Fallout 4

[Carlie]

 

[Hisako]

Coming out soon! Pretty excited, though I want to wait a month or two before they patch it proper and iron out all the save-corrupting, game-breaking bugs.

Especially for a Bethesda game.

 

[Kionae]

I want this game so bad....

 

[Russell]

I'm looking forward for this game so much, I hope it works at launch.

Anyone seen the SPECIAL videos online?
They are worth checking out.

Also I like this, Fallout 4 theme on Piano:

 

[Hisako]

Inon Zur's work on the Fallout games since 3 are probably the only times I've cared very much for his work.

That said, them's fucking sick music! The new rendition almost makes me nostalgic.

 

[Mayo Master]

Inon Zur's work on the Fallout games since 3 are probably the only times I've cared very much for his work.

Holy crap I didn't even realize Inon Zur had been the one making Fallout 3 soundtrack - oh well I will go to bed slightly less stupid tonight
It's rather his work for Dragon Age games that stuck me.

 

[Hisako]

See, apart from the main themes of Dragon Age, I didn't really care for them a whole lot, plus Inquisition with Trevor Morris came out with some fantastic, long-running themes off the bat. Made a much longer-lasting impression for me

 

[Russell]

 

[Cthulhu]

Gameplay footage

 

[Geostigma]

Launch trailer has been released.

 

[Joe]

Pretty good trailer, I'd be hyped if I was getting this soon.

I want to point out that I'm really glad they split their time showing both the female and male player character. I think all games that allow you that option during character creation should make it clear during trailers.

 

[Mayo Master]

Man, I'm really hyped for this game. A lot of info has been leaked and I'm doing my best to ignore it so I don't get spoiled.
Anyway, I was actually thinking of having my Fallout 4 character hosting a blog about his Wasteland adventures. I've done that previously for Fallout 3 and Skyrim, although never published anything online. I think I'll make that step this time
EDIT - In preparation...

 

[Cthulhu]

With the actual gameplay trailer out, it doesn't actually look that much improved over its predecessor - looks like the same engine, not that much better graphics, etc. Better color scheme though, less grimdark boring. I'll probably end up playing it, eventually,

 

[Geostigma]

Yeah if you watched the leaked gameplay footage earlier in the weak it seemed Fallout has not evolved much into the next gen in a few respects.

Notable issues are the A.I. Both enemy and Ally A.I. is still the same from previous titles which is kind of a shame because it's always so wonky and silly.

The dialogue options actually seem like a step back as well but hopefully the examples seen in the leaks were just bad and I'll wait till it's out to decide on it completely.

Graphically its not a huge improvement. I mean it looks nice for sure but isn't top tier and some of the textures are really low quality.

Animations are so stiff. Characters and enemies run and move around exactly like they did in FO3 and NV.

 

[Cthulhu]

Shame. I mean it'll still be a good game, but that's the kinda stuff they could've done so much better. I think they're just afraid of letting go of their current engine, which has been in service since Morrowind and doesn't seem to have evolved that much since Oblivion, besides higher resolution models and textures and shit (Oblivion is from 2006 btw).

Ah well. Bethesda's core games (TESO does not exist) are more about content than graphics anyway. And for PC, modability,

 

[Hisako]

Bethesda are just too afraid of letting go of their creaky-ass engine because it would require a new knowledge base for their legion of employees, and that would require effort

 

[Geostigma]

I know most of us here will be playing this on pc so this won't affect us (hopefully) but the PS4 version seems to have issues with frames dropping while scoping and load times between zones/fast travel seem to be in the 30 second range =/

https://vid.me/JLcx

Hopefully the Day 1 Patch will help alleviate this.

 

[Cthulhu]

And here I thought the PS4 was a decent enough system, given its available memory and shit . Does it have an SSD fitted?

 

[Mayo Master]

I know most of us here will be playing this on pc so this won't affect us (hopefully) but the PS4 version seems to have issues with frames dropping while scoping and load times between zones/fast travel seem to be in the 30 second range =/

https://vid.me/JLcx

Hopefully the Day 1 Patch will help alleviate this.

Thanks for the notice. As a PS4 player, I would hope for a quick fix. Thankfully, I pretty much never rely on Fast Travel - still that much loading time between zones is quite inconvenient. Oh well. I don't think that will prevent me from having fun.
Going to the midnight release tomorrow, which quite conveniently happens around 10pm for my time zone

 

[Geostigma]

Completely forgot to link the vid of the load times lol.

https://vid.me/5kSk

Honestly that's pretty excessive I think my head would explode if load times like this made it into the live version of the game lol.

 

[Geostigma]

Performance comparison between the 2 console versions

The tl;dw

Both gun for 30fps.

Both dip to low 20's when loading data in certain over world parts of the map.

PS4 version has more consistent frames in dense cities/ with tons of models on the screen. Xbone version dipped to sub 20 iirc at the ghoul swarm event.

Xbone has more consistent frames when fights involve fire/explosions.

Xbone has a stutter issue where frames drop to sub 5-0 for a second when performing certain actions such as switching weapons, dogmeat finding items in the world and when cut scenes are about to load.


edit:

Heres a webm tl;dr

https://i.imgur.com/MYpPSnZ.webm

 

[Russell]

The PC download is 24GB, my top download speed is about 1 GB per hour....

So at 4 or 5 hours a night I might be playing this by Sunday.

 

[Geostigma]

Wow I was legitimately thinking it was going to be much larger than that.

Black ops 3 was 45gb by comparison. Honestly that's a really really pleasant surprise. With my current net I top out at 250kbps down so I was really dreading having to download FO4 expecting it to be massive.


Thinking about it though I guess it makes sense? Bethesda does tend to heavily reuse assets in their games so maybe that helped reduce the size? Or maybe they are top tier at repacking lol.

 

[Russell]

Found this, quoted below:

It's revealed that the game will take up approximately 28.12 gigabytes. That's not too bad given that some games out there, such as GTA V on PC, will take up like 60gb worth of space. Essentially Fallout 4 is only half the size of Rockstar's HD rendition of their open-world action title.

The revelation of the game size probably comes as a surprise to many, given that Fallout 4 is expected to be an absolutely massive game. However, Bethesda doesn't appear to be pouring a whole lot of their attention into the graphics so much as they are the gameplay content. Texture resolutions, geometry density and even detailed light rendering maps can sometimes take up a heck of a lot of memory (especially if the light maps are pre-baked). But in this case it looks like Bethesda worked some compression magic for Fallout 4 to keep the game as lean and as mean as possible.

That level of efficiency is always appreciated.

Now some people might assume that the game only being 28gb means it's tiny or that Bethesda gimped on the content. It's easy to assume that when you compare it to a beast like GTA V that clocks in at 60gb, but keep in mind that Fallout 4 doesn't have a lot of needless civilian dialogue to take up more than 10gb alone and it doesn't have three different protagonists with several gigabytes worth of speech data.

There's a lot of bloat attached to GTA V, where-as in the case of Fallout 4 a lot of the game's weight in hard drive space comes from all of the different interactive entities in the game. There are a ton of objects littered throughout the game world and many of them can be used for crafting and upgrading your equipment and character, and there aren't any vehicles that you have to worry about where they take up so much memory due to sounds, damage data, liveries and physics. So when you actually look at it there's a plausible reason why Fallout 4 is a lot smaller than GTA V in regards to space and it doesn't by any stretch of the imagination mean that it's a smaller game in terms of gameplay content or interactivity.

Anyway this is one game where not playing it right away is a good thing.
It is a Bethesda game after all. I'd guess there will be a patch or two by next week.

I've managed to avoid almost all spoilers, but today I learned....

Spoiler: Minor gameplay spoiler

That you can manage and run your own settlement. You can find a run-down failing town and take over and help build it up or find a husk of a failed town and start from nothing.

I think I'll call my first settlement "This Land", and I shall rule over it all...
If raiders try to rename it "my Grave" I shall curse their sudden but inevitable betrayal then kill them with violence.

 

[Lex]

I'm excited for all you folks. I'm not the biggest Fallout fan but even I can feel it in the air.

Happy fallouting folks, I look forward to your posts <3