Fallout 4

I should really give Fallout 4 another go, especially as I bought the GOTY upgrade with all expansions about a year ago.

Just didn't find it very engaging. Loved 3, thought New Vegas was okay (better writing and characters, just didn't dig the atmosphere as much and didn't enjoy the world as much), but 4 had neither the atmosphere *or* writing.

*nostalgic feeling about that RPS review of fnv*


Is Fallout 4 improved by expansions?

Haven't played it myself but I'm sure it's bound to be free on epic store at some point.


F2 was my favourite game as teenager. Would love it to be redone for modern audience by keeping the design choices of old.

They should use wasteland 3 engine for example. Keeping it turn base.

I think FO4, like FO3, is a pretty bad Fallout game.

It might be a good game for what it is! But what it is... is not something I'm all that interested in. Maybe I'd feel differently if I liked Bethesda games more, but I don't.

I like this summary. I did enjoy replaying Fallout 3 earlier in the year but a lot of that comes down to the Fallout universe being fun and interesting and nostalgia. There's very little to appreciate from a craft perspective, whether that's down to tools or ability. I like the blank slate and that initial feeling of wanderlust but once that wears off, my enjoyment starts to wane. I got as far as reaching the Brotherhood, getting some power armour, had all the stats I wanted more or less maxed (probably not far off max level) but didn't have any desire to carry on after that

You should just play Doom. You get to kill loads of shit in that, no talking

FO4 is a pretty mediocre action game wearing a Fallout skin. At least 3 tried to be an RPG.

I've installed F04 again so that I could try the FROST mod out but have got tied up playing stalker instead as it just seems more fun.

I want my wasteland to actually be barren because anything not nailed down has already been looted. Sure there isn't much in the way if voiced dialog but I play it for exploration, atmosphere and emergent wierdness not chatting with Steve the local glowing feral leper decked out in his tux

1 is still the best in the series by far. 2 was decent enough but a little sillier. I have yet to properly play 4 and don't even own 76 though.

The thing with Bethesda games is that they can be played in so many different ways, appealing to different sorts of players who want very different things from their games, that there can hardly be any consensus in the player base. For example, some players love VATS while personally I don't understand why anyone would ever want to use that. Some like the base building, I don't give a shit. Some like survival stuff like eating and drinking, I can't be bothered and am very happy with zero weight ammo.

I lean towards the action/shooter side of things, which is why I prefer FO4 to 3. Compared to dedicated shooters FO4's action is not good, but compared to other RPGs it's very good actually. There seems to be some unwritten rule that RPGs must be shit at action, and in light of that I guess I should be glad that I have FO4 the way it is--even if it falls short of the action of ancient shooters like Counter-Strike.

The point was brought up that I could just play Doom instead, and purely in terms of action, yeah totally. But I also like the RPG parts, the exploration, the looting, collecting and recycling rubbish at my little base, crafting better weapons and armour, changing the game through myriads of fun perks (among my favourites the ability to incite enemies against each other). Doom doesn't give me that.

And through mods I can improve the game, notably by getting better weapons. If it's just a matter of changing a few stats, I can even just make the mod I want myself. This is one thing I think should never be underestimated: mod support in Bethesda games is fucking amazing. No matter how much you hate everything else about them, you have to give them credit for that.

But then there's always a lot of issues with their games, one of the worst imo being writing of characters and dialogue. Especially in FO4 it feels so disconnected it feels like it's written by an AI. As in, an algorithm was tasked to fill the game with content but it didn't have any understanding of any of it meaning anything. It feels downright bizarre at times, like it's got some of the most detached and meaningless writing I've ever seen in a game. In almost any other game, even if it's written badly, I can usually figure out what the author was trying to do and roll with it--in FO4 I often can't even figure out what the author was trying to do other than fill the game with random shit.

Somehow it's worse than Skyrim. That wasn't exactly a masterpiece of character/dialogue writing, but it did well enough to be serviceable. As in, you know they're kind of brainless video game NPCs, but they get the job done. In FO4, A) they try to give NPCs more personality but it falls flat on its nose because all of it is so flat and dumb. B) adding more facial detail actually hurts in this case: Skyrim's low-poly NPCs let your brain fill in the gaps, FO4 fills the gaps with awful-looking garbage. PS4-era FO4 characters look worse than PS3-era Skyrim characters--but to be fair, Bethesda is not alone in this, Mass Effect 1 also had better looking characters than Andromeda. C) and then FO4 NPCs actually behave less naturally than Skyrim's: they constantly turn their backs to you during dialogue or start wandering around, while in Skyrim they actually behave more like real people. Skyrim had simplistic NPCs, which is still better than the broken NPCs of FO4.

Sorry for rambling, I guess my bottom line is FO4 is great and it's also shit.

Anyone playing this? I'm still dipping in and out, mainly just going from building to building looking for some mindless violence, I haven't bothered with any of the missions for weeks, think I've only bumped into two traders so haven't done any trading at all, there seems little point anyway, I did some dull base building in the beginning but left that well alone, I might dip back into the missions now I'm pretty invincible and I've been using the Vats less and less, what does annoys me is if you've already explored a building, why can't they make it obvious you've previously entered it? Curse my memory.

I'm playing through Fallout 4 for the first time.
I'm quite enjoying it, mostly because I went to Boston back in May so I'm enjoying spotting the notable locations like Fenway Park, Boston Common, North End Church, Faneuil Hall etc.
Base building is a bit take it or leave it. Youtube vids would suggest that you can use it to generate caps, but I'm not convinced that I need them.
I've done the Minutemen questline, and started both Brotherhood of Steel and Railroad. Working on a stealth pistol build.

Isn't that just a regular american suburb?

Be interesting to see how they incorporate all the bugs and glitches into a TV show format

Wonder if the TV show will get people buying the game like Last Of Us did. I personally can’t wait to reinstall the game on a whim, spend an hour fiddling with mods, play the game for 10 minutes and then remember why I stopped playing it.