The visuals are for the most part ~identical, and are the identical resolution; and (interestingly) of the same resolution that Oblivion defaulted to when it shipped.

*If you mean ~with the Fallout 2 hi-res mod (so called), that doesn't not affect the artwork; just how much of it you can see at once; and it effectively does this by shrinking it.

**Personally, I think that the Fallout 2 talking heads are all inferior to the those in the original game.

(With the possible exception of the one used for the Enclave... but that one has zero lip sync or facial expression, so it doesn't truly measure up.)

People mention "casualization" like Bethesda and other developers/publishers are trying to make games to capture the Angry Birds crowd, but that's not really the case. The reality is that the average gamer is in his or her 30s and likely has other responsibilities. I know ten years ago I played games a lot more than I do now, before kids and a demanding job. I still am a "core gamer" and still enjoy gaming as my primary hobby, but simply do not have the time to play like I did years ago. Streamlining is what can allow me to continue enjoying these games on a more limited time budget, spending less time in menus and more time playing. I imagine that I speak for many, many gamers who are in their 30s.

For those old school hardcoe Fallout gamers, its a big step back. This game is the game we all feared would happen when they made Fallout 3.

Aren't they though? I mean, shouldn't they be? As a company who needs capital to survive and thrive that makes the most sense. I don't agree with it from an artistic standpoint, but business is business.

As for the old timer sentiment? I hate it, but to ONE extent...I agree. I really like winding down after a day shift and vegging out to my wasteland hiking simulator. Thing is though, I still pledge to almost every single kickstarter for games like Wasteland 2, Shadowrun, Serpent in the Staglands, Underrail, etc etc. All those games that took so much more effort due in no small part to their overwhelming complexity in mechanics? Well, heck. I do still have time for them too!

You sure the heck dont speak for me even though our situation is identical. So you are more busy now, and it will take you more time to finish the game than before. So what? Is that cause for gutting a game of core attributes that made it so unique?

I was wondering why the development for this game seemed so fast from announcement to market. Now I know why: they gutted this fish!

I was about to pre-purchase the DLC but I now see that would probably be a mistake.

I see a lot more demographic nuance between "casual" gamers who play mobile games and "hardcoe" gamers who crave complex games that reward significant time investment. Games like Dark Souls are wildly successful for their target demographic, but appeal to a subset of the gamers interested in a game like Skyrim. Business is indeed business, and I think Bethesda saw this when Morrowind was ported to the Xbox. That port was not good at all, but in my recollection actually sold more copies than the PC version of the game. I just figure that games like this simply wouldn't exist in this day and age if it weren't for the console market.

As for the artistic integrity argument, that's a tougher one. If it's about expressing the story to players, then I might want to get it in front of as many people as possible. There is a balance where gameplay systems impede on artistic expression rather than bolster it. A useful comparison is subtitles in a film. If someone releases a subtitled film, it's going to perform poorly compared to the same film without subtitles. It's up to the filmmakers if artistic authenticity towards fewer people is more important than the rest of the film's themes to a wider audience.

Funny, I play these games for the world, exploration, quests, etc which can still be enjoyed even if the systems are "gutted like a fish". I enjoyed Skyrim even though that game was streamlined compared to Morrowind.

Then again, I'm a "lazy console gamer" and have already read your opinion on us.

Ah okay. The installations were probably 8 years apart and on very different machines. Seem to recall playing FO2 on a laptop, and FO1 I have installed on my current machine. In truth I only just launched FO1 and looked it over a bit. I will have to fiddle with my settings and see if I can get them more to my liking.

I definitely enjoyed the heck out of FO2. I think I even "finished" meaning I made it through what seemed to be the main quest line and finished it. I just remember a ton of quests and playing it a lot.

I can really only agree on the dialogue system being botched, and that's not even due to dumbing it down. That's just good ol' poor execution.

1) Skills - The new system does a fine job of replacing that system and making your character creation matter so much more. Not sure how it got dumbed down and it also reinforcements RP/build choices. Want to ace speech checks? Well, make sure you take a bunch of Charisma or you can't. That makes much more sense than setting CHA to 1, but dumping points into Speech.

2) Item degradation - let's be honest here: we traded in a straight forward and, at times, tedious system for an expansive, relatively complex - at the very least faceted - modding system. It turned "oops, my gun is in bad condition; time to repair" into "I have all this junk; let's see what I can make or need to get". It's easily one of the best improvements in the game to me. At the very least, this wasn't a change that's a dumbing down or meant for casuals.

3) Dialogue system - ya, they screwed the pooch here a bit and took a major step backwards. However, that's not because of dumbing down either. After all, selecting an option from more choices really isn't all that harder than selecting an option from 4. My gripes with it are 1) the dialogue options got a bit too whittled down. This is something that TW3 knocked out of the ball park because while it featured a similar system, I never recall picking an option that turned out to be something I didn't expect. 2) Speech tests are rubbish; I hate the reverting back to chance-based test from what we had in FNV. I wish each speech test would have a CHA amount requirement and sometimes an alternative way to pass it if you had a specific perk and say the requirement next to it. For example, "You do it [Charisma 5]", "I have no plans [Ladykiller]". But again, that's a result of bad design, not necessarily making it more casual friendly.

This "old school hardcoe Fallout gamer" AND "old school hardcoe WASTELAND gamer" disagrees with you. I'm in my late 40s now and don't have TIME for that anymore. No, I don't play angry birds, but I enjoy revisiting the universe of my youth in a new format. I'm no longer interested in spreadsheets, calculators, and notebooks filled with scribbled optimization tables.

Couple things wrong with this comparison.

1 - Subtitles are not there "just because" they're actually a necessity in gaining a wider audience.

2 - The same film without subtitles would only exist in its native market, nowhere else.

So while we're on the subject of film, let's ponder a bit. Let's take Andrei Tarkovsky's 'Solaris' for example. Now, as much as I love Steven Soderbergh (isn't The Knick just fantastic??) his version...while certainly reaching a far larger audience than the native Russian original, pales in comparison as a work of art. And I know which film I'm teaching if I'm a professor and I know which film I'm re-releasing if I work for Criterion (and they have, and it's wonderful).

Taking out things like item degradation takes away from the theme. It replaces desperation in post-apoc times to 'whatever it'll last forever' kind of attitude. This degrades the feel of the game from its former. This is unquestionably an example of casualization.

You can say the same for hunger and thirst as well.

You didn't HAVE to play that way, but for the rest of us TRUE wastelanders, we understand the importance of the origional feel and intent.

Just pointing out that not all of us old fans feel the same way about any of this.

We're certainly not a homogeneous group by any means (were that the case I wouldn't be able to count on one hand the number of things Gizmo and I have agreed on over the past seven years or so. )

No true Scotsman logic fallacy detected. Take shelter.

No, you don't.

"No true scotsman" mentalities pass for jack [censored], sorry.

Sorry I wasn't clear. I was trying to make a comparison between a subtitled film and a film remade for a market. The one in my mind was the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, where the English-language remake had success that the subtitled original version wouldn't have if released in the same theaters. Even though the remake wasn't as good as the original, people experienced it even though they may not have otherwise. Not the best anology in the world, but it made sense to me

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a big success ... and fully subtitled.

Budget $17 million
Box office $213.5 million

I think that any game should stand on its own without the story, before layering the story on top of it. A bad story is tolerable in a good game, but a bad game will ruin a good story.

Minecraft being the quintessential example of that premise! No real "story" at all and it is one of the most popular games ever.

I suppose I count as an "old timer" gamer, though not specifically an old timer of the Fallout series. I started playing with paper and chit strategy and tactics games and original old school D&D (I'm talking the original paperback pink and blue box sets!) in the 1980s. So roleplaying games, complex games that involve quite a lot of quantitative dimensions, games that involve characterization, narrative, character development and the like are certainly not unfamiliar to me. I like such games a lot and enjoy them.

Nonetheless I think Minecraft is a brilliant game. Literally a masterpiece. I have no desire to play it continuously for years at a time like some of the guys on servers I have played on do, but it is a damn good game. I don't tend to scoff at a game's popularity and deride it because lots of people can get into it. On the contrary, I think that is the pinnacle of "good design."

This is not to say that, I think Fallout should ever be made into a Tetris-like game. But Tetris is like . . . 10,000 steps at the other end of the continuum from Fallout 2, and what is wrong if Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 take it 50 or 100 steps in that direction?

This is no excuse man. I work as well and have little time and some of my friends with families say the exact thing you do. It's not the time. It's the energy. You spend too much energy on everything else and you are looking for something to pass the time without having to get involved too deeply and deal with more problem solving. That's what most mean when they say "casuals". If games are "casual"-friendly you can understand that someone who wants something more complicated or challenging other than just some relaxing time, will not be able to enjoy them.

It is a great game, shame that they update it once a year heh. At least they added quartz but I still wait for black marble to build more architectural wonders.

Some of the new things I love, others...not so much, if at all.

I love the new crafting system, but hate the UI as a PC user. The UI is clunky, and not at all m/k friendly. Don't think I've ever come across a game, that ask the user to implement WASD, arrow keys and E + enter in the same menus. It is weird, and not really intuitive in any way.

As for the perks/skill system, I'm in two minds here. The previous skill system wasn't optimal, but neither is the new one. I can't build a really sneaky character from the get go, because the ranks achievable are gated behind levels. So no very sneaky but awful at combat from the get go. It makes for a more rounded character, without to many quirks....but I loved those quirks.

Speaking of combat. Combat is now decided, more or less, how good at FPS games you are, since VATS doesn't stop time anymore, and you can only crit in VATS which is now clunky because you have to rush decision where to hit, and try to hit crit and E to resolve. It makes for [censored] Fallout combat. To be honest, if I wanted to play a straigth up shooter, Fallout wouldn't be my choice. As a sidenote, which probably will get fixed by mods, with so much emphasise on direct FPS shooting, why the heck isn't there more options of crosshairs? The default ingame, is bad. The AI is absolutely better tho, altho I will hope there comes a mod, so all raiders doesn't have 3+ molov's on them

Dialogue wheel along with voiced character? I simply can't fathom this decision. My character will sound the same for every playthrough, so there goes immersion, along with always being Mr.Goodguy with the same basic motivation to wander in the first place. So, likely I will play through it as male and female, and then time will tell if I can stomach more. Dialogue wheel is horrible. More often than not, I can't predict what my character will say, and if that is what I had in mind. It is severely limiting in the RPG factor. Most NPC and including the sound of my character, are very bland, and makes for a sort of sterile feel. Think it has to do with a combination of poor execution and trying to make one shoe fit all kinda thing. It just feels off.

The world (what I have seen so far with 25 hours under the hood) is nice enough, altho the textures is not that good. I can forgive that, since it shouldn't be that important for a game like this. The colour schemes however. It is really wayyyy to bright, even with godrays on low. I had to lower it on my monitor, else it gave me headaches with bright lights all over the place (surely there will come mod's for this, but still) And the headbopping, please make it stop!

As for degradation of gear, I'm indifferent to it. I didn't mind the struggle to keep my weapons up to par and manage inventory via combining armour and weapons. I don't mind it is gone since there is a better crafting system in place. However, I do dislike the removal on making ammo myself. I don't struggle at all right now with ammo, since it is all over the place (imo) but I wish I would!

Overall I like the game, but there are some serious thorns, which will probably lower my amounts of playtroughs to one male and one female playthrough, since any others after that, will be with the same person, with the same motivations.

Fallou4.ini under display

bNvGodraysEnable=0

this one says it best

Than reality sets in, and people realise that those thinking this game is "dumbed down" are merely a minorty in a much larger picture of all those that buy bethesda games.