RPG means different things to different people, and none of them are 'wrong' because there is no right or wrong when it comes to what you prefer.

To me personally, Fallout 1 had less meaningful choices because all you ever got was a text box telling you to use your imagination that this action did this. That doesn't mean I disrespect the opinions of people who still like that oldschool style , I appreciate it for what it is, and it just isn't me.

I view RPGs as the 'Indie' kids that are outside of the 'Cool' kids culture, and I view other people saying one game is more 'RPG' than the other as silly as one counter culture 'Goth' kid saying another counter culture 'Goth' kid is being too mainstream for not following the style patterns of the other 'Goth' kids... The whole thing is convoluted...

I do admit however, I can't speak for Fallout 2, because it is the only game in the series I did not play. A lot of what I make it my mods is from Fallout Tactics, which you probably also hate for not being RPG enough though... I always feel so judged when I am around so called 'RPG' gamers... lol

All in good humor though.

You're such a confusing person. You say you want dialog that's more meaningful, you want branching options and unique responses. Based on this, you should like Fallout 1 a hell of a lot more than Fallout 4
In Fallout 1 your choices matter so much more, whereas in Fallout 4 nothing you do matters and it always plays the same regardless.

The writing was Okay. For some reason I could spot the plot ending, plot twist or a variation of it, miles away. The writing was serviceable and the dialogue was a definite downgrade from Bethesda's previous efforts. I agree with Angry Joe's score, Bethesda can definitely and must do better next time.

Outside of these two peeves, it's still a great game.

In my personal opinion that is not intended to down play other peoples favorite things when they play a game is...

It is all just a facade in Fallout 1, you get a few blocks of text that tell you it is different but the feeling is not there, the art is not there. I feel much more when Sheppard calls on Garrus to lead the secondary team while you infiltrate the Collector base in Mass Effect 2. The choices I made and the conversations I had led up to something meaningful. The gameplay and the story became one and I knew the job would get done because he had never let me down before.

That is my personal opinion on what the 'Role' in Roleplaying Games means. It might mean something different to you, but that is what it means to me.

You're saying this while defending Fallout 4, the game where all of your dialog options receive the same exact responce no matter what you do or say. The Fallout game with the fewest opions, and most meaningless choices. I don't understand you.

Somewhere between 3 and 4, leaning to 4. It's super predictable and there's some cop out explinations but the character and dialogue are enjoyable enough, certainly deeper characters and better story telling than any Bethesda game so far. What makes it lean to 4 is that i think the premise is great. The utter mind [censored] of a situation the character is in and the giant grey area that is Syths,while their other games which were really black and white. Something i liked about Nick's quest

The simple fact is, 'some' of the choices all lead to the same option, but not 'all' by any means. You still get an emotional impact when you actually do make important choices, and having a voiced player character adds to that exponentially to me. I would cite my favorite example, but this happens to be in the 'no spoilers allowed' section.

There are some weak choices in Fallout 4, but the quality of the strong choices by far outweighs that and makes it a more enjoyable game to me than any previous Fallout.

You are taking the extremist route and trying to argue something that is not true. You seem to care more about being right than you do about learning from others, so this conversation and all further conversations between you and I are done. There are people on this website that have some really good opinions that can help me expand my thinking and see new paths to make better mods, I would appreciate it if you stopped trying to get everyone off topic with your personal disapproval of something we all enjoy.

I will gladly admit I am wrong on whatever it is, if it means you will leave me alone about this.

did not find as many interesting stories as there were in 3 and nv. especially about vaults.

eddie winters was ok, but didn't have the same spark as the Survivalist did in Honest Hearts (great story by the way)

I thought they did a great job and found this to be one of Bethesda's most engaging stories yet.

I dunno. I played a good solid 20 hours the last two days for a total of 50 or so, and I did not have the feeling of being forced down any path.

As far as the writing goes, I feel that making an epic story has never been Bethesda's strong point. They do a lot better at telling their story through the environment. A good example I never forgot is the wizard that falls out of the sky at the beginning of Morrowind. He had s note explaining what he was doing. Skyrim had a skeleton on top of a cliff over looking the sea with a letter beside him to his girl. Fallout 3 had a bed with 2 skeletons holding each other.

I know it's easy to just say "well they need to hire writers!" But I don't think it's that easy in practice.

Not sure I agree with that.

There are different approaches to handling choice in games. Many developers, including Obsidian have lots of decisions made in dialogue. So what you say often locks you into that path.

Bethesda don't design their games that way, in general (there are exceptions, of course). Dialogue gives you information and opens quests, but it's only after the fact that you decide what to do. It's merely a different way of handling it, but the choice is still often there.

I'm having a very different experience with my second play through, because this time I've joined the Botherhood instead of the Minutemen, and I've done different side quests on the way, by only doing what suits my character.

When I refused to help Preston Gravey in the museum, he seemed quite upset. Rude, even. Of course, the game kept that quest active, and I know that I could have completely it anyway and he would have greeted me with open arms. So the choice I made wasn't in what I said, it was when I turned my back on him and walked out the door.

Fallout 3 was very linear. There were no factions to join, and not really enough side quests to play things differently for long. I'm amazed that many people think it was less restrictive than Fallout 4. I can only assume they were able to replay FO3 again and again via heavy use of mods. In which case, it's not a fair comparison.

Fallout New Vegas had a lot of choices in dialogue. That's good. I like that. But if you accept that it's just a different design philosophy, I think there's a similar amount of freedom for your character between Fallout 4 and New Vegas.

And fewer mechanics and features? No. That's clearly not the case.

I think the voice acting was good in itself, the writing was satisfactory, but the overall plot was ok, but I feel like many of the possible events that would be within the lore's guidelines were left on the table. Also I never felt like I related to the main protagonist nor did I ever feel like the main protagonist was my character. I think the story feels a bit disjointed because we are kind of on a wild goose chase, focused on our son. So any NPCs we meet, any lore, factions, quests just feel not important because, "my son is missing". Then I feel like as soon as we begin to figure out the current reality it's like, yeah the whole game you we trying to do objective "A" but objective "A" no longer matters, objective "B" has been exposed and objective "A" is 100% irrelevant now. So this is what the story is now, go. This would have been ok if we could have interacted with the Institutes daily interactions with the people of the wasteland, and been faced with choices having to side one way or the other before the finale, that way it would have put more weight on the choice. But with not faction reputation now this probably can't work...

Well that's exactly the problem, you hardly ever have consequences for you actions because regardless of saying you won't help him, the next time you'll talk to him it will be like you haven't said 'No' at all.

Just ignoring him is just the illusion of choice, there's no real consequence to it if i know he's still going to be there waiting for me to advance that particular story.

And it's 99% the same for every time you say 'Yes, Sarcastic, No (but actually yes)' to someone.

Story-wise the game is better than most Bethesda games, but the dialogue and interaction for itself is horrible.

You hit the nail on the head there. The game never made me feel like I was actually changing the wasteland. You have the choice to let events unfold or to do nothing. Sure in the end you tip the balance in favor of one of the factions, but i was invested in all three factions before the climactic end thing and it didn't really seemed to.register. no faction really seemed to care about my interaction with the others. There's some dialogue about the railroad when you're with the institute and vice versa, but the best stories reinforce the gameplay and never did i feel like my actions influenced the gameplay. I felt ignored quite often and it did not make me feel immersed.

How do you figure? I've played all the Fallout games and Fallout 4 by far has the fewest mechanics and depth. Many features have either been removed completely,or trimmed down and watered-down.
They removed a lot in Fallout 4, more than I ever could have expected.

Given the overall picture I rate it a 4. While the actual main story itself may not be too solid (I myself find it passable. I also wasn't bothered by Skyrim F3 or Oblivion though.) I'm still having fun I'm having no problems roleplaying a morally nuetral dad who does love his son but doesnt want to get his hopes up. So yes he's taking the advice of that probably insane drug user he's also not ignoring the problems of those individuals that are actually right there and need help (or trouble) now.

I'm not saying it's perfect, or that I wouldn't prefer it if they'd handled these things differently. But that's the all their games work. And it shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone who's played Fallout 3. (I accidentally left that kid in the Preservation Booth for weeks of game time in Fallout 3)

But Fallout 4 does have factions that tie into the main quest and eventually you do have to make some decisions between them. It goes further than Oblivion and Skyrim in this regard (where guild quest lines are independent), and much further than Fallout 3, where there is only the main quest and individual side quests. It's a similar set up to New Vegas in many ways, and evidence that they did actually listen to feedback, despite people claiming that they through everything out of the window.

Some suspension of disbelief is needed at times, but I don't think it's fundamentally broken.

From Fallout 3, the only other Bethesda Fallout game:

Skills: Separate skills and perks did not have more depth, IMO. It was a very simple system. More relevant is that it could barely hold together in the game. Just doing the main quest and a couple of side quests was enough to max out several skills and be pretty good in all. Broken Steel made everyone an uber soldier. There's no way that system would have balanced in Fallout 4 for both players doing a quick play through and those spending 200 hours+ on one character. New Vegas had similar problems.

Repair: Mainly a money sink for collected loot. There was nothing fun about it and it wasn't very realistic. They took that away and adding crafting, which is far more involved.

Quests: As discussed above.

VATS: Vastly improved. No longer feels like God Mode.

Dialogue: It matters about the same. About the only big thing you could do in Fallout 3 and not 4, was use Speech checks to skip bits out the main quest. Avoiding part of the game and adding nothing in it's place is not my idea of depth.

What do you think they've removed?

That is most definitely the weak point of the game in general. Certain decisions never felt... lets say... 'final' enough, up until you hit the 'point of no return' quests toward the very end of the game. But up until then you didn't really have to choose, you could always just go back and do it later.

One of my main focuses with the stuff I mod is having my npcs impact the player and the player impact my npcs.

But, overall I still liked it more than most games I have ever played, even if the game has its flaws. If we are comparing Fallout 4 to some hypothetical perfect game, I would say it falls far short, but if we are comparing Fallout 4 to real world games that actually exist then I would say it is one of the best.

The Main Quest was horrible but the Sidequests had some Awesome stuff. Paladin Danse, Captain Irionsides,...............................

Actually Fallout 4 have more Mechanics that old Fallout game. The big problem most ppl had is the dialogues options situation. But u have factions, u have a crafting system (improve), u have a settlement system (new), a new PA system(new), a level system (improve). Rad system (improve). Rework how chems work. New leyer armor system. VATS system (improve)

But yeah the dialogue system is the biggest complain, i mean it can be improve, but still isnt like the worst i have seen.