Is it just me, or are there much fewer quests in Fallout 4 compared to previous Fallout games and, in particular, Skyrim? I seem to play Skyrim for months on end and the quests just go on and on. And none of these repeating quests as in FO4 (well, the book fetch quests for the Mage's Guild were repetitive, but at least he sent me to different dungeons). The quests in FO4 just seem empty. Pretty disappointed in this latest game.

This isn't intended as a rant -- more of a concern about where Bethesda is headed. Been a fan of their games for a long time now.

There's no Mage's Guild in Skyrim...!

Though I hear what you're saying, it seems like a smaller game at first, FO4 is actually HUGE.

A lot of it is way far away from the main quests or anything to do with them.

I'm still finding things, now on my second runthrough (500+ hours).

So being "pretty disappointed" in the game would not be the first description to come to my lips, heheh...

IMO I think it's a masterpiece.

I started playing on day one, I made a save at a major turning point in the game then played all 4 endings from that point and just now started a new game from scratch, I did how ever spend a lot of time with settlements, any way I think I got what I paid for and then some. Now I'm looking forward to the dlc's coming over the next 3 months.

It's hardly a short game.

Just into end-game now after 175 hrs on this playthrough...

Technically true:

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Mages_Guild

That depends. I would say the Fallout games are way shorter then Elder Scrolls anyway. Factions tend to be a part of the main quest and not side stuff you do, so when you choose one you lock out the others which is content. Still it is way more beefy than FO3 and New Vegas if you take your time with it, and remember this is without DLC. Most of your memories of those other games is probably with DLC.

All Fallout games are shorter than the Elder Scrolls series.

Fallout 4 itself is definitely longer than Fallout 3 and New Vegas though. Unless you are rushing, you'll need 150 hours to complete it (and I don't count settlement building here not reloading to play different MQ Act 3 routes). NV with all DLC lasts for around 100 hours.

The story is very short. . If all you do is play the story then it'd most likely be a disappointing venture. They need to make a DLC that adds more to the story and ties things together better. There should have been a lot more faction work after finding your son. As it is, you find your son and then jump right into destroying other factions without really learning anything vital about them. At the moment there's absolutely no reason why you'd want to do that. There is no informed decision making process in the story.

You're so helpful!

I wish FO4 had more side quests.. that`s for sure.


I was so happy when I found Constitution ship, Cabot house, and the submarine.... but I can`t think of any other meaningful side quest...

after a little googling and a little math a few weeks ago, I determined that there were roughly half the number of unique quests (approximately 150 for FO4 and 300 for Skyrim, including the first of each radiant quest). Of course, many of those are inaccessible once you choose any faction.

Actually Fallout 4 has more quests than Fallout 3 had. It has somewhat fewer quests than New Vegas did. This is disregarding any DLC content since there isn't any Fallout 4 DLC yet.

Fallout 3 has 11 main quests and another 17 side quests (no faction quests or companion quests). New Vegas has 24 main quests and 50+ side quests, and 4 companion quests (no faction quests). Fallout 4 has 36 main quests, 17 side quests, 25 faction quests, 4 companion quests, AND the radiant quests. These numbers may be a bit off depending on how you're counting them, but in either case Fallout 4 definitely isn't shorter than Fallout 3, and it's not really significantly shorter than New Vegas.

The first time I played through Fallout 3, I beat the main quest line within about 40 hours. I didn't finish the main quest in my first play through of Fallout 4 until I was almost 200 hours in.

A big part of what makes it seem shorter is that there's no possible way to complete more than about 2/3 of the quests in one play through. Completing all of the quests for each faction requires either multiple characters, or just jumping back to old save points. This wasn't really the case in Fallout 3. There were some quests that you'd get locked out of depending on choices, but definitely nothing close to 1/3 of the game.

as far a numbers of quests compared to skyrim, yeah its less, skyrim had close to 300 base game quests, fallout 4 about 130 but fallout 4 has more going on, the locations are much more intricate, skyrim did have a lot of dungeons but so does fallout 4, most of the skyrim map is wilderness area, tree's, rocks, fallout 4 has tons of buildings many of which you can go in, it has more going on, its just more exploration driven, but i would of liked closer to 200 base quests, it has a lot more quests than fallout 3.

I enjoyed F4 a lot until I cleared pretty much every area, all in about a month. I am back to Skyrim now. Interestingly, there is a whole lot in Skyrim that I never managed to do, and I have the game since 2013. On my last playthrough, I am level 71, halfway through Dawnguard, not having seen the Grey Beards yet. I hope that mods and DLCs make F4 to feel like this.

Fallout 4 is far larger than Fallout 3 or FO:NV, its more like Oblivion or Skyrim.

Number of quests are far lower, decreased more in that many can not be done on one character.

So if you rush its shot, if you like to explore its large.

I played Skyrim with the same Speed and yes Fallout is very tiny.

BGS is kinda caught between two approaches I think. With Skyrim the comments were "wide as an ocean-deep as a puddle". With FO4 we've got a lake more or less. Really missed all the handwritten quests from the previous games..... Were they there, this game would be almost perfect, 'cepting maybe the voiced protagonist.

My first playthrough took me 210 hours in Fallout 4.

Skyrim on the other hand 'only' took around 180... F3 and FNV didn't even reach the 100h mark

but

I still did less quests in 4 than I did in Skyrim or New Vegas.

It's just that Fallout 4 has another distribution of content... the exploring part is far more important than it was in New Vegas or even Skyrim.

Those games aren't only about the amount of quests... you have to love roleplaying by yourself to be able to enjoy them for a longer period.

Make your own stories, explore the world, have fun... there is no need to have quests that force you to do things their way everywhere... it's nice to have more freedom this time around.

For someone without imagination and the need for quests, it will definitely feel way shorter than some other Bethesda games... but the amound of content is as big (if not bigger) than it was in Skyrim.

And the game has certainly at least twice as much content as New Vegas had, and several times the content that F3 had.

I was 400 hours into the game before I even visited Virgil. What is apparent is there are noticeably less NPCs that offer adventures/quests to explore beyond those associated to the main quest. They've substituted procedurally generated quests ala minutemen/Preston or MILA / T Tom, etc. which offer only new (sometimes) locations to explore. The game world is great, but it shouldn't be carrying as much weight as was loaded on it IMO.

MrMatty said there were fewer actual quests than in Skyrim yes, but there is so much to do in this game. If you neglect all the stuff out there and simply do quests you're missing out on a lot of what these type of Beth games offer.

That said I like quests myself. There's a noticable lack of them in Fallout 3 which is why I like New Vegas more. So I'm with you on not wanting to neglect quests. But so far I've found plenty of them.

The game is short on real content. As in, actual non-radiant quests.

Sure the world is big, but what's a huge canvas if you have very little paint?