...I'm really never going to understand why loading screens are such a big deal to people. Probably because I've never played these games on a console off a disc. I really, really hope that there are "instanced" areas in the game, if only so that important & interesting dungeons can't be messed up by random overworld combats exploding through them.

This.

Bethesda is keeping Fallout 3's roots, which is a good thing. Keeping the roots is what we want in a series, keeping the whole tree itself we don't want... Bethesda never keeps the whole tree itself though from game to game, so I believe we are good.

So the OP is outraged that Bethesda based their NEXT Fallout game on the previous, wildly successful LAST Fallout game? How dare they build on a foundation of success and popularity! Fetch the torches and pitchforks so we can storm the castle!!!

It's weird. Those who care most about the graphics don't seem to be able to spot the improvements.

FO4 looks far better than FO3 did. Not that I really care much about that.

Just. Wow. Very unprofessional article here.

" If the people making and publishing this seem like they’re just going through the motions, how can they expect us to get excited? I’m not a fan of the over-the-top marketing presentation, but a little fizz would have gone a long way."

This dude somehow believes he should get special treatment, or that Bethesda should throw this crazy conference, while glossing over the fact that they are doing this presentation Over and over and Over again, All day, every day, till the end of Gamescom. What the hell does he expect?

And I won't even start on the "It looks like Fallout 3" Side. Completely baseless, and purely used for clickbait.

LIES!!!

Fallout 4 OBVIOULSY uses WASTELAND 1's ENGINE!!!! >: ((((

See I'd think it would look more like 3 if they spent the time they did on crafting and settlement building to just boost the graphics. I don't want a grossly better looking same system fallout 3/4. 3 certainly wasn't a graphics powerhouse, I don't know why people expect/want 4 to be. They are clearly updated and better, is that not enough? I'm happy with the additions and changes while still gaining some better looking graphics. It's like they dumped stats into every category and got the crafting and settlement building perks instead of just dumping their stats into visuals lol

The growing entitlement in the gaming industry is actually quite sickening. I am aware that listening to your fans feedback and making some changes adjusted to that is important, or just in general have a good relationship with the fans. At the end of the day though this is Bethesda's product and they can do whatever they want with it and we are ever so lucky that all they want to do is to make a great game. Whether you like said game or not is irrelevant, be grateful a game developer like Bethesda is still around in 2015.

A tiny rant that sort of has nothing to do with this, and yet everything to do with it.

Are you kidding me? Skyrim is atrocious with its loading times on the 360. Even when installed on the hdd. I even went back to play Oblivion to compare the loading times, and Oblivion's was faster!

It's inexcusable to have Skyrim loading times with FO4. If this is the case I will cease to play it.

Like I said, I've never played them on a console, so I haven't had that experience to make me hate loading screens. (I wonder how much difference the current-gen systems being much more "load the game onto your harddrive" would make. /ponder Which also makes me wonder if the console drives are 5400rpm or 7200. And then I think "d'oh! of course they're 5400")

Indeed. By the looks of it FO4 has evolved from FO3 in the same relative way that Fo3 should have evolved from Fallout 2. In that respect there is no foothold for complaint.

(*Though of course I don't agree this middle bit.)

You can upgrade to a faster third party hdd, but pretty much every game doesn't take advantage of it. Some games are broken even because they weren't programmed to be run from said hdd on that console.

Also, sorry if I came across rude, but Skyrim's loading times strike a real nerve with me. I really enjoyed Skyrim, but those damned loading screens / times, ruin any chance of another playthrough for me on a console.

That's nice, dear.

for me the longest loading screen is when first loading the game after that its nowhere near as long. And i dont mind the wait your making it sound like every loading screen takes five minutes. And morrowind hands down has the longest loading screens of athe tes gameor on the console.

we should cool there hot hatefull hearts with a warm island song.

Yeah most likely that is exactly what happened.

There was probably a limited amount of people from that website able to go to Gamescom. This guy gets picked, full of excitement about what awaits him. He's there hoping for a huge presentation with a ton of new content to rack up some pageviews on his article. And of course the expected VIP treatment for the honoured members of the press like him.

And then it doesn't happen, lol. He gets the same demo as Quakecon, no one svcking up to the press, no fun goodie bags, no exclusive interview with Pete Hines and Todd Howard.

So he writes a sour article. That's all this is. Moving on.

Did that come as a surprise?

Are you serious.

well, I never expected to see more than a fallout with the gameplay feeling of Skyrim. Not that I will not enjoy new stuff, but I will be happy if we can just get rid of the aweful feeling of Fallout3/NV.

Beside there are new stuffs: crafting, settlement. Whats wrong with that exactly?

No, because it's not recycled FO3 and anyone who says so is braindead or purposely being an [censored].

Personally, I'll be happy if Fallout 4 looks even as pretty and atmospheric as I found Skyrim (actually Skyrim almost ruined Skyrim for me because all it made me want was a Fallout game that looked as nice...) And from what I've seen in previews Bethesda looks to have surpassed that.

Maybe I am getting old, because I'm still amazed that character models have fingers instead of just block-hands (hell, I'm still amazed that games have more than two colors...)

One thing that gets overlooked a lot by some of the folks who want to focus on the graphics instead of any of the myriad gameplay and ruleset changes that Bethesda's bringing to the table is the difference between art design and graphics power. They're not the same thing.

I remember when everyone was talking about the first Crysis because it's big selling point was that it would just about melt your computer if you tried to run it at full settings. But to me it just looked like any other bland sci-fi shooter. Sure, it had plenty of graphics power, but no art direction to back that up or set itself as visually distinct from any other game that played just the same.

I have my reservations about some of the gameplay choices Bethesda has made with their games over the years but I've never been able to fault them for anything short of downright admirable art design and attention to detail. If they're not necessarily pushing the "graphics" from a technological standpoint I still feel they pretty much set the bar in terms of art direction for these sorts of games. There was quite a bit I didn't think Fallout 3 quite accomplished even to their own objectives (and more that I just subjectively didn't approve of,) but I have to hand it to them - visually I felt they not only hit the nail on the head in terms of creating an iconic open world in the Fallout universe, I think they went beyond the original Fallouts in terms of creating something visually distinct and iconic.

I do remember when Morrowind came out, that was a big step forward in games like this. That was the first real 3D world that I could play in an RPG context and explore with that level of detail. No one was doing the "every item you see in the game is it's own object that can be manipulated and used," at the time - and even now in most games if you see a shelf with a bunch of items in it, it's all one model; the level designers aren't painstakingly placing every random tool and piece of string into the level one by one. I recall being just blown away by Morrowind. And then I went into a house and looked up, and realized that Bethesda was putting more thought and detail into the ceiling of one type of house than other developers were in entire levels.

These days, maybe they're not reinventing the wheel, graphically, every single time - but I believe they are still putting as much passion into the art direction as they always have. They make very pretty games, I think, and wonder if those who don't see what I see just can't see the forest for the tree.

Pfft, don't sweat about it. This is what people wanted and expected. It's the same game Bethesda keeps making over and over with select tweaks to make it feel as if "new".

I think part of the problem thus far in getting a handle on Fallout 4, is that we've been shown what the world looks like, and a good deal of what our tools will be, but there is nothing which gives us a sense of real purpose yet. Unless its "GO Out and [censored] some [censored] up!" Seriously, I expect the game to retain a lot of what FO-3 was about, at least in game world design, including it's inhabitants. Discovering what's in the Fall Out 4 world, will undoubtedly seem familiar, but we've not seen anything that's a WOW feature yet. Crafting your own community, great, but how does it relate to the rest of the world. Can you build alliances?, can you ally it with other factions in greater wars? Or is it really just playing with legos as a side line in game? Our PC speaks their lines now, but do we have an example of a complete conversation yet, something with 4 or five exchanges between two characters yet? There's still an awful lot unknown...

Couldn't the same thing be said about Fallout 2 compared to the original Fallout?

No doubt article author is using the term "recycled" to generate clicks and from the responses here, he (and the OP....which just might be him) was successful.