Now that Fallout 4 is out, I think we'll benefit from some spoilerfree gameplay discussion. Spoilerfree is an important keyword, anything that relates to specific items, quests, characters, locations, etc etc shouldn't be mentioned here. If you feel you -must- mention an item or a location, then do so with as little spoilers as possible within the usual spoiler-field, written as: [ s p o i l e r ] [ / s p o i l e r ], (no spaces), looking like:

I'll begin with my thoughts, mostly positive!

Athmosphere:

The world as a whole feels very nice. The sky is beautiful and the landscape, despite being destroyed, looks beautiful as well. Yet, as is to be expected, many places are dark and creepy, especially with the known radiation storms blowing up, which changes any beautiful location to a depressing radiation fest.

Gameplay:

In the same way Fallout New Vegas felt as an improvement over Fallout 3, Fallout 4 feels like an improvement over Fallout New Vegas. The 'first-person shooter feel' has definitely been achieved, yet it doesn't feel very different from Fallout 3 or New Vegas. Indeed, it feels pretty much the same despite being so different.

Crafting:

The entire economy of crafting is centered around one resource:

, which is pretty funny. It slows down crafting since you specifically need it to make practically anything, but that's a good thing. Without that limitation, it would be far too fast to create the desired items you want and thus would take away from the sense of progress.

More thoughts to-be added. Share yours

Atmosphere:

Love it. I like the use of color, and the weather system is really neat. It's cool to walk outside in the rain, then come inside and have a conversation and notice your character is dripping wet.

Music:

The ambient game music is incredible. It seems to know exactly when to kick up the poignancy too.

Gameplay:

Feels like an incremential step-up from New Vegas. Doesn't feel radically different, but I guess that's a good thing. The shooting mechanics feel a lot better, and VATS is not an "I win" button anymore. I was worried I wouldn't like the "loot on mouse-over" mechanic, but it is fantastic. At 5 hours in, I can say it is a definite improvement.

I'm liking the voiced-protagonist. I'm playing a female character, and Courtney's VO work has been wonderful so far. Had a small flashback to Jack in Mass Effect when I told an old woman she was full of [censored].

Crafting:

I can already tell I'm going to sink so many hours into this. I've already modified a 10mm pistol extensively, and built a little base in the hills. People are going to do crazy things with base building - I noticed you can put almost anything into a house - even outside barrier walls, so long as there is room.

Agree here, would more say its an increment over FO:NV and Skyrim.

Voiced PC works well, one issue however is that if you stand a thigh place the camera might end up focusing on your neck.

My current main issue now is that scopes takes too long to aim with. Wonder if some of the smaller ones are faster. VAT has saved me many times then I get surprised holding an scoped rifle.

Weight affects the speed of aiming down the sight. Heavy weapons take longer to aim. How much difference there is, I do not know.

some textures are pretty [censored] sometimes the graphics look gorgeous....character models still look weird mostly - but no one cares about the graphics anyway...the atmosphere and music are amazing and the gameplay feels good ALTHOUGH mouse/keyboard controls and pc ui is quite clumsy...