F1 & 2 had multiple distinct cities and the wasteland was a vast empty space filled with ruins and monsters that required vehicles to cross. But since they built this all off of oblivion we got 1-2 tiny towns with a handful of people. Pretty much all the problems stem from basing it on a fantasy game, not having vehicles, not having a map that requires vehicles and forgetting that good writing was the core of the game. I doubt anyone who designed this has any pen and paper experience.

But other crappy games like Far Cry and Just Cause have much more bigger, souless, repetivive and boring and empty maps than FO4!

Not true of epic games like Witcher 3, DA 1, RDR, and any maps that are TES universe related....

And despite the repetition, I'd even throw AC2 Brotherhood and AC Black Flag into this lot as well.

I prefer density over volume. But that’s just me.

OK stop right there, if I wanted to play as a 80's hairband reject, I would gladly pick up Witcher 3...

Must admit, RDR was slightly awesome, maybe Cockstar's best game, besides GTA:SA.

If Fallout 4 is bad, then I'll be glad to stay with the bad side and they can make it even badder than before.

The Infinity engine used in Fallout 1, 2, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and such has been obsolete for a long time, and was limited with its top down type graphics.
gamesas did good job keeping this all going for Fallout using a 3D engine.

I'm with you. I have my issues with this game but WOW! Skyrim still holds title for me as being most immersive exploration game with score of a lifetime.

Well if ya gonna be so narrow minded as to define a franchise by such specific points, not strange Beth's attempts comes of as "not getting the franchise"

Has anybody else noticed this "Roachor" person seems to only post negatives about Fallout...to the point it starts to feel like flame-bait?

More inclinded to think old Fallout fan that for some reason holds the delusion that if he complains like a grey haired old man enough here he can make some kind of difference. Even tho anyone with any bit of common sense knows the old kind of Fallout irreversibly died the instant Black Isle closed.

So, from your sweeping generalities, may I assume that you wanted more than one city; a bigger map with more ruins and monsters; vehicles; and better writing?

The thing is, there are many areas in which to set a story, and not all of them feature vast empty spaces; indeed, some of them may be big cities surrounded by small villages: people will tend not to live where the vast empty spaces are, they will tend to form communities close together for mutual protection and trade (or to prey on those who are trading- either way): if you project 200 years into the future after a nuclear war, vehicles and fuel are going to be pretty rare, because the industrial base that produced them was bombed off the face of the planet, and the relatively few humans left alive will be too busy subsistence farming to re-start any large-scale industry, except for a tiny minority. In fact, those industries would have been prime targets for the nukes.

As for the writing; that's a very subjective evaluation, isn't it? I like it (as far as I've got through the game, anyway).

I'm a grey-haired old man, and I resemble that remark!!

I would imagen you do resemble my remark if you're indeed grey haired ;3

More every day, my good remmus... more every day.

Yeah, I get the gripes about the distinction of areas/districts, but the newest one is Massachusetts, and a textbook definition of urban sprawl, same as Fallout 3. 1, 2 and NV were all set in an uninhabitable wasteland, and that was before the bombs fell, so of course it could only get worse. And only one of the other canon games had a car. Yes, I want a version of the larger Getty-up Buttercup that I can modify into a working mount, but that's just because I fell in love with the concept/idea of it when I saw them on Mothership Zeta, and the posters. (Please Bethesda, I'm begging for that.) As for pen and paper experience and writing? Bethesda employs a few of the people who originally created Dungeons and Dragons, including the man who wrote the lore, or they did at one point at least. Writing in the main campaign is definitely lacking, and putting it plainly, I don't care about Shaun. I got two minutes to get attached to a android-eske weird baby, so no attachment there. But some of the other side quests are truly amazing. The Yangtze? Arlen Glass? Pickman's Gallery? Those are gorgeous examples of the good writing Bethesda could be capable of if they truly put the right people in charge of writing. Boom, done. 3,000 plus hours clocked between the main 5 games, and I'm still not done. Fallout 4 lack some of the heart and soul of the best fallout games, but it still manages to grasp enough to make it good in its own right.

Jackpot. Although I don't think any forum post ever has made an impact on anything.

The issue is not with Bethesda, its with the die hard fans who jumps all over Bethesda when they try to grow the franchise... There is a huge difference between "growing" and "changing"... Fallout fans often confuse the two and mistake Bethesda trying to grow the franchise with "changing" the franchise.

Growing takes the existing lore and respect it but expands it because just like with anything in existence, time changes things... Time has past in the Fallout Universe and everyones focus is to rebuild. So yes new things will happen like having vehicles...

But the hardcoe fans will scream blasphemy any and every time there is any kind of addition and its annoying. Honestly I think Bethesda is so sensitive to not upsetting said fans that it interferes with their creativity.

Bethesda got it right. Right after the bombs fell, people are just trying to survive, all industry is destroyed. You have bands of raiders and gangs roaming the land, it takes an organizational presence to start a city and maintain enough defense against attackers plus resources like food and water in surplus for people to start specializing in other roles. That's very hard to do, grow a city and build enough defenses so that when it becomes known that there is some sort of settlement, it doesn't get wiped out right away. So people are just trying to survive, who is going to pass on the technology? The kids of those who survived the bomb aren't going to study chemistry or particle physics. They are going to be working in fields or scrounging. Do YOU know how to build a car even in today's world? Fact is that with the production line in modern times, people only know a certain subset of their field. Yeah smart people could figure it out, but they would have to have a secure spot and they would have to be "sponsored" or paid for their work so that they could afford food and water. As generations pass, the technology that humanity had is forgotten or lost. Only a few organized groups who've made it their purpose to collect and store and preserve the technology still can do what you want, like build cars and machines. And where is the refined oil going to come from? In fallout cars operate on nuclear power. Ok, but the technology to build a fusion core doesn't exist anymore except maybe with the Institute or Brotherhood. It wouldn't make any sense for people who barely have started rebuilding into small communities to start making cars. In order to rebuild, you need to have a strong organization that can defend itself from outside forces and can enforce law and order. Otherwise it's impossible to rebuild, which is why you don't see many large cities in Fallout.

Want vehicles?

play Mad Max, a huge empty world that you will be pleased to drive past at high speed.

And the need for developers to have 'pen and paper experience'? Nil.

Personally? I think its extremely unrealistic that there would continue to be raiders for two hundred years. Their inability to
settle down and start farming to actually survive would ensure that there isn't that much raiders after first thirty to sixty years.
Plus they're a buncha drug addicts.

Civilization generally always win the long game.

Stockpiled food that didn't get destroyed by nukes would've have run out long time ago sort for undiscovered piles of MREs.

For two hundreds years to pass, there would've had been roughly twelve generations of raiders. Assuming Raiders have raiding babies
by age of 20-30. That's why Raiders to me is unsustainable force that would eventually perish on their own from their refusal to put
that hoe into the ground.

There definitely would be cities in safe spots attempting to come back after fifty years or more.

There would be wars fought over fertile ground for farming first. Food deserts is a real thing. Those raiders would eventually
become lethargic from lack of real food. One only can eat potato chips for so long before flying into a berserk rage.

https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-food-deserts

And then a bunch of those fertile farmlands will likely be lost to http://motherboard.vice.com/read/salt-is-ruining-one-fifth-of-the-worlds-crops

Its a question mark on whether if world went bye bye to nukes then farmers left would still remember how to switch farmlands
to let the ground get its nutrients back and know how to deal with salt.

Which is why its not impossible for vehicles to survive the nukes. There is vehicles in isolated places. Ya know? Cuz
some people like to live faraway from other people. Sanctuary Hill for example, that neighborhood didn't get hit by the bombs but
it's vehicles were conveniently destroyed. Further away, in middle of nowhere, a vehicle can survive the blast. As well as tiny towns
that's so tiny that they're not worth being hit by nukes because nukes is going after major targets first. That's where vehicles
can be found at, and made usable again. Those small towns generally have mechanics. Etc.

Mad Max has that annoying push button combat like the Batman games, I resold it after 1 day

No, no, dude. You're in the wrong forum. This one's for video games.

Got it right? Tell me where the radioactive Barrels came from. The poor Chinese got no money for making Bombs so they just used their Barrels from Nuclear Plants?

And about OP:

I cant say about older Fallout Games but there are just 2 small Towns in this Game and the unique NPC's you could count them with just a few Hands. A Size like Skyrim but Content just like some DLC's.

Everything was running on nuclear power... cars, power stations... the obviously had to dumb the radioactive garbage somewhere. The radioactive barrels don't have anything to do with the bombs.

There are actually 4 towns... Diamond City, Goodneighbor, Prydwen, Institute.

And we have several unique NPCs: Nick, Danse, Maxson, Piper... damn, even Codsworth is more interesting than anyone from Skyrim.

As much as I understand the complaint with the amount of quests, the NPC part of the game was a major improvement over Skyrim and New Vegas. They finally got character and stay in your head for more than a few days.

DLC's don't have 300+ hours of content.