henke on 16/11/2015 at 06:46

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As a counterpoint to the complain-o-video, here's 9 things that have been improved!

[video=youtube;ul8TMyDZ2SM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul8TMyDZ2SM[/video]

Ok, several of these I don't really care about(VANS, Hud color), but several are welcome improvements indeed(containers, sprinting, melee/throwable button, weapons modding, no weapon degradation). I haven't tried base building enough to really have an opinion about it yet.

Jason Moyer on 16/11/2015 at 09:53

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I'm finding FO4 is a pretty good game so far despite not really feeling like a Fallout game whatsoever. In other words, it's a lot like FO3. I suspect that the last game in the series actually feeling like a Fallout game may have twisted people's expectations somewhat. FO4 is like every other Bethsoft game, you're not going to get much world or narrative interactivity and many design decisions will make you scratch your head but it also has the best environmental design and environmental storytelling of anything they've done. It seems like most of their efforts went into making the world more enjoyable to explore, which probably makes sense given that's always been the strongest point of their games.

Jason Moyer on 16/11/2015 at 10:19

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I dunno how far into the main quest I am, but the writing seems ok so far. The usual lack of having any influence over what's happening (although it's severly hinting that there will be some OMG WHICH FACTION WILL YOU CHOOSE!!!!! aspect later on) but...well, I dunno. The main quest missions have been alright, I'm not sure if that's down to simply having good mission design in terms of gameplay or if there's something special going on with the writing. Something new that probably ties into that is that there's a lot of NOLF style ambient dialog now, with enemies in different areas having scripted conversations that you're clearly meant to listen to while you're crouched in a corner somewhere. The plot doesn't really strike me as being any different/better than Skyrim, and it's almost an inverse telling of FO3's story.

I'd say the biggest thing they improved on in FO4 is the exploration aspect. The world feels bigger and more dense than anything they've done before, to the point where I'm basically just following roads and completing quests instead of stopping everywhere and exploring like I would in Oblivion or FO3 because there's just so much there. And after 30 or so hours, I haven't started to get "wow, I've seen this tileset/level layout 50 times already" fatigue.

Ostriig on 16/11/2015 at 14:55

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Free tip number one, disable autosave on anything. Fo4 doesn't have a couple of autosave slots that it cycles through, it makes a new save each time, so unless you want your savegames folder to balloon up just come to terms with using Quicksave.

Free tip number two, if the PipBoy interface seems to small, right-click. It will zoom it in and it will stay that way. Doesn't do anything for screen estate, but there you are.

Ok, some more impressions, long form:

- Gunplay and movement are much more solid than before. Movement does suffer somewhat in third person, while your weapon's put away, but overall it's pretty good and a definite step up from Fo3. Also, you can finally jump onto stuff! At long last, Beth have fixed a bug that's been hounding their games since Oblivion - it used to be that if you were colliding with an object you couldn't jump onto it, just up, and you'd have to step back and then jump on. No more, all good. Also, you can jump from sprinting, which was woefully missing in Skyrim.

- Combat balance, however, suffers. Twenty hours in and so many enemies still feel like they take a million bullets to the noggin before they have the good sense to expire. It's very unsatisfying in this respect, I wanted to play on Hard, so that it'd put more pressure on using my resources, but every time I try I end up dropping back down to Normal as I just can't be arsed spending a half hour on each dull raider encounter.

Also, grenades. Jesus, these guys have surgical precision in lobbing the little buggers. This one time I tried to take a Supermutant patrol, five of 'em and at least two were packing Molotovs and Frag Grenades. I actually enjoy games that throw encounters at you that you may have to flee from, which, after several attempts I did end up doing, it taps into my STALKER nostalgia, but Phatose is right... stupidly high accuracy.

Combat AI is generally better all across the board. Raiders are using cover nicely.

- Character models may be the best Beth have put up so far, but they're still more awkward and plasticky than the competition. Environmental assets are generally okay, but they won't knock your socks off.

- But! The art direction is great, and makes up for the asset quality well, in my opinion. The wasteland sinks into various hues and weather conditions, and outfits and character designs run the range from mundane to outlandish. Power Armour is pretty sweet. And when you clamber up to an observation point, Bethesda's true to form with impressive vistas.

I do miss gun holsters, though.

- "Shaun, who?" I like the idea of having a voiced protagonist, but they haven't quite pulled it off right. Games like these will always have a hint of playing loose with the plot - you have a great, urgent thing to attend to, but you can break off and do other things. Which I'm completely in favour of, because I like for games like these to have a strong plot thread that I can come back to when the sense of purpose erodes, but I also want to be free to explore and do unrelated stuff.

The catch is that, if you're gonna have the PC voiced in this context, you need to be careful how you direct that acting. JC Denton, Adam Jensen, Geralt of Rivia... they work well because they're written as stoic types, even spoken and a tad more emotionally reserved. It's easy for the player to imagine the character's thoughts behind restrained and distrusting facade. Gets a little trickier with less defined characters, like in Dragon Age: Inquisition, but the devs can provide for a wider array of playable personalities as long as the scope of the plot is large enough to accommodate it.

But this doesn't work for the plot of Fallout 4, at least not in the beginning. I'm going to spoil the first fifteen minutes of the game here, if that's a problem just skip to the next paragraph, but... your character's just emerged into a completely alien world of devastation and savagery, witnessed the death of their spouse and the kidnapping of their only child and when the people they just saved push their luck and ask to go also help some other people the protagonist doesn't know over in Bumsville Nowhere, their answer is... a very warm and perky "I'd be glad to help?"

This item's gotten a bit long and rambly, but yeah, point is that some of the line performances feel out of touch with the context they're delivered in within the stage of the game. I'd get it if it were later on, but we get quite a bit of this in threads at the onset of the game, where the protagonist comes across as inconsistently comfortable with their situation and outright casual about their missing spawn.

- Ghouls are creepy. Really creepy. Job well done.

- I've only used Dogmeat as a companion so far, and I like what the crew have done with him. I understand and agree with hardcore players that wanted there to be an option to make him mortal, but it's an option I'd have never used, getting in the line of fire is a common occurrence. Elizabeth never did that. But then again, Elizabeth didn't rush enemies to chomp onto their ankles and drag them to the ground. Overall, it works pretty well, Dogmeat can hold off some aggro and effectively pin down one enemy at a time while you take potshots from farther away. There's no way to fine tune his general behaviour, but I haven't missed it so far, he seems to be fine with keeping up and will automatically sneak with you. And he finds stuff for you. And he's never seen a mudcrab.

My main gripe with the dog is that he can get in the way in tight spaces. A behaviour to make him scamper out of the way when you collide with him, or reducing his collision bounds to the player, or both, might've helped.

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In a way, this is a return to the "glorious" days of Oblivion... I'm miffed that like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and now Fallout 4, can't seem to learn from Deus Ex 3, which displayed the full line of dialogue when you hovered over one of the shortened options on the dialogue UI. Just make it double tap on consoles. But everyone seems to be more concerned with getting text off the screen these days.

Hey, at least it doesn't do like DA:I did, where selecting "I don't know what to say..." turns into "Well, shit."

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I'm actually kind of fine with it. It's a departure from the classical D&D split of attributes, passive skills and active feats, but other games have done it well too. Deus Ex did away with attributes, kept just the latter two, and recently The Witcher 3 combined those into a single table with a single resource pool. Which Fallout 4 is also doing with its skills and feats perks, while keeping the SPECIAL attributes. Less granularity, but often that was redundant in Fallout 3, see Lockpick 49.


- Yeah, I would agree that the game is a bit lighter on the RPG choices and stuff. So far. There's a lot more going on once you get to Diamond City, but still feels superficial and railroady. Yes / No / [Persuade] More money / Lolwut? Last night I actually had a "but thou must" moment with Piper, where I literally tried each of the other three options on screen until I had no other recourse than to take the "correct" choice. Not looking good.

- Getting more used to the UI doesn't make it any less atrocious. And I'm constantly bumping into new grievances, large and small. Constant inventory micromanagement doesn't make it any better. At least gotta give Beth props for making all the buttons mouse-clickable on PC. I'm looking at you, Gwent match summary "Close" button.

- Oh, and it doesn't rain beneath roofs anymore. I checked.


All in all, I'm enjoying Fallout 3++ this far in, in spite of its issues.

You know, I just checked the word count, I did not intend to write this much...

Al_B on 16/11/2015 at 18:53

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Finally started playing this following an extremely protracted install time and spent about 6-7 hours on it so far. Only tinkered with the building / crafting aspect of it but once I've located reliable supplies for certain material I can see it taking up a lot of time. The user interface is dreadful as has been mentioned multiple times in this thread but I'm starting to get used to it.



Absolutely my feelings too. Fallout 3 was the same in this regard and although I've only done limited exploration I get the same vibe. It's still frustrating to come across a "you can't go this way" popup at the edge of the map but that's my only real complaint.