Fallout 4

Yillan

One of the things I dislike about the game, in addition to everything else, is that it's far too bloody magic. When did the wasteland become magic?

1. Cabot House.

Guy goes to Egypt or somewhere and somehow becomes really powerful when he gets a thing stuck on his head. His family then drink a potion he produces that means they never age.

2.

Teleportation. In and out of the

institute.

It's just cheap. And if possible, changes the universe totally. If I couldn't teleport in Skyrim, I'm not sure I should be able to in Fallout. Fast travel is different.

3.

Taking a walk through the memories of

Kellogg.

Cool idea. Well executed. Too magic. Reminded me of the dream sequences from Max Payne. In this desolate world, where a Mr Handy can't cut a cake properly, apparently the technology exists to go dancing through a dead man's brain. It's just too much. Tranquillity Lane was a cool virtual reality idea that seemed out of place, but in a really good way. This was I think an attempt at that, but just didn't work.

Now Fallout 3 had a degree of magic in it - the tree in Oasis for instance, but the back story behind that was cool and had its background in an effect of radiation and it was a throwback to one of the earlier games. FO4 seems to just introduce new things with the title, 'things that are things now and shut up'.

FO4 is lacking in imagination and charm. I agree that it's not really a proper RPG now, and in fact is a shooter with the capacity to change guns and build settlements, that once built, appear to have basically no value or function in the game. Great. It's all so samey. And I don't just mean the radiant missions - every mission. Go there, kill 20 things, find the thing, come back. The reason you did that is because I'm interested in Shakespeare. Gotcha. Cool. Repeat. Ah the reason you did that is because that thing you found will help our war effort. Super. Anything else? No that's it, but someone over there has a quest for you.

Where's the wandering around that promotes further wandering around? Whereby you'd find somewhere cool and there would be a few missions there and they'd be fun and interesting. The worst example I found was when I did the Here there be Monsters quest, and I went back to tell the boy what had happened. And he wasn't there. Disappeared. Stayed there for 20 days while I was off doing other things and then once I'd done the mission he vanished. Give me a break.

'Thanks for helping us out'. 'You're with the minutemen right?' I am level 39. I'm pretty sure I can still ask what a ghoul is, as if I've never heard of one. As said in the video above, the four option speech choice thing is crippling and lazy. I walked out of the vault and went into a town nearby. And struck up a conversation, and it was if I'd been wandering the wasteland for months, because as far as the voice actor was instructed, I may well have been. When it's not voiced, you can attach whatever tone of voice to the speech options as is appropriate.

I think I hate the game. I think I hate it.

That's what I found absolutely hilarious - in my gameplay, I would stumble across someone early on that would prompt a discussion about the Institute and my character would talk like he knew everything about it, like he had known about it for years, when a day might have passed in the gameworld. Then few days later, "what's a ghoul?!" in the most shocked voice ever.

I genuinely think that putting a voice actor in was a bad move. Especially during the scenes that are supposed to be heart warming and sad and whatever else. If they wanted to go down that route, they should have removed character customization, because a poignant moment is destroyed when you're stood there, in your underwear and only wearing a sailor hat, glasses, and a character that looks like Elvis.

Was just thinking about the previous post and I have to say that the

teleportation

doesn't bother me as such. To me - you have to remember that this was already a somewhat advanced society, before the bombs fell. I mean, we have robots with some degree of advanced intelligence, for a start. Then the bombs fell and it put that progress to a halt. However

the Institute was already moving underground before the bombs fell. So their advancement didn't halt and kept going. They essentially had 200 years of unimpeded research, development, and advancement, so teleportation isn't that too crazy a concept when you take this into account, right?

Evade

It turns out power armour doesn't give you unlimited breathing time under water. It only last a few minutes and runs out without warning.

Lone Stone

One thing i found annoying was when i first started out my guy who is new to this world, i wander of the beaten track and kill some guy for the first time and he does not react or even when you first have to go to find the minute men guys he has no reaction to having to kill about 50 people as it was just another day, i mean if your going to add voice acting the character has to fecking act and they do zero of it in this so badly directed, you just shot your way through a 50 mad raiders from bizzaro world and your as calm as a daisy in a field. I think i spent most of my time finding settlements and building them as i assumed it would give me some sort of minute men army and did so many quests for them not knowing it was a bloody radiant ****e fest. It's like a half assed game they made and just said sure modders right.. modders can make our game for us.

Fallout 4 is weird because when i first started it i was disappointing i kinda hated the look of it i thought skyrim looked better but then i got into it and took it for what it was and enjoyed it but when i tried a few new characters and different builds for me it had zero replay ability because nothing i did mattered or effected anything in any way and i could have just kept leveling my first character to get all the perks..Which i had most of by the time i decided to start over.So yeah i hope the dev's at Bethesda take some lessons from this i wont be pre ordering the next one il probably give the dlc a miss to.

The_Valeyard

Feck Fallout 4


I ended up dreaming about the glowing sea last night and got attacked by hordes of gouls. I may be playing too much fallout, or not enough.

Maximus Alexander

Yesterday I thought I had run out of things to do and it was time to go to the glowing sea, pursue the rest of the main quest, and that would be that. Then I walked around a bit and found loads more stuff... Must be pushing 100 hours now. This stupid game is stealing my life.

khamilto

Deleted User wrote: »

. However

the Institute was already moving underground before the bombs fell. So their advancement didn't halt and kept going. They essentially had 200 years of unimpeded research, development, and advancement, so teleportation isn't that too crazy a concept when you take this into account, right?

It's about maintaining internal consistency. Teleportation is not maintaining internal consistency in the fallout setting, it's an obvious plot/mechanic insert.

I think TUN had another video on this idea, the idea that as long as a setting/world/story is consistent within itself, it doesn't matter if the premise itself is inconsistent with what we know to be true.

Zillah

Why is the introduction

of teleportation by the institute

200 years after the war not internally consistent? Did they state somewhere previously that that was fundamentally impossible according to physics in the Fallout world?

Sofiztikated

Lads, yer debating whether teleportation is plausible in a world that diverged from our timeline somewhere in the early 1900's, cars were nuclear powered and not petrol engine powered, where you can use a device to make you invisible, where bears mutated into Yao Gai (Yogi Bear), where you were cryogenically frozen for 200 years, and robots that mimic humans to the point of sentience.

I think it's quite likely that technology that can teleport is plausible.

allibastor

Deleted User wrote: »

That's what I found absolutely hilarious - in my gameplay, I would stumble across someone early on that would prompt a discussion about the Institute and my character would talk like he knew everything about it, like he had known about it for years, when a day might have passed in the gameworld. Then few days later, "what's a ghoul?!" in the most shocked voice ever.

I genuinely think that putting a voice actor in was a bad move. Especially during the scenes that are supposed to be heart warming and sad and whatever else. If they wanted to go down that route, they should have removed character customization, because a poignant moment is destroyed when you're stood there, in your underwear and only wearing a sailor hat, glasses, and a character that looks like Elvis.

Was just thinking about the previous post and I have to say that the

teleportation

doesn't bother me as such. To me - you have to remember that this was already a somewhat advanced society, before the bombs fell. I mean, we have robots with some degree of advanced intelligence, for a start. Then the bombs fell and it put that progress to a halt. However

the Institute was already moving underground before the bombs fell. So their advancement didn't halt and kept going. They essentially had 200 years of unimpeded research, development, and advancement, so teleportation isn't that too crazy a concept when you take this into account, right?

I did actually find that this kind of ruined the game for me. I mean, the guy wakes up 210 years into the future, wife killed, son gone. Comes to his old housing estate, and "meh"

Meets his old and still loyal robot after 210 year, "meh"

Meets the guy who put him in the vault 210 years ago, still alive and goulified, "meh"

Finds out about Ghouls, Supermutants, Deathclaws, Mirelurks, And "meh"

allibastor

allibastor wrote: »

Meets the guy who put him in the vault 210 years ago, still alive and goulified, "meh"

Really? I must have missed that! Where did that happen?

The Randy Riverbeast

Deleted User wrote: »

Really? I must have missed that! Where did that happen?

The hotel (Rexford?) in Goodneighbour

Just met him. Again, showing how annoying poorly implemented the conversation system is; met tonnes of ghouls throughout the game so far and one of the conversations is, "are there many other ghouls from before?" You already know there is.

allibastor

Deleted User wrote: »

Just met him. Again, showing how annoying poorly implemented the conversation system is; met tonnes of ghouls throughout the game so far and one of the conversations is, "are there many other ghouls from before?" You already know there is.

Yeah, I did the kid in the fridge quest before hand.

It is just very poorly thought out of a game, As someone else said, the game is more a shooter now that anything else. And all I use is my lucky combat shotgun, or else bull 45 revolver.

I think new Vegas was the best fallout game I have played, but still way behind Skyrim in ever aspects.

Also after using a tonne of chems and especially jet. Bumped into the drug dealer there and one of the options was to ask, "what's jet?"

Wossack

they should really have you on rails till you've met some ghouls - murdered some bandits - encountered some synths etc. I know they try and let you loose asap, but the conversations/immersion takes a serious dive as a result imo

the beginning of skyrim, while annoying for replays, did give your character a good baseline intro to the world (and dragons) iirc

allibastor

Wossack wrote: »

they should really have you on rails till you've met some ghouls - murdered some bandits - encountered some synths etc. I know they try and let you loose asap, but the conversations/immersion takes a serious dive as a result imo

the beginning of skyrim, while annoying for replays, did give your character a good baseline intro to the world (and dragons) iirc

Very much so, and because you werent a frozen 210 person you were given a good intro into what was going on.

There seems to be no major kind of emotion in the game, I mean none at all.

I thought the whole Murdered spouse thing would be a set off, but sure I have romanced a few new companions now!!!

Gbear

allibastor wrote: »

Yeah, I did the kid in the fridge quest before hand.

It is just very poorly thought out of a game, As someone else said, the game is more a shooter now that anything else. And all I use is my lucky combat shotgun, or else bull 45 revolver.

I think new Vegas was the best fallout game I have played, but still way behind Skyrim in ever aspects.

Don't get comparing Skyrim favourably to this at all. It has the same issues of b bland questing, a dead uninteractive world, meaningless drivel of a storyline and the combat was mostly crap as well.

The only thing it has is the setting and art direction.

allibastor

Gbear wrote: »

Don't get comparing Skyrim favourably to this at all. It has the same issues of b bland questing, a dead uninteractive world, meaningless drivel of a storyline and the combat was mostly crap as well.

The only thing it has is the setting and art direction.

Ah the story was a bit better over all.

The way you were introduced to the story was good, I could have thought a better way initially would have been instead of Alduin attacking it would have been some random dragon and your player helped in it downfall, only to be found to be Dragon Born at this point, instead of many hours later in the game

But overall the art, direction and playing were better.

Potential-Monke

I have only about 35 hours done, but i'm enjoying it. Maybe it's because i'm playing it differently, i don't take any of the drugs, i rarely if ever use power armor, i don't buy anything and I make everything myself. I dunno, it's still appealing to me. Yeah, the infinite quests of the "Kill X and collect Y" will probably get boring, but i've more or less stopped them as i thought there was an end to them until i looked it up (specifically, so far, the BOS fetch/kill quests and the Minutemen help/clear quests).

I never played Fallout 1 or 2, so i don't have the rose tinted glasses to skew my view. This is Fallout 3 which looks better and has way more custom options, and to me that's not a bad thing! It'll tie me over for another while anyway, and i'm looking forward to being OP and have max everything. That's what i'm aiming towards. Will the game get stale then? Probably, but at least i'll have done everything i think i can. I never felt Fallout 3 or NV was about the story, it was about the experience, and i'm loving the experience in this so far. Yeah, there's some silly dialogue, things don't line up well, etc, but i'm taking it as it is, and to me, it's a good game.

I agree that the first few hours of story should have been linear or rails-driven, because it would have absolutely fixed any issues with the uneven dialogue that happens at the wrong moments. It seems so silly that after.. maybe 40+ hours of play, my character is getting shocked at ghouls, confused about chems, and whatnot.

Potatoeman

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I agree that the first few hours of story should have been linear or rails-driven, because it would have absolutely fixed any issues with the uneven dialogue that happens at the wrong moments. It seems so silly that after.. maybe 40+ hours of play, my character is getting shocked at ghouls, confused about chems, and whatnot.

You have to ask those questions though.

Shougeki

allibastor wrote: »

There seems to be no major kind of emotion in the game, I mean none at all.

Maybe the PC is just a complete sociopath? :P

J. Marston

Saw a great post on Reddit that explained better than I ever could why I find so difficult to get invested in the world.

To give it context, it was in response to this gif...

http://i.imgur.com/hi0iuhb.gifv

This is one of those things that always bothered me. It's been 200 years since the bombs fell, yet apparently nobody in any settled place bothered to clear the debris or remove the skeletons.

In fact the whole world makes almost no sense if you think about it at all. For over 200 years, not only has nobody bothered to clean anything up, not only has nobody already looted the massive amounts of useful stuff laying about, not only have no large settlements been established, but no NCR style government of any sort has established. The political and social structures as well as the post-apocalyptic logistics that you see in games like New Vegas and Fallout 2 (I still remember how cleaned up Vault City was in Fallout 2) are completely absent after 200 years.

There is almost no civilization with most settlements being two people living surrounded by dangerous creatures, the raiders outnumber the settlers by a massive margin which makes no sense as there is an inverse economy between the predatory raiders and the settlers they are raiding.

The raiders are apparently constantly attacking the traders and caravans, despite the fact that they could just go into all the local buildings filled with stuff, loot everything, then go sell it. Not 10 seconds out of the main exit in Diamond City is a Super Mutant respawn point. You go on Radiant quests where the settlers complain about how you need to kill ghouls that are attacking their settlements covered in turrets that I placed, and the ghouls are literally on the opposite end of the map.

The open diners are in better condition than closed off buildings, and completely destroyed buildings that people settle in are not 50 feet away from well preserved houses that have been boarded up and look way too good to be 200 years old. Elevators in abandon buildings work, without a power core generator, and even if there is a power core generator they continue working after you take off the power core. There is a workshop and manufacturing processes complex enough build energy weapons and power armor, but not to build a straight, smooth wall.

The very opening scene in the game hammers the point that "years of consumption has lead to shortages in energy", yet powercores that last for centuries are all over to make the god-mode Power Armor a reality. The time inconsistency is particularly bad in many quests that reference prewar society. You come across a locked fridge in the Commonwealth out in the open, which has a kid that was locked in it when the bombs fell and has remained locked and become a ghoul. He has been there for 200 years and nobody has opened that fridge in that time. It leads to a very short quest where he asks you to find his parents, they are a few minutes walk away and also sentient ghouls, yet somehow they have not thought to look for him nearby for those entire 2 centuries.

You walk into the local drinking hole in Diamond city, and while there hasn't been any immigration from Russia for 200 years, yet somehow bartenders speak in a Russian accent. Any such ethnic accents would have long ago disappeared especially since no one else in the game speaks in Russian accents.

You can shoot down as many vertibirds as you want, and the Brotherhood of Steel doesn't care. The raiders in Fallout New Vegas were organized into different factions, each with its own territory, motivations and politics. You could talk to them, you could have affinities, I remember coming across a Vault overtaken by raiders and passing a speech check to enter it and see how they lived. Other raider groups become trade partners, and have farms and networks that support their people, and different views on different groups, they give our quests and create relationships.

You would think after 200 years such social complexity would naturally arise in Fallout 4, yet the raiders are essentially wildlife, your interactions with them is no different than with a radscorpion or mole rat.

The nonsense goes on and on and on, the moment you stop blindly following the quest markers and look around and start thinking about the game world is the moment you realize how poorly realized the world is.

Ultimately none of the NPCs feel real because the world they live in doesn't feel like a real place. Apparently the people have enough time to pose teddy bears into cute little scenes that make for perfect shareable memes, but not to take out the skeletons and clean up their own home or shop. It seems Bethesda put a lot of effort into building visually designs that look good, but not much effort into allowing suspension of disbelief by making the world actually believable.

This dissonance becomes even more blatantly apparent with the whole settlement building mechanic: Why am I the first person to remove hazardous waste, sharp objects, broken crap blocking doorways in your house? Apparently filtering water was so complex that the entire Fallout 3 plot revolved around it, yet I'm somehow able to make a water filtration unit within seconds from garbage I found in your yard.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3xly4f/fallout_4_janitor/cy5rcca

Evade

There was a push to unite a bunch of settlements about 80 years before you're unfrozen but it fell apart because of raiders and non aligned settlements IIRC. Other than that the post is pretty spot on.

I first really noticed the overly dirty world at a diner pretty close to Sanctuary Hills. Its up and running but there's a couple of greaser skeletons in one of the booths.

Plus after 200 years, would there actually be any skeletons at all?

Evade

Apparently it can take hundreds of years for skeletons to break down if they're not in a slightly acidic environment.

Soby

This dissonance becomes even more blatantly apparent with the whole settlement building mechanic: Why am I the first person to remove hazardous waste, sharp objects, broken crap blocking doorways in your house? Apparently filtering water was so complex that the entire Fallout 3 plot revolved around it, yet I'm somehow able to make a water filtration unit within seconds from garbage I found in your yard.

So true - never actually stopped to think about this

Josey Wales

I had a very frustrating evening playing Fallout last night. I was playing a mission where it was the point of no return between two of the factions. I had to retrieve something from a building for one of them. I started on the top floor of this building and worked my way down through all the levels.

I realised I'd missed something right at the top so I took the elevator back up, which is no joke due to the loading times on console. I found what I'd missed and had to take the elevator back down to the lobby. The problem is that when I get to the lobby the doors don't open. I'm totally stuck in the elevator.

So I decide to go back up and see what happens. What does happen is that once the loading screen finally finishes I find myself loaded back into world without the elevator or most of the building. If I move I just fall to my death. Reloading the last save the exact same thing happens.

I'll have to back a few hours now.

allibastor

J. Marston wrote: »

Saw a great post on Reddit that explained better than I ever could why I find so difficult to get invested in the world.

To give it context, it was in response to this gif...

http://i.imgur.com/hi0iuhb.gifv

Jesus, that post is completely spot on.

It does ask why such a large game on a next gen console is so lacking. I mean New Vegas didnt have the best graphics, but you did feel that you were a person who was out making a bit of noise in the world.

Places which had people living there were cleaned and looked lived in. I am finding settlements now that are actual dumps and no-one has thought to clean them up. I mean even a in game mechanic where you have a settlement and it starts to look cleaner as more people move into it would have been good, I mean there are bodies in my camps from raider attacks that no one has thought to move.

It is one reason why I prefer Skyrim over this game so much. If I went on a murder spree in a town it was remembered! Places where people lived looked good and workable, places people didnt live were left looking that way.

When you built a house it looked built, people moved about and did things.
Every time I go to my settlement at night the people there just kind of stand around, even though I have a lvl 3 bar and loads of seating, lights and all to make a fully functioned pub!

I murdered all of vault 81, but I will still able to do the quests from the few people who couldn't be killed and still got my room.