But in 1950's we had better gun tech than FO4 does. Thats the problem.

Where is the m1, the m-14, the 1911 all the guns that actually look like guns????

FO3 had real guns, FO:NV had real guns, FO 4 has steampunk guns that belong in fan fiction.

Nah, its a purposeful design choice, merely to have the sixy side of the rifle action directly in front so the player can see it. In RL It is a terrible inefficiency for a right handed shooter (which most people are) to action a left-handed bolt. It is a bit easier for a pistol because you have a free hand to use since the weapon is not shouldered.

Now I will say, I am no authority on game design, and can only speculate why Bethesda made this design decision, but it appears to be a deliberate one based on other games I've played that have done this...only with RL weapon designs. I personally do not like it since I pay attention to such things as my primary means of interacting with the game world is usually through the weapon I hold in my hand.

Because this gun is a step back in every way technology wise from the assault rifle in every other game.

Fallout 1 & 2
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.nexusmods.com/Images/130/2580563-1418089349.png&imgrefurl=http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/2353734-ak-112-texturing-progress/&h=550&w=1151&tbnid=I_R3rNgvNge7cM:&docid=Tr_qkCCEQtPHeM&hl=en&ei=zotTVrvyNoPOeoz_o9AC&tbm=isch&client=safari&ved=0ahUKEwi7kbeAxafJAhUDpx4KHYz_CCoQMwgeKAEwAQ

Fallout 3
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Assault_rifle_(Fallout_3)

Or God forbid a .50 BMG. That is one serious pipe there. That's something I'll be letting others test fire.

dude u can make your combat rifle look like that.

Well take a look at assault rifle designs from 1945 ish to today, the assault rifle is basically a half way house between a rifle and a SMG allowing the soldier to both shoot a target at a distance and have close in semi to full automatic firepower.....the basic 'assault rifle' in F4 is a large, heavy single shot rifle. You can mod it into fully automatic, in which case it becomes a large heavy machine gun, still not filling the assault rifle role, althrough is would fill a weapon spot lacking in the F4 game the Squad Automatic Weapon upon which all modern infantry tactics are based.

Realiy though its like they re-invented the wheel (and replaced it with a square one), when they already had two fine canon assault rifle designs (seriously who wouldn't want to mod the chinese assault rifle) and replaced them with something that looks out of place in the game, initally when I saw a enemy using one thought they had gone the Star Wars route and scified up a lewis gun.

I'm actually trying to come with a reason it looks like is does..........some sort of rare liquid coolant rather than air cooled and perhaps it was designed for Powered Armor, althrough why you would create a 5.56mm rifle for Power Armor I'm unclear on.

We are not talking about combat rifles, we are talking about assault rifles.

I'm not even going to begin trying to figure out why a "combat rifle" is shooting .45 ACP...

Well, that is a mod, so I'm guessing they must, I dunno, glue 9 other pipes of increasing diameter around the initial one?

You'd think that these pipes would be more valuable for their copper than for guns. Maybe for wire, or, i dunno, plumbing?

This irks the tar out of me. If it is in a pistol round, popular nomenclature would make it either another submachine gun, or a carbine.

Of course, on the subject of nomenclature, all of the "pipe rifles" shouldn't be called "rifles", since they aren't, well, rifled.

Its a beast once its rechambered, which is why my .308 combat rifle is now a sniper weapon rather than an automatic.....a lot of the problems would be solved by the ability to mod the combat rifle into a 5.56mm assault rifle.

While I agree that the Assault Rifle is silly I kind of like how it looks like a miniature WWI machine gun.

Like i said, i enjoy the game and it works fine.

I just am disappointed that no one at BGS sat down and said....

"Hmm perhaps making 1/2 of our guns steam punk rust buckets is not a great idea"

Or
"Let's make the player find .45 cal pipe revolvers along with a cooler full of raw radroach meat in a SEALED PRE-WAR bunker.

I love you.

The weapon designs in general this Fallout is simply awful, really. I get that the modular system is a mechanic for limiting the firepower of the PC as they level up, but many aspects of it....such as the base rifle not having a stock...are plain silly.

One example...revolvers, Pre-War rather than the pipe revolver trash. Why is there only one, the .44 magnum? They at least could have made the base revolver a .38, then let you convert it first to .45 then .44 as you progressed up the levels. It would make sense as the S&W style lock, which the .44 in this game is based on, was produced in all three calibers IRL at various times. But no...if you want to use a revolver it's either the .44, which ammo is hard to find for, or pipe gun trash.

Shotguns aren't too bad....I became quite fond of the side by side once I modded it to a coach gun...but they left out pump actions, which have been the most popular shotgun type in the US since they were invented in the late 19th Century, and almost certainly still would be in 2077. NV's Hunting Shotgun was great...I always carried a fully modded one once I could swing it, one of the few games to get shotguns right...especially with ammo crafting. And why isn't there a pipe shotgun?

Pistols....would have liked to see the M1911 make a return, as well as the Chinese 10mm (with the ridiculous underpower problem corrected). The Chinese 10mm was well suited to many of the mods for pistols, as variants with detachable mags, full auto, and shoulder stocks were made of the C96 it was based on.

The hunting rifle is OK. but there should be a version of the semi-auto sniper rifle too.

The Combat Rifle is meh...it looks like a combat shotgun, and the first versions shoot pistol ammo, and you can't convert it to .308 until you hit Gun Nut 4. I would have much preferred the M1 or even better the M14 they trolled us in the Wanderer trailer with.

The Assault Rifle? Ridiculous....the R91 and Chinese Assault Rifle were far better. If they made it larger and called it a LMG I could have bought it, but the base version is semi-auto, what a pantload.

It's also irritating to find pipe-guns in caches that were confirmed sealed since before the War....just where you'd expect to find the best weapons.

They didn't give a lot of though to weapons in this game beyond controlling player DPM, and it clearly shows...which is odd considering lore and how well received NV's weapons system and ammo crafting was received. I still love the game, and I'll deal with the weapons we have...but I'm not pleased at all with what they've done with them in this game.

I don't know if its "wrong," given the subjective nature of art and game design, but the design of the FO4 assault rifle is based on a water cooled, belt-fed WWI machine gun that was crew served and extremely heavy. Technology through the first half of the 20th century eventually incorporated air cooled designs and reduced the weight of the machine gun. By WWII the Maxim and Vickers type machine guns were really obsolete replaced by such beauties as the refined MG 42 and M2...not even mentioning the fact that it was never intended as an assault rifle, or battle rifle if you prefer...in other words hand portable, shoulder fired, air cooled. So there's the historical argument.

The simple argument is the assault rifle in game is 13.4 pounds and shoots a 5.56 round. The based weight of an AR is between 6-7 pounds and also shoots a 5.56 round. Radically reducing weight, yet still maintaining the same ballistic velocity and power is what any reasonable mind would consider progress. The in-game "assault rifle" is a regression. And that is the gaming argument.

One of the above two weapons was purposely designed as a shoulder fired, air-cooled, magazine fed, gas-operated assault rifle and was designed in 1957...and weighs exactly half the other one. On a side note, it was also included in previous games, along with an AK variant, so the decision of introducing a regressive and weird shoulder fired assault rifle is a strange one, especially one never designed to be shoulder fired decades before the split.

Like, I said in another post, I don't even use the assault rifle due to its terrible inefficiency, and it being easily eclipsed by the combat rifle, which should have allowed us to at least chamber it in 5.56 as long as Bethesda remains entrenched in their strange vision of weapons.

I love this game, and I even love the weapon modding, but I am fairly put off by the weapon design choices...no 1911, M-1, M-14, Pump shotgun, purposely designed antimateriel rifle that does overpowering damage, or the inclusion of real assault rifles. Weird, especially after playing New Vegas.

I think a lot of it is that Bethesda seems to have ignored a lot of what was praised out of New Vegas like they were jealous their younger sibling did something people liked better than what Bethesda did and don't want to adapt it out of bullheaded pride.

Actually I think its more about animation esthetics then being "sixy", since hunting rifle can come stockless they need a reload animation that universally works for both a hunting rifle with and without a full stock and one based on a left side bolt does the job.

Only then fans from Black isle like NV, the really problem with new vegas is the weapons at a point have 0 impact bc after u get a 50 cal sniper (best in game) unique plasma ( best energies) and the other version of the gun and rifle, everything thing else is irrelevant on the game.

So really u are just speaking something u really dont know.

the Weapons system on NV was a super cluster [censored] with 3 different types of ammo that really dont impact on the game at all.

Or they just honestly hated most of it with a purple passion like I did.

agree with u

Ppl should stop prizing so much NV when it have a tons of problems

"Addictol". Yeah, it's strongly seems so

"Because" is not an argument. You have to say why is it step back in every technology.

Fallout does not take place between 1945 and today. What happened in that period is almost irrelevant for Fallout because Fallout universe diverges from it somewhere in 50ties. In Fallout period, there were just 2 "our" assault rifles ever in service and non of them in US army.

In fact Fallout universe diverges sometime between end of WWII in Pacific and 1961 without specification and there are few events before that time which happen differently in Fallout universe.

Therefore argument that Fallout 4 assault rifle is not like out modern assault rifles is completely irrelevant.

Almost any gun in the game can be moded in to single shot or automatic,
so what? Not to mention that modern USA is full of single shot assault rifles.

Are you serious? Do the reasons for a WW1 era machine gun being worse than contemporary rifles really need to be explained? IT'S RIGHT THERE FOR [censored]S SAKE.

Wow, 4 pages on what types of guns are in the game? Guys, its really pretty simple. It's a different game, and they,re going to use different weapons. They aren't going to just reuse everything from previous games. Is it really that hard to understand?