So there is a series on Youtube by AngryCentaurGaming named Walking The Walk which I greatly enjoy, It goes in-depth and discusses various forms of World Design in a relaxed albeit long format. Latest video was about FO4 so I decided to share it here.


So if you disagree on some points or you can think of more similar points please do post

I watched about half of it.

I disagree with him on a few things, especially the beginning of the game. But that's just an opinion type thing. There's no right or wrong there.

Also, he said he's running a PC with Ultra high graphics enabled (I think that's what he called it.) and it reminded me once more of how the gap between console and PC is closing. Even he mentioned that there really isn't a whole lot of difference in the graphics when he is running in Ultra high mode.

He was talking about color palette and how people mod the game and change that. I don't like the term 'vanilla' as a lot of people (PCer's mostly) refer to the original release of a game and I believe that those things shouldn't be modified. The game is what it is and is the vision of the developer. To call it "vanilla" like some do is really a slap in the developers face in my opinion.

I didn't agree with a lot of what he was saying, but it's just an opinion. It's not like he was making wild claims like for example, 'Oh yeah, the .38 pipe pistol is a far better gun than a modified minigun' or something factually inaccurate like that.

I do like hearing other peoples opinions of Fallout 4 and other games. I have my own view and vision of the game and most of the time I'll walk away with an entirely different take on it when I listen to other peoples thoughts.

Seems earnest enough. Interesting.

The difference of Console and PC version visually may not be much different (There are some advanced effects available on PC and in most games better Anti-Aliasing and draw distances) but the most striking difference is the Frame Rate, with a good PC you can get 50-60 FPS but with consoles you get 30. That makes a huge difference on how the game feels.

Well many would disagree, I mean I'm sure there are people at Bethesda itself that would like some things different in the game but this was their collective thought as how it should look and in the end I don't see why we should take their thoughts as granted. They even encourage us to change stuff.

Me, being the peasant i am, i have greatly noticed the difference between Console and PC play, and i'm on the Xbox One for now. I have issues with frame rates and the occasional screen tear(which only last a moment.)

Other than that, i'm sure in about a month or two some one will make a mod (jealous) for FO in very rich textures unless its been done already. Even if they do release the GECK for consoles, we are still going to be limited by the hardware that comes with them, and doomed to 30 FPS for eternity. Another reason for FO's graphics is because of the Havoc game engine, but all in all, i love Fallout 4 much more than any other Fallout before that.

Please correct me if i'm wrong on the game engine, but im 99% positive thats the one they use,

Define "many"? According to Bethesda sales are even. 50% Console, 50% PC.

I'm not disputing the fact that PC's can produce better FPS and draw distances and AA, or the importance of all of that, but I will dispute the cost vs. gain ratio till I'm blue in the face. None of those factors have ever stopped me from playing FO4. FO3 and NV, yes. FO4, no.

And that being said, hooray for the folks who do have the disposable funds (or rich parents) to gain those visual goodies. God knows I beg borrowed and stole to upgrade my rig back when I was in to PC gaming.

There are only so many frame rates the eye can detect over 24, and not everyone feels that's a good thing. Remember the uproar of the Hobbit movie? Anything below that we can clearly see, anything above that has it's limits as to the benefits, and in some cases can actually cause adverse effects such as nausea, vertigo, headaches. There are a lot of complaints about that already with FO4.

Where PC's really shine are how they can maintain decent FPS with heavy graphical content such as heavy battle scenes, etc. etc., but we don't need 60 FPS all the time.

I'm not a fan of either, both have their good and bad points. But in the end, cost and Steam are what drove me away from PC. I will never, ever, deal with Steam, ever again. If somehow the PC Lords crushed the Console God's and banned all consoles, I would buy a PC game at Wal-Mart and go to a hack site to download it and play it before Steam would get another penny of my money.

I meant many people (regardless of being on PC or Console) don't think they shouldn't change something because that was the developer's vision, like many others do think the original dev decisions is the best. I don't care really, I'll be a happy bunny while Bethesda allows us to mod their games.

It's fine if you are ok with consoles, personally for me it's really hard to play a game at lower frame rates because of how controls would feel like but this is not about console vs pc or framerates, it's about Bethesda's World Design.

He talked about pc's and consoles so it's relevant in my opinion.

He drifted off on a tangent a lot and even made comparisons of one area to the dust bowl era. The dust bowl was the result of bad farming practices and natural drought, not over farming.

Tires being worth a fortune I don't buy either. Tires decompose in about 50 years. So there really shouldn't be any tires at all in Fallout.

All in all it was a good video and I enjoyed watching it and would recommend that others watch it.

Finally a video worth watching/listening to.

I don't know, but it seems to me that what "many would disagree" about is not PC vs console, rather your notion that the developer's vision is somehow sacred and should not be changed. I remember similar arguments about movies that were created in black and white, and colorized by various people over the years. The point is that in the end, it's about the entertainment value for the player, not the deveoper's grand vision, or the marketer's hype, or the restraints imposed by technology, nor of what society will allow developers to actually place in a video game.

I call the original game vanilla, because it's just one flavor where there is a possibility for many flavors. I enjoyed vanila Morrrowind, but once I'd tried Morrowind using mods and utilities like the MOrrowind code Patch, and the enhanced graphics and LOD brought by MGE, I'd never even consider playing vanilla Morrowind again. Nothing against the devs, but having a choice is better.

Bethesda have literally never said that. In fact in a recent interview with Todd Howard he said how surprised he was by Morrowind sales on Xbox going way ahead of the PC sales. It is because of consoles that Bethesda have garnered the amount of following they have, which has given them an increasingly bigger budget for each release. They have sold more copies on console for every game they have released since Morrowind.

Over 80% of people who played Skyrim did or do so on consoles.

I agree with AngryCentaur on a lot of points he brought up.

The audio thing he brings up at the beginning in particular threw me off during my play sessions, but not significant enough to throw immersion out the window. I think in 2015 (2016 in a few days yay!) proper audio engineering and implementation of foliage-recordings should be done to a much higher standard than what has been presented in FO4. It IS noticeable when you move from one area to another and the fade between two sounds is sudden, as opposed to subtle fades over longer distances. That being said they have covered some audio elements which I thought where fantastic, I like how being indoors and outdoors significantly changes the sound effects around weather such as rain, and I especially like the immersion of hearing two settlers discuss something with one another when you near them; both points he didnt really cover.

I also agree that the beginning area is fantastic, its too bad that the quest-element associated with that area is rushed and feels awkward. I find it very weird that the character seems to ignore his/her search for their son almost immediately. Would love to have seen a more linear intro sequence where the end of said sequence was your character assuming your son was lost forever, would have given way to a more logical remainder to the rest of the game and it wouldnt have been so immersion breaking.

His points on animations are great, and I do feel like it hindered FO4 significantly yet again. It seems Bethesda will never have good animations and really need to push that element for their next game cause they are miles behind in the Triple A group of gamedevs. The one that always gets me is the lack of ladders and I do think its because there was no attempt to create a ladder-climbing animation.

I do disagree with his points about colour. Dont get me wrong the colours in this game are miles ahead of FO3s and NV but certain colours feel off. The majority of buildings are still very brown, I would like to have seen more coloured buildings here and there, especially in using colours like green, orange, purples, etc. The game seems restricted to Blues and Reds, with very few greens and yellows. Although there is an entire region filled with yellow (Glowing Sea) which looks amazing. Radiation storms are another example and are amazing green additions, but dont push the envelope in its ability to drastically change the world around you like Avalanche's Mad Max and its sand storms. Then again, as AngryCentaur mentions in his Witcher 3 video, the choice of colour and its impact on the audience is polarising, where many will like the colour scheme and others will dislike, I am in the middle with FO4.

I also disagree with his points about Safety and Danger. Fallout 4 is not a game that evokes any true sense of danger, and that might be a result of my own gaming style where I am usually over-levelled beyond the expected level for a quest. I also feel the lack of a hardcoe mode taken from F:NV is partly responsible for this lack of a sense of danger and I really miss that option. NV was not NV unless you played it hardcoe. I also feel like every area has another area right besides it less than a few seconds away, and I feel like had FO4s map been elongated, and had it had a hardcoe mode in addition to a larger map, the sense of need-to-survive would have been more noticeable.

I largely disagree with his points on the Skylanes, I loved that area. Maybe its the fact that its a great loot spot and its also a great spot to watch two factions fight without you needing to get involved. There is ALWAYS a fight whenever I visit the Skylanes.

I think one set of points he missed out was the world building found on terminals and scene setting. One of my favourite areas in the game is a certain boat house with several Mr. Handys still present.

To me its the scene setting where Bethesda sets themselves apart from contenders who have really push boundries this year (namely CDProjektRed).

I also dislike that he missed out any settlement outside of Diamond City, because lets be honest very little attention was paid to Bunker Hill and Goodneighbour. The latter is especially immersion-breaking. A settlement surrounded by towers presumably occupied by deadly mutants, gunners and raiders, and the settlement just happens to be three alleyways... It feels somewhat lazy. And I do think, having seen the Skyrim and FO3 settlements, the settlements in FO4 are disappointing. Dont get me wrong they have more character, especially GoodNeighbour, for a tiny piece of [censored] it has great character, but the two outside of DC needed to be larger, and Bunker Hill also needed to be spiced up just a little.

Back up that 50/50 quote. I just spoke with my contact with Zeni/Beth publicity and he hadn't heard of such a release. Not saying you're lying, just saying that he'd never heard of that.

It's nonsense, Beth have said more than once in the past that since releasing Morrowind on consoles, the console versions of all of their games have sold a LOT more than their PC counterparts. Something which surprised Beth themselves. So in a sense we owe the sheer size and scale of games like Skyrim and Fo3-4-NV (on account of bigger budget) to console gaming, take that PC 'master' race, not everything is about YOU!!

Well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_3, a TL;DR says 12.4 million units of which 1.14 million are on the xbox 360 and 552,000 are on the PS3...leaving 10.8 million units for the PC.

So that looks more in favour of the PC sales doing much, much better than consoles.

The console crowd took a bit longer to take to Fallout.

Not the case with Elder Scrolls.

Skyrim for example.

As of 12th Dec 2015.

PC: 3.8 million

PS3: 6.3 million

XB360: 8.6 million

But like I said don't just take it from me, I am 100% certain that I heard with my own ears Todd Howard saying console sales had overtaken PC sales quite some time ago, PC gamers may not want to believe it but does it matter anyway? The fact that it is selling and allowing Beth to make more and better games should make everyone happy regardless of what you play it on.

If anyone wants to mention that these stats don't include Steam sales, it's worth pointing out that it also doesn't include console downloads.

And even though Fo4 has broken Steam Records, it's still selling more on consoles.

I think it's funny how people get when their favourite platform isn't the most used for something. As if it actually matters, does the game selling less on PC spoil anyone's enjoyment? If so it really shouldn't.

The gap between PC and consoles is getting smaller all the time, I think the war between the two is getting pathetic. Just play and let play.

Are you sure those sales aren't based on current research data? The 1.14 Mil/552k sales both mention they were made during 2008/2009. The 10.8 doesn't seem right for PC.

I'm not sure of anything...but it's the closest thing to stats I've seen so far for sales of a Bethesda game.