The truth about Fallout 4

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So, as others have pointed out, there really aren't any bad reviews for Fallout 4.

And, I can see why. For the most part Fallout 4 is a really good open world game. I'm sure I'll lose many hours playing it.

HOWEVER, that's not the whole story...

As far as I can see, Fallout 4 is less a Fallout game and more like post nuclear Skyrim with LESS character building. On the plus side, I like settlement building. I like the fact that scavenging everything is important. I like the fact that there are just a few types of guns, but they are HIGHLY moddable. I lie that dogmeat is fairly useful in combat and I don't mind that he (and other companions) are unkillable. Let's face it, most of us would reload if we lost a companion anyway...
Fallout 4 is a good, fun, open world/sandbox adventure game.

I don't like the loss of the skill/perk/SPECIAL/karma system. The new system really limits your ability to make unique characters. You're pretty much stuck with a generic Jack/Jill of all trades.

I also HATE the loss of Damage Threshold from New Vegas. This makes combat a lot less complex. I hate the nerfed monsters. Deathclaws should make you crap your pants and RUN until you are level 20 or so...

Fallout 4 is a TERRIBLE RPG because of its lack of character and skill development. It's also seems to be a TERRIBLE Fallout game in that you aren't really a free moral agent and your actions don't seem to ever have unintended consequences (that's what Fallout really meant in the original games, kids).

Anyway, that's my take as an old school fan who has played ALL 5 games (1, 2, and NV several times).


What do you guys thnk?

Last edited by GoonSquad on 15 Nov 2015, 1:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think you summed it up nicely and I agree with all the points you brought up.

It really depends on what you expect from it and what you compare it to.

If you compare it to the first two games in the series, you're in for a massive disappointment. From 3 and onwards, the series has been established as more casual. But due to the clunky gamebryo engine, it never succeeds as an action game either. Mechanics is much better now in FO4, but there's still "moon gravity" when you jump and input delay that makes the game feel awkward and clunky mechanically.

If the response was better, it would probably succeed more as an action game, but due to Bethesda insisting on still using gamebryo, you're not going to get a good shooter either but some weird half-baked hybrid that doesn't really succeed at anything except having a lot of content. And content isn't much worth if it doesn't play well.

The AI is very easy to exploit and makes for kiting, i.e sneak attack and go hide behind a rock nearby and wait for the dumb enemies to return to their post. They never chase you or dynamically try to map out where you could be, so it's very easy to exploit. This makes the game very easy if you run a VATS/sneak character like I do so you have lots of VATS points plus 3.5x sneak attack damage. I'm not even level 20 and I can easily take down just about any enemy I encounter without breaking a sweat.

It's entertaining to some extent, but again, if it's good or bad according to you depends on what you expect from it.

A lot of the younger gamers without the baggage of the first games don't have the same references and their standards will be lower.

I keep hearing about how bad the game engine is. Look they took years and years making and have since spent years and years tweaking it, so you want them to start over fresh and expect it to be a better engine. I bet you its be a far worse engine and then people would be pissed and tell them to go back to this one. I've never really had problems with the fallout games. Mean there's been a few like how in Vegas how I had to wear a certain hat to go into the strip or it'd crash but over all they've run good.

I've actually came across some people saying the dialog wheel is realistic...
All I can say is, "HATE NEWSPAPERS!"
The only fun I'm really having is the settlement stuff, as somebody whose played all the Fallout games it's not as if I was expecting it to be good anyway... but Cabot House made me accept the death of Fallout. That was awful.
If this was marketed as some fps adventure sandbox game without pretending it's a fallout game I might've said it's good, but the fact they pretend it's a solid rpg experience makes me done with Bethesda all together.

I was conflicted between fallout 4 and hAlo 5 but I think I better stick to halo.

Wasteland 2 and Stalker Call of Pripyat handle survival elements better than this game, even Metro 2033 is better in that aspect. Fallout NV implemented survival elements far better and the factions are better.

In the first Fallout, I tried keeping Dogmeat alive for as long as I could, reloading saves...but eventually, I got tired of him running after bandits and getting himself killed, so I gave up and buried him (figuratively speaking).

I don't understand Bethesda's obsession with invulnerable NPCs. If players want to go berzerk and kill important characters and/or children, either punish them, or force them to live with their mistakes. Making them unkillable just breaks the suspension of disbelief.



I will probably never play FO3 or 4, so it doesn't really matter what I think =) I wouldn't mind trying NV, though.

I recently replayed New Vegas in anticipation of the launch of 4, and just as I feared, most of what made NV great has been lost, especially the amount of choices you could make in even the simplest quests, let alone the ways you could play everyone against each other during the end game. Don't get me wrong, I'm having a ton of fun with the game, I just miss that free agent feel that NV had, along with the grittier stories and the attention to detail regarding the characters and factions. Caesar's history alone went back 30+ years explaining where he came from, how he came to power, why he does the horrible things he does, etc, and when you finally actually meet him, you can kill him, work for him, pretend to work for him and stab him in the back, even "accidentally" kill him during a botched surgery and talk his goons into thinking it wasn't you fault, and that's all just one character. I haven't seen anything like that kind of detail in FO4 yet, and I don't think I will. Hopefully they'll subcontract another semi-sequel out to Interplay...

Would be nice if the contract didn't stipulate that they had to use Bethesda's buggy engine, though.

I'll live with the engine if it comes with good writing, I mean I've played NV many times and it's a far buggier and uglier engine, even for it's day, but I love the underlying game enough to look past that. Man, just thinking about it makes me want to come up with some new creative and ugly way to kill Caesar, Cook-Cook, that serial killer that talks like Ned Flanders, the slavers in the old motel, snipe some fiends... Also, launching Caesar out of the game by packing his throne full of C4 that you smuggled past his guards never gets old, especially since he's voiced by John Doman, aka Rawls from The Wire.

Yeah, it would be VERY nice if they let obsidian/inexile do another game.

I'd love to see Fallout 2 converted/adapted to the Fallout 4 engine.

In the meantime anyone who needs a more traditional falout experience can always play Wasteland 2--lots of hard choices and unintended consequences there...

Yeah, but imagine if you didn't have to look past the buggy and ugly engine, because they used one that's much better =)

I really don't get why you think a new engine made by the same people would be any better then the one they've been tweeking and working towards getting right for years. I think the new one will likely be buggier.

Also I've come to realize they gave up weapons, armor, ammo, options in exchange to make everything in the world scrapable. I wish they hadn't. I really liked nv's gun options. I could get my gun then scrap ammo and make hollow point ammo for it. You had 9mm,10mm,5mm,5.56,.50,45-70,44,308

Also they've totally ruined the hunting rifle. It's so stupidly slow to cycle the bolt. Excuse me fallout , but who cocks their rifle in a 45 degree then awkwardly pulls the bolt back. You jus lift head and cycle it. It's made it totally useless in non long distant shooting. And no big 50 cal simiauto this time around I always used the hunting rifle as my first gun in the past games but not this time. Also why are 90% of rifles in the game have their stocks cut off, did some group go around hacking all rifles they could find pre war 0.o

Also if pipe guns are hand crafter after the war from trash why do you find them in safes lock and unopened since prewar o.0

Well yeah, in a perfect world, but in this one, Bethesda has done a lot of heavy lifting to produce an imperfect but still enjoyable game, I'd just like to see what some talented writer/developers could do with it, since that's much more likely than Obsidian building a game from scratch. Like I said, I was pretty happy with the product of the last such collaboration, and the turnaround time was relatively quick too.

NV had it's share of those too, like the Boomer base that no one has gotten on or off of in decades, and yet accepts NCR money that they have no way of using or even of knowing what it is.

Not "the same people", I'm talking about Oblivion. I couldn't care less what engines Bethesda use.

Imagine if they had free reigns to do their own engine (or license one out). I know most Fallout fans aren't into turn-based stuff, but it would be awesome to see a new top-down isometric game like the old ones.