So a game is designed explaining that the main road north past Sloan is attacked by Deathclaws and the Goodsprings road was hit by cazadors and bandits, all of which CAN be defeated at level one with some skill of the player and it even explains the initial enemy you were chasing saw these threats they looped south, that isn't discouragement. Discouragement would be impassible walls. That's the problem with gaming today with this logic of "I can't go into that elite big bad base at level one? STOP DISCOURAGING ME FROM ENJOYING THE GAME!". It only discourages Level 1 bumrushing, which you should be hit in the head with a beer bottle to begin with if you're just going to rush through an RPG's content. It's better than Fallout 3 which lets you just run right to GNR with ease and no fuss.

Besides all the ghouls and super mutants between you and GNR.

I wouldn't say it's super easy to reach GNR at low levels but yeah.

I just hope AI has improved, this rubber banding sounds nice but if the AI hasn't gotten better, it's just going to be more of the same but with more preset enemies.

This is all that needs to be said, really.

Every Bethesda RPG, including Morrowind, has level scaling and plenty of it. The only game that didn't have "no-go" regions was Oblivion, and that was a flaw. But if you tried to go to a Giant Camp, Falmer Cave, Dwarven Ruin, or Dragon Priest crypt before you were strong enough in Skyrim, you were in for a bad time. Fallout 3 had plenty of locations like that too, and Fallout 4 looks to be exactly the same. But they didn't have beefgates; they put the powerful enemies in their own locations, not on the paths to major regions.

No, lol. I was watching G4TV one day when Blair Herter one day went out of his way to recommend Arkham City. I had passed on the game because I wasn't a real fan of the first one, but Arkham City was a great experience. As a game journalist that is what you are supposed to do. Push people towards those games that YOU really enjoyed as a journalist. The problem is that most gaming journalist don't play all that much.

You are not prepared!

Anyway, at first I was confuse what OP is saying, I thought it is something like Nemesis system.

Recommending a game that they played/reviewed and liked is one thing. Generating excitement/hype is another thing entirely. One is the job of a games journalist. The other is the job of a game's marketing department.

I'm not saying that it's their job to advertise the game or speak about the game when it's inappropriate.

Entertainment journalism in general is about hyping as much as it is informing. If journalists can talk about games the same way others talk about music, or movies, it will at least be only as crappy as those media.

Not to mention the Behemoth.

...with a FAT MAN lying there with available ammo....not really as BIG an actually combat issue as a staged David and Goliath segment. Not to mention you start the fight with at least half a dozen heavily armored and armed allies.

Working exploits, advanced knowledge and some "tricks" to reach areas you should not be able to at a very low level in a game is nothing new. I see absolutely NOTHING wrong with Developers creating areas you should NOT be able to casually stroll thru at a low level. The idea that the game is not truly and "open world" because of these things is ridiculous. Nobody is stopping you from entering those areas but it's gonna take some thought an planing to actually survive them.

Invisible walls as a blocking technique is just lazy terrain design and not really part of an enemy scaling discussion.

Personally, the ability to go back to an area I struggled with earlier and find it incredibly easy is one of the most satisfying feelings I can get from a video game. My idea of a perfect open world game would be to have the easiest area be hard at first, and the hardest area to only be mildly difficult when you've made your character the best it can be and have completed most of the game. It's all about the satisfaction for me.

Hell, I even like it when I "can't" get to certain areas before advancing in the story (broken bridges). Finding ways to get into Mexico or West Elizabeth in Red Dead Redemption before finishing the tutorial missions was always fun.

A world where you can go anywhere from the word go and not face uneven odds is the opposite of an organic, lived in world. It suggests absolutely everything revolves around you. You are a cosmic force that can even bend the fabric of reality and turn a place that in-universe is home to unspeakable terrors into a nest of monsters no more threatening than a stack of notebooks.

A world where you can go anywhere from the word go, but going to certain areas will mean you're facing things that will absolutely destroy you is a much more organic world, as well as one that makes exploration more fun and exciting, as it removes the safety net of knowing the enemies won't be too tough because you're at a low level.

It is actually easier to get to Rivet City than GNR. So just as a warmup, a person that is planning on what is essentially a naked run to GNR, should go to Rivet City and talk to Dr. Li before they make their low level trip to GNR. If for no other reason than to make such a boring trip for a level 3 more interesting.

Well, the road north isn't all too difficult. Go to some Powder Ganger outposts (which are close-by) and grab the explosive charges, then simply bait the cazador's to cripple themselves and pick them off with some other weapons, might as well use dynamite in VATS for precision bonus crippling. After those initial 8 or so cazador's on the road north it's smooth sailing so long as you avoid certain Fiends and Fire Gecko's.

The thing is, they don't. It's ok to be somewhat biased, even if you're a journalist, but it's not a question of bias in my honest opinion, but more about the maturity of the medium. In movies or music or even technology, journalists take on a more skeptical if not more balanced approach to their reporting. It's easily seen. Look at any Windows or Apple product. Regardless of the marketing and the hype machine of those two massive companies, the journalists are there reporting a balanced on their products, discussing the pros and cons. That's the way it's supposed to be. If a journalist was in bed with Apple, if it seemed like all he did was praise their products and hype their products with slightly veiled criticism, who's going to respect that guy. I sure wont read his reviews, most advlts wouldn't.

A lot of these journalists act like kids from my perspective, not all of them, but a lot of them. So much that I don't even bother reading reviews half the time. Sometimes I think the forum does a much better job of providing a balanced atmosphere of the quality of the product. You can see both sides, but even more, each side has their own consensus on what's good and bad about the game that isn't as far apart as you might expect.

edit: A lot of these so-called "reviewers" aren't even professionals. Typically with any other medium, whether it be technology, music, movies, books, ect, the reviewers have a strong grasp of the history and foundation of the topic they're reviewing and the medium itself. They know where it came from, why it's important, and how it has changed over the years.

Now I'm a bit worried about just how long it will take to level your character. It would be frustrating if took 300 hours to reach level 50 in the game. That would mean there would be whole areas that you would be locked out of COMPLETELY for most of the game.

You won't be 'locked out', it'd just be harder. And I doubt it'll take that long to level your character.

We know it won′t since that′ll scare away short attention spanners

I find this very satisfying, too. It gives me a feeling that my character has 'grown' and I like that.

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Also I find that just starting out with a new character (for me) is one of the best parts of the game.

I agree. A new character in a new game; can′t beat that!

Unless you are just trying to finish the story ASAP, I'm unsure why you would bypass GNR and talk to Dr Li right away (yeah, if you don't like the GNR > Tech Museum > Washington Monument portion, i guess). Now traveling to Rivet City ASAP to get the INT bobble head is another story. Also, Rivet City offers some good merchants, a decent free bed (in the common room) and access to the easy way into the Mall area of DC (via Anacosta Crossing Metro station).

Again, if you have advanced knowledge of what you will face where, it's not that big a deal to get past the areas to the North, but you MUST plan to do so and be quite careful about the encounters you will face. It's NOT easy is the point. It's more than obvious Obsidian designed those routes to be non friendly to low levels for a reason. As mentioned above, if every area in a game presents you with enemies you can easily handle without any risk of failure, ti's not a very well designed game (my opinion, of course). These challenges are what make "open world" games so much more interesting than linear forced story lines (that most "open world" games also have in them).

I know, right?

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Here's my favorite way to get to Rivet City:

It's a wonderful thing and a good decision, true to past Fallout games. Even better if high level areas can be conquered with some ingenuity, which would be rewarded. It is possible to get North from Goodsprings after starting the game, and that's a good thing. A mix of easy and horrifyingly difficult areas is necessary for the game world to feel more alive.