Was an assault rifle shown? How did the gameplay look? Were the power armored guys helpful?

More specialized characters sounds good to me. I like this system.

Bring on the naysayers!

The consensus of the reports I have seen from QuakeCon is that there are no level requirements. As I recall, you predicted this awhile back.

I think we may see perks tied to levels too.

Calling it now. Bust out the record books and quote me on this, either so I can brag later about being right or people can rub it in my face when I'm wrong:

This game will feel like Skyrim. The more I think about the stuff we've been shown, the more it seems akin to Skyrim. Night-vision rocket launcher...? It doesn't really sound practical or useful and is no doubt a side-effect of the crafting system....which leads me to believe there will be a LOT of comical or impractical creations and only a limited amount of good ones, the good ones being the ones that all of us will discover and brag about discovering on these forums, only to figure out in a week's time that omg literally everyone on planet earth discovered and uses that weapon.

The end note of OP's write-up about perks actually sounds good to me, that Todd and crew were praising that the Sole Survivor can feel drastically different when you impose more limits.

However...something still doesn't sit right with me in regards to the fact that there's 70 base perks and 170 ranks. More than half of the total perks are rank-related. This leads me to believe that either the perks will often do basic stuff, like essentially function as +25 Science in place of the now dead skill system, OR they'll be "20% cooler" perks ala Skyrim, which unfortunately are quick to be canceled out by enemies that gain 20% more HP and damage as you gain 20% more damage and defense. Likewise, an average of 4 SPECIAL seems a little TOO limiting if the unlocks are as simple as 10 Luck = can unlock anything on the Luck path; this would mean that there are AT LEAST 7 perks in this game that would be exceedingly taxing to take, AKA the 10-rank perks. Hell, the 9 and 8 rank ones would be difficult too, and surely some of those have ranks. That'd be a little awkward no? If ~30% of the base perk content was rarely if ever utilized.

While I would be tempted to cling to the hope spurned by the comment made, the realist in me is tempted to rationalize that you will be given ample opportunity to increase your SPECIAL stats. I would actually love to be wrong here, because I'd prefer a harsher system, but....I just can't believe it. Bethesda's last work involved systems so forgiving that at the end of the game, Bethesda said "dawww ok! You can have EVERYTHING. You've earned it!" You were then given an Almost Perfect perk or a new leveling system that allows you to keep leveling until you can afford every perk in the game ala Skyrim. Therefore, I find it extremely difficult to believe Bethesda has truly sprung from that overly-pandering style to a harsh and less forgiving one so quickly. Nah, I'm gonna guess the system is harsher at the initial character creation, but throughout gameplay itself you receive ample opportunity to beef up your stats and trivialize your initial decisions.

Lastly, romanceable companions? Holy hell we are Mass Effect now. Feels like popular elements are being copied in order to help make the game more popular. This has me worried they're copied with limited quality control.

And all of that rings very true with how Skyrim was designed. Skyrim had systems that were often too flexible for their own good, resulting in a lot of meaningless weaponry, minimal impact from choices made and a design philosophy that screamed "I DO NOT KNOW WHAT KIND OF GAME I WANT TO BE SO I'M TRYING EVERYTHING, GIMME A MINUTE I'LL FIGURE IT OUT." Here, once again we have a weapon crafting system that seems prone towards useless customizations composing 75% of the customizations total, a SPECIAL system that will EITHER be a pleasant surprise and incredibly harsh on Beth fans that are used to their old style OR yet another system with potential that falls about quickly as Bethesda fails to be capable of telling the player that he can't have his cake and eat it too, and instead of the "yes my love I met and married the same day, here is your pork roast and money for the day my love" marriage system from Skyrim being dropped and deemed a failure, romance is getting a round two, which again might have the result of the game having bipolar disorder and not being able to decide what it wants to be. Maybe I'm just too jaded, but personally I freak out at news of romance options or little things like the Pipboy having minigames; those ultimately feel like distractions and gimmicks, and to me they imply the dev team didn't have one clear goal in mind and instead let the game get tag teamed by two giant f***bots for funsies, just to see what the result would look like.

But yeah, rant over. Only posting this to have it on record. I know better: the majority of you have all pre-ordered this game already and don't care for anything I have to say. As I said, just getting it on record.

This is the kind of critical thinking I wish we could see more of.

4 average means 28 SPECIAL. This is enough to put 7's in 4 different SPECIALs, that probably being your best bet for a diverse-yet-specialized character. If you all-in on Luck and Endurance for example, then the character will be defined by those perks from those trees; you will NOT ever skip out on taking the 10 Luck perk.....if you would skip it? That means the perk must svck and the perk was poorly designed. If you wouldn't? Then grats, every 10's character will very quickly begin to feel the same.

It's also a shame to hear they dropped level and skill tie-ins for these, not to mention cross-SPECIAL perks. For example Better Criticals is a ridiculously OP perks and - let's face it - one of the main motivators for bothering with Perception, which was otherwise a very lackluster SPECIAL stat. Only characters who had both 6 Perception and 6 Luck would be able to take Better Criticals, and even then, a character focused on explosives for example or one that's focused on melee/unarmed doesn't need crit damage OR might shy away from it and instead put focus elsewhere, so they would skip the damned thing.

Here? Well, again you take the highest ranked perks you can. If Better Criticals is a high-up Luck perk for example, then guess what happens: do you take it? Of course you do, because getting an 8 in a SPECIAL is no small feat.....or it is with enough time, at which point, the character diversity is an illusion reserved for starting characters.

Have a lot of personal experience with Doctors?

Since First Aid is on the second row of the Intelligence perks, you could be pretty good while not being that bright.

I do think using a stat as a dump stat is going to have a real cost.

For example a drooling idiot with a one Intelligence won't be able to get the First Aid perk so will be stuck with the base level of healing.

He also won't be able to hack a computer much (Hacking requires a 4 Intelligence).

I expect that Sniper, Gun Slinger, and Commando perks all impact how your Sole Survivor uses single shot rifles, automatic weapons, and pistols respectively.

Sniper could let you zoom further in. Commando could reduce the spread and recoil so you could handle automatic weapons better.

Or they might just increase your accuracy in Vats.

Except that Skyrim in no way rewarded specialized builds, unlike how Fallout 4 appears to be.

Second, romancing companions is optional. I know I won't be pursuing any romance.

This is assuming that SPECIAL doesn't grow on trees throughout gameplay. Just give that some thought.

And optional or no, it eats up dev time. The little Pip-boy games are optional too, but you better believe they ate up dev time.

They worked great in fallout 2, in fallout 3 and NV they were just "there".

Someone better bring back Bittercup...

I'm with Longknife when it comes to the crafting issue, and I was correct about it, just as I thought: Most of the crafting recipe's are merely added fluff, which in order to access the actual parts you want, you need to crank out your specific perk to Rank 4, thus there's really no point in crafting said items until you actually hit the maximum. Then (here's an educated guess, so it's not confirmed yet), only to realize, that the Rank 4 items are not really unique but merely stat-increased mods of the same lvl.1 weapon mods. That giant number of 700 mods is most likely just really 175 for 50 weapons, which means that's only really 3 mods for half of the weapons, 4 being the rest.

I seriously hope I'm wrong.

From what I've seen they really seem to be trying to improve Fallout and bring in the best elements from other games while addressing long term issues, like MOAT characters and the last half of the game being so easy.

They are obviously building on the Creation Engine and learning from the mistakes made producing Skyrim.

Things like no stats, bandits wearing glass armor, and extremely generic companions with few if any quests.

It is also obvious that they have looked at the most popular mods for Fallout 3 and FONV, the ones they liked to play with, and trying to bring them in to Fallout 4.

Not yet, but considering how important the Special stats are, they will have to have something.

Plus anyone dropped off in the Boston Wasteland is rapidly going to get lean and mean or they will be dead.

If Bethesda Games Studios is learning from the mistakes that they made with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim when they developed it. Can you confirm or have you seen if armor and weapons will break in Fallout 4? I will be very upset if armor and weapons cannot be broken in Fallout 4.

I don't think I will be taking a 1 in any stat unless I really want to highlight that deficiency.

I do think I will have at least one stat at 8 to start.

I can set four stats to 3, have 2 more at 4, and have one at 8.

That should provide a good mix.

Called it in another thread.

But this doesn't sound so bad honestly, it is very Skyrimy but it sounds like it works well on an RP level.

Power armor and the heavy raider armors can have pieces blown off during combat.

Saw a guy in Power Armor get hit with a missile and he left a trail of pieces off his power armor.

It doesn't look that way for medium and light armors.

Same for weapons.

But if they do decide to drop it, someone will mod it back in a month or so after Bethesda releases the modding tools.

This is going to svck so badly if armor other than Power Armor and all weapons cannot break .

Looking at the perk chart and how having certain high stats lets you take the higher perks, it looks like Bethesda is really trying to have multiple ways to do most quests.

This quote from Bethesda back it up.

"Fallout 4's narrative has a lot more branching paths and overlapping of "if that than this" than Fallout 3. They want the game to handle all the fail states of missions instead of forcing players to reload saves."

And more ways to do something means they can have better writing because there is more player choice.

The replay value for Fallout 4 is going through the roof.

There is no doubt in my mind that she will show up as a companion in a mod.

This change seems so...drastic which means i have no doubt it will have glaring issues which completely devalue the purpose of the change...just like Skyrim

But this time, everyone will have access to mods.

Not only do mods fix problems (often before an official patch is released), but they let you tune the game to exactly what you want.

With mods, you really can make (almost) everyone happy.

Read my signature, i stand by it firmly. Mods are NOT an excuse for devs to half-*ss the game's mechanics. Do it right the 1st time, let modders do crazy stuff

Agreed.

Guud.

Every game has to be able to stand on their own without having mods to fix it. I see mods as a way to fix minor annoyances, because every game has them, so it is just a bonus.

The Developers should be fixing the bugs. When they are done with the game than the community can work on fixing what bugs they can fix.

Mods should be for adding more content or for fine tuning your experience of the game.