I feel the same way. I honestly can't see why Skyrim was praised so highly. It seemed to be sitting atop The Seven Thousand Steps of hype. While the game did have it's flaws, I accepted that maybe Bethesda was pushing the old gen limits, resulting in some less polished areas in turn for greater graphics and world scope.

Four years later, FO4 arrives. It stumbles in many of the same ways as Fo3 and Skyrim. It's a bit disheartening to see very little criticism from fans carry enough weight to justify any real change. I too am very cautiously optimistic though.

The no level cap is a really silly complaint. Have you played enough of it to even max your special? I've got 72 hours and don't have enough points to do that if I wanted, and then there's 270+ perk points I'd need to "have everything" Even if the leveling stopped scaling as it went higher, I'd have 500+ hours in before I "had everything". But it won't stop scaling so you're probably looking at double or triple that amound of time to max a character.

The story is opinion really. I hated New Vegas's MQ and couldn't care about the outcome even after I drug myself along the poorly motivated main story. I liked mostly everything else but the main story was wholey uninspired to me

so true.......

the ppl complaining about the leveling system is just ppl complaining that they cant become god at level 20 like on NV. I seriously dont understand how they like the skill system so much when it was broken as hell.

Here you go.

http://www.amazon.com/Crown-Mark-Cheval-Mirror-Brown/dp/B0038FFWJ8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448481849&sr=8-1&keywords=mirror

heres what I think.

there is a main story line, and you have options how you want to proceed. Alongside that, there are so many different side story lines and characters to interact with. So much of the stuff you can do ties in with other lines and I find the game has plenty of variety.

easy bc Skyrim was a good game with problem ofcurse but a good game.

Gaming forums have turned me into a monster, that's one thing I won't deny.

We Friedrich Nietzsche now.

Deep as puddle?

*Counts how many "Institute/BoS are or are not the good guys" threads in the forums*

LMAO

Set protagonist you say?

*Thinks back to the original Vault Dweller, the Chosen One, and the Lone Wanderer and how all their back stories were predefined*

Right....

Except I feel like people are going to be saying this stuff no matter what Bethesda tries to do. Just look at Fallout 4 - you're forced to make hard choices of who to support in the main quest, the factions are more morally ambiguous, the companions are more fleshed out and actually care about the choices you make, crafting is incredibly detailed without becoming ridiculously overpowered or making loot useless, your SPECIAL stats matter, and despite the lack of a level cap you won't become a master of everything in only 50 hours like the prior games. I'd be surprised if all these things weren't in direct response to fan feedback from Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Skyrim.

Most reviewers regarded it as a perfect 10/10, an epitome of open-word RPGs. Disregarding the buggy mess at launch, especially the PS3 port, the shallow enemy AI, the linear skill system, the gross amount of fetch quests. How many of these problems were carried on to Fo4?

I see people complaining about the exact same things as Skyrim. And it's funny how people say when these complaints appear at every release they are warranted as null and void. Instead of the pattern of complaints being coincidental or devised by the same-old-nostalgia-tinted-goggle-wearing-grumps, maybe they actually hold some validity.

Preach

Hallelujah!

yea just get it.......its about time

Eh, I'll just report you for flame baiting at this point. I have received enough warnings on this forum as it is.

The devs listen when it becomes clear that the people complaining about it not being a legit Fallout game and so on represent more than 1% of the people playing it.

Cthulhu's tentacle beard, this. I'm cheating like a maniac using the console, and I have yet to break level 80 with >130 hours of playtime and maybe five levels straight up added with modav experience. People don't seem to realize that the lack of a level cap simply doesn't matter unless you A) hit the far side of postgame, or spend ungodly hours just running around doing miscellaneous crap. In fact, it was far easier to become an overpowered player character in the prior games due to ridiculously easy exploits of the skill systems. My first Beth game was Morrowind - now that was exploitable to hell and back.

This. Absolutely this. Did you notice that a lot of things in this game seem to have been implemented directly based on some of the most popular features modded into their past Fallout and Elder Scrolls games? I did. Sure, they broke a fair few things, but they clearly looked at what people were doing to their games and took several pages of notes.

Moreover, if Bethesda's Fallouts somehow aren't "true" Fallout games... what are they supposed to do about that? Make a turn-based game? Hand over the IP to Obsidian, and publicly apologize for making two critically acclaimed best-selling games? Creating a complicated storyline that presents you with several morally ambiguous choices doesn't seem to work... it's not just not constructive criticism for people to say 3 and 4 aren't "real Fallouts", it's useless and petty.

Just as a disclaimer, I am in no way trying to bash Bethesda or spew unfounded claims.

Yes, there are improvements, but it seems with every two steps taken, there is one step taken back. Companions are more fleshed out, but companion AI is as horrid as ever. How many have complained about companions in prior TES and fallout games, only to see the problem persist. The dialogue , while voiced, is a step back in their resulting effect and depth. No matter if you say something good or bad, the resulting responses from the NPCs is vastly the same. The main quest is more in depth, but side quests are the same fetch quests people complained about with Skyrim.

And not too mention the buggy mess at launch. It's not fair how Bethesda gets a pass on this just because we've become so used to and numbed to bugs in Bethesda's games. The engine is running on thin ice at this point. There needs to be some serious innovation in this department for future titles before enough is enough.

The fact that you are blaming the engine for the bugs doesn't help your argument.

The engine has nothing to do with it

Understandable I felt the exact same way about the last Fallout game. I felt indifferent to practically every npc (they werent even well written enough to hate it was sheer indifference.)and the story and main quest were a bore.Though unfortunately I didn't even think the world in the last game was interesting.

I have asked this question before, and nobody has ever really given me a straight answer:

Is there an engine out there that does exactly what Bethesda needs it to do? Can it handle NPC schedules. Can it handle the thousands of individual objects out there?

The engine may be flawed (lmao 9000 drawcalls for shadows), but it does exactly what Bethesda needs for it to do, and it's proven to be an adaptable engine. This is by far the most stable Bethesda title to date.

I really don't think it is a "hard choice" when it comes to the MQ. Think all sythns should be destroyed? Join the BoS. Think Sythns should be free? Join the RR. Agree with the Institute? Join them. Prefer a more good guy approach? Join the Minutemen.

Is there a single consequence in FO 4 like the Roy/Tennpenny tower quest in FO 3? Is there a failure state to the game besides your character death?

Are there any consequences to SPECIAL? I don't see any, there are zero dialogue options based upon Special that I have encountered, every persuasion attempt only governed by Charisma(with a unknown % bonus based on black widow or lady killer), no INT checks for dialogue etc, and this was even in FO 3. I took a pretty crappy SPECIAL loadout, basically just "average" in everything, and I've had no problems in the game. Dialogue choices tend to lead to the exact same outcome.

Really, where are the big consequences that down the road change the game? I've had some triggermen come after me, that is it. What are the evil choices? Seems like the only evil choice would be to go around and just refuse to help people or something.

I like the game, but they dropped the ball on lore and C&C. It is better than 3. There doesn't have to be groundbreaking C&C with every quest or around every corner, but a taste of it would be nice.

B...but Angry Joe said it is so it must be true.

One thing I find interesting is the notion that the player can't roleplay because there is a set backstory. So I consider, what kind of person is mandated by the mandatory background of lawyer or ex-military, and I've decided there is no mandate involved. What we have is a lack of classes to point to saying "my character is a thief" or a "warrior" or a "mage" and yet the basis of each of those classes is merely a matter of deciding to play the character that way.

For instance, I personally have never had a RL good experience with a lawyer, so it's not difficlut for me to imagine a lawyer for the mob (who favors suits and a fedora over armor, and enjoys suppressed pistols and submachine guns) married to a hitman turned special forces/black ops agent. I also have to presume a lawyer would naturally steal anything not nailed down and favor stealth over brute force. The military history gives a natural slant toward the warrior/survivalist, and the mage? Well, I'd imagine a highly educated research scientist turned lawyer or military would qualify, since technology is very much like magic.

Having then decided the basic background for your character in the face of a pre-written backstory, it's just a matter of playing the character accordingly. Can't play an evil character? I could have sworn that the "Local Leader" perk kinda creates a politician, and what could be more evil than that? Especially a lawyer turned politician...