While I would agree on much of that rant... Bethesda has actually gotten that bit right; about as right as you can. (They did it wrong in FO3.)

(I'm biased of course, because I posted the concept here before FO3, and all during FO3/NV; for years... And was in the process of modding it myself for FO3 ~see SIG)

*I'm not entirely happy about the limited power-pack. Those machines were supposed to run for 100 years. ~Granted, they would be dead by the time of FO3/4, and should require modified power supplies, but those are so common in their new setting that it doesn't make sense. They should be able to run a 200 year old antique on their modern hand held microfusion power-cells.

This I'm on board with; but I never saw that in FO3.

You're talking about this footage, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrX-QT19Ro0

Because you can even see the shot from Garvey's laser musket hit the raider from behind. Garvey was on the balcony. Not sure what you're seeing.

Balcony? Again to remind people, the last raider before you talk to Preston, not the last raider you kill at all, nor the first raider that dies to a laser round, the last one the player kills before having a FACE to FACE talk with Preston.

Minecraft was an inspiration for the building system.

Fallout 4 misses one critical function from GTA, cars and all other stuff you can drive from bicycles to planes, or CARS confirmed if you are an optimist.

It has the same detailed world as Fallout 3 and TES something GTA misses, in part as it need an very large maps for the cars to drive on.

Ohhhhh right, my bad.

Back on topic, I'm not sure what I think about the critical hit meter in VATS. But it's not exactly game-breaking, and we still have random criticals in real-time, so it's not much of an issue.

I think it's very much an issue. Imagine a baseball game where every ball you hit adds to a meter that when full allows you to choose when to be given a home run. How would that be used? Why... You would wait until bases were loaded, and then send it out of the park.

The meter seems to afford the PC with the [super]power of selecting when they want a fortuitous hit.

But you still might miss completely.

So in the baseball anology, you get to pick when you really swing hard at it.

Instead of having a dice roll to hit and another dice roll to critical hit, you get to select the shots you really want to line up, then get the dice roll.

I think it could make it a bit more tactical.

Then consider that you don't. (Take anologies in the spirit of their intent.)
Say that the batter can select any scoring hit for ascendancy (as a critical hit).

That is the issue; the PC shouldn't be able to do that.

That's like if boxers could hold their knockout punch in reserve, and use it when needed.

*Actually... that's more like if a boxer had an ampule of ether they could smear onto their glove when needed.

Giz, I know it's not exactly the same thing, but how do you feel about "RPGs" where the characters have (due to race, class, perks, etc) activatable skills? Like, my dude can attack regularly like so, but every few minutes/combat rounds/twice a "day"/whatever, can do a Power Attack For Massive Damage?? Or a Cleave Attack to hit several targets at once/etc....

(or, what if they'd named the selectable VATS super attack as something other than "critical hit", so it wasn't automatically connecting in your head with die rolls & percent chances to crit....)

Not that I'm necessarily arguing for the crit-gauge thing, just curious about your wider thoughts on the topic.

Losing Repair is terrible, I agree with that point and Vats could be godmode but it was always Godmode.

As for Voiced Protagonist, the only thing I don't like is that Alternate Roleplays are gone, it's going to be like New Vegas where your directly involved with the game's plot. Sure the main quest is optional and there's nothing wrong with that but your going to be the Sole Survivor whether you like it or not and that works if you want to Roleplay that you are the Sole Survivor. As For Voiced, I'm not concerned, seeing the Interview that Brian did, I'm not concerned at all about his voice or Taylor's for that matter. Will it lead to a more linear personality, yes and that's going to svck but it's also going to do other things you can't do with Silent. As much as I like Silent, you can't have emotion with it and that's the only major problem with Silent Protagonist, you sac Emotion for Freedom.

I do think that Fallout 4 will be a great game, easily GOTY for sure (Yes even over Witcher 3) but it will not be a great RPG. There are some things that could make it great, if Special doesn't go up and is optional to raise, same with Perks then we could be looking at something special. Past history says otherwise but I remain optimistic that will change.

Abilities like that almost always come at a cost; I see no cost here in FO4. It would appear that any PC gets this power.

*By cost I mean that the skills of a committed class indicate unique training or ability. A Fighter can have Cleave or Power Attack because they are professional fighters. Combat is their expertise. Mechanically, it's why you would ever pick a fighter over a mage or cleric. Each has their own class abilities and an understanding of how they work. These abilities start to push the abstraction a bit.

** If you are asking if I think fighters should be able to initiate critical strikes on demand... personally no; but in a game where wizards can cast fireballs on demand (when available), I think it's not strange that a Fighter should have something similar that befits their own class.

Me personally, I'll Roleplay that My Survivor got the ability to do this mode in Vats by the Cryo Freeze over the 200 years, acquiring stuff by the caretakers of the Vault, or something like that.

• No Skills progression. Just pick a perk on level up.

i want skills but i am willing to at least wait till i have my hands on the system before i take the nerd rage perk

• No Crit. Chance and less Stats. "People don't like number crunching." -Todd Howard

i would agree to this entirely if someone hadn't pointed out that crits are apparently still in, but i am still against the guaranteed crit bar

• Focused on player skill, not character kill. Hired id and bungie employees for help.

tbh i thought NV had amazing gun-play, although i dont remember to what extent skills affected it

• Power Armor isn't armor anymore. It's a vehicle you enter with a limited resource so it can't be used too often.

that's the way it is supposed to be tho, isn't it?

• Dialogue Wheel. Limits responses to 4 options with abbreviated sentences so we have no idea what we will actually say when we select it. (This is how we'll get people to replay the game again. Great idea! )

this is just god awful. if they were really so set on real time conversations they should have just tweaked skyrim's a bit. having an actual menu for dialogue is extremely important imo because it could otherwise limit your options quite a bit, hell even the original wheel had more options than this thing.

• Voiced protagonist. This isn't such a bad thing, on the surface level, but with mods being the heart and soul of gamesas games it will hinder the modding scene.

in theory i would love a voiced protagonist, but in practice the game would be better off without. it's just too limiting without making some kinda voice-synthesizer to read lines so it can be adjusted and used by modders

• Companions can't die. Well, the dog can't but we might as well assume the others have god status' too.

i would much rather they put any thought into the AI instead of just making the things immortal

• No weapon degradation. "It just interrupts the action." -Someone at Bethesda

the best stories i have of FO3 are that way because of weapon degradation, they should have just tried making a better system

• No hardcoe mode. Be honest, if it was in, they would have mentioned it already.

i still have hope, they are marketing to the least common denominator and this would not appeal to everyone

• Minecraft and GTA V were inspirations for F4. -Todd Howard

i feel the sims would have been a better choice of inspiration for the building but oh well. as for GTA, i dont play it but iv seen some things on youtube that beth could really take a cue from.

Fair enough.

(I suppose from one point of view, the Fallout4 PC's "class" is Sole Survivor/Protagonist/Hero, thereby making them different/better/cooler. )

Personally, I'm not sure I'll be using that auto-crit thing. Seems unnecessary (and will also require - as it's "cost" - spending a bunch of time in VATS in the first place to charge it up), but I suppose it'll take some time with the combat system to see how it all feels in actual use.

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All of this reminds me, as an aside, that in the new 5th ed D&D, lv20 Rogues have the ability Stroke Of Luck. Once per "rest" (the new version of "once a day"), they can... succeed. Turn a combat miss into a hit, or turn a failed ability check into a 20. (Of course, a 20th level character in D&D is supposed to be representing a Legendary Hero who'll be having songs sung about him hundreds of years from now, so..... )

That's unfortunately how it seems to be. They - and others - claim it's an RPG, but what about it is it that causes the claim, I do not know anymore -- perhaps it's just due to tradition. Certainly not the character system (that does not sound all that much different from Farcry 3/4, or Saints Row 3/4 - and is said to be more compensatable by player skill now than before), or wasteland engineer simulation (wasteland tycoon) features, or the ability to roll cheesewheels downhill.

Because they don't have a definition of what RPG is thats as tight and restrictive as a straitjacket?

Think of the class as Vault Boy/Girl. The ability is a lucky hit. It is given by the luck stat.

I'm assuming that at 1 luck, it takes forever to charge. At 3, it's still meh. At 10, its fairly frequent, as the character is super lucky.

Having it RNG in real time is great, and getting that extra oompf in VATS is going to be awesome.


Is it going to be available for every fight, or every sneak attack you are trying to do? Probably not.

Its not going to be as "On Demand" as you seem to fear.

And the cost of being able to choose when it happens in VATS, is that it ONLY happens when you tell it to. You aren't going to get RNG criticals in VATS

You're certainly right about that. What people seem to have instead is something so loose you could fit it over everything, and thus it also fails to define anything.

Well, they certainly have their own style of RPG to be sure. That is one of the reasons that I was so drawn to Morrowind when it first came out. However, going as far back as Daggerfall, their games have been pretty weak in a few areas: choices and consequences, character actions affecting the world, deep storyline and NPC narratives, ect. As opposed to Baldur's Gate or Fallout, these things have always taken a backseat to their emphasis on world-design and making you feel like you can go and do whatever you want.

When Morrowind was first released, I could forgive the lack of those things mentioned above, but it's been a long time now since that release, and they really haven't improved at all beyond that as far as I an see.

Perhaps Fallout 4 will be that change, and I think people including the OP will be delighted to at least see an effort to improve this area of gameplay, which tends to be one of the biggest complaints: the simulation vs role-playing aspects.

The RPG genre isn't as strict as a "straightjacket" as you put, but if the genre didn't follow any rules like every other genre, then what would be the game? There are goals to be met in the genre to ensure great roleplaying. So far Bethesda has hit that mark, with a few areas that need improvement, just like every other game. But if the game did become a Far Cry in a sense, it wouldn't be an RPG as we have enjoyed them up until this point.

As it is right now, we have so little information on the subject, that I'm not really worried about it. We still don't know everything about the game, especially the important parts -- choices, the ability to affect the world, and their consequences.

The OP has listed some bad points as a representation of the sum of the game itself, and it's not fair to do so at this point so early with the information we don't have about the game.

About that, can anyone source that?

*shrugs* guess thats how we differ, I see the definition of a RPG as just the frame around the painting and the details within as a white canvass, in which a creator should be free to express themselves, so far in my mind, Beth is paintings within that frame quite well and is filling it with some beautiful work.

I enjoy how some people think their definition of rpg is absolute law, and speak on it as if they are some sort of authority on the matter.

Why do people allways think 'No skills = no RPG'? I know so many RPGs without skills and only perks... Witcher, Baldurs Gate (as thief you has skills, but all others only have weapon skills), Mass Effect... Just some exemples.

I think he was talking more about individual people's definitions of "RPG", which do vary greatly. (You know there are some people out there, for whom 95%+ of the digital "RPGs" published over the last three decades, aren't. They have exacting standards for what RPG means to them. And that's fine. But the industry in general, and much of the playerbase, have different ones.)

Good question (some interview somewhere, likely)..... but I'd guesst that it's just on the level of "Ooh, Minecraft shows Crafting & Building is Big!", not specifics. Given how many post-Minecraft crafting & building games are out there now (yay, bandwagon), I'd bet there'll be some other game that looks a lot closer, mechanically, to FO4's settlement construction.

They have told us so little about any of the things the OP brings up that it seems most of the things mentioned are assumptions. We all know what assume does.

I've read almost everything they have said and really, I'm not sure exactly how any of it is really handled. For instance "skills" seems to still be there though perhaps in a different way and interwoven with perks. We really don't know exactly how that will work.

And honestly, I would love it if we didn't find out all the specifics until we actually play the game on release. Maybe we would have some pleasant surprises.