If its a competition does it win the graphics category? Are the graphics better than w3. The rest isnt relevant to that category.

This is it in a nutshell.

We are at a point in gaming where 4k monitors and crazy resolutions are the cutting edge of gaming. 1080 at 60fps has been the norm for years in gaming technogy. If anyone is planning on building a new pc chances are they are NOT planning on gaming at 1080 these days. Point being 1080 at 60 is nothing.

Yet here we are, and BGS is super proud to announce that yes, your very expensive brand new Xbox One will be running Fallout 4 at 1080 and 30(gee whiz!) fps. Yikes. What a piece of crap.

The Witcher 3 (on max settings via PC) is the best looking game made to date. Nothing even comes close. BGS honestly hasn't been known for its graphical fidelity with games since Oblivion. Fallout 4 looks tolerable, but that's the biggest compliment I can give it. There are plenty of games, many of which are RPGs or open world, that look much better.

Same here. Any other "open world" game is pretty much subpar in terms of interactivity. I have to scoff at the likes of Far Cry and think "oh what it could have been"

And yet the Witcher 3 still feels like yet another static and boring game world by comparison. I'll grant you it was a good story driven world but I would leave it at that. Everything else turns to dross upon closer inspection.

Graphics really shouldn't matter, but it can't be ignored just how beautiful the witcher 3 can look at times.

Yep. The sad truth is BGS accommodates consoles over everybody else. They've been doing this since Morrowind. The reason the visuals are the way they are has nothing to do with the game being too ambitious. It's simply a matter of the hardware and BGS wanting to make a certain benchmark with it. Getting 1080p with 30 FPS is their target, thus visuals are reeled back in order to accommodate that. Of course Todd Howard would never give this explanation because it would lead to an outcry, so BGS makes excuses. Again, at least we have mods to rectify the ugly textures among other things.

Funny you should say that. My current - and favorite - Skyrim PC is Breton. Those features just look good...

You are leaving out dynamic beard growth in Witcher 3. I had to get mine cut a couple of times in my playthrough.

You make it sound like this is a bad thing. If the bulk of their target audience rides most comfortably at that level of resource consumption, they'd actually be stupid *NOT* to make it the target. I don't say that half heatedly either. It would be objectively a worse decision to target something too much farther or lower than their average user base on graphics processing. Unless one feels like perhaps BGS and Zenimax should be doing this as a purely artistic venture, and not, lets say, putting food on their tables and educations in their children's future.

Fallout has never been about showcasing bleeding edge graphics tech. It has always been about a certain aesthetic with a respectable graphical delivery.

It's not a bad thing from a business perspective. It's just a bad thing from an innovative and pioneering perspective. To have stringent boundaries limits the creative ambition a development studio has. For years BGS has been forced to real in their creative minds in order to accommodate aging hardware that should not have lasted as long as they did. The new console hardware is considerably better than the old, but there will always be limitations due to the need of keeping console hardware cheap and affordable for the masses.

I am ultimately not upset by this decision on BGS's part. Again, mods will fix any deficiencies Fallout 4 suffers from. It's the mere fact that they fabricate ridiculous excuses for why the visuals are the way they are. I understand they do it to not receive heat from fans and their competitors, but its disingenous and tries to hide the truth when anyone with a decent understanding of game development should recognize the truth from the very start. I'm not suggesting BGS should make a game only for high-end gaming PCs. That's clearly financial suicide.

The visuals for Fallout 4 are decent at best given the competition, but nothing to write home about. As far as any precedent concerning the graphical fidelity of Fallout as a franchise and what it focuses on, pure conjecture. Fallout, as BGS has in more recent years interpreted, is a open world sandbox post-apocalyptic shooter. It just so happens that BGS in more recent years has not focused on graphical fidelity, but that is not something isolated to the Fallout franchise.

This. Not to mention the ai don't have their own inventory slots/interact as much with other ai. I love the fact that witcher 3 has lots of ai in the game to make it feel more lively but they don't have much interaction. In fallout/skyrim human ai could pick up/change weapons and armor on the fly.

To an extent. There are a lot less AI in a BGS game. The extent of their "uniqueness" is tied to the limitations bestowed upon them by Radiant AI. This delivers unto them a very basic schedule in which the NPC will be at certain places at certain times of the day/night. Unless one decides to randomly attack an NPC, they generally will never offer anything to the player or enhance the experience in any way. NPCs in TW3 also have a basic schedule and time table. This has actually been the case since TW2. Regardless, BGS does a great job suspending our disbelief by creating the impression that AI are actually doing something substantially more in their games. On the contrary, Radiant AI is rather basic and very straightforward.

Unleashed Radiant AI, on the other hand, is probably the most advanced AI system ever created in a video game. Sadly, Radiant AI without limits leads to anarchy and an environment in which can not lead to a fulfilling and quality experience for the player. BGS tested unleashed Radiant AI in Oblivion for a long time and decided better to limit it severely than watch it break the game in infinite ways. An NPC that is smarter than the player and is only interested in its own well-being leads to a very poor, albeit humorous, experience.

Oh here we go, let's blame consoles for all our troubles. Hardware limitations are by no means an an excuse for making a sub par game. If you can't do you want you want within set limits, than you're a crap developer, plain and simple. In fact hardware limitations have helped, way more often than not, developers on innovating new and better ways to develop their games.

And for those saying "ugh this game is unplayable without mods", maybe you're playing the wrong game? Maybe if the characters are so "horrendous" play another game that does it better. I absolutely can't stand when people use mods to "fix" a game, mods are meant to add to an already enjoyable game. If the game is so damn bad in its original state why buy it at all, let alone future titles from the same developer.

Whoever is in charge of art direction at Bethesda does an excellent job. I don't quite know how to put it, but each of their games simply "feels" right, as far as visuals go and so I don't really have anything that keeps me from immersing in the world. I have always been a fan of stylized games (Fable and Bioshock anyone?) so not having life-like visuals is not even remotely a deal breaker for me. What IS a deal breaker however are janky character animations. Going back to play Oblivion is almost torturous due to the floaty running style and just overall stiff animations. Fallout 3 made some improvements in that arena, but was still pretty rough overall. Skyrim was definitely a big step in the right direction, with a more natural walking motion, adjustment of legs to suit terrain, etc. I expect Fallout 4 will be the best to date and from the pre-release videos, it seems that way. I hope it is a bigger step forward than I even expect it will be, because poor character movement drives me crazy and I feel like that is truly one of the few things that actually mars their games.

Yes, you can place things where you want (with some difficulty at times). And I know many people love that. But it's really just used for decorating houses, and messing around (rolling cheeses down a hill or putting buckets on people's heads).

But I don't think you ever need to manipulate anything to complete a quest, access an area or set a trap to bring heavy objects down on someone, etc.

Basically, the system uses a tonne of resources, and has lots of potential to make the game's more interesting, but so far it has been wasted.

I just started playing Nehrim, a total conversion mod for Oblivion (mainly because I'm trying to learn German). Only level 5, but already there's been a couple of simple examples where I had to move objects to complete a quest.

No, you really couldn't, not if you are playing as an RPG. Maybe if you play the games only as FPS type while ignoring everything in the game, but that isn't their intent. Playing BGS' games does not mean completing quests. It means living in a virtual world. You have to interact with the objects in the environment to do the latter. The quests are merely meant to give you an excuse to explore the world, nothing more. Just doing quests is not playing a BGS game. The system isn't wasted at all because it's the interaction with hundreds or even thousands of objects that make BGS' game worlds far more alive than any other games on the market. It has nothing to do with forcing the player to manipulate stuff to complete quests and everything to do with giving the player the freedom to realistically interact with many objects shown on screen just as a person would in reality.

???

I'd suggest that you check again. Try the Shojo Race mod for FO3 and FONV and you'll see that the characters are very attractive. NPCs are very attractive with Dimon's body mod.

Even in vanilla Oblivion, I was able to make a decent character and I am not a CG artist. It took a lot of time which I don't like, but it was certainly not worse than stuff like Mass Effect or Dragon Age. Those were much worse than BGS' games.

Having said that, BGS has very poor fundamental elements for their character aesthetics, mainly the meshes. This is why the Shojo Race mod looks so great; it uses the meshes from the Angel mod (which also looks great, of course). It isn't that the games can't do great-looking characters, but that BGS doesn't use basic assets with great aesthetics. Once the fundamentals are replaced with good aesthetics, the characters are some of the best 3D characters out there.

Definitely.

So I'm not role playing, if I don't move things around for no reason? Most other RPGs don't have all these movable objects.

That might be an important part of the game for you, but others will play differently and not find it important. That doesn't mean they are only playing as an FPS.

Has to be said, Skyrim's 'ugly creator' was a challenge.

This one looks much better, though I might just go default, I like the current look of the protagonists...

Who said anything about making a subpar game? The visuals are bland because they are limited by current gen consoles. It's a simple concept. Game development isn't waving around a magical wand. You have to work with the hardware that you have. It doesn't matter how talented or great you are. You can't get Crysis-level graphical fidelity out of a toaster. That should be common sense... The only thing hardware limitations have done is hold back games creatively and force developers to try and come up with new waves of using the same hardware. This does not necessarily lead to positive innovation or better ways to develop a game.

Perhaps you aren't aware, but BGS has one of the largest and most dedicated modding communities in the industry. A large portion of their player base buys their games because of the mods. I personally actually just enjoy BGS games from the start, but not everybody shares this view. Regardless, this does not change the fact the graphical fideltiy of the game is less than impressive. Mods will allow the game to be what it should have been had there not been console hardware limitations. We are "fixing" the game in the sense that PC is capable of an experience consoles cannot match. Look at any BGS game with graphical mods and you will see they are night and day compared to their vanilla counterparts.

Trying to tell people they are "playing the wrong game" merely shows your own ineptitude in regards to why so many love BGS games.

I still think there's a world of difference between "graphics" and art direction. Bethesda may not lead the pack in terms of graphics power, but I still feel they have the latter in spades (and I think that's far more important anyway.)

I actually have to agree with Redguard King here. Nobody is saying Bethesda shouldn't aim for lowest common denominator hardware wise, you'd have to be a financial imbecile to back that stance. The lowest common denominator hardware wise in the modern market is the consoles. Yes there are lower end PC's still being used for gaming, and yes the single hardware criteria of consoles do allow them to perform slightly better than a PC counterpart with the same specs, but overall the consoles are weaker than the average gaming PC. To deny this is to deny simple logic and statistics.

Would it be nice if Bethesda were able to accommodate a wider range of hardware specifications and really push the boat out in Vanilla for those that can run stupidly demanding things? Of course, but again, financially this just wouldn't be viable in the genre they work in. Bethesda games provide more bang for your buck than 90% of the other games out there. That takes a lot of money. When they're retailing at the same price as everything else and having longer times between releases than most other studios then you really can see why you can't have your cake and eat it.

Bethesda are a BUSINESS, and businesses run for one reason, and one reason only: PROFIT. If the work isn't putting food on the table, paying off the mortgage, and sending the kids on school trips then it isn't worth doing. If you can be an artistic visionary and revolutionise the industry while doing that it's a bonus, not a requirement. I don't blame Bethesda in the slightest for making compromises given the modern market, I'd be doing exactly the same thing. The game is still going to better than most games out there.

I respect that you have different opinions, and you are entitled to share them.

But stating your points as 'facts' implies a greater weight to your argument than they merit.

Particularly when you make statements about what Bethesda or Todd Howard believe, things into which you actually have no credible insight.

Perhaps it is being done for effect?.

In my opinion, it isn't working.

As someone who plays their games on either consoles or a a [censored]*** computer I appreciate what you're saying so much

I don't really like the art direction. It doesn't feel dark enough at all.

Graphics are fine though. To be completely honest, I'd take FO3 graphics at this point, as long as it's a brand new Fallout game.