...or is Fallout 4 not nearly as popular as Skyrim or Fallout 3? Seriously, I don't hear jack squat about this game, I even forgot it existed for some time. It's like it just came out and nothing. Compare that to Skyrim which soon spawned the infamous "arrow in de knee" meme, or even Fallout 3 which is still talked about. I mean, yeah, there are still YT Let's Plays, it sold a lot, but I don't feel it is resonating as much as any other Beth game. Thoughts?

well in the case of Skyrim, that can come down to the setting..


don't get me wrong, FO has a pretty good setting.. however, Fantasy settings will always have a wider more universal appeal compared to post apocalyptic ones.

This. Fantasy setting are almost near universally more popular then post apocalyptic ones, especially in games.

Not Sccording to any of the aggregate data I've looked into. If it is less popular then it isn't by much. I'm also trying to understand why it would matter

To be fair, its barely a month old, a bit to early to call its long term popularity.

Really? It's been out for less than a month and Rock Paper Shotgun has eight different articles on it already. It's plastered all over YouTube.

How are you "not hearing about it"? I'm not hearing about it either I guess because all my spare time is being spent wandering the Commonwealth.

Opinions do seem to be a lot more polarised for this one than they were for FO3 or Skyrim though.

I mean Skyrim seemed to pretty much take the world by storm, but his one seems to be a "love it or hate it" affair.

Well, "hate newspapers" just isn't as catchy as "arrow in the knee"

Based on copies shipped, steam sales, and number of active players on steam fallout 4 is Bethesda's most popular game yet. What you "hear" is just anecdotal. Kind of when someone says I don't know how candidate X won the election, I don't know anybody who voted for him. All the hard numbers say otherwise

that's always the case with FO games. The reason being Bethesda bought the rights from another studio and drastically changed it. So with every release you gget the fans of the first two out en mass complaint that it's not like the original and beth has ruined the franchise. In their eyes every FO game has to meet the FO 1&2 litmus test. Adding to it, in the purists eyes, NV, which was made by obsidian and not Bethesda, did pass that test. To quote the joker from the end of TDK, I think we're destined to do this forever

I don't see how opinions are more polarized for Fallout 4 than for Fallout 3. You have the same people hating everything Bethesda does with Fallout and then the rest of us who spend most of our time actually playing the game and having fun. When Fallout 10 comes out, it will be the same. The TES series doesn't have this issue because they were all made by the same company.

Yeah, Kotaku has been covered in FO4 articles for the last month. And their weekly roundup of the new games coming out, had wise-ass "I guess some new games are out this week... we're still playing Fallout 4"-style headlines or intros several times.

The games been out less than a month. But in comparison to Skyrim, I don't think Bethesda spent nearly as much money on advertising and hyping Fallout 4. Skyrim was near Bungie Destiny level of advertising campaigning.

And thy didn't really need to either.

The Fantasy setting has been much stronger in the Modding Community for TES games than Fallout.

Mod Community Massive for TES, not so much post-apoc. Though Fo4 did really well in sales, so time will tell....Thing you gotta realize is that not every mod maker is hopping on the boat to make mods right this moment and also mod tools are only the ones that well other mod makers, programmers, and hobby guys have made so only so much to work with atm on that front.

I'd bet if you put this game down for like a year or 2 and came back to it your jaw would drop open with how much stuff it'll have going by then, DLC's, Gold box, all those Modifications people made, and youtube videos.

Meh. That polarized audience goes back as far as Oblivion if not farther. Can't tell you all the threads I remember about oblivion not being a real rpg because it had quest markers. Skyrim was the same. When these titles launch there's always doomers who portend the end.

Years go by, people still play, a new title is announced, and the prayers for failure start all over.

I am 120 hours into fallout 4, have seen pretty much the whole map, build up 2 whole settlements and a private base, completed all 4 endings (named save before the big moment) and I have to say... I just don't feel there is any more left to do. I am wasteland and gun fatigued. My second char going full melee is strong, but even more lacking in variety of combat.

I remember hitting 200 hours in Skyrim at about a month and a half in... I hadn't seen Markarth or the blackreach yet, and the world seemed still full of mysteries to uncover. I loved fallout 3, I just find this one a bit more... i don't know... bland? it just feel like it's missing something. being the "most ambitious game ever made" by Bethesda, I am almost hoping to come across a whole other land that everyone just casually missed all this time, but that is VERY unlikely.

maybe it's just my sky-high expectations not being met, and maybe comparing it to Skyrim ISN'T fair... i just feel it is.

That, and TES lore can be... fluid.

"But TES VII said...!"
"The most recent Dragon Break rectconned that."

Totally fair IMHO. But our preferences are different from "popularity".
This is my favorite Fallout to date, but I still like Skyrim more.
My least favorite open world RPG from Beth is Oblivion which people are still modding today.

See, I'd have thought Fallout would have a wider appeal. It has guns and people in big stompy power armour shooting zombies in cities. I figure that would be more mainstream than the fantasy genre, which tends to be more a niche nerd affair.

Oh, granted, certainly. There's always those who wish things had been done differently, and they're generally quite vocal.

It just seems to run a bit beyond the usual grumbles this time. Then again, I'm a grumbler this time around, so I can't really rule out confirmation bias on my part.