Compared to the Mohave Wasteland, Zion valley was colorful and full of life, yet it probably had the most depressing story in The Survivor. I don't think brightening the color palette will hurt the depressing aspects any. If anything, it'll make the really depressing moments hit all that much harder because the baseline rests a little higher up on the scale of everything's gone to hell.

Personally, given that the pc lived in Pre-War America, I hope there's some dialogue that goes along the lines of "Tell me, what was it like before the bombs fell?" to which you can answer "It was worse."

As Cheshire said, it's mainly based on heresay, conjecture, and various discussions that the Fallout 3 timeline was perhaps changed in the early stages.

Whatever floats your boat, I suppose.

You seem really salty. Did I offend you or something?

I have to admit, typically I'm able to really empathize with others' complaints but I just don't see what many are complaining about, as far as the graphics go.

Then again, I've never really been too picky when it comes to graphics or anything of the sort. In fact, I care much more about the physics and animations than graphics.

Still, I am impressed by the graphics that I've seen thus far. I will agree that much of the footage was initially a bit underwhelming, although I do think that the city looks like it will be amazing to explore. I also like the sound of the radiation storm thing. Sounds quite ominous.

The only thing somewhat questionable to me so far, is the scene where the minigun shreds through the guy in vats. It just seemed like a weird/jarring... transition of the person going from a full person to chunks of meat. Even then, it still looks pretty great, IMO.

I think the matter of the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K1Kd9mZL8g applies here.

You can see almost instantly, with the https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/87106516/Fallout4_E3_Salesman.png, or https://i.imgur.com/uGkazlf.jpg that we are not quite at photo-realistic.

Clearly this is a design choice, hands are a little large, facial features are a touch too expressive for photo-realism.

The advantage of this is that the discomforting impact of some raider's head being blown off in Fallout 4 is less

than a character in Metal Gear Solid having their internal organs messed around with.

For emotional story beats, the character expressiveness supports that, not hinders it

rather than an attempt at a more photo-realistic, less emotionally expressive face (Aiden Pearce anyone?)

Next, most games with more photo-realistic representations don't have tons of objects that can be dropped/positioned in the world.

What we're left with is an inconsistency, if a deliberate one.

The world looks gorgeous, trees, water and so on.

Characters have more realising weapons and clothing, yet have a slightly stylised appearance.

And Dogmeat doesn't hold up, though good, against some photo-realistic dogs in games/movies (though they may not have to fight or fetch stuff).

Finally, we are still fed games trailers that are either CGI movies or enhanced vertical slices,

so there's a slightly lower fidelity due to being honest - this is what the game is actually like.

Are the graphics good? Sure.

There is some logic behind the 'concerns' but after playing the prologue, we'll soon be immersed.

Fallout 3 had emotional 'world vista' moments, Fallout 4 certainly will.

The graphics as shown look all right to me. I don't understand why so many people seem to be going nuts over them.

I don't really care, like, they're fine but that's all.
What I care about is how they will use the colors. I (and some other people in some other places when the trailer first came out) thought it reminded us too much of BioShock Infinite, especially the city part.

Once the game drops and people have played it long enough, I think they'll eventually come to like Fallout 4's lively color scheme. It'll probably be something that doesn't even cross our minds when we're playing as we'll be too busy enjoying everything else that the game has to offer.

I don't consider graphics to be all-important. Sure, it adds to the experience, especially for a first/third person game, but as long as it conveys everything the authors need, it's fine. Hell, I'd be OK with the graphics of Fallout 3.

I guess this is something that would only be noticeable to a dog person. (I'd vaguely recalled hearing of movies/tv-shows using animals of different genders from the "roles" they're playing, and did a quick check.... yeah, Lassie was played by a male dog in the filmed stories..... of course, in a digital work, you're not constrained by issues of athleticism, or what trained animals are availble, etc So, who knows.)

My primary complaint on the graphics would be the cartoony characters. It doesn't sit well with me for this setting.

While I like the new graphics effects and colors I hope they don't overdue it. I don't want a Fallout game looking like Bioshock

...how are the characters "cartoony"?

Yeah.. don't really agree with any of this.

Lol, it might be the first game where it's not all brown or drowned out in bloom.

The looks fine, even spectacular in some areas. I can't wait to see what they've done. The game so far looks impressive.

It may not be a graphical powerhouse, but so what, it's a new Fallout game.

The lighting and animation look much better.

I think these things should be more apparent when playing than looking at pictures or even the videos.

The hair is still pretty poor compared to Geralt's luxurious mane though (which often clipped through his amour, I might add).

We must have seen a different demo because I saw nothing "cartoony" at all.

Well we all know what opinions are like....

The pre-war section looked cartoony to me. Partly because of the overly bright colors though.

Like I stated in a previous comment though - The game looks very similar to RAGE in terms of graphics and I loved the looks of that game (except the poor pop-in textures)

I just hope they don't overdue the bright colors. It would look too much like Bioshock

The animations do look better, but that is actually one aspect I'm disappointed in. After 15 years, Bethesda is still struggling with this. The running animations just look terrible.

As far as I know I've never looked at a game and thought "this looks so pretty, I'm going to play it" but rather "this looks so fun, I'm going to play it". As long as the game looks good I'm fine with that, it doesn't have to be a new milestone in graphics, just look good enough to show that they cared a lot about crafting this world. Heck, I finished a 250 hour playthrough of New Vegas plus all its DLCs last night (finally managed to play through the entire thing). The game looks like absolute crap by today's standards but it's an amazing game, putting a lot of recent tripple A releases to shame IMO. Mount&Blade looks pretty bad but it's a very fun game. Or Magicka, wasn't much of a looker compared to other games but holy crap was it fun!

For me, FO4 looks good enough to immerse me in its world. Graphics is the thing I'm least worried about in the case of FO4.

I guess I just don't see http://assets.vg247.com/current//2015/06/fallout_4_e3_2015_5.jpg as "cartoony". Colorful? Sure. Clean & bright? Absolutely. Of course, it's the "idealized 50's" pre-apocalypse scene.

Perhaps the word means something different to each of us.

re: bioshock - I find those games to be quite dark. Sure, they're stylized and have bright colors (and even happy-looking places, like in parts of Infinite)... but that makes a great contrast for http://i.imgur.com/IpY1ikX.jpg. Kind of like the goofy happy songs on GNR in Fallout 3. Hmm. I'm not sure I'd call even Infinite "cartoony".

Salty? It's figure of speech. All you said essentially was " I heard it somewhere." Also: Whatever floats your boat= Whatever you want to go with.

Thought there was a legit reason for your conclusion beyond a rough guess, so I inquired. There clearly isn't, so it's all just theories. Not Salty, Just if it has no basis in fact it doesn't really concern me.

Although the redundancy of requoting something I clearly already read, instead of elaborating does come off as a bit smug, Wasn't offended.

I completely agree with you. The graphics are more lively and vibrant than anything else. They go well with the overall vibe and theme of the game.

Graphics don't define a game as a whole. They do, however, help increase and better the immersion and experience... to some extent anyway. But they don't make a game completely... there's other factors to consider, and fortunately Fallout 4 has a lot of awesome factors that far out weigh its graphics.

Characters don't necessarily look "cartoony," but super mutant behemoths definitely do: http://36646d87786feafc0611-0338bbbce19fc98919c6293def4c5554.r0.cf1.rackcdn.com/images/Ul3m-rkkTNzG.840x0.Vdef9Kkm.jpg

As opposed to its Fallout 3 counterpart: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FIA-I3qsYl0/hqdefault.jpg