At the moment, I can't say I am particular excited by Fallout 4, but I am holding onto what optimism I can. The main stories in all of Bethesda's most recent titles have been horribly linear. The player has no sovereignty over the direction of the narrative which is the singular strength of video games as medium for story telling. And this glaring weakness wasn't helped by the combat-driven quest solutions.

What Fallout 4 desperately needs is to follow the direction that Obsidian took with Fallout: New Vegas. That is, focus on choices, reactivity, dialogue, and various quest solutions. Bethesda should look to improve upon the framework of Fallout: New Vegas, just as Obsidian improved upon Fallout 3, and if they do Fallout 4 might just be a really damn good game. If it turns out to be Fallout 3 version 2.0, well, it could still be a good hiking simulator... I guess.

Honestly, "a good hiking simulator..." ??? Bethesda has released some of the grandest, most ambitious games of all time in a market saturated by mostly complete BS and you would actually come on their forum on the day of a huge announcement and degrade their work like that?

I can understand your legitimate complaints but the reaction is a bit overboard. Let's be real, we already know this will be one of the best games ever released and might as well be prepared for a disappointment or two but also many great surprises as well.

I might worry about many things, but i doubt Fo4 would fail in the hiking simulator area.

If you love that kind of thing, you shouldn't be worried.

Lol "Bethesda games" "linear"

Linear in terms of narrative. It's true. Every Bethesda game has a very directed narrative. It doesn't branch out. Do this, get that, save him, acquire this, kill antagonist. This also applies to most side-quests.

For Elder Scrolls, it was always "there's only one way to do this quest, but there are tons of quests for each character type so join a faction and have a ball". With Fallout 3 it was more "There aren't as many quests, but we have given them multiple outcomes and approaches, so have a ball". Although yeah, the main quest didn't have many options up until you could poison the purifier, and that was a really underwhelming decision either way.

The main story, which it is compared to NV's.

Here's to the hope that BGS took and applied the right notes from OBS.
:clink:

Having multiple choices who are the same for 99% of the game apart from the last battle(and even then it's the same unless you are legion) is not what I call multiple routes.

New Vegas might let you do a few quests in any order but how is the storyline in reality any less linear then Fallout 3.

Heck in Fallout 3 if you went right to your dad you could bypasse a huge chunk of the story, and you weren't walled in by high level mobs the way you are in Fallout New Vegas.

I see some of the Vegas inspirations with the art of the town. Also we need Todd Howards opinion on New Vegas, still dying to know what he thinks of the game.

One of the most important things in RPGs is who is writing it. There is no point saying "the writing should be good" -- it all depends on who you actually hire, and it is unfortunately a rare talent. A bad writer won't become a good one by just "not being afraid to be dark" for example. So it is kind of a crap shoot.

Apart from that, one good thing about New Vegas was mechanics that fleshed out the survival side a bit. It makes things a little more complicated but it adds a lot of immersion. That is one thing that you can fix quite easily.

He already expressed his opinion on New Vegas when a journalist asked him about the possibility of Obsidian making another Fallout game in the future. He thought it was great.

PLEASE! Let them make one. I like Fallout, but I don't like it Bethesda style. It lacks... intellect.

Did it?

I mean Hunger, Exhaustion, thirst were just like slow ticking radiation and never felt really oppressive unless you used Mods.

And the whole crafting seemed like an awesome idea but in reality I personally thought it took to much effort for minimal results and it was just easier to ignore it because armor/ammo and food were easier to obtain normally.

Both games had a maze. In F3 you normally didn't get into it until mid-game and it had physical walls. In NV the maze had to be negotiated at the beginning of the game and the walls were virtual (made up of mid and end game mobs). The only real difference was when you had to negotiate the maze and how complex it was (Fallout NV had the very simple maze).

For crafting systems we shouldn't be looking at past fallouts, we should be looking at Skyrim. They did a pretty good job with that crafting system and hopefully there will be something akin to it. Garages you can stop by to make new gear or something.. (also hope there's more armor sets.. and pieces of armor to cobble together.) I do hope there's a survival mode even if it doesn't really add that much to gameplay. Why have all that fun food in the game if there's simply no reason to eat it.?

Id love a viable crafting system, make ammo and supplies scarce enough and crafting components accessible.

Make craftable armor that you can make before better armor becomes available and making crafting weapons/armor viable past the start of the game.

Id like to see thirst, hunger, and radiation all play stronger roles.

But people have rose-colored glasses on thinking that New Vegas actually did these things well.

I would damn well hope so. NV was a step in the right direction, back to the old fallout games. We will never go all the way back to what the series was, but it's an opurtunitybto go back to its roots and to become a proper RPG, as opposed to the theme park sandboxes Bethesda usually do.

I'd love to see multiple paths like New Vegas, maybe even a bit more. That being said, Bethesda has never made what I would consider to be linear games. They are masters of the sandbox style.

You know Fallout: APNRPG had no crafting right?

If you had a canteen you could avoid dehydration and that was it.

Fallout 3 is truer to the original Fallout then New Vegas was.

Look people, we have a comedian here.

Or not, Fallout New Vegas is much closer to the pop-culture stuffed Fallout 2 that railroaded you through a certain path, going right to San Fran was as easy as going right to New Vegas, you could if you rand from all of the end game units.

Fallout APNRPG is much smaller and bleaker, and you could go anywhere minus a few zones from the beginning with out getting insta gibbed by high level mobs.

That's not what defines a Fallout. It's the plot, dialogue, general storytelling, NPCs, etc. Pretty much everything in which Fallout 3 failed and New Vegas did right.