I think you guys aren't getting my point. I most certainly don't think that F3's engine is better. I've said that F4 is superior in terms of gameplay, including gunplay, power armor, modification system and Workshop. Are you guys just skimming through my posts and pigeon-hole me as a hater?

I want to know if the story, characters, quests etc. etc. would be considered good or interesting in the engine of Fallout. Literally just imagine Boston has been ramade exactly the same in F3's engine. Also I've said that F3's content in the engine of F4 would be the perfect game.

I understand but that's not the point. You proclaim to have a "benchmark" to figure out the true quality of FO4. So what's the meaning of TRUE? It means you find a mechanics that is ALWAYS right, no matter who or when he's performing your test. But that's very uncertain and i just want to show that your way to proclaim statements is wrong. Maybe FO4 has a superior quality, but your thought experiment doesn't show the answer and no truth, just subjectivity. That's my point. Never said you're a hater.

Hey hey, this was just supposed to be food for thought - not dictating opinion. Sorry if it sounded like that.

Also I'm not trying to showing F4's superiority. F4 is better concerning the gameplay, but F3 was far superior by having a purposeful world and interesting locations/quests/characters. It's still a RPG while Fallout 4 is merely an Exploration Shooter. That's what I tried to point at. The RPG aspects of F3 in F4's engine would be the perfect game in my opinion.

So you wrote a wall of text for one or two sentences? (the last one)

It's a lot of small changes combined.

First of which is that it just feels smoother, whereas 3/NV had this jankyniss to combat.

Power armour changes speak for themselves.

Environments are a lot more vertical and varied in combat.

Human enemies make better use of cover and grenades.

Enemies will fire randomly in your direction if you're sneak sniping.

Nearly every enemy has been made more distinct and given more abilities/weaknesses.

The player can make use of cover.

The ability to blow off limbs mid-combat.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, I'm sure I'm missing some.

Yeah I don't know if anyone is going to understand you. This game is FO3 in FO4's engine. It has 80% of the same features with new stuff added in to make it different.

It's silly that people are complaining about this game not being like FO3. News flash... FO3 was nothing like FO2. Games evolve and change. BF2 to BF3... CoD 2 to CoD 4... MGS 5 from the entire franchise. Games change and you either change with them or die complaining about it.

I really thought that they wouldn't have cut out the karma system. I absolutely LOVED the karma system and did two full run throughs because of it. That's the only real thing that I miss.

Oh and not seeing how I fare with the various factions. Does anyone else thing that you get promoted really darn fast in factions like the BoS and the MinuteMen. It's like.... "WOW YOU KILLED THEM ALL.... be our General or be promoted to Knight". There was no real progression there.

Other than that, The game functions well. The Settlements system is a bit confusing as I have only ever seen one settlement attacked and since I added more turrets I haven't seen any more. Combat is loads more fun now.

Definitely prefer 4.... BUT... if they could have used New Vegas' faction system it would have been better.

It's a very empirical approach, is there no other, more valid way to assess a game?

F4 is an sandbox Exploration FPS, it's nothing like F3 with its RPG over FPS focus. Also evolving doesn't equal to improving, just look at how the Resident Evil franchise is failing due to too much dumbing down, streamlining and putting the focus on action. Especially RE5.

If by evolution you mean the terribly dumped down dialog, less npc reactions, less consequences, similar dialog options which lead to the very same results and skill/SPECIAL checks in dialog and flavor dialog completely gone you must have either not liked the RPG aspects of the game and just want it to be an FPS, or you are still in your honey-moon period with the game and can't see it for what it is.

News flash... FO3 was still more of an rpg than FO4 is. You could actually rp something instead of being railroaded into being Bethesda's character. News flash... most reviews, even positive ones, admit that the dialog is dumbed down.

Games evolve and change not because "that's just the way it is" or because of some "unexplainable force of nature". Every product changes according to their customers. If a company for example suddenly starts selling crap and the customers have no problem with it it will keep selling crap to them. Bethesda was always a company that sold top quality products. This one is certainly not one and it shows from every user score out there, not only metacritic, youtube videos, reviews and pretty much everything.

What makes you think everyone would reach the conclusion that FO3's dialogue, choices and story is better? As an avid RPG fan i actually prefer FO4 over 3 in exactly those areas. I played through it once when it came out and didn't touch it again simply because i didn't care for it's story or dialogue. You'll just have to accept that people have their own perspective on, and like diffirent things, it's really that simple.

But yes, the good ol' Bethesda hype train was in full motion as usual and i'd say it's a reason why so many are so dissapointed in the game. Why? Because na?ve gamers new to gameing will buy into it and start imagening a game that can never be. And people who have maby 1 Bethesda games under their belt are expecting the same game that they loved so much but much better, and imagine a game that can't be. Or expect to feel that same first Beth game magic again, don't and get disillussioned. Maby so much so that they feel the need to justify why people like something that disappointed them.

A game that can't be? I don't know whether to laugh or cry with that statement.

Do you know what would happen if Bethesda didn't exist?

People would play "rpgs" like gothic 4 (that disgusting piece of..) and then some people, understandably, would go on their forums and say "why is this game so... bad or railroaded or so poor in content" etc.

Then, every "game developing expert-wanna be" would pop up on various games' forums and say "it is not possible to create the open world game you ask for, it just can't be".

It can EASILY be. What we have now but with a more eloquent dialog system, more work on the quests, more POIs, more rp elements etc. Obsidian freaking did it, but they admittedly are not as good in world designing as Bethesda.

Bethesda could have taken the best of both worlds from FO3 and FNV but it did not. It could easily have been. But yes, it will never be if its customers even can't understand these simple facts since Bethesda won't bother as long as their standards are so low.

Please, if you go purely by dialogue every AAA RPG with voice acting is a complete joke of an RPG by your standards. Including FO3. And the FO3 dialogue was terribe once you left the vault aswell and rarely were there more conversation that FO4.

You talked to an NPC, got maby 4-6 options, if that, most of which was a questions of some sort. Sometimes one or two actually went anywhere and you got the choices of 1) Contine 2) Good Bye.

The main thing that was better than FO4 was that you had more interesting options with key characters in the plot and what i miss the mist, stat checks that made characters feel abit more unique.

In FO4 you may have less choices at a given point but choosing one will lead to 4 new responses.Why they felt they just had to be exactly 4 so they could be mapped to ABXY is beyond me and the dumbest decision they made with the game, but calling it dumbed down is pretty silly since the original system was so dumb to begin with. The upside is that it flows like an actual conversation.

To the first paragraph: While you have all the right to like F4's story and character more than F3's, you can't disagree with the fact that the freedom of choice is only marginally there in F4. I mean, let's just look at the choices & consequences of the first quest in NV:

- 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 sightHelp the bandits (power 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 

Even the first quest of F3 had various different approaches. I'm talking about getting information from Moriarty and that you could pay him caps, work for him or steal the info from his terminal. And if you've nuked Megaton, then the main quest would simply update to "Continue to look for your father".

Now look at the possible choices in F4's quest. Right, none.

And to the 2nd paragraph: I don't agree with this. Especially hype tends to make people turn a blind eye to all the weak sides of a game and take it as it is. Just look at how most professional F4 reviews aren't even mentioning all the bugs, horrible PC port, atrocious AI and AI pathfinding, etc. etc. Also a lot of people who've never played any Fallout game bought F4 because of the hype making them interested. And I doubt that they had any expectations.

Yes can't be, because it's a dream. It's a thing in your head that you wish would happen. My english isn't perfect so maybe can't be isn't the right phrase to use, but sitting around dreaming up what it will be like just leads to disappointment.

What you think is better might not be what Todd thinks people will like.

Have you actually tried choosing different options and seen the outcomes? Because I have and I have to say I have been completely disappointed. Most of them seem to lead to the exact same reaction/consequence.

Any flavor dialog is gone. Any skill/SPECIAL checks in dialog are gone! I mean, how can you be ok with that since you say you have played F2?

For example here's the science and repair skills interraction in FO3:

• 50 Science to hack the RobCo production facility mainframe during the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_quests http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Wasteland_Survival_Guide_(quest).
• 50 Science to reactivate the robots during the quest http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Big_Trouble_in_Big_Town.
• 60 Science to unlock certain dialog options with http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Weston_Lesko during the quest http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Those!. This allows you to learn he had been using a modified form of http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Forced_Evolutionary_Virus to induce pyrosis reactions in http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Giant_ant_(Fallout_3), creating http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fire_ant_(Fallout_3).
• 75 Science skill to disarm a http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Slave_collar.
• 75 Science to modify http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Healing_archway to fully heal the player, though this reduces their number of uses to three. (http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Mothership_Zeta_(add-on))
• 75 Science to hack the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Mobile_base_crawler' mainframe. (http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Broken_Steel)
• 80 Science to deactivate the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Repulsion_device aboard the crawler. (http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Broken_Steel)
• 85 Science to bypass the Speech check required to convince http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/John_Henry_Eden to self destruct during the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/The_American_Dream.

• 30 Repair is necessary to fix the water valves in http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Megaton during the unmarked quest http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Treatment.
• 35 Repair is required in the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Anchorage_Memorial before, during or after the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Wasteland_Survival_Guide_(quest)#Place_an_observer_unit_inside_a_Mirelurk_nest to fix a broken door, if he/she has the door's component. Without the component, a Repair skill of 95 is required.
• 40 Repair is needed during http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Rescue_from_Paradise to gain an option to free the children.
• 40 Repair is needed to fix a broken robot during a http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_random_encounters. If you repair it, the scavenger will give you twohttp://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Energy_cell_(Fallout_3). With a http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Speech check, you can convince him to give you 100 caps and the energy cells.
• 45 Repair is needed to disarm rigged combat shotguns.
• 60 Repair is needed to disable the turret power generator during http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Stealing_Independence.
• 75 Repair allow you to repair the elevator to the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Statesman_Hotel's roof yourself during the quest http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Reilly%27s_Rangers_(quest). Otherwise, you'll need to retrieve a fission battery.
• 85 Repair is required to disarm laser tripwire emitters in http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Raven_Rock during http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/The_American_Dream.
• A Repair skill check is made when disarming microfusion cells wired to a trapped toilet. It does not specify what the minimum Repair skill is.
• After using the artillery switch in http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Takoma_Industrial a few times, it will short-circuit. Players with a 33+ Repair skill can repair the switch and continue using it.
• Downloadable content also includes Repair checks on some items, most notably http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Point_Lookout_(add-on) in the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Chinese_Intelligence_bunker; 44 required to shut off the radiation.

Now check Rouce's post above too.

FNV was even closer to the classics with much more skills interraction, special/skill checks in dialog and low/high int dialog lines. Bethesda COULD have followed its example.

What does FO4 have again? http://imgur.com/a/koaKe

Wish it was only me saying these things.

A dream? How naive a customer you are

NV deffinently had superior quest choices, no doubt. I only mentioned i preferd the story and dialogue to FO3, I wrote something about choices too but must've erased it. But to say that F4 has absolutely no choices is a stretch, hell in the MQ you have to make a rather important choice that affects the story.

I beef with FO3 choices on the other hand is that there are hardly any good ones, it's mostly "be a decent human beeing" or "channel the spirit of Jeffery Dhalmer". Most of the choices i recall where evil for the sake of being evil so it's not something i miss, though i admit leaving that option out is a flaw.

And hype makes you turn a blind eye to the weak sides before you actually have time to sit down and play it. It very much makes you buy it.

I enjoyed all the previous Fallouts more. There's a few things in Fallout 4 I liked. It looks pretty. I don't hate the simplified perk system they have (though I do have some reservations about it) and I don't hate the voiced protagonist.

Though the overall experience just seems less... There's a few early places I loved, the nearby Quarry (as an example, trying not to spoil) for example. Where the location and world actually changes thanks to your intervention. I wish Fallout 4 had more of these. It just makes it feel more real, like there's a real passage of time.

The dialogue system reminds me of Bioware (which I don't hate), but the actual writing seems to have gotten worse.

The gun play is better, VATS became worse. Some enemies became a lot scarier, Mirelurks for example.

The modification system I find questionable. I love and hate it. Automatic receivers come to mind, being incredibly underpowered in comparison to semi-auto.

I'm also not a huge fan of the settlement system. I have about 10 settlements and only want to look after one (Sanctuary). Why isn't there an option to let them look after themselves, with some player intervention (defense and trade). I see Diamond City and I feel saddened, to see this living, breathing community. I wish there were more communities like this.

The inventory management also svcks. I hate how keys, notes and holotapes are just stuffed into "misc". Keys should return to the old keyring. Notes and holotapes should return to the "data" section of the Pipboy.

At the moment that's my 2 cents.

If Fallout 4 had the same, complex and varied dialogue/SPECIAL system of previous Fallout titles I would probably be playing the game far more. That would actually cover my biggest gripe with this game.

Honestly, it seems that Beth focused too much on gunplay mechanics and the Settlement feature, in my opinion. Which is great if they would have put more effort into developing a complex dialogue system that your SPECIAL points also had an impact on. We get the illusion of choice & consequence with four generic responses that are really just slightly different tones of the same statement.

It's a shame

No, the same things that made FO3 great are also in FO4. No difference in RPG aspects that are there, nor any difference in any other action-RPG hybrid.

So you completely ignore any of the facts and wiki entries posted above? Typical of you guys - why am I surprised every time. You are the reason we will all be playing mediocre games at best - don't get me started on politics.

Yes i have, becuse the abridged descriptions are terrible and i do get completely diffirent responses 90% of the time. I'm actually sort of nuts about it and my F5 and F9 keys are almost worn out. And i wrote that i really missed stat checks and i agree with you that it's a major flaw, i guess you missed that.

Also that pictures is just silly, the first part in the vault had way, way more dialogue options than most of the game and besides most are the same as FO4 which is kind of funny. Take a look at say the first picture,"Sure, Butch" that's a "sarcastic response right there, "Go soak your head Butch" a mean, or Right Arrow response. The only thing that image establishes is #1 The abridged descriptions are [censored] awful #2 Skill chekcs are gone and that svcks #3 Besides skillchecks being gone it's pretty much the same deal

And yes a dream because it's something you were dreaming about, it's your wish. Not a dream because it's technically impossible, of course they could've done it. They changed it becuse they thought people would like it more and it's not gonna change now. You keep dreaming about it if you want but i don't really see the point in it. I mean it was already what it was going to be in the E3 presentation, hell, giving Bethesdas track record i was expecting much, much worse.

No, Obsidian did not do anything for an RPG except fail miserably.

For great RPGs, we have Japan's writers and character designers. They know how to focus on story and character. Likewise, we have their visual novels and adventures, as well as hybrids of those, which offer far more role playing ability than any Western offering. The Western market wants action first, so that's what it gets.

I'll repeat: Obsidian's writing was nonsensical right from the start of FONV. I have offered many posts and examples as to why. The original Fallouts were no better. However, if you prefer to play older games, please feel free to do so. Companies like Bethesda are targeting the majority of the mass market around the world, not the niche. I never go into a BGS game expecting the quality of writing and character empathy I get from excellent Japanese RPGs like Xenosaga, Star Ocean, or Tales of Vesperia, or excellent visual novels like To Heart or Kana ~Imouto~. You're expectations are wrong for the company's products, that's all.

Nope, I have replied many times in various threads to false claims in threads such as these. The problem is that people like you don't know what makes a good game and want your own personal preferences to speak for everyone. It's like someone who thinks Street Fighter or Call of Duty are the greatest games ever wanting every game to feature elements from those games. If you want different elements, go play different games rather than insulting the work that BGS does or making false claims about Obsidian being great when they are factually not.

The only objective measure I can think of to gauge the quality of the game will be longevity. It's a single player RPG, so how will it stack up against other single player RPGs (in terms of the number of people still playing the game) over time? The longer people want to stick with the game, the better it can be argued to be.