You are the guy who thinks Fallout 4 is a "good game" even though it isn't a "good Fallout," seemingly completely obvious to the facts that it is a game set in the Fallout universe and with the title "Fallout . . ."

Not being able to express in excruciating details what "is a good Fallout" is no excuse to get away with nonsensical opinionated posts that have zero real value as far as promoting thought or discussion and seem generally to be seeking primarily just to smear [censored] on the stall walls.

Look, no videogame using current technology is going to be able to give you the kind of choice you're apparently looking for. Ultimately every game has to have a script, and that means that it's going to have a finite number of possible beginnings and endings no much how much it allows you to roam around during Act II.

If you're looking for a game that lets you do anything you want and all those choices have a meaningful effect on the game world you need to get yourself some paper, some dice and some friends and play Pathfinder or D&D. Complaining about the lack of choice in a game like FO is like complaining that the Mona Lisa lacks animation. Any medium only allows what it allows.

reminds me of CoD MW2 lol all the perks

A true roleplayer might not learn about those things for hundreds of hours of play.

A fake roleplayer who trolls boards, reads reviews, reads guides, watches Youtubes on various min-maxing gambits, has sold their roleplaying soul to the Demon Lord of Tactical Shooters and will pay eternally despite the brief worldy joy of shooting that extra bullet and getting that insanely high VATS hit probability is the only one who will be harmed by such things . . .

So it is ultimately irrelevant to the discussion. Such things cannot "kill RPGs" because a true RPGer is impervious, oblivious and willfully neglectful of such gameyness.

The question with that is always how weightened each part is. And in F4 shooting outweights simply everything.

For sure you will deny that now.

I also agree with crag cause that are my experiences while i was reading the user ratings. Great shooter, bad fallout/rpg.

I just don′t repeat myself all the time over and over again in each topic. I already wrote my arguments in broader versions into other topics (most people here do that) so that you still have clear stall walls and can read my explanations in the other topics.

However, your health never stops going up, which does impact on combat difficulty whether you like it or not.

And on the whole "you don't just stop learning" score, most pen and paper RPGs which are all these games forebears usually appreciate there are maximums of a races' excellence that you can reach - with Fallout 4 it seems you can pretty much play a god by the end.

And that's all well and good seeing as you don't have to invest perks, if not for the health not constantly increasing. This implies the onus in on the player to work out what level of a combat perk appropriates a good level of difficulty at a given level, which is something a the company should have really done themselves rather than hand off the responsibility to the player.

Whilst there's more freedom to the FO4 approach, the lack of those boundaries and the fact that you have to manage your own levelling in your chosen combat field to moderate difficulty is clumsy at best, and unrewarding for a player to go through the hassle of working out an optimum difficulty when that should have been taken care of by the game's company.

As I did say also, willingly forgoing an in game resource doesn't feel rewarding to the player. The reward for levelling up is a perk point, and so to skip it isn't really "fun". I will be doing it once I level high enough, but will I like it? Certainly not, no other game has so blatantly asked me to hamstring a character by having to pass on a resource to keep difficulty in check - it's not a well implemented system, even in comparison to Skyrim which I know people didn't like. I'd much prefer the game allow you to cap a character where you want - and you don't have to if you don't want to - both for the sake of meaningful investment choice in perks but also so players can determine a difficulty sweet spot where things are the hardest even when you have fully invested a certain combat skill and you can stick to that.

Until you have tried to finish the game with a CHA 10 toon, and using every possible method as your disposal to NOT shoot, you are in no position to make such absurd claims.

You can be a god at the other fallout games by level 20 lol. I've done that, you don't even need to reach level 30 in 3 or NV to get 100 in all stats and again, most of that is forced. The only way to get around it is not read skill books or get the 2 skill point increase from books perk. Honestly I'll continue seeing it as a problem because people make it into a problem, not an actual problem with the game.

Level 116, 344 hours played in total, weapon, sneak, talk etc. skills all maxxed out. Played the game forward and backward in all possible styles and build out multiple settlements. No cheats/console used.

Your next question sir, did not know that i first have to solve some competence/progress test before i am allowed to post anything here.

I can′t stop to laugh now, sorry.

Now you already try devoicing me and make fun of my experience.

If you play on the hardest difficulties all the time, and particularly when choice were made in New Vegas to not have enemy scaling throughout so there's always the top tier enemies out there, there's no way you can just walk up to a death claw or some of the more difficult fights at level 20 and boss them.

You are dreaming. It still doesn't change problems with difficulty going forwards, or their handling of putting the responsibility on players to make things difficult, or the very real fact there's not longer difficult decisions to make when levelling up.

I remember a character I made when New Vegas was first out before DLC where I had to get skill books by certain levels as it was impossible to hit those skill levels by skill points gained through level up on the build I wanted to play to get an appropriate perk, and in general I had to make sure that I prioritised certain skills so I had them where I wanted so as to not waste perk points as I wanted to use all 15. It was a hard, yet rewarding, thing to do. In FO4 you can do whatever you like and it's all gravy baby.

Not at all. I'm glad FO4 has good combat. But it shouldn't be the focus of the game for a RPG. And FO4 is basically a shooter with a meh story and a huge map. Just like all the other billion shooters on the market.

Well, look at a lot of RPGs - especially the really old ones, and even tabletop RPGs. A lot of the time the focus isn't on storytelling at all - it was on building a character, leveling them up, and going dungeon crawling for better loot. Bethesda games are the epitome of that RPG model, and their storytelling is only improving. "Choices & Consequences" came later on in the genre - but if that's all that mattered then TellTale games would be the best RPGs out there. JRPGs are also a huge influence on the genre (at least part of the reason people equate RPGs with big stories), and they usually offer almost nothing in terms of story choices or letting you build your own character.

So I just think it's a little elitist to try and draw the line on what an RPG is and how story and choices relate to that. Especially since it seems like the logic and definitions shift around in discussions, or unintentionally exclude a ton of RPGs typically praised as hugely influential. Besides, it's a genre definition, not an honorific.

(what is the "traditional CRPG way", anyway? Legitimate question. A lot of people refer to the original Fallouts and games of that era, but I've also heard Daggerfall called a CRPG and that game predates all of those games, and is completely different as an RPG to begin with.)

Nothing of the sort you lout! You judged the merits of the game, I judged the merits of your judgment. Have at you!

Eh, I use CRPG to mostly refer to those really old games like Baldurs Gate or Fallout 1/2 that people seem to worship. Those seem to me to be linear RPGs, which im not really a fan of, compared to getting into more open world RPGs that Bethesda is absolutely the king of.

CRPG was used in a lot of promotional materials for Arena and Daggerfall, but then that was the 90s when I think any video game that had roleplaying on the PC was called a CRPG. The thing about RPG labels though is that it varies heavily from person to person and you're never going to get a 100% accurate definition on what is a RPG and what isnt. Simply isnt possible. To get into Daggerfall though it absolutely has more in common with Fallout 4 than any of those games I use the CRPG label for. I'd even say it is closer to Mount and Blade than Fallout 4, actually. Daggerfall relies heavily on a radiant-like system for all of its quests, and fast travel is a requirement due to how the world is modeled.

Also I think you might be reading me wrong. I consider that old CRPG way of doing things to be incredibly dry, and find Bethesda's work to be the biggest success story in the gaming industry that I can think of. The open world that Bethesda makes feels a lot more like fitting your character into a massive world that is doing its own thing rather than having your character being led along a linear track of heroism. The latter feels more like a book or film rendered into a videogame, whereas the former feels like something that can only exist with our super advanced videogame technology, if that makes sense

A role playing game is one in which a player plays a role: Football, hockey, dating, marriage, teacher-student relations, boss-oriented sycophancy . . . boring stuff generally, but the make-believe variants where you get to cleave SuperMutants in-two with an axe can be fun.

I watched a review of Daggerfall recently where the guy talked about Daggerfall being a "Fantasy life sim".

I think that's how I would describe Bethesda's games from Daggerfall until now. Fallout 4 is the next evolution of a game where you create a character who lives his own life in a fantastical world, and you can see a very direct line from 1996 to 2015.

Oh, I wasn't disagreeing with you or anything, just adding to what you said and going on an only kind of related rant. Bethesda's games are basically the modern version of RPGs that predate the CRPGs you talk about - they talk about their influences being the old Wizardry and Ultima games, I think Might & Magic too. Grognak & the Ruby Ruins comes off as a bit of a love letter to those games.

So maybe instead of people lamenting that their games don't emulate the old-school CRPGs of the late 90s, they should tell Bethesda to get with the times.

I would say that New Vegas is a better Fallout game than Fallout 4, but whether it is a better game is debatable. Just look at how many different choices there was in the Come Fly with Me mission. You could either kill all the ghouls ending the quest or you could help the ghouls escape on a rocket. Then there is killing all the Nightkins in the basemant, kill Harland in the basemant so the Nightkins leave, or try to save the Harland's friend so he will leave, then the Nightkins leave. Acquiring the parts and fuels involve a few more options like killing, stealing, persuasion, or bartering. Then you can either sabotage the rocket through either Sugar Bombs or programming the Navigation Computer, get someone else to sabotage it, let it launch normally, or improve the navigation co-ordinates. The level of complexity in this mission is beyond what Fallout 4 provides and is reminiscent of some Fallout 2 missions. There are multiple ways to complete this mission from using a pacifist style to killing everyone. Then there is ending slides which showed the consequences of your actions and the dialogue system where even SPECIALs and perks like Math Wrath are part of the persuasion system.

Oh Wizardry, I was so young in the 80s but watched my dad playing and loved it. I did play and enjoyed it but it was difficult for the kid that I was.

Ah, I guess I read you wrong there aswell

I find that there's really not a whole lot like Bethesda in the world. I can think of Mount and Blade as something that contains some elements, but everything you do in that game is towards the goal of being a nobleman in control of the entire map, although there are multiple ways to play the game they always feel like going towards that one end state of painting the map. I also think that some of the open world space sims have some things in common, but then I really doubt that Freelancer, X3 Terran Conflict, Elite: Dangerous or whatever truly consider themselves to be in competition with Bethesda in any way.

Its a good thing that Bethesda has been consistently outselling their previous game by massive amounts. Since there's not anyone who really dares to compete directly with Bethesda - probably because they know they'd get murdered

I'm familiar with some of those quests from New Vegas, and I enjoyed them.

We're not in spoilers so I cannot offer specific examples, but I would have to say that, if "alternate ways to skin a cat" is the measure of a "good Fallout game" then there is nothing deficient about FO4. I've found that many times a scenario can be resolved in at least three dramatically differing ways. Not every one of them that is for sure. Many (if not most) quests have only one way to finish them: kill the boss. But then that was also true of NV: many if not most quests have one way to finish them: kill something (if not everyone) and/or get an item and do something with it. Without an actual tabulation of all the quests, I'm not convinced by the argument that a qualitative or statistically "real" change has actually been made here. It is true that, quests with so many chunks of modularized "decision-tree" dialogue and such clear "To use your CHA to solve this problem Choose A; To use your STR to solve this problem Choose B . . ." seem to be notably absent from the game.

But lets be totally honest: those types of modularized decision-tree dialogues were gamey. I'm a gamer so I don't think that is a "bad" thing. Some of the greatest fun in games I've ever played was largely mediated in these types of "story-book, decision-tree" designs; such designs are classic and timeless and Obsidian did a great job with it. But it is also cliche and old style and it does not lend itself to the sort of overall feeling Bethesda it seems clear has been striving for since at least Skyrim: beguiling and immersive.

When you are in the heat of a stressful discussion, or tense negotiations in real life, you will never even get a dialogue wheel, much less a storyboard summary of what choices you can make, which of your talents it will depend on and the chance you'll succeed. The changes to the dialogues, social interactions, quests, and decision-consequence dynamics are, I think better thought of as a conscious decision to make their games more immersive, beguiling, gripping and poignant, i.e., more naturalistic if not more realistic. To the extent that you are anolyzing, strategizing and generally acting and thinking like a gamer, the intent I think is to make you less aware of that and to help you do all of that under the surface while you "take on the role" of your character more.

I'm not sure it is a full fledged success, but I think it accomplishes these primary objectives of a "roleplaying game" and of a "Fallout game" at least as well as its predecessors if not better.

The removal of INT from dialogues and the removal of SCIENCE checks was a loss, but on the whole a relatively minor one and especially considering what we gained. If memory serves, what those functions had a tendency to do was to make INT overpowered and to undermine the importance of CHA. I think it is justifiable that CHA is the primary mediator of most social dialogues, though a few INT checks or checks in which the effects of CHA were moderated by INT would have been nice. I can easily recognize however that the apparent facility of including such elements in the design may have a dramatic 'rippling' effect on the game and can thus justify not doing it. On the whole it does not diminish the game judged on its own merits, it is simply a point on which invidious comparisons can be made. The lack of such things does not "harm" the game, it merely serves as "ammunition" for complaints; at least that is how it seems to me.

Metacritic user scores have been a joke to pretty much everyone who doesn't want to use them as a weapon since http://www.examiner.com/article/why-metacritic-s-user-ratings-are-useless Fallout 4 came out.

So far, it's been my experience that there are often multiple ways to arrive at different ends in FO4 quests, but they often aren't visible. At least not without going back through the same thing with a different character, and using different dialogue choices or whatever. then, the ending is different for the new character. The problem is that the responses you have to use may not be ones you consider worthwhile because the only options are: "seek more info" "Sarcasm" "Intimidate" and "agree nicely with whatever the NPC said". Because of forum restirctions, I can't give a specific instance, but it's true none the less that sarcasm can get a desired or different response than you anticipate.

If you always choose what seems the logical response, you will never discover the other results hidden under less likely labels.

You found them gamey, i loved my "modularized "decision-tree" dialogues". They are one of a lot of parts of what a fallout made something fallout for me.

I remember "There stands the grass" from NV where you had to fetch a science holotape out of a biology vault. You got catched up by another person that asked you to find a missing biologist down there. In the vault you first managed your way down and fetched the holotape. After that you went for the missing biologist where you first had to follow her and then got an additional mission to blow up the lowest vault level with the cave. At last you had to take the decision to give her the holotape, destroy it yourself or lie and bring it back.

If you went into the BoS bunker before all this you got a third party interested in the research holotape.

Fallout:NV was full of these questlines, same as F1 and F2.

In F4 we have only ONE line that comes a bit close to this, and this is "Special Delivery" that leads to "The Secret of Cabot House" leading you to the asylum in later levels.

All other questlines are shorter or even just one stepped. And for something where Fallout is printed on it i expect a bit more spectectular questing stuff then the one i got served for dinner.

Fallout 4 is filled up with "Moe"- style quests. Moe is the baseball guy in Diamond City if someone does not remember. He wanted me to bring 3 very special football artifacts. When i heared the quest i thought: whohooo, that will be 3 different locations and the items are well hidden. I checked the quest and the map and it pointed to a single location (already "meh" came into my mind).

I move up to the close quest area and collected 3 items spread over an area of 10 metres around me. 4 Mirelurks popped up meanwhile. That was it, quest done in about 8 minutes.

Sorry guys, i loled and however you argue thats totally lacking on any quality. Next example?

I know the critics about that but this argumentation works in both directions. High scores are randomly also pushed by 1-sentence ratings and the trade press is something i stopped trusting from the past 8 years or so when they started to polarize only on the most viable young usergroups and always swam with the biggest available wave for article sales.

I remember at least 3 others, without thinking much...

Without spoilering and only mentioning Covenant, Goodneighbor metro & the ship on the house. And there are many others as well.

All are far more detailed and have more interaction than the Vault quest in New Vegas. They are even on the same level as the flying Ghouls from New Vegas.

Maybe you just didn't notice them, while rushing through the game?

Or just didn' try out the different paths, in your anger about the game? ^^