If FO4 was identical to it's predecessors then everyone would be complaining that Bethesda had no imagination & just re-wrapped FO3. I personally think they did a good job w/ it and as far as the PC aspect goes face it PC gaming is all but dead EVERY major title that has been released in the last 5 years has been optimized for consoles just the facts of life not hating on the PC crowd just stating a fact ( it's the reason I bought an Xbox One & not a new PC ) as far as the RPG element goes it's more old school than people give it credit for I have not been so motivated to gain a level & add a point to something I think I really need since the original D & D release

LOL

Just someone else with hot air to expend then. Got it.

Its a matter of our expectaions, ok *my* expectaions and about 50% or more of people who expected game like new vegas, judging from reviews. Only thing Bethesda did was pumping the hypetrain, nothing about dialogues etc. Tbh i think hype was pumping itself because of FALLOUT name. So I and about 50% of buyers expected game like NV and nothing was done to correct those expectation because mr salesman Howard would have less dollars to count. Therefore expectations were exploited and people who had them were scamed. Maybe like a month before release they said something about graphics not being superb and great but it was it. So I am dissapointed by gameplay, depth of this "product", and heaps of bugs. I dont claim that its so bad no one can have fun with it. People have fun with COD and AC and thats ok

Why would anyone EXPECT a game like NV, especially after Skyrim?

Because NV was an amazing game? Just a hunch.

i really don't get the arguments about beth being a money-grabbing company who doesn't care about their products

certainly there are easier ways to earn cash than to invest four years on developing a game

sure, they might want to appeal to the masses, but if you make something you want to be really proud of, who wouldn't?

NV was not a Bethesda game.

It was, it was published by Bethesda Softworks. It was not developed by Bethesda Game Studios, but they did have to approve their plan for the game and it wouldn't have been made without them. Semantics maybe, but still.

Fallout 4 is a great game. It's also a terrible Fallout.

As usual the culprit is mainstreaming and no offense, but the console crowd is a huge part of what's killing quality gaming, at least the things not aimed at 45-minute console gamers.
I don't say that to piss off people playing on their xboxes or playstations, I mean the target audience has forcefully been changed by companies to include as big an audience as possible - because money.
It's happening to all game genres. Where we used to see deep games with thrilling storylines, great dialogue and systems that allowed you to play the game however you wanted, we're getting bland games that appeal to the short attention spans of people who have no vested interest in what they're playing.
I could've lived with the dialogue wheel if the dialogue trees weren't so bad.
I'm fine with the perk system, even if it is a tad oversimplified.

Anyway, I had fun up until the ending(s) of which I completed 2. I read the other ones and all of them left me with a pit in my stomach. Since I bought the season pass, I'm hoping for better DLC.
To be honest though... I'd rather pay double for a remake of Fallout 1 than I did for this game and the season pass.

In fact, I think I'll install the original Fallout for the 13th time and enjoy a quality experience that I know won't dissapoint.

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What makes me the most sad about all this, isn't the game itself. It's the defense of it. So many people have no idea why some are downright angry about it.
Bethesda is not a very good game studio when it comes to RPG's, at least not since Morrowind. They're excellent at making sandboxes though, but to me and a lot of others, this isn't a remake of a classic game, some of us see it as a game legend being butchered.
I don't hate people that love Fallout 3 or 4, I think people are absolutely entitled to love and enjoy these games. I just wish others would stop hating us older guys who'd like to see something more along the lines of what we played.

I actually didn't really like New Vegas. It was clunky and the story was meh? I'm really enjoying Fallout 4 tho and I loved Fallout 3 so yea.

Are the threads at no mutants allowed all backed up that the people trying to post have to come here? Its amazing how this section contains so much hate.

Fallout 4 is an amazing game, and a breath of fresh air into the franchise and the genre. I'm really boggled as to why anyone would come to a fan forum to whine about something they don't like to people that do.

This. I love NV but I didn't expect Fallout 4 to follow New Vegas. I expected it to follow Skyrim which is what it did.

Fallout isn't supposed to follow Skyrim, it's supposed to follow Fallout.

Yes and No.

Fallout New Vegas wasn't made by Bethesda so why should they follow it? Also there are elements in Skyrim people loved so why not add them to Fallout and why not add stuff from Fallout to TES. They can take from each other without becoming the same. What Fallout 4 is started with Fallout 3 and some of it was in Skyrim. I remember a lot of people ripping Skyrim for the same reasons you ripping Fallout 4. And There was a lot of them ripping Fallout 3(and New Vegas) for the same reasons.

That pretty much covers both our stances. You see it one way, I see it another. That's...pretty much the end of that conversation.

Do not know what a lot of people are talking about here, Role-played my character very well, in some cases, was A LOT more natural to do so then in other Bethesda games.....but maybe that is because i do not have such a limited view of what role-playing is.

None of that tech talk means anything to me. Perhaps I have the wrong hardware and I'm missing some super enchilada, but oh well. Any hype I miss cause I don't watch twiter or streams or whatever, so I don't care about any of that either.

I've been playing video games since pong. I got into video games for real once I started on rpg's. I like many different types of them. If you don't consider them rpg's because they use obsolete tech, it doesn't really mean anything to me. FO4 seems amazing to me. Especially if I pop in some of my old games-Legend of Zelda, Secret of Evermore, Gates of Baldur, diablo (I only have played the first one), arena ect. Now, when they first came out...they were amazing to me. I was completely obsessed. But I don't want to play them now. Things have progressed. Perhaps even that is opinion. Maybe some want turn based or 2 dimension games. I'm sure there are some still being made..maybe I don't really know.

A game that is perfect, which is subjective, so perfect for me has not been made. It's unlikely too. I'm enjoying my settlement building, dungeon crawling and it's unlikely for me to change my mind because I have the wrong hardware or something is being hyped in any direction, or it doesn't have every aspect I personally wish on a game. If I am having fun, then I am having fun and it's really all that counts.

Let me get this straight. You think people who game on consoles have short attention spans and are "casual" gamers?

This is a very silly assumption, considering as a console gamer myself, I can spend hours and hours. In fact, I did so with Fallout 4 as soon as it was installed. Fallout 4 is not a game you can play for a short amount of time. You will not get anywhere.. there is just too much to do.

I get it. You like the old school way of gaming. The CRPGs. However, I find it hard to sympathize when it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how gaming has evolved (or devolved, depending on one's viewpoint) and that Bethesda simply do not make games for that crowd.

Classic RPGs (with stats, more choices, etc) are still being made. I own Wasteland 2 and D:OS (both on CONSOLE, fancy that.)

I quite like those turn-based RPGs, but my tastes vary. I enjoy hack and slash, FPS, action RPG, sandbox, you name it.

I was going to write something like this but you caught the point much better than I would.

Its about first 3 lines of Smilomaniac's post. No need to be offended, it was not his intention. Problem is that crpg games with rich world poured to the player trough rich dialoques became quite a niche games, because of companiest trying to produce games for a broadest audience possible. So the game must be suitable for 30 min session (pointless with game like Torment) and for 12h session. It forces game to be all and nothing at the same time. 30 min session in conversation heavy game is a bad idea. Im ranting here because great series of crpg's was flattened to a shooter game like far cry 4. For me its almost sacrilege. If they wanted to make a shooter they shouldnt name it Fallout, but the ease of getting attention under Fallout flag was apparently more imprtant for them than upkeeping loyality of fans of this brand. But slowly we are getting to the point where every game wants to be for every one. Boundaries of genres becoming less clear and in effect all games are the same, because psychological studies dictate what should be in game and what not to make it sell best. Communism in gaming? Apparently yes. It wont make any good for anyone. Its funny to think that todays so called AAA titles are mostly copies of copies impossible to digest. And the real creativity in games is now called indie, like something exotic or even bizzare. Everything went upside down

Not counting the first two Fallouts (which I haven't played, cause you know, I'm a modern day gamer) Fallout 3 and NV have already appealed to the FPS crowd.

Ironically, it was Fallout 3 and NV that got me into shooting games when before I did not like them all that much.

What it boils down to is money. They do not care for the original fans or creating a game to suit that crowd. They diversified the gameplay to attract a new fanbase = more $.

I don't agree with the "30 minute session" thing. Fallout 4, as I said, is not a game that the casuals with busy lives should play.

The crux of the matter here is whether it is a good or a bad thing; I've seen other game series I've played change, and in some instances I agree that it's for the worst.

But not in this case; Fallout 4 to me, is highly addictive, has beautiful environments and interesting quests. Mind you, I don't really care about stats. I don't require them in order to roleplay.

Yes but its a process, at least in my case. I have to fire up afterburner and riva, enable aero and then can get fairly stable FPS.

This game is great visceral combat cool monsters good AI . Legendary weapons and armor . Crafting. The immersion and ambience is great and downright frightening at times. Better graphics Improved story and writing les dialogue perhaps but most of that from previous games was superficial and added little. Companion AI is improved enemy Ai is improved. Voiced protagonist my character can speak imagine that though I'm fine with an unvoiced protagonist as well. An extremely well made RPG Shooter and Fallout has always been a thirdperson/firstperson RPG shooter never a pure RPG . I love the post apocalyptic nuclear war setting it's been an interest since I read Liege-Killer years ago great read if you can find it. Elder scrolls is still there best IP but Fallout is a close second.

The assumption that I somehow think all console gamers are like that, is yours. No, I don't.
Console players in general don't have time to play a game for hours on end, instead they tend to play in shorter intervals. That means that the games they play have to be interesting for those 45 minutes to 1? hour a day that they play.
A heavy RPG with tons of dialogue is not optimal for that kind of player, because they'll have forgotten most of it between sessions.
So in order to get a good review on consoles for a multi-million dollar game, you HAVE to cater your games that way.

That was my point.
I own four different consoles and I bought each one for casual and social gaming. In my life, THEY are the niche and not the other way around PC will always be my platform of choice for immersive gameplay.

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It goes beyond just whining about one game series, the thing is that it's happening everywhere, across all genres. Games have become such huge projects that they all target the mainstream audience...
It's like people have forgotten that you can make games for niche audiences and don't have to pump resources in them that could feed a small country for a year. It's absurd to see so much money and effort be put into games that are ultimately not very good.