Which to many of this more of that is a terrible thing. I get there are many people that enjoy Bethesda games, but they enjoy them for the sandbox aspects. They need to stop selling their games as RPG's because they just aren't, but This isn't just a bash post there is some substance comeing up (unlike a Bethesda game) I'm just getting ahead of myself.

So looking at the E3 info and announcement trailer the first question is, what in the world have they been doing for the last 4 years they've been focusing on FO 4? Seriously.

Ok, the world looks nice and I'm sure it will be massive and have tons of little markers on the map to do silly little things that have absolutely no depth just like all the other games, so their art team has been busy but what else have they done?

Shoe horn a so called next-gen experience into an ancient engine that's what they've been doing. The game itself is no different than FO 3/NV in it's systems.

They've expanded the weapon mods... so they took popular mods from the community that helped complete the old games and added them to FO 4.

But we can build a whole settlement now! Oh wait, http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/36922/? is the link to that EXACT mod. So again they are taking the ideas from the mod community and putting them in as an official feature. You know its a really good thing gamers had an up rising against paid mods (I don't have a problem with them to be fair), because if these mods went to paid status the devs could have nailed Bethesda for taking them. Besides, looking at the settlement building footage... yeah I want to build a lemonaide stand for the merchants that have the best gear in the game, that just looks amazing. *sigh*

During his massively long sales pitch for FO 4 he also didn't say anything along the lines of....

"You'll also experience an amazing deep storyline set in the very roots of what is Fallout!"

One guess why he made absolutely zero attempt at anything like that. Because they know they have nothing, they didn't with Oblivion, they didn't with FO3, and they didn't with Skyrim. The writing is always terrble, the quest design shallow, the characters lifeless, and the dialogue is what existed in games from the 90's.

Look, I know there are people that loved the past games and will love these games and I want to be very clear on this point. I'm not telling you you shouldn't if you are one of the,. But I am saying is for those of us that like the worlds Bethesda is building in, it would be nice if they made some games with some real depth and got out of game design frm 20 years ago.

In the past there has also been this side that, "Hey, its a massive totally open world you can do whatever with. That's going to create limitations in other areas."

That may have been true with Oblivion, but certainly now Bethesda is staring down CDPR's gun barrel that is Witcher 3. That is the kind of world so many of us are waiting for from Elder Scrolls and Fallout. Even the people that didn't like New Vegas would probably agree we'd all be VERY happy with a Fallout with a world as rich as what CDPR created.

As the other thread 'Style vs Substance' talks about, give us a world with meaning, depth, some meat on it's bones for us to chew on for hours. Here is my harsh call out... Stop being lazy sh*'s Bethesda, get a new engine, hire some decent writers, stop copying mods, and create something with some depth for once.

My only concerns are engine limitations, if the 60hz limit on certain...things still exists, i'm writing off the engine permanently.

It's still a RPG: You have stats, play a role and decide what to say, upgrades, exploration, solve quests, etc. What does F1 (for example) have over F4 that would make the latter not a RPG? Or Baldurs Gate, a game that like Fallout 1 is on my absolute top and I love them more than any other games out there. I still recognize Fallout 4 as a RPG.

Was Diablo 1 really a RPG? It had stats and you leveled up, and yeah that was it. The stats part is something people seem to think truly defines a role playing game. But what about the story, the ability to talk to npc's and have a choice what to reply to said npc's? Fallout 4 has both.

In the end it's just an opinion. To me F4 is an open world role playing game.

"... what in the world have they been doing for the last 4 years they've been focusing on FO4?"

Um... I don't know...

Perhaps something that they couldn't role into a 10 minute E3 presentation?

I mean honestly guys and gals, before any more of you go off the deep-end why not wait until it is actually released and played by others? Might limit the "What have they done with the Fallout that I loved from almost two decades ago" threads that pop up about every 20 minutes on the boards.

*snicker snorts* yeah no, as good as Witcher 3 is, it磗 no gun barrel beth is starring down.

"Get a new engine." Are you qualified to talk about the technological/economical logistics of creating a new engine, because if so, do. If not, you sound like a fool.

"Hire some decent writers." After having very little/no information on the writing in F4, I have come to the conclusion that it will be poop - you, 2015

"Stop copying mods." On this I can agree. If a person in the community creates a mod that enhances the game, ignore it, because YOU didn't think of it. Stop designing features in the game based off successful community projects just because you assume that that's what your players want.

...oh wait, anyone thinking that is a Fing spaz.

"Some depth for once." See my second point.

Can a mod lock this thread, there's maybe one or two sentences of depth to OPs vomit of text, maybe.

Asking a mod to lock a thread by not using the report function is not nice.

I'm new here!

Edit: Wait... no, what you said should have just been common sense. How have I been on the internet my entire advlt life and never reported a post...

You've opened my eyes.

I'm just waiting to see if Fallout 5 become Fallout Theft Auto

At least the map would be bigger.

Stats that define the character, that are the character, instead of just boosting the players arm; persistent gameworld that does not forget or forgive artificially. For a couple of examples.

Fallout 4 will likely be nice action RPG-lite with a heavy emphasis on world simulation, but in comparison to Fallout 1, yeah... there's quite a lot in between.

RPG's are more than just stats. And what does role playing really have to do with stats? Stats in Fallout 4 does define the character, otherwise you could ignore them all and think you can make it. Good luck with that.

In the end it's both, stats and story.

Glad to see someone else knows this.

Bethesda don't particularly enthrall story-wise, the movement to control the game more was likely to deal with that, but at the ultimate cost of variance and ironically depth, though how their focus shift has affected the NPC's, i dunno.

Yes, in principle. They are a lot more than just stats. But then... How can you roleplay a character in a game with no definition on who he is, physically, mentally, that the game responds to? That's just playpretend with a role that is made up outside of the game and not concerned about the game. Roleplaying in a dedicated roleplaying game is to assume the role of the other, his abilities and his disabilities, and play through those, and build him through learning the way you want and can as dictated by the game (the game part is the important one... roleplaying as a singular concept is something you can do where ever and without a game). You can imagine it's you and that's fine, but the game never responds to it being you, it responds to what the PC at hand is and does.

I don't believe the defining of the stats in Fallout 4 will be anything but enhancing the players controller dexterity slightly. For example from the way it looks, there's no making mistakes that are not the player's mistakes (much like in any game outside of RPG's).

Todd made a comment about the new voiced dialogue system, along the lines of "anyone who hadn't seen any of our previous games would expect to have voiced dialogue in a game made today." I believe this is the point. I do think that Fallout 4 is about giving people what they want, whilst also putting forward ideas and elements that the developers would want from their own perspective of also being gamers. The map does indeed look to be enormous, and judging by the concept art as well as the footage, the locations appear to be a great deal more varied and interesting. As for mods, if Bethesda has taken the basis of a number of additions that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of their fans have voluntarily added to their previous games, then good on them. These are very clearly things that people want in their games. How many totally original games are there in the current market? And how many other role-playing games? What about strategy games? Or roguelikes? Or games that now use aim-down-sights and other popular features? Surely every game idea has been inspired from something. Ideas create new ideas. And I don't think you can credit the base building to just one mod. Look how many games there are now available on steam that have similar themes!

The point is that, like many many others, I am looking forward to spending countless hours playing Fallout 4, as I have with most of Bethesda's previous games. And that's not because I am naive, or because I am some kind of super-fan. It's because I appreciate the years of hard work that such a project takes, and the quality of the end result as it appeals to my natural yearning for discovery. Everything I have seen so far tells me that's the final product will be nothing short of amazing.

I don't see how taking inspiration from the community and implementing it into the game is a bad thing? Developers do the same thing with other developers why shouldn't developers incoperate the best of the communities ideas into the game? I mean quite a few of us would like to have these ideas in Vanilla compared to waiting for a mod which althrough greatly developed still isn't at the calibre of Bethesda and doesn't incoperate as well into the game world.

There's nothing wrong with expanding on the idea of weapon mods Fallout New Vegas did with Obsidian and obviously Bethesda took inspiration from that and the community. I don't see why we should complain about good features its like me complaining about the company that makes my stove because its not original of course its not going to be completely original its going to take inspiration from the past and other models.

Honestly, i'm happy they're striving to incorporate the more popular mods. Each mod they have built in, means i don't have to download it, worry about how it may or may not work with my other mods and give me more room for other mods. It's a win imo.

1. I never said getting a new engine would be easy or cheap. But Bethesda has the money, they are just too lazy or too shackled to this one. But facts are facts, engines suffer over time just like computers do, technology's change creating new possibilities. Most of all it's quite obvious that their updates to the engine they've been using are creating serious issues. They have more bugs and poorer performance because its old and has been stitched together in ways it was never built to do in the first place.

2. They have a very clear track record of poor writing that plus the lack of any attempted to claim they did better in that EXTREMELY long sales pitch tell's me I'm safe to assume FO 4 will not be an improvement in that department. Yes it is an assumption, but between the known history and no evidence they are even attempting to change said history it's the safer assumption. If Vegas put odds on which would be more likely, better writing would be the dark horse.

3. You're right, community makes a great idea that lots of people like, devs should run with it. But they need to make it better not just the same thing. They did a better job with the weapon mods, by re-conceptualizing how to mod the weapons. But the building settlements looks to be EXACTLY the same, just official instead. That is, again, lazy. But still, these seem to be the only significant changes to the gameplay, not major sweeping changes. So that brings me back to, 'What have you been doing for the last 4 years Bethesda?'

this.

and just for notice from someone who's been around as a gamer when fo1 came out:

it was NOT considered a proper rpg by these days' rpg-cracks. period.

not turnbased etc where the "arguments"

You are 100% correct, RPG's are more than just stats... They tell a story.

Bethesda games tell a VERY weak story. So either they are RPG's and don't come anywhere near the quality of all those GOTY's because they that story is weak compared to so many others of the same time periods.

If any of them deserve GOTY it's because of the sandbox/simulation, I personally don't think they deserve them for that either when you see how much better those aspects are made by just a few mods. But hey, they aren't 100% crap games or I wouldn't have played them and mod'ed them to make them more interesting to me.

But they certainly aren't award winning RPG's, I'll never understand that, but it would be nice if they started to become such.

This. I'm playing through the Mass Effect Trilogy and one of my problems with the game is I don't feel Shepard is the character I want him to be. It's either pick the top or bottom option because the middle on is useless. I can't make my character a sarcastic guy who like to joke around with a good heart I wanted him to be. Instead he is generic good solider or generic bad one. The fact I can give my character a personality I can get behind is what make me love the FO and TES games so much and why I like DA:I.

Fallout 3 is a good game and I enjoy it for what it is. But after playing the originals and NV, I concur that it's not the best Fallout game it could be.

I actually want Fallout 4 to be a Fallout 3 with improvements from NV and Skyrim. If that's the case, I'll be so happy.

As usual, mods will address some minor issues but even Morrowind needs mods you know.

Actually I was very surprised they spent so much time showing that concept art when the game it due out this year. Why show all that concept art when you could show those locations with screenshots? It makes me wonder if they actually have that variety in the game or was it left as the concepts. I mean that was like a 2-3+ minute montage of concept art, you see that for games still early in development, I would never expect to see it for something this close to release.

If anything, I think its great that they take the most popular mods and expand on their concepts. Its a great system: build a wide open game that lets people do what they want. Give them the tools to add to the game what they think it lacks. Observe which additions are the most popular and successful. Incorporate those into the next game. It's way better than any survey or focus group.