people games(not accusing anyone of being dumb) sell a lot on PC as well.


That being said the partnership with Micrsoft will probably lead to more exclusive DLC [censored], which I won't be happy about.

... D&D was shorthand for dumbing down, since you were offended by those words. Hence the sentence in parentheses. I never mentioned Dungeons and Dragons.

Well, see now you're just crossing wires here. You say D&D and I immediately think Dungeons and Dragons. Don't do that to a guy.

Anyway, I still refute the term. It's a catch-all statement for gamers who are disgruntled when a game does something design-wise that they dislike.

I say D&D and then say right after it that that's what I'm calling dumbing down for brevity's sake. Abbreviation, shorthand, etc. Since you didn't like the term dumbing down.

Anyway, like I've said I watched the dumbing down in Ob and Sky, then I watched Obsidian add more and not cut anything when making NV. So I know it's possible you don't have to cut X or Y mechanic to appeal to some other demographic. And I'm not talking console demographic, I'm talking gamer demo in general. Why else cut RP mechanics?

I'm rather proud of (some of) the community's pessimism, since it was sorely lacking leading up to Skyrim.

Gotta tap' into that CoD cash.

Which is sad, because I believe Beth's form of RP medium (open world, real time 1st/3rd person tangible) is the pinnacle and desired format of any RP medium. It's the closest the cRPG can come to tabletop imagination and creativity, at least for now.

For FO4 it looks like this is mostly about the dialogue system, only four options so console players should not get problems selecting an option then they also can move around.

With it probably goes the skill (perk) checks in dialogues as with more than four options you need one of the four an other options if you have 5 options.

Moving around while the npc talked worked well in skyrim but might be to complicated.

And this is an build in limitation in the system who can not be moded out unlike the Giant fonts used.

CoD is a top seller on PC as well.

Side Note: I don't get the notion that consoles are cheaper than PCs. With a console you gotta pay $60 a year to use your already paid for internet connection to play games online. Games for consoles are also generally more expensive. PC users have Steam, etc. A PC is more expensive at first yes, but the costs for the console adds up over time.

I play on consoles and PC and in the end I spend way more money on my consoles than I do for my PC.

Good games have been made on a variety of electronic devices for decades.
I fail to see how consoles or PCs are responsible for a game being good or not.

It's just something PC gamers like to say. "This game has flaws x,y, and z it must be because it's on console there is no other excuse."

Yeah, evil, evil consoles. Without them we would have Mario Party, Halo and Red Dead Redemption on PC and there would be fotorealistic graphics in every game like since like 5 years ago. And there WWII could be prevented without consoles,

Something something Call of Duty something battlefield....

Not all PC gamers are like that, some of us are decent.

The " dumbing down " is a change all developers have taken on in an effort to get more sales from the game, making the game more accessible means more people are likely to pick it up and at the end of the day money talks, I'm not saying the devs don't care about ' hardcoe ' fans who want things one way, but they want the extra $$ and this is the way to get that.
They don't sit in the board room and say " well doing this nets us 5million units shipped, but doing it this way nets 13 million units shipped! Okay Todd let's go for 5mill "
you know?
It's called maximising sales

Edit- Also I think what you were trying to say is " consoles are the reason for the ' arcade look " to these things?

I honestly don't think "dumbing down" is an appropriate phrase at this point.

In a lot of ways, I think it's more like... distillation. boiling the game down to its base elements, and removing the less desirable aspects while enhancing the better ones.

Companies need to make money so they need to develop for multiple platforms.

Since the PC master race is infinitely more adaptable with mods, it is only logical to base design decisions on the more limited platform.

That said, an effort to create a separate ui for PC would not go unappeciated.