Any professional development company that signs a contract like the one Obsidian signed knows exactly what they're getting into. That doesn't make the awards/scores/critics scene any less of a steaming pile of parasitic revenue generation. It's relevant to whatever extent consumers choose to be led around by the nose while people make a buck off their innate monkey sense of curiosity about what the neighbors think.


The gaming press adds nothing to the games themselves, they're just shills. That Bethesda (or ZeniMax) inserted that clause in the contract reflects the nature of that beast very clearly. It was a bonus based on the speed of the hype train. Obsidian had to know what it meant. "If you would like to have this extra stack of cash, you will be required to leverage your brand and engage in parallel marketing of our IP to buy exposure for us in the reviewing press."


"Get out and push, and we might give you a lolipop."


It was a rigged gamble for Obsidian, but a win for Bethesda regardless of what Obsidian ultimately chose to do with it.

FO3 >>> FO4. I think I'm going to replay FO3 and sell FO4 for $5 at Gamestop.

that 84 score is for pc from metacrtic, if not for destrucoid giving it a 7 and giant bomb giving it about a 7 the other gameing publications sites etc all gave it a 9 to 9.5 its aggregate score isn't 84, its closer to 88 which is very good actually and not only that, the witcher has been out for a while and flalpout 4 is basically not done, we have dlcs that will be coming out, along with patches for the issues the pc users mainly seemed to have had so its really not straight up comparison with witcher 3, the fantasy games always have an edge and witcher is pollished and very good looking game grapgics wise so that gives it an edge, fallout 4 outselling the witcher and that speaks more loudly actually and fallout is being played a lot just check twitch, steam and youtube, its holding its own fine.

I bet you'll be back before long

It was metacritic. My point was that people think if it doesn't win goty then its a trash game. The funny thing is if you turn this sentiment around on them it would mean that if it did win then has to be a great game but they don't think that. The goty in used to validate their OPINION about the game, a use they would quickly abandon if did win as I've stated.

Ah, don't get me wrong, I really enjoy Fallout 4. Sometimes I think that Telvanni avatar makes people think I am anti-Bethesda since some people use Morrowind to hate on them.

The 84 is on my chosen platform, PC, so im just going to go for what I play on instead of what I don't play on. The 84 I think is very accurate to my opinion, since I find the voiced protagonist to be a major dislike, but by no means a game-killer.

You are correct that sales will what will be the ultimate force here, and I know that Fallout 4 will endure the test of time with more active players for a longer period than Witcher 3, since that's just how Bethesda is. I only know the stats for Steam players, but Bethesda's games are the only games ive seen that manage to compete with huge multiplayer titles in terms of having a huge volume of players years after release. I think that critical reception is a huge measure of success, but people are acting like anything less than a perfect score in the 90s is proof of some great failing. In terms of metacritic ratings ive always seen the 80s as being the extremely high quality games that may have one or two small elements to it that may be less good for certain people, all based on personal preference of course, whereas getting into the 90s you find almost none of that. As I said I find the voiced protagonist to be something that puts it into the 80s range for me, but I am not saying that element is some universal thing that everyone's going to hate. Not at all.

Fallout 4 is the best game of this year for me. Is it the best game of the decade? That's Skyrim right now, and we've still got quite some time for TES VI to rear its head. But Fallout 4 is about 95% of everything that I had hoped it to be from the years of hype I have had surrounding it. And that's still damn good.

I think Bethesda still has most of its fanbase, and I'm not worried about them not getting GOTY...however for me I think they should have changed up the little things (lockpick, hacking...) this time around...seriously for that alone I am having a hard time staying interested in my second playthrough, also for that same reason, as petty as it may seem to some, It is not my GOTY anymore (was a couple weeks ago)...Super Mario Maker for me..

idk...have about 470 hours split between PC and PS4. Don't remember any actual bugs. Had one crash to desktop on PC the day it released. Seen some wonky physics which I actually like. Then again I usually don't run into the bugs people complain about on any game forums. I guess I just know how to update drivers and take care of my PC better than most people /shrug Not saying the game doesn't have a lot of problems but I wouldn't consider bugs one of them.

I figured Witcher 3 would win. I'd imagine more players want to run through mediocre fantasy story as a beefy blonde guy than want to run around post apocalyptic Boston.

Other than the fact that it has currently won over 20 GOTY awards from critics putting it at second place overall. Witcher 3 just happens to be incredible enough that none of Bethesda's games and most other games for that matter could really compete against.

Let's be frank, if Bethesda released Fallout 4 last year they would have set a world record for the number of GOTY it receives.

GOTY are just a marketing tool I personally think Bloodborne was the best game this year not the witcher which I also adore. so its really based on your judgement whenever a game deserves a GOTY or not.

Have to agree with the general sentiment that F4 does not deserve any goty awards, but i also agree that: 1. They'll most likely get some anyway. 2. GotY awards dont actually mean much of anything.

I consider F4 a good game, but as it stands now (pure vanilla, no dlc or major mod enhancement) it's a mediocre -fallout- game.

Storyline is boring, no sense of resolution or world impact after you've completed the main game, settlement system is barely at the "half baked" stage of development and certainly bloated in the number of sites it throws at you and expects you to manage/care about, settlements really dont offer the player anything other then a place to store your gear and waste your time when you're tired of shooting your way thru every quest. Endless radiant quests from the MM faction is aggravating, especially when they start replaying the exact same quest at the exact same spot, ect ect.

Factions feel really thin and under-used, no good quests or characters to generate even a minimal feeling of attachment to their existence or goals (at least for me)

Settlement system is probably the biggest let-down for me, personally.

They lost GOTY almost entirely because of the fact that the game was released like two weeks before the award was presented. Witcher 3 had been out for months, gotten several patches, had multiple installments of DLC, and so on. That was an unfair comparison in the first place.

Is the game a bit buggy? Yes, but not so much that my enjoyment of the game has actually decreased.

Honestly though, GOTY awards don't mean much anyway. Fallout 4 is an incredible game, and it doesn't matter to me if it gets an award acknowledging it.

I dunno, to outright claim an entire industry is a 'steaming pile of parasitic revenue generation' feels off to me.

I am not saying everyone should follow a game-critic word for word but they do have valuable input into the game development industry. Take some games that where rubbish before the critics came along and provided it valuable feedback essentially, like Assassins Creed (AC2, 2:Brotherhood and 2:Revelations are among my favourite games of the last generation, 3 and everything after reverted to rubbish for my tastes anyway).

More so, how do you gauge whether or not you should purchase a game? Not everyone has deep pockets, some people only purchase a few games here and there, and if they are looking for valuable insight into a game from a series they have yet to ever approach the game critics are a decent source of information. Again it just depends on how you take the information and make a decision, and IMO it beats the old 90s way of looking at box art and deciding on that, like many people I know used to do (and admittedly me to, but I was a child at the time).

That being said I am aware that the state of gaming in some genres is the way it is potentially due to these same critics, and I am aware that some critics are swayed by money to market games for publishers, but that doesnt invalidate the ENTIRE profession.

I know that does happen but I dont think it completely removes the importance of GOTY-awards because a few people misuse the award to prove their points.

Geralt has white/silver hair and is not beefy at all. Sure he has ripped abs but he's nothing special.

Maybe look at a screenshot of the game before criticizing?

That and I would think post-apocalyptic settings would be more alluring than dark-fantasy, could be why so many have started developing games in post-apocalyptic settings.

Also immediately after release everyone on Metacritic and Steam were so reactionary against the lack of RPG elements plus hating on Bethesda vs supporting "that other company", Fallout 4 didn't stand a chance...even the reviewers had to "turncoat" on the game.

Bethesda really should have tested using more RPG PC players and fewer FPS console players however. Lesson hopefully learned, but probably not.

I lol'd hard

The "the game sells well so Bethesda did well" argument is a strange one to me. Sales are important of course but keep in mind they are the result of what people expect from a game, not what they eventually think of it. People had very high expectations of Fallout 4 and for many Bethesda failed to meet those. Expectations for Fallout 5 will probably be adjusted accordingly and FO5's sales might be more reflective of Fallout 4's quality than FO4's sales so far.


That being said GOTY is useless. It boggles my mind that NV did not win any of note. I wonder if it would have been different if NV's DLC all came out in 2010, they really added loads of quality content to the game. The Ultimate Edition ironically had to compete with Skyrim for GOTY.

Not at all.

Witcher 2 came out several months before Skyrim, yet the latter had no issue beating out Witcher 2.

What? Like FPS console players money isn't green?

I like what Mark Twain said about critics in general . . .

NV had some really good DLC in Old world blues and lonesome road, but dead money was freaking terrible. That dlc was reason enough for it not to get goty.

"They're currently holders of three consecutive GOTY's with Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Oblivion, each a consensus game of the year winner".

-Pete Hines describing Todd Howards team, this year at E3.

I'm pretty sure Bethesda cares about GOTY awards and realize their significance. You guys may not care, but Fallout 4 broke the streak. That matters.

More like their input wasn't entirely all that useful for making the best possible RPG game.

The backlash really came down to that, and if they had used more actual RPG players maybe we would have seen the game that could have been. Not to say I dislike Fallout 4, I think it's awesome (just not as full of RPG activities/sidequests as I would like). And it's time to make a UI that people can really celebrate.

Well if Witcher 3 came out in 2011 it would also annihilate the hell out of Skyrim too. Much harder than it would Fallout 4. Witcher 2 and Witcher 3 are two different beasts and Skyrim was fortunate enough to be released in the same year as the former and not the latter.

Ummm no, Fallout 4 still won plenty of GOTY so no Fallout 4 didn't break the streak and thus Hines can add a new game to those list of games.

It doesn't matter but that being said all the people who said New Vegas didn't win any as a way to put New Vegas down will be eating some humble pie now.

I care because I love this series of games. I played the original fallouts when they were released and always thought it would be awesome for them to be first person, so I was very receptive to what bethesda did with the IP when they purchased it. I loved fallout 3 except for the god awful character creator. They did a lot right with fallout 4, but also took a lot steps backwards as well. Witcher 3 was nothing but massive leaps forward and it added complexity while fallout shed some.

Uhh... no, BGS is far more successful with FO4 than Witcher 3 will ever be, thanks anyway. Witcher 3 has a very limited, specific audience and the majority of consumers are not interested in playing a typical, boring, musclebound hypermasculine character, especially not for an RPG. Look at the sales and you can see this. Witcher 3 certainly does NOT deserve any GOTY award due to its very limited appeal. Sure, SOME people like it, but the majority of gamers do not when you look at the entire, worldwide gaming audience. People who like it think it's fantastic just like any other game, including FO4. However, you can see by the sales that there's a huge difference between a biased consumer claiming their personal taste is worth an award and the actual global gaming market. It's very much the same as a movie winning an Academy Award but being ignored by the majority of the movie-going public. Some people loved the movie and it wins an award (or multiple awards) so those people claim it is the greatest thing of the year, but the actual general public reaction shows a very different picture about what the majority of the market prefers for their entertainment.

Anyone can complain about this, of course, but posts like this are simply incorrect and misleading.

Edit:

Finally, people, FO4 has the same amount of RPG elements as any other RPG and far more than something like Witcher 3 with its single character option for playing. Look at the many RPG franchises on the market today and throughout the past 3 decades or so and compare them to FO4. That includes both East Asian and Western products, of course. I can play role playing games from franchises like Star Ocean or Tales where I play a group of characters and can choose one or more as my favorite. I can play classics like Wizardry or the original Gold Box AD&D games from SSI where I create my own character and form a party of others. I can play stuff like Baldur's Gate where I play a group of characters but am not allowed to truly create or play with at least one character I can empathize and identify with. I can play epic RPGs like Xenosaga where story and character are paramount or i can play RPG wannabes like Dragon Age or Mass Effect where action is 90% of the focus. I have no idea what people are thinking when they claim FO4 is in any way lacking in role playing elements because such a view simply is not true. Such statements are made without ever offering alternative products of equivalent caliber that offer "more" in some way. FONV certainly is NOT an example as it forces you into a very restricted character role right from beginning and places you into a very restricted type of entertainment environment context (same as Witcher 3, so maybe people who like such restrictive games tend towards those products rather than real RPGs).