I disagree. I think his points are totally invalid. It's a fictional universe with a warped, 1950's nuclear era mixed tech hodgepodge of scientific advancement. Today's gun designs absolutely do not apply in a logical way in this illogical world.

The looks have been addressed by others. As far as chopped weapons?

I suggest you google the .50BMG pistol. Yes, you read correctly.

You said it yourself, "scientific advancement". What that gun is, is actually scientific regression. That gun design was already long obsolete by the 1950s.

The world still has logic, it just developed differently to ours...you make it sound like some fantasy world,which it's not.

Pretty sure lasers, plasmas, cryogenics in weaponary is advancement. Advancement is where the money is so perhaps these ballistic guns became obsolete and were only re-found in a post apocolyptic setting where progress had indeed stopped due to the collapse of institutions responsible for advancements.

What makes that gun design obsolete? I am yet to hear single argument from proponents of this theory. For record, it's obsolete because I said so is not argument. That's opinion.

Or maybe, just maybe, this actually bugs the OP, and all of the people here who are insulting him/her over a valid complaint are acting childish in defense of can-do-no-wrong-Bethesda.

Is it a minor complaint? Sure. Maybe even nitpick level. But that doesn't make it any less valid. Seriously, the people on this thread are acting like animals, treating OP like he doesn't know a thing about the series over this, despite the fact that the guns he refers as making more sense do have a precedence in the lore that predates Fallout 4! Hell, the R-91 AR in Fallout 3 was literally confirmed as pre war America's standard issue army AR.
Whether you like the old designs or not, the OP is both right about them making more sense, and about them already being established in the lore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9jScOyH7TM

Pretty sure that guy will become a Super Mutant once the Great War hits.

Overall I like the new flavors of weapons. The combat shotgun and combat rifle just look sort of stupid.

My one gripe, you worm your way deep into some sealed up place from before the war and what do you find inside? Pipe weapons. Given their attention to detail, they really should not have let that slip through. I can understand wanting to populate the landscape with Pipe weapons to get across the idea that "they are the most readily available" but it makes no sense for some place pre-War to have pipe weapons.

Agreed, I just love the way the assault rifle looks - quirky and odd, it's a simple, easy to produce design and fits in with the 'everything's ruined' theme.

Yeah, I'm gonna go with "it's a game" and "Rule of Cool" for this one.

Also, I'd bet that many real-world companies are much more on-the-ball about having their trademarks/copyrights properly licensed, as opposed to way back when FO1 and 2 were made with lots of real-world guns in them. But that's just a guess.

I despise the look of the assault rifle and no it does not fit into the fallout world. Never once have we had a 1930's style assault rifle in one of these games. the R-91 was a perfect reflection of the 1940's and 50's thinking, the mishmash of horrible gun design to make it look more steampunk when almost every other pre-war gun looks like what a gun should look like. The design choice for the look is horrible and is one of those immersion breaking moments for me. I liked the way they changed the laser rifle in F3 to look like a real weapon over the F1/2 lasers but now they have done the exact opposite with the assault rifle. Horrible gun, just horrible.

ok. several points I want to make:

There are things that bug me in this game, but this certainly isn't one of them. If I post to the forums, I expect to have my argument debated. I don't see a lot of "insulting" of the OP, just people disagreeing with the reasoning of his post, but then, nowadays people think "disagreeing" is this huge personal victimization offense. Anyway, moving along:

A complaint is less valid according to the level of its merit, so I'm not sure how it's possible to call something "nitpick" and then say it's a valid complaint. Define "valid." I haven't treated the OP like he didn't know a thing about the series, just that he didn't know why the guns are the way they are in this world: because the overriding lore of the universe of this series deems it to be so, end of story. The OP is not "right" about anything making more sense since this game does not take place in 2015 modern Prime Material Plane (lol).

Please understand, I simply disagree. Nothing personal.

Ok, fine, this is supposed to be 1950's flavored. I'll take that. in that case, where is a freaking 1911? It is more than a little ridiculous that the only pistol that uses .45 is a single action pipe revolver.

This is one of the few things that doesn't make as much sense here. We have proliferations of certain ammunition, but very few weapons that use it.

Another example is the .38. THe only gun in the game that uses it natively is the pipe pistol, and the hunting rifle can be modified to take it. Why are we swimming in an ammunition type that is only used by a gun made out of plumbing?

Don't get me wrong, I'm loving this game, but there are a lot of bits that don't make sense, at least as far as weapons. I mean, there are two shotguns in the game. Two. I can go to a local Walmart and look at ten. And before someone talks about 1950, shotguns have been available from Sears since it was founded.

For that matter, why isn't there a pipe shotgun? This is one of the few guns where a smoothbore would make sense, and it is ignored.

On a personal note, I want my .223/5.56 pistol.

Why aren't there flying dragon supermutant reptiles? Why aren't there geckos and golden geckos?

It's just how the game was designed......*shrug*

I'll give a lot of leeway to game design, but this is a lapse in logic and continuity from a series that usually values it, at least to a degree. While portions of the game have taken impressive strides forwards, the weapon variety, and the logic behind it, have been pulled back, a lot.

I mean, there is one kind of hunting rifle, in one caliber. That makes little sense, at all. There are bullet calibers with no guns that natively shoot them. There is a complete lack of pump-action shotguns, but there are semi-automatic ones.

Also, this is kindly ignoring the fact that every pipe pistol seems to use the exact same hunk of wood as it's stock.

On top of all of this, the only "futuristic" guns are the energy weapons. There is absolutely no progression of ballistic weaponry. I get retro-futurism, but every gun in the game is either made of plumbing, or something that existed by 1950. Apparently, aside from lasers, no one made anything new between 1950 and 2070.

Were this just a shooter, it would bother me less. But this is an open world RPG. You are supposed to explore, and read into, and question. This is just stuff that itches my brain.

Also, again, Bethesda, I would please like my .223/5.56 pistol. Stick it in a DLC. I'm a nostalgic moron, I'll pay for it.

I just want to know why a lot of the guns in this game are so ugly-looking. Stylistic choice? Sure, but couldn't they make some aesthetically pleasing stylistic choices?

Lmao, I absolutely love guns, especially pipe weapons. So steampunk-ish.

I'm not really getting on the aesthetics of the guns. Personal appearence choice aside, they look fine. However, this isn't a steampunk game. Also, from what I've seen from way to many friends nuts about steam punk, the pipe guns are a bit crude for that. Steampunk still espouses the style of the Victorian era, so most things there still look much more elegant.

However, this isn't a steampunk game. I guess it would be, what, nuclearpunk? THe point isn't wether the weapons look good, or if the work well. They do both. It is more that the weapon variety, or lack thereof, seems to clash with the established canon, in this game and previous games.

Yea, I'm not gonna lie: I have had just about enough of finding pipe guns.

I'm being a little nitpicky here, but I'd personally like to know what kind of crazy pipe they are using that can chamber and contain combustion forces on a freaking .308 hunting round. o_O

Same reason the bolt action weapons are on the left side of the weapon. Does it make absolutely no sense? Sure. Does it make things look cool? I guess. Thus why we're stuck with a WWI machine gun. The rule of cool rules...because it's cool.

The bolt being on the left side is, I think, because they modeled it after a bolt action target pistol, instead of a bolt action rifle. on a good chunk of those, the bolt is on the left.

Disintegrating link belts jam way more often than mag fed or solid belt, just saying...

The position of a mag on a firearm has very little impact on jamming, what is important is the extraction dynamics, and the ability to clear a mis-ejection, notwithstanding that the action itself isn't jam-prone.

Yep, I prefer all the guns to not really look like our modern or recent weapons but retro science fictionish.

The reason is the same like in many other first person games (Stalker comes to mind): you see only left side of the gun on the screen most of the time and reloading animation looks cooler on the left side as a result. Not that I like this one bit, but that's the reason they do it.

Still waiting for a single argument why assault rifle is wrong...