3/10, a major disappointment

I don't particularly like killing stuff, though it is fun to stomp people with my jetpack power armor. The only other shooter games I have played in the past 3 years were Mass Effect 2 and 3.

I really enjoyed the story to Fallout 4 far more than any other Fallout Title I have played (which is all of them besides Fallout 2 and the burned title). It was what I like from an RPG game. There are parts of the interactive dialogue system that I look at and think I can do better, but you will never hear me complain about those areas, I will simply make my mod and prove it. Whining never got anyone anywhere.

The true test of the game is "How much do I want to play it, as is?" I've put in 355 hours so far, so I guess that means I MUST like the game quite a bit. But having said that, the game has an ENORMOUS amount of room for improvement... which I am sure BGS will get around to doing.... eventually. (Until the devs get bored of doing FO4 stuff and switch back to doing TES 6.)

I don't agree with the rank you gave it but I agree with this statement.

The world is great because it makes sense. The developers listened to a lot of what people were saying on these forums. I didn't expect some of the references to the West Coast and Tactics which were great.

But on the other hand there were so many wasted locations such as the Combat Zone and no reputation system which made things seem very odd at times. An example of how odd it got. I was working with the Brotherhood, The Institute and the Rail Road but had yet to officially take a side. I agreed to help the Brotherhood attack the a location. I get there and there is a big battle between the three groups and I am just standing there. I shoot people from all three groups and not one of them turns hostile on me.

The dialogue is limited, the quests are limited. If you remove the quests to help settlements and get things for various people, there aren't that many quests.

I was helping the Institute and Brotherhood right up till you have to pick a side. I was helping the Institute in hopes I would learn more from them, as to why they are doing the things they do. But I decided to join the Brotherhood and take out the Institute. I ran around looking for my son to see what he had to say about my attacking the place... but all he did when I found him was run from me like a chump. Say something! is all I could think.

Anyways this is kind of a rambling thing here because I just finished the game tonight and I have a strange feeling I haven't felt while playing Fallout. And it is the feeling of "why bother replaying this?"

I don't like the Rail Road and I don't care about the Institute so I don't feel the urge to replay the game to learn their story. And after about 156 hours of playing the game I feel a decent size chunk of the game was just building settlements and taking care of them.

As for actual rank.. around six I guess.

8 out of 10 it' not perfect but it's sure a blast to play and it's a lot more stable than it's predecessors

I'm not voting until I have finished the game with 1st play through... only on lvl 16 atm, but one thing stands out the most is the duplication of PC controls with keyboard mapping... default setup is only OK imo except for equipping of mines and grenades. I dislike with a passion the timing interval for throwing grenades... seems my character has to cop some fire from enemies before the silly things can be dispersed in enemies direction... grrrrrrr!

Good list I like several of those too. But I would be unable to come up with a ranking for the games I have enjoyed the most in life, I don't even know how to measure the enjoyment from one game to the other exactly. So I mostly talk to the ones I remember the most, which are usually the most popular ones, I even forget some of my favorite games sometimes because I don't see them being mentioned everywhere.

That is a good point! It is very hard to rate games because they are so different. The only one I am 100% sure on is Morrowind being my favorite of all time. It was my first real massive open world sandbox where anything was possible. It was the most mystical and glorious thing I ever played. I'm sure nostalgia and my age at the time factors in but it was amazing.

I had the same feeling. It just isn't "fallout". I never liked the "oblivion with guns" thing that people said about FO 3, but this is a worse version of Skyrim(you can join more groups in Skyrim than FO 4 and do more varying stuff) with guns. I haven't even had the energy to finish it, and I already have the feeling(on two characters PS 4 and PC) there is no reason to replay it. I quit playing the PS 4 version because of a bug which I avoided on PC. I know the outcome of the quests, character build isn't going to change anything, and do I want to see the 5-10% of the game that different joining another group? Not really.

It isn't as 'Fallout' as other Fallout titles because it is simply better.

6/10 game.

4/10 Fallout game.

Not a fan of number scores, but here are the issues that I have with the game that keep me from ranking it higher than a 7 which is above average in my book. For a AAA 60$ game, (that was super hyped too) I expect better than above average.



-What we gain from quick looting, we lose in other aspects of http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1575734-such-intuitive-inventory-management/



-Dialogue feels stiff in the choice department.



Option wise, you basically get Yes/No, Inquisitive, Snarky, and Mean. Also I feel as if your dialogue choices don't matter all that much. For example, in a scenario early on in the game, you help out a group of people fight off some feral ghouls. One of the people in the group is a jerk to you, at the time I figured it was because I used a speech check to have them hire me and he thought I was a lowly merc and extorting their situation for caps. Fair enough. But when I reloaded the save and just helped them out kindness of my heart, he's still a jerk to me. the way his character is, it's justified to be a bit paranoid, but given that I did nothing morally ambiguous in the second run, he should not be showing the same amount of his disdain for the PC as the first one.

The second example is a very minor spoiler so I hope I won't get in trouble for this but there is a scripted scene where one guy accuses his brother of being a _____, while pointing a gun at him. If left to it's own devices a guard steps in and blows his brains out before he shoots is brother. If I try to step in, I get a "This character is busy" or something like that and the same outcome happens. I reload and try to shoot the gun out of the offenders hand to disarm him so at least he can be pacified by the guards non lethally. Nope. Apparently VATS can't target an enemies weapon in fallout 4. (Why?). Trying to cripple his arm only makes him and the settlement hostile. I have yet to try pick pocketing his gun off of him, or using the intimidation perk to diffuse the situation, but it's very unlikely that the PC would have the required skills considering you encounter that event fairly early in the game.



I feel as if the game is railroading me, like the best way I can describe it, is "http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ButThouMust



Also another complaint about the dialogue is that other than charisma, character stats don't affect your options all that much. I have yet to see an intelligence check, perception check, and so on. I loved in the previous titles a low intelligence character would give hulk speak like strong, and a high intelligence character would express his gratuitous amount of verbosity. In NV, there was a mission where you had to interrogate a captured legionnaire to get him to spill the beans on some important information. Because I had high intelligence, I began to tell him that I was a legion spy that came to kill him because of his dishonor, and sold it when I started quoting the laws of those under Ceaser's rule in fluent Latin. Do you know how badass a scene like that could be with a voiced protagonist? I don't think a voiced protagonist for fallout is bad, but currently feel like it was wasted potential. So I guess someone is going to say: "Well recording all of the possible inflections your PC can have is an absurd demand, it would be too expensive to record three or more versions of a line the protagonist will use in a certain situations.



My reply is, that I loved fallout for how you can pretty much be how you want to be in the game, make the choices and say the things you would say if you were in their shoes. And while the voiced protagonist has some upsides, such as better and more natural conversations, and that he gets vocally disinterested when skipping dialogue, "Yeah" *click* "Uh-huh" *click* "Sure" is hilarious, I think we lost a little something when it comes to player choice.

Personally I give it a 9.5/10! The only things missing are more structure/building types for settlements and the R91 Assault Rifle and the Chinese Assault Rifle!!!

Other than that, one heck of a game!

8/10 with plenty of room to grow.

I wanted to avoid saying this but I agree. I have 3 characters and don't do much in terms of the MQ after going to the glowing sea. The story just isn't interesting enough to keep me interested to see what happens.

I also agree this games feels too much like Skyrim.

9

[RANT Alert]I've had such a blast playing Fallout 4 I've been itching to rave about it for a while - and then someone made this thread [/RANT Alert]

Combat is massively improved. It's not perfect, but it's the improvement that matters. I mean, skirmishers that skirmish when the situation calls for it and stealth mechanics which favour sprinting at the right time over trying to duck-walk in front of everyone (as if that'd work) represent a huge improvement over what I've seen in previous Fallout versions. I'd like to point out that it's also possible for combat to be too good. Arma III simply terrifies me - which is why I don't play it that often.

In any case, the need to scoot once you shoot had been very nicely portrayed, thank you very much

Bonus points for innovation in implementing randomly dynamic environments. I don't know if gamesas actually took a shot at a dynamic navmesh system but the fact that the player can make persistent alterations to environments which remain rudimentarily navigable by NPCs is an example of the kind of innovation which, in this day and age, more than makes up for any shortcomings in tactical systems (i.e. first person combat). While we're on the subject, much as I enjoy a seriously heavy and deadly incursion into Gunner or Greenskin territories, I just love how I can set up a settlement to pretty much take care of business if the gunners or the greenskins come hawking their wares when my attention is really on other things. It's not how much firepower or "defence" rating that counts, here, it's all in how you set up your firezones relative to where the hostiles like to come in (and it's also about understanding that the point of a fortress is not the impossible dream of keeping hostiles out but the much more practical chore of corralling them into a series of killing zones where they can be rendered, ah, "non-hostile").

I don't find the landscape cluttered. However, there is a seemingly related problem with what might be an excessive level of rendered detail. I don't know whether this is because the rendered detail conforms to underlying patterns that are processed unconsciously (thereby loading up the perception) or because it exceeds the amount of detail we see in real life - but difficulties with peripheral focus at the end of a very active session when I don't have this problem doing very visually active real life activities (like driving a car for 14 hours straight) seems to suggest that something might be not quite right with something to do with in-game detail. Any comments from, a medical or optometry perspective might be very interesting....and, if you'll excuse the pun, there just might be more to this than meets the eye.

Having said this, the timeline, rather than the landscape, is excessively cluttered, in my opinion. There is a serious problem with the frequency of radiant quests - particularly those originating from settlements. I've not been able to complete so much as a single independent exploration sortie (just enough wandering around to fill both my inventory and my companion's inventory and satisfy my curiosity about, maybe, 0.1 square kilometre) without this self-initiated mission/quest for discovery being interrupted by the demand to be at a settlement promptly to defend the settlement (and this isn't counting rescues and pre-emptive strikes). Moreover, I had to install a mod to force the time-sensitive announcements into a proper message-box because, really, the immersion is so good that most of those top-left messages slip past unnoticed. I'm not sure how realistic this level of operational intensity is, but I can say that it is stressful and irritating to be unable to do anything without some kind of urgent interruption - often in places you can't fast-travel back to and, by the time you get back to where you left off, there's another insistent demand to go do something-else. I fully acknowledge that this issue is a very realistic portrayal of the modern work environment but I'm not sure work is what people are looking for when they come home from a hard day and just want to lose themselves in a game world. This kind of dynamic might make a very interesting "Intense" mode - especially for the kind of people who might enjoy juggling knives and catching hornets (using only chopsticks) while doing world-class acrobatics...and chewing bubblegum at the same time. However, I think time-sensitivity on some quests would be better as a gameplay option rather than a blanket hard-coded condition. Also, time-sensitive quests, in particular, need to have a persistent place on the HUD (maybe a little list the player can move around like a stickynote) where they remain visible (at the player's option) until completed because that's similar to the way many of us tackle urgent time-sensitive assignments (even if it's as abstract as wearing an annoying constantly chaffing elastic band to remind us something needs doing).

Dialogue and quest options are, quite honestly, beyond the ken of constructive criticism unless someone can provide a reference to a purposive anolysis that can derive a general dialogue/decision-making rubric based, albeit indirectly, on the relationship between human emotions and human needs. And, yes, Maslow does touch on this but, I think, only casually so. If I missed something Maslow might have said about the formal methodology necessary to derive a rigorously consistent hierarchy of needs, I'd be very interested in a reference...

Ingame mysteries are far too infrequent.

Factions seem a little oversimplified. Real bad guys nearly always pretend to be the good guys - and also tend to be very good at pulling the wool over people's eyes. What was done with

was a brilliant depiction of this issue which, in reality, tends to be much more the rule than the exception. It is also what distinguishes the psychopath from the more easily recognizable sociopath. Having a more persistent and widespread faction with strong popular support while doing evil things behind the scenes and justifying itself every time it gets caught - now, that would really hit the reality-button nicely. The Institute aren't really a good example of this because their abuses are conducted with too little emphasis on secrecy. If anything, the Institute would qualify, eminently, as a decoy operation to divert attention away from the activities of an unnamed organisation engaged in real covert operations. Having said this, the approach to assessing the agenda of any organization is not much different to that of solving a murder mystery. You have evidence versus highly unreliable testimony and if you don't stick to the facts you eventually find yourself acting upon the wrong side. It would be good to see more of this kind of organizational-agenda mystery when dealing with factions. The Gunners had tremendous potential to play the role of an evil faction pretending to be the "good-guys" and I think this was a wasted opportunity.

Speaking of factions, I just love how Beth did the supermutants this time around.

I've been at this game for over a month, now, and that line still makes me laugh for some unfathomable reason.

Breaking new ground by combining larger scale gameplay (e.g. settlement development) with a first-person role playing game is just pure innovation given that no-one else has even tried for a combination like this. It cannot be perfect in its first release but when it comes to innovation in game design, I think the only conceivable competition in this innovative design niche is RSI and they're in a totally different variation of the fantasy genre. And, yes, there are quite a few of us who are simply sick and tired of waiting for mainstream developers to do anything with a lick of innovation to it - which is how RSI has been able to raise so much money long before even being able to release a functional Alpha.

What I disliked the most was the lack of hardcoe play and dumbing down of the player health system (instead of making it more complex and challenging). This is, by far, the biggest issue in an old-fashioned hit-point system that has been nonsensical since its inception in D&D. I mean, if your game designers know enough to depict (in ghoul models) the form of goiter complicated by asymmetrically enlarged parathyroid (which, incidentally, really does cause psychosis for quite obvious reasons) - then I think there's enough talent there to expand on the basic role of fatigue in combat and give wounding a much more profound and complex chain of effect on gameplay. Crippling is a permanent condition and it's this permanence which, I think, distinguishes crippling from wounding which is recoverable if medical treatment is administered correctly and in a timely manner by a competent person other than the injured party. This is where companion NPCs could really come into their own. Also, healing from wounds would be much more compelling if there was more passage of time involved. For example, you step on a mine and, miraculously it doesn't kill you or even permanently disable you; instead, you limp home with the assistance of your companion and depending on the medic skill level of the companion NPC, it may take a week's worth of bed rest to get back on your feet (if that skill level is very high) or it could take as long as a year before you have both feet working right. You don't have to focus on the convalescence of the player - this can be fast-timed or blacked out just like waiting or sleep. However, the most compelling aspect would be the companion's role (especially, if graphically rendered) in playing the human crutch as the player character limps home (or at least somewhere s/he can convalesce). This human crutch rendering worked nicely, if only briefly, in the "friends" system rescues portrayed in Far Cry 2. Moreover, the roles can be reversed in the converse situation where the companion character is wounded. I think that there is a lot more that can be done with radiation poisoning and disease, too. These can afford to be made much tougher and far more deadly if ignored too long.

On the subject of hitpoints and health, one of the things I really liked in Fallout 4 was the fact that venom/poison is potentially deadly. The number of times my avatar has been killed outright by some venomous attack made the tactics so much more interesting. Also, that

is the creepiest science fiction element I've seen in decades. I particularly enjoyed the first encounter. The forms similar to some found in Doctor Who's "Seeds of Doom" were very compelling for some reason.

Ingame literature is sadly absent. Readable books and newspapers to carry more lore detail would be a boon (and turn books into collectibles, of course - further deepening the game for some). And there are quite a few forms of mystery which can be couched in terms of controversy in the literature. The answer remains, as always, with physical evidence and observations but you'd be surprised how readily some people can be goaded into making leaps of faith if, say, one of the less scrupulous authors were to push the right "hot-buttons" (i.e. emotional provocation or "trolling" as it is known on the forums). At the very least, in-game literature is a wonderful opportunity to portray the depths of deceit to which propaganda descends. Once again, I think this is a missed opportunity to deepen both the game lore and the related gameplay.

So, with all this criticism, how do I still score Fallout 4 as a 9 out of 10? Well, in a nutshell (or a fruitcake - just take your pick), it breaks down like this:

Positives: 8

Negatives: 3

Innovation bonuses: +4

Total: 8-3+4=9

Overall, I've had an absolute blast playing Fallout 4 and the score I've arrived at, above, reflects my ingame experience too.

Not to me, and others. It fails as an RPG, just too much of an action game. It fails at options and choices. It fails in FO lore(we don't even get a canon ending to Replicated Man, the quest that ties FO 3 and 4 together). Doesn't have ending sliders which is like taking the opening scrolling text out of Star Wars, it has a lot of repetition, can't play evil, can't be a slaver, join a raider gang, join a merc group(which even in FO 3 could do 2 of those), can't be a mobster(even though there are at least three mob bosses in game), doesn't have any iconic Fallout ballistic weapons besides 10 mm pistol, so guns just up and vanished, no BB gun, can't play as a pacifist, smart guy, dumb guy, tough guy(all dialogue just charismatic guy), quests decided by kill x or kill y with rare instances of kill nobody. Can't do crafty things like plant explosives on people(I've tried reverse pick pocketing grenades on people and it does nothing).

But hey, on plus side Power Armor feels like PA, companions are much improved, and Silver Shroud is fun.

Maybe DLC can improve the score. I would have given vanilla FONV a 7-8 out of 10(a 8.5/9 if I could have just left the Mojave, the cut ending), but the DLC pushed it up to 9/9.5, simply the best DLCs I ever played. But, FO 4 would need some pretty darn awesome DLCs to do this.

I used to criticize BGS for FO 3, yet at the same time, excuse them for it being their "First FO game", and felt that they could improve and actually make a good Fallout game, that there were some signs in FO 3 they could do this(tenpenny towers quest, joining slavers and enslaving people). Now, I would say there is a great chance I will not purchase the next BGS FO game.

This bit, I agree to a point.

Yes,

you can play evil and rack up some crime in your stats and someone will, no-doubt, cook up a slavery mod to bridge one of the gaps here

but

any restrictions on which factions you can or can't join seem innappropriate, to me, for a Role Playing Game. This really goes back to the point I made about the Gunner's lost potential as fake good-guys to lead the unquestioning character astray...just like it's done in real life.

the only "evil" you can play is the psychopath evil route or a thief. I don't view being a mass murderer as really "playing" evil, unless the game has a group(like DB) that makes murder an actual aspect of the game. And sure, you can tell people "no" about as evil as your dialogue can get, but at this point in time they just walk away from you and sometimes say something rude back, but then you just can't do quests, and the game doesn't have many replacement evil quests, if any.

Gunners is Talon Company 2.0, and when a game company doesn't make improvements in this regard(same old same old) they can expect me to dock them in score.

Also, if a mod has to create it from scratch, instead of improve it(slavers), then I dock it points.

To put it simply, the Fallout franchise needed a change. Fallout 1 and 2 appealed to a very small niche market and the company went bankrupt as a result.

It was Bethesda that made Fallout a household name, not Black isle. Outside the few hardcoe nuts, nobody knows or cares what Fallout 1 and 2 are, however, I meet people who are ballroom dancing instructors or bicycle technicians or massage therapists that tell me Fallout 3 is their favorite videogame ever. Bethesda was the company that brought Fallout to the world, not just to the basemant nerds. Black Isle failed miserably in that regard, and they are no longer a studio as a result.

I totally respect you right to stay stuck in 1997 when it was considered overkill to have more than 500mb of ram in your computer... But for the rest of us, we want to move forward, we want a multi-media experience that includes voice acting, animations, gameplay, music, and highly detailed graphics. We want to usher in a new age of storytelling that our parents and grandparent could have never dreamed of.

Bethesda, unlike Obsidian has the desire to be a stand alone studio, a company that doesn't have to rely on the charity of kickstarters or coat tailing off franchises in the way Obsidian rode on the success of Fallout 3, KOTOR, or even the South Park franchise. They actually have some self respect and want to make their own way in the very brutal and volatile economy that the videogame industry has become. Obsidian is nothing but a joke, a kite flowing in whichever direction the wind may blow at that point in time.

Bethesda is brave enough to not only define a genera, but to re-invent that genera time and time again. They are not cowards, they are the ones who set the standard and meet it time and time again. They set the path for games like 'The Witcher' and they met the challenge.

Yes, CDprojekt and Bioware can challenge Bethesda's title as king of that genera of videogame, and yes, I personally think Bioware is the best game studio out there. but that is what makes it so great. Bethesda defined a genera and is doing their best to keep making the best game they can. They don't just make another Fallout 2. which nobody in the real world ever player. they made a game that actually made an impact on the big stage.

Fallout 4 is the next logical progression, and even though it doesn't live up to being the perfect hypothetical dream videogame, it is a much better step forward than just copying the bankrupt model that the Fallout franchise they bought for a bargain price was.

Registered just for this. I don't expect much, but hopefully Beth can take these feedback into account.


I'm new to the series and fallout 4 managed to keep me crazy and sleep late for 4 solid weeks and counting. I don't care about previous fallout and their previous genre. What matters is that I find fun in this game and I'm giving it 9/10. Here's why:


Cons:

- Game bugs like no mission marker, unfinishable quests are irritating. Lost a legendary item because I had to reload.

- Some character may walk around when talking. Causing speech to fail or losing subtitle focus.

- ps4-vita remote play (post patch) requires me to restart game because I'll be unable to grab item from inventories (people, objects)

- Abernathy Farm's addiction on getting trouble is like asking to be mass-nuked (*)

- Preston is such a ballbuster. Giving buggy settlement quests and crap which makes me avoiding him

- Random mob is underleveled. Perhaps at least they should be 10 levels behind us (**)


Pros:

- Focus on single player and game's packed up since the beginning. No cut content bullcrap. Please keep this up

- Overwhelming freedom of approach. People like me appreciate this a lot

- Character creator that par-up with Saints Row's

- Random rescue tasks is very welcomed as it will keep me busy with objectives. But please take care the bugs(*)

- Respawning enemies is great. But I hope the enemies can level up too instead of staying level 1 or 9(**)

- Weapon and armor mods and their mixed variations makes my favorite game, Borderlands, looks like a big joke

- Various attack animation, including melee attacks

- Good AI which actually fight, well responsive, and challenging, but not being undefeatable psychics

- Nice tales around Boston. I believe looking-for-Shaun is just an objective to carry you around

- Thoughtful on giving us companion to be a mule

- (Best Part). Settlement customisation. This is pure Quality over Quantity. It's not just a random slap-on feature. It's actually very strong, well-done, and supportive to the part of your task, which is to create settlements. Please keep it up.


It's rare to find game like this nowadays. I'll be sure to continue my support if dev can keep it up and improve.


Looking forward to the dlc!

6/10 maybe a 7-8/10

Biggest letdown for me personally is that there is no replay value. I made numerous characters but you end up with the same story/actions only different way of killing things. Plus the lack of a raider/criminal/evil/ faction. I could go on, but most people that gave it a lower rating already pointed out those things.

7 at best, a decent game but a terrible fallout game. The game itself overall lacks proper content, has scrapped pretty much all rpg aspects. Now its more akin to far cry series than fallout series. SO 7 and thats being generous.

Sorry to have to say a 7 since I would give all of bethesdas last gen games 9's and 10's but this time the bugs really hurt and the graphics where really poor for a "next gen" game, that and the map was kinda small and the story arc was very limited, you can't do everything in this game like you could in past fallout and elder scrolls games, you seem to be locked to one path per playthrough which I really hated.

I don't think fallout 4 is going to win any goty's, bloodborne and witcher 3 did much better in graphics and open world, other devs can make bigger games and not have them be buggy so bethesda really needs to step up or their next game or it will be like a 5 or 4/10...

I'm not stuck in 1997, I fully understand progression in technology. But, Fallout is a LOT more than better graphics, gameplay, music, animations, and full voice acting(which is all a given that SHOULD progress game to game and 20 years later).

The rest of your hate filled post towards Interplay, Black Isle, and Obsidian also have nothing to do with what makes a Fallout game(and interplay didn't go belly up because of Fallout, that is for sure). If you paid even the slightest attention to my post, I gave vanilla FONV a 7-8 score, the only thing that saved it for me was the DLC, which were excellent, the worst of which imo was honest hearts which is saved by Joshua Graham and the Survivor story only.

FO 4 is just not a good Fallout game, and it is barely an RPG, it is a straight up action game, and if the only argument you can come up with is Obsidian/Black Isle svcks to defend FO 4, then you're barking up the wrong tree, I'm a fan of the franchise and crpgs, not of a particular company there, bub. You should address the issues I actually have with the game, which you didn't do once, instead of bashing companies I can care less about(don't care about Bioware or CDprojekt either. I like good products, regardless who made it).