Why though? I'm not having a go here, i genuinely want to know why you buy games you know are action rpgs that you know will be aimed at a broad audience(or not rpg's according to you) and then complain that they are not traditional rpg's?

Most people criticizing the game are judging it based on previous Bethesda titles. Which is funny because Bethesda has almost created their own genre, their own standard, for open world sandbox RPGs. That standard is so high that it's unfair, almost impossible to directly compare with non-Bethesda games. Take Bioware and CDPR games for example, you have NO control over your character's attributes, and very little in terms of character building and customization. Yet people are still whining about SPECIAL.

yes, they do, it has the name in the genre title. they ARE RPGs. Most people grew up with Final fantasy as their ONLY RPG game. They are teh most famous RPG game of all times, There are many who have not heard, or care about NEverwinter nights and Baldur's gate, but EVERYONE has heard of Final Fantasy, heck Pikachu, and pokemon in general in many ways is a sort of mascot for RPGs, being the ONLY RPG game to have a competitive world championship.

The only people who do not consider it an RPG are those who are stupid beyond reason and are ignorant of all common sense.

FarCry 5 as i expected.

Hopefully we get and Obsidian follow up to New Vegas. I.E. Fallout New Vegas 2: Baja Bugaloo

Out of curiosity, is there any consenses on what constitutes a RPG and what doesn't? People seem to have conflicting definitions...

My opinion: regardless of what you want to call it, Fallout 4 is a game where player skill is much more important than character skill (unlike previous Beth games, where the opposite was true). Personally I welcome this change, which the reason why, for me, Fallout 4 > Fallout 3.

Humor me.

First and foremost: a review or game editorial is only an opinion.

Second: did anyone scroll down to the end and see the picture of this author?!

The most significant quote from the article "After playing this game for 30 hours...." What the heck is 30 hours in this game?

There is no a single fact or formal criticism in the entire article. It is pure editorial.

How do we know if OP is not just the author of this piece drumming up traffic?

Getting into the meat of the article: It means nothing to me as a reader looking for useful information about the quality of a piece of art for a critic to just run down a list of things in the subject work and just say "I couldn't get into that" or "I didn't find that interesting." Those are unsupported, subjective statements so they have no bearing except in their ability to give me a sense of the writer's experience.

What was OP's purpose in posting this?

Finally, the most important question: Who cares if anyone wants to call it an RPG, or an action game with heating elements or what have you? If you like a song or a band, do you care if anyone else wants to classify it as any particular genre? That entire line of thinking is nonsense. You could call it anything you wanted and it would be the same game. Genre is dead.

If you want to talk about particular things that you think work or don't work in the game, that's fine. If you want to say you do or don't like the game, that's fine. Why, though, waste time on something as meaningless as a genre label, which is just commercial nomenclature imposed by business entities for their convenience? I don't buy into that stuff because it's a meaningless effort. Get into the nuts and bolts of it and you know this yourself: why can two similar bands/movies/games/etc., be categorized as different genres? Why is the opposite also true? It does not matter whether this game can be called an RPG any more than it matters if it can be called a llama's mandible. It's gibberish. You guys are bandying that nomenclature around like it's a freaking award of some kind and I'm just watching the rhetorical equivalent of people wrestling over a rotten banana peel.

The general consensus is whenever it supports their argument.

It's pathetic how all the fan boys who feel the urge to [censored] on every thread regarding the lack of freedom can only argue about some damn semantics, like the meaning of RPG, and never have anything to say about the real issues.

Personally, and like someone said at the beginning, although I'm having fun right now, I wonder what will I be able to do differently next playthrough. Even just with the dialogues, it seems there's only a choice between being a goody-two-shoes or a complete jerk. And then I'm not even sure the outcome would be any different, past the single following comment from the NPC. Besides, all the neutral topics like asking for info, trade, etc have the goody-two-shoes tone, so anything else seems to e there only to provide the illusion of a choice.

RPG = Rocket Propelled Grenade...........................................sorry, had to do it.

Mechanics are what determine to be an RPG, the ability to roleplay has nothing to do with whether a game is an RPG, as you can "role play" in Call of duty, but that is not a RPG.

LEveling up, skills/abilities, Vertical progression of a character in some way, some form of equipment or item system, etc are all what determine if a game is an RPG. Role-playing never comes into it, as again, 90% of RPGs give you zero chocies on what kind of person your character is, or what powers they have.

EVERY games with choice are an illusion of Choice, they all end up in the same place, or one of only a select few places. RPGs video games, are not, and never will be about choice, otherwise, Shadow the Hedgehog would be an RPG, as you can determine what kind of person (hedgehog?) becomes by playing certain ways in missions.

Also, a game that is labeled as an RPG.....is an RPG.

Great article. Nailed it. I still think it's odd that people expect RPGs from BGS, though. Skyrim made that obvious, and that was just the next step in the progression.

BGS makes action stroll playing games. Really great action stroll playing games. They're fun, they've got amazing worlds with little details scattered everywhere. With FO4 they've really tightened up combat and raised the difficulty, which were two of my big gripes. For roleplay, they offer cosmetic options like what clothes to wear and hairstyle to choose. They have character progression, but the system has been too streamlined to offer significant difference for different characters. Dialog is railroaded more than ever, and the majority of quests is just slaughter. The game systems don't support roleplay, they completely ignore those aspects, so it's not an RPG.

You can love BGS games and be a fan, and still recognize that they're not RPGs.

Im not the author, I can guarantee you that. Actually, I have a hard time expressing myself in English, as you probably can tell from my posts.

I created this thread because, like I said, I agree with most points of the article and most of my complains with this game are well explained there (lack of freedom, bad dialogue, too much combat).

Finally, you are missing the point if you think that the article is about labeling FO4...

I have to admit I agree with the article in general. I did bump into a few instances where I could talk my way out of things and avoid conflict but overall it feels very shallow. Dialog system is terrible, I can barely get any information out of NPCs or give my character the opportunity to flesh out their.. well... character.

I feel Bethesda are moving away more and more from traditional RPG features and more into Far Cry territory.

by definition, they ARE RPGs, it is kind of in their genre title of Action RPG.

If you go to metacritic the genre is listed as "general".

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/fallout-4

It also makes me sad that bad level design now means fps level design.

I don't know, I actually feel like this game is a step forward towards more rpg elements than past Bethesda games. Honestly, I can't really remember where previously my choices really mattered in a Bethesda game (going back to Morrowind, at least) beyond how I approached the world. The stories though, most were all kinda accept this quest, or don't do it and move on. Now I have companions that won't work with me if I do stuff they don't like, and I find the main quest factions to all be kinda dark/evil in some respects. Apart from the minutemen, the rest of the factions are far from "knights in shining armour", and being able to influence their respective levels of power in the Commonwealth actually seems more rpg to me than previous BGS games have allowed.

Yes, the voice acting certainly will prevent me from playing a male character because I picture that person just reading their lines, and granted no VO volume slider makes it hard for me to play any female character, but despite those things I feel like the dialogue choices do matter more. I do do separate replays for responses just related to sarcastic or not at some points because I see those as two completely different people. Two weeks in, I'm on my 4th or 5th replay of the main quest, and haven't really touched much else.

I guess for me the bottom line is (voice acting I can take it or leave it) I feel like my choices matter more in this game than any previous bgs game (in 15 years at least), and I actually find the story quite relevant and interesting morally. Apart from the voice acting and technical issues, I feel like Bethesda is moving in the right direction.

Apparently not, i always thought it was defined by if your characters effectiveness is determined by stats/skills/feats/watchamakallits and you go out on quests and collect loot and xp to gain levels, making you stronger, it's an RPG.

If you make your own character and role play it via dialogue and can influence the story, it's a regular RPG. If the game just uses the mechanics i already mentioned and doesn't focus on role-playing through story or just the loot getting/fighting/mechanics it's an action RPG.

If it fetures a bunch of angsty teenagers with spiky hair and a story littered with melodrama it's a JRPG.

But the genre is so frickin broad these days, broader than any other genre today.

The title of your thread and the article you linked to are misleading, then. They specifically say "good game, bad RPG."

Thanks for clarifying, though! Your English is great, btw!

I definitely am unimpressed with the dialogue options- that's one thing I agree with you and the PC Gamer guy about. I feel like they kind of make up for the limited dialogue options by still giving you a good bit of choice in the actions you take outside of conversations in specific quests, but in general I think it stinks.

The other stuff I disagree with- I'm loving the combat, leveling, crafting, exploring, etc. I do think there are enough leveling/progression structures in the game, as well as customization, crafting, inventory, etc., to scratch my rpg itch.

I kind of got over the streamlining of things in Skyrim. What I feel like they're doing (Bethesda, I mean) is taking some of the rpg experience that used to be handled with text and menus and putting actually in front of you visually and with sound. I'm quite happy with that, so I like it. Back in the day when I used to play tabletop rpg's with my friends (AD&D, to show my age), I was always more into the story and characters than into the game mechanics and dice rolls and whatnot. One of my buddies was all about that stuff, though, so we had some balance in our campaigns. So the argument some are making that an RPG is abut structures and game mechanics doesn't carry TOO much weight with me.

Meta-critic means zip.

Fallout wiki: Fallout 4 is a post apocalyptic role-playing game

Wikipedia: Fallout 4 is an open world action role-playing video game

Gamestop: Category: Role-Playing

IGN: We’re giving this post-nuclear RPG a glowing endorsemant.

Steam: Genre: RPG

I think you get the picture.

Ah, it's a fault. Always willing to give the benefit of the doubt and go in with an open mind, I am. Especially when it comes to the Fallout franchise. It's really the only title I give much care about, and the first two games were my first non-tabletop experience which really felt true to the PnP experience. So, a bit of curiosity leads me to the purchase and a tank full of piss & vinegar is what keeps me going.

An RPG is a game which includes mechanics which allow you to build and play the role of a character, then watch said character progress as he or she makes choices and decisions which the world responds and reacts to. The traditional RPG will include dice rolls, stat-based mechanics and a dynamic set of skills and or abilities which help define your specialization (or lack thereof) and determine your path through the game. The further away from the traditional RPG statistical mechanics you get, the closer you get to playing pretend.

You're using a marketing label.

ARPGs are descendants of rogue-likes like Nethack, which were never called RPGs until they had 90% of the features removed, got graphical facelifts, and put into the hands of marketing. So it's kind of funny that games that don't even derive from RPGs have been mislabeled, and that people accept that.

The truth is that the RPG label has been so horribly abused that people who actually like that style of game probably need to come up with another name, and hope that that new term doesn't get diluted to the point of being pointless.

I love that. And I'm going to steal it and use it forever.

nope, Go paly Final fantasy, go play Pokemon, Go play the D&D goldbox games, go play Diablo, D&D for that matter, where the original version of the game was "go to dungeon, kill everything" and there was no background for any kind of story.

You DO KNOW that the Rogue-likes are BASED ON tabletop games where if you die, you die for good, right? or that the term Hack and slash was BASED on what 90% of people played D&D did originaly, right?

actually, nevermind, let me answer that for you, you are one of those guys who never play any kind of RPG outside a VERY specific type of RPG, and believe that anything that slightly deviates from that is not an RPG, the kind of person who has no idea about the actual history of the genre and really no idea what you are talking about.

Yeah, that or the genre has evolved so much that it has become completely meaningless. These are the things we navel-gazers contemplate, though...