Fallout 4

[Carlie]

So far the game has gotten critical acclaim. I haven't bought it yet though, is on my cart on Steam but I can't seem to pull the trigger.

 

[Flintlock]

An old friend of mine (someone I used to know from a Final Fantasy forum, actually) wrote a less-than-positive review, called "The Dangers of Hype" for IBTimes. And one of his editors published it too early.

I'm quite sceptical about AAA game reviews nowadays, especially ones that are embargoed until release day. There is such hype around them that people will jump on anyone who posts anything critical, and as a result, I wouldn't be surprised if the big reviewers deliberately played it safe. I was looking at MGSV on Metacritic a while back and the "worst" review has a ton of comments on it saying stuff like "this is total bullshit, you shouldn't be on Metacritic". As if it's no longer allowed to have a dissenting opinion.

If you're not completely sure about Fallout 4 - or any game - why drop $60 on it? You know it's going to be in a sale sooner or later, and since it's a single-player game, you won't be missing out on anything. In fact, since it's Bethesda, you'll probably have a better experience if you wait for the first couple of patches to come out.

 

[Mayo Master]

Got the game yesterday at the midnight release, then half an hour of install (they show Vault-Tec Special promotional material during the install, which I found pretty clever), half an hour of creating my character (I aimed at the "American of Italian descent" type - which in the end wasn't too different from the default character), and then played for an hour, just to get out of the Vault (it was 2am by then).
Positive first impressions overall. Disappointed at the lack of "Hardcore" mode like in New Vegas (food, water, sleep) - but I'll just be roleplaying it. The first small very pleasant surprise is that, after typing the name of my character, there were NPCs calling my character by his name, which I think is a first in video games. I even wonder how they pulled it off.

 

[Flintlock]

^ What was your character called? It's possible that the game has a bank of pre-recorded names, and if yours happens to match one of them, they'll use it. Otherwise they'll call you something generic.

NBA Live 2003 did the same thing.

 

[Mayo Master]

^ I admit my character had a fairly generic first name (Tony), but now I'm very curious about a/ how many different names can the game "vocalize" b/ how many characters in the game can do it. In a sense, I'm mostly curious about the scope of this feature, given how huge Fallout 4 is, with its insane population of NPC and amount of dialogue. NBA Live 2003 doesn't play in the same category.
Besides, the name was inserted very seamlessly into the dialogue, it didn't really have the pre-recorded feel.

 

[Cthulhu]

The reviews right now are kinda hit and miss because apparently no PC versions were given to reviewers, only xbone/ps4 versions which have the (IMO unacceptable nowadays) performance issues. One review I read basically said "Loads of content, graphically unimpressive" - it's basically an evolution of Skyrim, which by now is four years old already. Similar animations, AI, etc, too. Shame. But then I guess they can't just switch because they have huge teams of scripters and content creators that are used to this engine.

 

[Geostigma]

^ I admit my character had a fairly generic first name (Tony), but now I'm very curious about a/ how many different names can the game "vocalize" b/ how many characters in the game can do it. In a sense, I'm mostly curious about the scope of this feature, given how huge Fallout 4 is, with its insane population of NPC and amount of dialogue. NBA Live 2003 doesn't play in the same category.
Besides, the name was inserted very seamlessly into the dialogue, it didn't really have the pre-recorded feel.

The name wasn't pre-recorded alone. IIRC the voice actors did a toooon of retakes to cover different name scenarios.

edit:

You'd think devs would learn tying physics and simulation to framerate (Especially after other games bug out due to it) is a really bad idea.

edit:

All things considered I'm going to pass on Fallout 4 for now.
I wanted it on console just to avoid having to DL 25gb , but honestly in this day and age 30fps is unacceptable. Dropping below 30fps is a fucking joke. Considering the game is borderline unplayable at later stages due to the bad frames on console its definitely a pass (Its a slideshow at the end)

Considering Fallouts Modding community sucks so hard in comparison to Skyrims, the better performance doesn't out weigh the annoying long download for me. Maybe in a few months after mods fix the animations and trash textures ill give it a try.

 

[Hisako]

Fallout's mods are fantastic, dude, what are you on about. Those guys got working weather effects in Gamebryo even as Skyrim did their thing

Also, the named voice bank was an announced thing since Bethesda's E3 conference this year.

copy pasta of my thoughts from another forum:

Picked up this game for free as a bonus on my Xbox One bundle! Quick thoughts on my first 5 hours in the game:

Opening movie is great. Ron Perlman big dick OG.

Character creation isn't incredibly intuitive at first glance. I've seen better forms of sliders/adjustments. Much, much better diversity of appearance options, though. Fumbling around with presets made my young female redhead married to an old wrinkled dude. Uh, emergent story whoops. lol
Oh, and body build adjustments. Love love love love.
Voice options are good, performance is solid. On-the-fly conversation prompts makes things great. Endless stream of constantly-repeated "Hey, you"s? Less so. Still, this sort of real-time persistence in conversations would have been less effective if the voice options weren't there.
Graphically it looks like the update it needed to be. The palette is much improved, though the lighting doesn't quite do a whole lot for me. Outfits look vastly better out of the gate and faces look so far and away better than any previous Gamebryo game.
I went with "Sydney" for my character's name, which checked out in the voice generation. Apparerntly I hear there are some gems, like "Fuckface" and "Furiosa".
Animations are still a bit wooden but there's more expressiveness here and there which is a godsend, otherwise we would be so far into the Uncanny Mariana Trench

I like how the settlement building and item crafting/modifying systems are just... there, with little fanfare. They're also much, much more intuitive and easy-bake than the character creator, thank goodness. Lots of potential, though I'll see how far it holds my interest.
Codsworth is an incredibly endearing character, which bodes well for companion writing.
Combat system seems by-the-numbers as before, despite the revamped VATS. Lockpicking minigame exactly as it was before. A lot of old familiar retreaded ground in this aspect. Mod system will spruce things up, though. Really looking forward to breaking out sweet combos. I also like how they've tied sprint to VATS meter. Makes perfect sense.
Like the new radio tracks (the incredibly socially awkward DJ is fucking hilarious) but boy there's a lot of reused stuff. I guess I was used to the shift between 3 and NV having completely different playlists

Questing seems fine, but I haven't really been given any real sense of urgency out of the gates with the plot. Out of all of them so far, Fallout 3 still has my vote for the best opening sequence in the series - it takes its time to establish the relationships between the characters, establishes the sort of life that happens in the Vault, and gives an air of mystery and intrigue which escalates into action with the perfect tone to go with. Fallout 4's prologue just feels far too short for me to start caring about the family that my character is a part of, and assumes I'll care about it just because it's part of the plot. I suspect this is a concession for those who want blank slate characters with backstories that they can easily fill in the blanks with something else.

tl;dr it feels like an iterative update on the Fallout series so far. I think it's a solid 9 but for me anything higher would be generous. Most of the improvements I've come across so far haven't shaken up the formula or broken wholly new ground. It's the entry for this generation that it needed to be.

Addendums:

I haven't found any issues with performance so far. I'd much rather an upscaled 900p/60FPS than 1080p/30, but visually it looks fine and I haven't encountered any game-breaking bugs so far. Plenty of those to go around already from what I've heard, though, so I'm reserving judgement on it.

Also, my patch was only a few hundred megabytes, lol. That said, maybe the Xbox One version's pre-load patches had something to do with it (I didn't actually pre-load mine though)

I think the hype bandwagon for this game has been way over-inflated, but it's still an excellent game

 

[Geostigma]

I mean aside from a Tale of Two Wastelands the mods quality is pretty meh when it comes to Fallout in my opinion. Clothing, gun and Armor mods that are available are relatively low quality and don't change much about the game. To be fair it's kinda tough to make lore friendly aesthetic mods for the Fallout universe but even the non lore friendly ones are pretty uninspired.

The selection of mods that completely change the game is pretty minimal as well. Where as Skyrim is teeming with mods of that nature.

Skyrim has 40k+ mods on Nexus. FO3 and New Vegas have around 30k combined.
Sure you can argue quality vs quantity but the Fallout Mods as a majority aren't exactly good quality where as Skyrim has both quantity and quality and also tosses in Diversity.


Idk maybe FO4 will change that, but I won't know for several months in any case so it's still a safe bet to hold off.

 

[Mayo Master]

Played a couple more hours, now leaving the stage for my gf to start her own playthrough.
I'm sharing most of Hisako's feelings about the game (btw thanks for having added the bit about Codsworth calling you by name). So far I've been having a lot of fun. Visually it does look pretty good - some can still nitpick but personally I've enjoyed the improvements on the rendering engine, the interaction of the light with the environments is much better.
Regarding crafting, the building of settlements, Fallout 4 continued what Skyrim had started (with Hearthfire expansion) and dialed it to 11. The potential is enormous.

Spoiler

Also, quite surprised than after less than 4 hours of gameplay, you get the dog, have a place with all crafting facilities, get a power armor, fight a Deathclaw, and begin to build your settlement, without even giving you the feeling of being overpowered. I'd have expecting all this to come up much later!

.
Btw so far I don't feel like Fallout 4 is a step back in terms of dialogue, taking Skyrim as a reference. Bethesda games never were really deep in terms of interactions with NPCs to begin with (you could interact with hundreds of characters, but the deepest character interactions would correspond to a dozen dialogues at best). Having a voiced character is a definite improvement, IMO.
Also, only a single minor visual glitch so far. While I've read news about excruciating long loading times between environments on the PS4 version, my loading times were in the range of 2-5 seconds. Really nothing to complain about.

 

[Hisako]

My only bad impressions of the character wheel atm is the terrible paraphrasing. BioWare has already evolved in this aspect; Inquisition subtitled the actual action that would be taken by choosing particular dialogue conversations and character-specific developments (such as romances) were highlighted by relevant, intuitive icons.

Fallout 4's early options consist of "Yes", "No", "Sarcasm" and "Tell Me More", which are pathetic and say nothing.

 

[Cthulhu]

You'd think devs would learn tying physics and simulation to framerate

Oh wow, that really is bad and I thought that was solved forever ago when they realized CPU's weren't going to run at 33 MHz forever (I remember the 'turbo' button on our computer, ).

Anyway I kinda want this, but at the same time I'm wondering if I should get Fallout 3 / New Vegas, mod the shit out of it and replay that, iirc I've only played it once. I guess it wasn't as gripping / extensive as TES.

 

[Hisako]

3 and New Vegas will feel incredibly dated compared to this iteration. It's the update it needed to be, no more, no less.

If you want, there's stuff like A Tale of Two Wastelands mod which merges the two games together into two disparate zones separated by loading screens (you need both games in Steam for it and the installation process is long and finicky). The main upside to this is that it rejiggers Fallout 3 to use proper New Vegas combat mechanics like ironsights and some of its relatively more interesting systems.

I will reiterate that Fallout 3's opening is probably still the best out of all of them in how much effort is made to establish characters and a compelling motive to pursue the Wastelands. Fallout 4's one is woefully underdeveloped.

 

[ForceStealer]

I hate that voicing main characters kills dialogue options. And the vague descriptors are the twist of the knife.

It's the only thing I've heard about Fallout 4 that I have an active dread for. I LOVED the breadth and varietyof dialogue options and Fallout 3. And one of my biggest disappointments with Skyrim was that it lacked those. And now 4 does too.

It happened to Dragon Age, but I had hoped Fallout's tradition would keep them. In a game where I am the character (as opposed to most JRPGs), a mute hero is not an immersion breaker. At least, it's not nearly as much of one as not having anything approximate what I actually want to say.

 

[Hisako]

It breaks immersion for some, it doesn't for others. Personal taste and what-not

The thing is, having a voiced protagonist and having dialogue option variety isn't mutually exclusive on principle. The concept of having the character speak doesn't necessarily mean that the dialogue tree will be simplistic.

Likewise, having a mute protagonist communicate via telepathy doesn't guarantee that all dialogue options and outcomes end up being unique and varied, as evident by Skyrim's mostly-binary/trinary quest path options.

 

[Remnant-of-VII]

Fuuuuuuck...

Started downloading Fallout 4 yesterday.

It's still downloading. It's been over 24hrs... and still has at least 1GB to go.

DSL sucks ass.

Good news is my desktop is more than capable of running it.

 

[Super Mario]

I'm loving this game thanks to Codsworth. Never change, my beloved robot butler.

 

[Hisako]

For those interested in performance sticklers, Digital Foundry has a cool piece on Xbox One's backwards compatibility version of Fallout 3 which comes free with all XBO versions of Fallout 4.

Given it was a bit of a performance shit-show here and there on launch way back when, it's interesting to see the performance gains

 

[Cthulhu]

It's just a shit that they apparently need to re-do those performance gains (with an existing engine / used before), and apparently need to do them after releasing the game. It's like they didn't realize the game was running shit themselves. Protip: They did, they just decided to sort it out later.

 

[Hisako]

New Vegas seemed even worse at some point, though, which is kind of hilarious

 

[Mayo Master]

Blessed are PC players...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIDsHVZICp4
I wish I could play that on the PS4

 

[Geostigma]

Blessed are PC players...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIDsHVZICp4
I wish I could play that on the PS4

Yeah only thing that sucks is that it's not currently possible for the seasons to switch on their own. If you wanted all 4 seasons over time you would have to manually swap them yourself in NMM. While not difficult at all is kinda lame xD

Standalone each season is really nice though.

 

[Abortedj]

It seems likely that Fallout 4 will get the "Steam Workshop" treatment just like Skyrim did. Just kind of wish they would pull the trigger on that already.

 

[Mayo Master]

Yeah only thing that sucks is that it's not currently possible for the seasons to switch on their own. If you wanted all 4 seasons over time you would have to manually swap them yourself in NMM. While not difficult at all is kinda lame xD

Standalone each season is really nice though.

Yeah. Too bad it cannot be switched according to the in-game date. Actually, ever since I got to play Bethesda franchises (starting with Fallout 3), I was thinking they should implement seasonal changes since a playthrough can span over such lengthy periods of time (in my current playthrough, I'm in August 2288, and I still have a bunch of things to do - not even done with the main quest for that matter). Ultimately it would be even more awesome if they could design different trajectories for the sun in the sky depending on the date (and correspondingly, shifting day-time vs night-time depending on the day in the year). In theory it should be simple (hell I could make those sorts of calculations in less than half a day of work), what I don't know is how much processing power that would demand for rendering (since generally pre-baked lighting is used to make rendering faster - that would not be possible if lighting is always dynamic) and how that would impact performance.
It's the sort of details that probably most gamers don't really care about and would get me really excited

 

[Shinra'sMostWanted]

I have a sealed copy of this game for PS4 if anyone is interested.. would trade if youre not trying to spend $$