It depends how you describe role playing game. For me a role playing game is one where I can be anyone do anything, make my own story and character. It sounds like you want the history books already written for you when you start the game. Want your character to already have a rich legacy and complex story. In F4 you can be a saintly hero traversing the wasteland doing favors and saving people from their wretched circumstances. Or you can be a bloodthirsty demon laying waste to everything good in it. And anything in between. You make your own story you create your own character.

I don't play it to do someone's missions for them, I don't play it to talk to people and hear their digital life's story, I don't give a rats ### about their family or their missing silver locket or their status or wellbeing. I play it to do whatever I feel like doing ie building massive strongholds from the ground up, exploring new areas and wiping them out and building it the way I like, killing stuff in extremely diverse manners, etc

It's a great RPG in my opinion

The way you talk about consoles it seems as if you are ignoring all of the great classic console RPGs to have come down through the ages. Three of my favorites being Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest VII, and Final Fantasy IX. None of which I'd describe as being short or casual. Dragon Quest VII in particular is absolutely enormous. It has hundreds of hours of gameplay easily. You have to play it for an age before you even get to your first battle. It is as hardcoe as hardcoe comes.

Consoles do not equal bad RPGs. If they did these games never would have been made. You do them and yourself a disservice by ignoring them.

Here's an idea, you make the next Fallout game. I'm sure it'll turn out great. No really, let's see you do it. Loaded with HD graphics,compelling characters, dynamic dialog and voice acting, mods for weapons and armor, intelligent A.I., the works. Sound like something you can do yourself? Well get started then. I'm waiting.

These discussion are almost always the same, also I feel they are at times started more to stir emotions (due to something lacking in the poster's life perhaps) than to make any valid points. This may or may not be the case of this thread.

The way people consume stories has changed considerably, as have the systems those stories are entrenched within. To claim that anything of old is better than something which has succeded it is completely ignorant. Languages evolve, as do people and the world. To keep something static, particularly involving technology, would not just be obsolete but perhaps even barbaric.

We have seen barbarians in the modern world, and how they want to change civilization as it has progressed.

I think the game is great. I too was torn, but decided that it is a considerable improvement over its predecessors.

As said, things evolve. Cocaine is not a drug anymore, but an aid to be more productive in a fast world. Twitter blitzes you the daily news condensed in 30 characters. My 5 year old nephew was disappointed my laptop had no touchscreen, whispering somewhat ashamedly "Uncle, it doesn't work properly."

So yeah, get with the times.

Might I add that I've been consuming Bethesda games since 2002, despite the join date indicating otherwise.

Too many people don't recognize that Bethesda is making Fallout their own thing instead of trying to copy the originals... Which is a good thing.

Fallout 4 is still an amazing RPG game and Bethesda has done a great job once again. (It still has flaws though)... It's just that Bethesda does a different kind of RPG than the originals.

Because you guys make forum accounts just to log on and bash a game. You not only bash, you guys also make long walls of text using your opinions as facts.

It's ok to give constructive criticism, but the majority of what I see is "This game sux!" and "console players ruin my game!".

You said something interesting right there, that shows the depth of thinking of some of the posters.

Why are your emotions "stirred" in the first place? Being emotionally attached to something such as this isn't very healthy in the first place. And it certainly won't help you judge something objectively.

I guess those who enjoy reading books or playing DnD are barbarians? Who says the way people consume stories has changed? Only the habits have changed because of a faster-paced world. The way we receive them in our brain hasn't changed at all. To claim that anything of old which is still enjoyed is obsolete, is terribly misguided at best.

Don't generalize, it is never wise to do so - the things you say are only valid for certain things, especially new functions which completely substitute the previous functions in all ways. Do you really think video games are at a point where they can substitude DnD pnp games? No chance.

The game runs OK even on my 8350 and R9 290. Not great, but OK. I haven't seen any wide-spread news about performance issues other than those regarding pointless godrays.

And this is why we can't have nice things.

I am rather confused not a single point in the list given had anything to do with the game failing as an role playing game. And much of the list was simply wrong. Game runs well with my system using a AMD video card on an ancient i7 920 cpu. Not a single crash yet.

I hear all this talk how the game looks crappy and is buggy and crash ridden but I almost feel like people and reviewers expect these things from a Bethesda game so they can't actually see that the game looks far better than skyrim. Is it the best looking RPG in the last year? No but just because it isn't the best looking game doesn't actually translate into crappy graphics. Games are so insane these days they honestly will say that Witcher 3 looks like crap when it came out and then use it as a benchmark for how other games should measure up. Fallout 4 isn't the best looking game out there but it hardly is the worse looking game either.

Buggy engine? I keep hearing this but i have yet to run into any major bugs, or crazy engine glitches. I sometimes run into characters getting stuck during a script execution but saving and reloading has fixed this issue the two times it appeared.

But again the above has zero to do with FO4 being and RPG, as RPGs go FO4 has a stronger narrative story then past games, their companions are by far superior to all previous Bethesda games. The progression system is diverse and well balanced so that what the "must have" perks for a given character build will changed based on play style. The Ai is so much better than before, sniping was pretty much an exploit in past games because the Ai wouldn't take cover. Now i have watch NPCs see a fallen buddy and instantly kneel and search for you using cover. Sometimes they get it wrong and take cover thinking you are in a different direction so they are exposed to your shots but they no longer stand over their buddies going "Jeez what happened here?" While you head shot them one by one.

I really don't ask much more from an RPG than it have a strong narrative, good progression and decent combat. Fallout 4 has all these things so i think it is pretty obvious that it is a successful RPG even though some gamers a QQ over some issue where their subjective tastes don't line up with the game. And so they blame marketing and all kinds of other BS why people like the game that they don't.

I'll be honest, as I made a realization in the car. Bethseda doesn't know their audience very well, imo. It's a bit of a double think. I always have played video games, and it's the one reason I had a love affair with soo many RPGs in my day, for great, in depth conversation, that allows me to build my own characters backstory, my own characters personality. I am also a writer. I like games like Morrowind, Oblivion, or even Fallout 3 because while yes I was given a bit of history who my character is after all of that is still a blank slate.

Compare the MC from Fallout 3 to Fallout 4 reasonably. Fallout 3's main characters morals are not completely defined. You have to take into consideration the character starts off as a child. As a child you learn right from wrong. You learn from making mistakes and the same choices you make as a child, are not the choices you may make as an advlt. Even I make that realization from my own life experiences. Now taking the character from Fallout 4 and the character's personality and morals are pretty much groundworked for you. Because the character is an advlt. And when someone defines a character with a voice and a dialogue wheel, my character sounds like a goody, good soldier.

There's no option for the hardened warrior. Or the option for this or that. It's hard for me a player to hear the voice and match it to a psychopathic murderer.

Beside that point, I am going back to Bethseda doesn't know who the [censored] they are marketing to at all. They want to sell their games to the mass market, but to be truthfully honest most of the mass market is not old enough to be a father or married or have kids. That's a lot of the older crowd who may or may not be playing this game. I realized why the main introduction felt so underwhelming to me. It's not that Bethseda was spoon feeding me a relationship or spoon feeding the mass market. It's the simple fact of this, if you have a family of your own and a mother or a father of some sort, you can easily put yourself in those shoes and put attachments of your spouse into the story. Boom instant connection.

Where as I am neither of those. I am neither married nor do I have children of my own. I need more than the first few five minutes they gave me to bond to a family.

It's why I think the more clever story would have been to:

-Introduce wife and son

-Go to the park

-Spend the day bonding with them

-Going to the War Council

But then wait something is wrong. See I had always expected a different twist than whole nuclear explosion and cryogenic one. The thing I had expected, since the dialogue felt so weird and off in the introduction to begin with, was that we were in a simulation and all of this was a dream and not real. Learning the Prewar world you were living was a stimulated life to make you feel like you were living this life. Your wife and kid were all, but a simulation and you wake up in a Vault due to an override.

Because as a gamer, because I am not married and because I don't have kids of my own, I am not motivated to sit there with a bajillion dialogues about Sean. I can give two flying disc about Sean and my wife.

You don't need to give me the gamer a motivation to go through the game of Fallout. Exploring out of my own curiosity and considering what the [censored] is enough motivation for me. It's like all the things I like in F4, are there. The exploration. The creepy environment. The world it entails. But the story is all the things I dislike in a RPG that should allow me to build and be my own character. It feels too weird to be forced into a history and forced with a voiced acted character.

I like F4, much in the same way I like Skyrim. But F4 has one thing over Skyrim, that I like a lot better. Where as Skyrim had really terribly sidequest. F4 has some interesting sidequest. But the main story falls flat and Bethseda has no idea who their audience is.

Well they kind of have an idea, but not a very good one.

Whew, wall of text over. We'll see if anyone gives me a good thought or if they are going to throw in something not really reading my thought at all.

The human visual apparatus cannot distinguish anything higher than 60 FPS so I don't know why one would think that getting faster frame rates would be beneficial . . . your dog of course looks at the game and sees boring dichromatic slow-motion (dogs can distinguish up to around 90 fps if memory serves and whereas a human requires at least ~20 fps to perceive images as "fluid" dogs require 70 fps).

100+ hours and one CTD so far. Have had a couple hiccups but the game recovered. Other than that, not a single performance issue.

MSI MS-7821 mobo, Intel i5-4690K 3.5GHz, 8GB RAM, Win7 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 3.9GB

Mostly ultra but a couple things turned down one notch.

One of the best computer games ever made in the history of the art. Shame that some are unable to appreciate that for whatever reasons.

I suppose I will weigh in with a more decisive opinion when I finally get to play the thing. I'm still struggling to get it installed using one of the worst Internet services in North America. Even Electronic Arts seems to know better than to accept $60 up front and give a very partial PC installation disc in exchange, and that is rather worrying considering the hate for EA is real when it comes to so many other variables.

I feel your pain; I have what I consider to be "decent" IS and it took about 10 hours

Such is the way of Steam and other "cloud-based" services.

None of those points are even relevant to the topic title. Did the Op change his mind about what he wanted to say after starting the topic?

Getting pretty sick of these threads.

The differenciation between Sandbox and cRPG is utterly useless, since the Role is only to be supported by the game, but played by the observer (even Tetris can be played as RPG - respect the iron-y).
in fact, historically sandbox is a great environment for cRPG, even though gamesas never had an actual sandbox, but plots with optional sidequests (which dont interact with plot btw...)
Nevertheless ES Games incl. FO3 + are cRPGs, Daggerfall ie. had great impact on the evolution of gaming in general and RPG in special.

Since the claim FO4 not being a RPG has not been verified by solid argumentation (ie. the definiton of RPG itself), no need more for commentary than said hint.
Just the personal op that FO3+ is substandard in FPS terms - mechanics (ie movement, aiming, AI), graphx (i like the ambients though) etc r just not competetive to genre-standards like 2008 Crysis, even Quake, UT or the more actual DayZs (sandbox right?).
And its also sub-standard in RPG content volume and narrative (plotting) in relation to Gothic 2, Deus Ex, Vampire2 - even Warlords of Draenor.

But the REAL question is close to the of the OP: is this a Fallout Game or just a "franchise"?

/edit: 2 clarify: whats the "identity" of Fallout and does Fallout 4 transport this idea?

Sources?

Another bunch of false claims... sigh...

No other engine can do what Creation Engine (and formerly NetImmerse and GameBryo) can do. Unreal? PLEASE! None of the engine you listed can handle thousands of objects that are fully interactive in a game world. Unreal has difficulty just rendering a static scene without texture pop-in. Learn something about how engines work as well as the hardware running them.

RPG is not about multiple paths. Nor is it about dialogue. Play everything from the original D&D and Wizardry all the way to newer offerings like the Tales franchise, Xenosaga, or even the original, first official CRPG for D&D "Gold Box" games from SSI (Pool of Radiance, Eye of the Beholder, etc.). All of these are RPGs and do FAR more to define what an RPG is than the original Fallout games ever could.

The original Fallouts did not have deep characters, great writing, etc. Rose-colored hindsight at its finest right there.

Lastly, as I have stated various times in posts here, if you want a multi-path game focused on characters and story with choice and consequence as a key element of the game, play the many excellent Japanese adventures, visual novels, etc, including hybrids of these such as Langrisser, Growlanser, Agarest War, and many others. THOSE games have what some posters here claim they want from an RPG... but notice that these games are not classified as RPG either in Japan, other East Asian markets, or the Western markets, unless they are hybrids such as the examples listed (i.e., where the RPG mechanics are NOT the dialogue, multi-choice, multi-path, choice and consequence elements because those elements are actually the adventure/visual novel elements that are mixed with actual RPG mechanics).

So yes, as was stated, posters such as the OP and some of the others here are in the wrong place because Fallout never had what you are claiming, not even the original games. Nor did Morrowind, for that matter, at least as far as well-written quests, NPCs that you cared about, etc. That's pretty much the case for any Western game because the focus here is not on character and story due to the market demanding superficial "flash & bang" (think of the criticisms about visual graphics, false as they are, or think of how movies like Avengers make $1 billion+ without having any great writing or characters).

Experience. And you made a claim, you provide sources, mate.

I'll quote one of my recent posts. If you still want to convince yourself that these are mere "claims" you will be part of the reason why this series will devolve even further. Stop consuming yourself and others to silly discussion about what is an rpg what isn't. See what changed in the series. IF you have played all the previous fallouts extensively, then you already know. IF you haven't, then either go play them before you "evoke" the "rose-colored glasses" argument or watch a "let's play" on youtube.

Assuming you have even played the previous ones, or even watched a "let's play" as I suggested above and you still think they don't have better writing quality or more RP dialog and choices (while even the very positive reviews claim the same thing) then I am at a loss for words

https://i.imgur.com/yPcC7X6.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/g0UtFZg.jpg

http://www.pcgamer.com/fallout-4-good-game-bad-rpg/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

some people said FO4's RPG elements are weak, only it more like another FPS game, but let's look at previous games in FO series...

Fallout 3 is also a FPS+RPG and it is a success game we all can see it.

so i only want to ask these people, why did you expect FO4 is CLASSIC RPG? you should know this game because FO3 just like this and it is a older game, no need to mention that FO4 released some trail films on internet before it began to sell, if you didn't know IT IS a FPS+RPG then that is your fault.

ok, in another point, there has many games with the same style(FPS+RPG) for example: "Dead Island serious" and Elder Scrolls serious....

we can't expect they will like a CLASSIC RPG because if you attack a enemy with first person sight and keeped to seeing a message "attack miss"....believe me, you will try to break your PC and your table(i know, Elder Scrolls III Morrowind is like this, so i didn't play it).

if you want to play a game this style, you must have the sense, or you will suffer by your ignorant.

so if you only want to play a real CLASSIC RPG, i suggest you to select Fallout 1 or Fallout 2, it will perfectly suit to your desire than 3 or 4.

I've heard reports that Fallout 4 is lacking in the RPG department which is disappointing if it is true. I haven't yet bought it but plan to do so, so will make my own judgement when I do.

Really??? So with your logic Fallout 3 is as RPG as Deus Ex 3 right? It means nothing that the game is hybrid FPS-RPG. It simply could have been a much better RPG. FNV and even FO3 which *used to be* the "weakest" rpg in the series, were.

A role-playing game (RPG and sometimes roleplaying game ) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting or through a process of structured decision-making or character development. Actions taken within many games succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines.

Per this (trivial) generalisation even tetris could be RPG.

Again: what does define the "identity" of Fallout? (sociological its usually not the what, but the who...)