Fallout 4

Here are my thoughts - a guy who plays a LOT, but only ever plays the "truly worthwhile" titles that give me hours upon hours of gameplay in an "open" world that can suck me in for a good while, games such as Oblivion, Skyrim, FO3 & NV, GTAV and obviously Civilization series, with a few exceptions, such as DAO... - or a "conservative ignorant A$$ who knows nothing of good games", as my over 500 games on steam owning gamer friend says.

Anyway, I liked how they did the announcement. No year long hype and releases of tidbits of information, of which half is BS (like say with Skyrim), instead an announcement just half a year before release with a meaty showcasing of the game, what is it about, what to expect, with no BS that sounds too good to be true. Or at least I got such an impression.

In short, the game seems to me like "Made a few not so significant improvements, but mainly we added loads of stuff", which is more often than not better than "We revolutionized/redesigned everything AKA dumbed down even more". Again I liked the fact that I didn't notice anything him telling or showing, that would be too good to be true.

The whole build your village is completely unnecessary for me, I like having a shack where I can mod, upgrade and build weapons and such, but my own apocamansion? Planting seeds? I'll probably pass. BUT I can see it having a big audience with other players, nor will I complain about too much content. Same thing with companions, nothing I saw suggested it being so improved, that I would bother. Never liked it in FO3, NV, Skyrim nor will I like it in FO4. It's ugly, clumsy and awkward, plus I'm a loner, but again, I know people like it and demand it, nor will I complain.

Didn't see any improvements with physics, characters still moving awkwardly etc etc. Same engine, however they abbreviate or "improve" it, and same bugs, limitations, problems will persist.

Overall can't wait to play!

You are so right.

 

I am 90% certain that you'll relatively early find out that your spouse and kid are stil alive and the equivalent to a main story will be to find them.
After seeing the E3 stuff I am really looking forward to this. The crafting looks amazing and I'll finally be able to build my own postapocalyptic dys...ehm, I mean settlement. The only thing I really dislike for now is the voiced protagonist. Imho voice acting isn't just overrated, in an RPG it's detrimental to the atmosphere and one of the many things that made Dragon Age: Inquisiton merely decent. It works in the Witcher and Mass Effect games because you play an already defined character, but I don't it in Fallout or TES.

 

On the e3 gameplay demo, the Mr Handy appears to address the PC by their last name (Howard).

Link to video.
Skip to around 5:40.

If they pull a Mass Effect style thing of everyone calling you by your last name; that will get old quickly and definitely puts a damper in my desires to play as a raider chief or a BoS Paladin.

 

I think Howard is the character's first name.
Todd Howard says in the E3 presentation that they have "recorded around 1000 of the most popular names". Presumably you'll be adressed as John or Steve if you choose that name. I guess if you call yourself Hieronymus or Rasputin the robot will just call you sir.

 

This just doesn't look very good to me. I just don't feel like Bethesda should be the ones designing these games. They make weird story decisions. A wife and kid? Sounds lame to me. Just as bad as the father from F3.

 

I'm already waiting for the fallout (haha, see what i did there ?) from the decision to make the PC canonically heterosexual.

 

Oh boy, I hope not. I'm sick and tired of having remember all these accounts. I don't think - I *hope* they're not doing something like uplay or origin, though, as they seem to have a close relationship with Valve/steam, but I guess it's all business either way at the end of the day.

The only companion we saw was the dog (so far as I remember, though I saw somewhere on reddit someone claim during the demo we saw a split second of a mutant companion like Fawkes), so it's hard to tell exactly how human(oid) companions will play out and if they changed (though I do think there won't be that many improvements per se). Even though I prefer TES over FO, overall I like FO's companions more than Skyrim's followers - ignoring their uselessness or usefullness in combat, there were ultimately fewer of them in FO, which meant that each of them were more unique and interesting.

I'm also guessing there's probably gonna be something like a "Luke I am your son/waifu/husbando" plot twist somewhere. Why else would they even bother to let you customize your wife and kid's appearance? The kid especially. They could've just had a generic looking baby who only changed skin color or something.

I think a voiced character works slightly better in FO than TES. FO's player characters tend to have a bit more backstory to them, so it's a bit narrower of an origin story than in TES. But it still doesn't fit a Bethesda-style open world RPG, nevertheless.

I think it's just the robot that calls you by your first name, I don't think they'd have to record 1000 names for every voice actor voicing a major character.

I already saw a bit of that on Bethesda's forums. I think there might be room to roleplay someone who's homosexual but in the closet, and/or discovers their sexual orientation in the more progressive post-apocalyptic world, but I guess some folks won't be satisfied with that.

 

Lol anyone who complains about your character being married limiting the role-play possibilities really needs to go back and play FO3 again. Great role-play there, with every conversation giving you a choice between "saintly goody two-shoes" or "sadistic monster". Anyone expecting any different from FO4 is in for a world of disappointment.

 

That's the problem, FO3 isn't real roleplay. Having black and white options and nothing else isn't that great. I didn't like being forced into the Brotherhood of steel. Bethesda is great at open world games, but doesn't really know anything else.

 

Yeah, an argument could be made that Daggerfall and maaaaaaybe Morrowind are RPG's, but since then Bethesda has been in the business of making open sandbox exploration games where your character happens to gain levels instead of RPG's. It's first person Grand Theft Auto with experience points. FO4 will be no different.

 

Not entirely sure I follow; how are F3 and other modern Bethesda games not RPGs?
Yeah, you may be forced into certain actions (being the Dovahkiin, joining the BoS) but that isn't any different from Bioware RPGs (being forced into becoming a Grey Warden, Shepard deciding to collect a ragtag group of misfits rather than taking himself and Miranda on a trip to the Andromeda galaxy).
I agree that Bethesda have been trimming down a lot of the more traditional RPG elements from their games -sometimes for the best, sometimes not so- but I really don't get calling them not RPGs. I can get that criticism of, say Borderlands 2, but not Skyrim or F3.

 

Could be cool.

 

I've already rehashed this argument several times on this very website, so I'm not interested in getting into it again, but in short, I feel that Bethesda games don't give you enough agency as a player to count as true RPG's. To take Fallout as an example, in Fallout 1 it was possible to talk your way through the whole main quest, there wasn't any part of it, including the final boss, where violence was required if you had the right skills. Contrast to FO3, where a shooting solution is literally the only solution to 90% of the content in the game. That's fine, that doesn't make the game bad, but it does make it a bad RPG. That's all I'm really going to say on the subject, again, I've had this conversation on this site several times in the past so I'm not real interested in going in depth with it again.

 

At least 90% of RPGs are like that :/ Action RPG is a more fitting description. OH WAIT, ARPG MEANS DIABLO.

Video game classifications are a mess.

 

Yeah. People tend to tack RPG onto any game where you gain experience and level up, and to me that just isn't what makes an RPG an RPG. I consider a game like Diablo for example to be simply an action game. The fact that you level up does not mean it gets the "RPG" tag attached to it. Or at least, it shouldn't. Call me a purist but to me, only games that are at least trying to mimic the experience of tabletop gaming count as RPG's. It will always be constrained by the technology but, at a bare minimum, an effort towards that goal has to be made.

 

I agree completely at this. I always wondered how people could say Diablo was a RPG. Leveling up is a game mechanic, not role playing.

 

With same logic for that matter, GTA Online can be considered RPG, I mean you level up and buy crap for your char.

 

I found a good preview talking about the game world setting here.

 

This game just went from "will possibly buy day 1" to "will definitely not buy day 1".

Article about it.

Key deal-breaker detail: mod tools will not be shipped with the PC version and will not come out until "early 2016" at the earliest. No way am I going to buy one of Bethesda's undoubtedly broken-ass games until the mod tools are available.

 

You shouldn't be buying games on day one anyways.