This seems as good of a place as any to get my full thoughts out on the Fallout 4 experience. The TL;DR is great game, the usual Bethesda work and well worth the time put in. It feels like Bethesda took on board all of the complaints levied against Skyrim and Fallout 3, and fixed them, though this did create problems of their own.
1. SPECIAL: At this point I have played 100 hours into Elder Scrolls: Fallout 4. Twenty-five of that was into my first character, where I did my usual SPECIAL traits I do in New Vegas and Fallout 3. Towards the end of those twenty-five hours I quit and started a new character, because I realized that a far wiser approach to the game was treating the stats more like Skyrim than like New Vegas. Pro-tip: Make sure you can get the perks that increase damage by weapons before you do anything else. It will save you a lot of time and hassle. Charisma too is significantly more important than it's ever been in the past, while I would say Intelligence is less important than it's ever been. Strength and Endurance are meaningless unless you like melee-focused characters, while Luck seems to have little to no effect on the game at all.
2. The Plot: I have to say, without spoiling it, the story is by far the best I've played since Bioshock Infinite. I thankfully managed to avoid any spoilers before entering the game and was glad I did. In Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the plot began as a small story of a personal nature and grew into something large. In Fallout 4, the pattern holds, but never loses the focus on the event that sets everything in motion to begin with. The narrative is good and the story specializes in dealing one sucker punch after another to you and the player character from the moment the news comes on and says that missiles are coming in. I was disappointed that some of the twists I wanted to happen never took place.
3. Quests: I've been reading online some reviews which are upset that there seems to be fewer quests and interesting things going on in Fallout 4. To be honest, after one hundred hours, I don't know if I agree with this. One of the problems people had with Skyrim was the piling up of quests into the log that will never get done. Fallout 4 seems to have fixed this complaint, at the cost of perception of lack of things to do. One big problem with the new system I think, is that it was clearly inspired by the radiant quest systems of Skyrim. This is fine on its own, but Skyrim had one thing Fallout 4 does not: a lore-recognized system of guilds that offered quests that would take you around the world. Also, Skyrim had eight towns which acted as quest hubs, and each had a jarl that would give you random quests to follow. Fallout 4 on the other hand only has the one major city that has repeating quests on a notice board ala Witcher. This improves somewhat as the game advances, as you will always have at least one faction that can give you quests, regardless of your choices.
To add on to this, it seems as though Bethesda desired to create a smaller number of well crafted quests and characters and bolster these with radiant quests. I think they succeeded. Upon experimentation, there are a lot of ways to complete the quests you are given, far more than you might expect. Some quests hold your hand the entire way, others don't and that can be a bit jarring. Even better than the extreme flexibility in how to complete quests is the consequences quests can bring. The biggest problem at the moment is that I don't know how many of these consequences are scripted or not and whether events that seem connected are connected or if it was just my sleep-deprived mine imagining it. I can confirm that you can get locked out of certain sidequests once you progress to particular points in the main quest. Still, I think that the biggest improvement over Skyrim is that new flexibility and variability in the quests themselves.
4. Companions and NPCs: Some reviewers are clearly living in a different reality than me. The companions in this game are better than New Vegas in terms of personality and interaction. Their dialogue and relationship evolves based on what you say to them at various points in time, and even on where you take them. Unfortunately, yes, you do reach a point where they run out of things to say if you travel with them enough, but the variety of things they say is impressive and reactive to each individual location. No longer do they only have general "oh wow" reactions like they did in Skyrim, but crafted responses to the variety of scenarios that emerge. Considering that garrisons of various buildings can change hands at different points in the plot, that's really impressive. The backstories behind the characters are also more human than in both New Vegas and Skyrim. In fact, I'd not even bother comparing it to Skyrim at all, because in Skyrim it would be "Do fetch quest, now I love you." In Fallout 4, it's more along the lines of "hang out, do things I like over a period of time, respond appropriately to my dialogue, flirt with me a bit (successfully), maybe do another quest with me, and now I love you, but not unconditionally." If you are familiar with the Interesting NPCs mod for Skyrim, it feels like that they have a lot in common with the way things work in Fallout 4.
Sadly, everything I said about companions doesn't really apply to the run of the mill NPCs. With a few notable exceptions here and there, most NPCs are as one-dimensional as they ever are in a Bethesda game. Don't get me wrong, they are mostly still interesting, but I do wish there was more diversity and interaction than they provide. I think a large part of the problems stem from the decision to have a voiced player character.
5. Voiced Player Character: This is easily the only truly great mistake Bethesda made when creating the game. I understand why they made the decision, as it allows for more cinematic and interesting interactions between multiple characters in a conversation. You can now have a three or four sided conversation, and even a staff meeting at one point. I can appreciate all of that, but it's clear that having a voiced player increases limitations in other areas which give me concern. Thankfully, my greatest fear that we would get tired of the PC saying the same things over and over was unfounded. After one hundred hours, I am not sick of the PC's voice. This is one field in which Bethesda did better than Bioshock Infinite or The Witcher in my opinion.
Unfortunately I am greatly concerned about the effect that a voiced PC will have on the modding community. In Skyrim, a large amount of the extended content mods were almost seamlessly integrated into Bethesda's world, to the point where once or twice I had no idea I had gone from vanilla content into mod content. I think that unfortunately, this will no longer be possible with a voice PC, because the lack of player voice acting will be an immediate immersion breaker whenever it takes place. Thankfully both the male and female PCs have the most generically American accents of all time, and not that ridiculous Bawstan accent, so it could be easy to make an impression of, but I don't have a lot of hope for that. Also I hope that Bethesda has both of those voice actors locked in for DLC content with an ironclad contract, otherwise the DLC will have similar problems.
6. Exploration: I would say that the design of Skyrim emphasizing exploration of a blank world map is completely in place. Unlike Fallout 3 and Oblivion, there's none of the copy and pasting dungeon creating, but instead, each location is unique with its own hazards and history. Also, I nearly cried with relief when I discovered that each dungeon has an easy way back to the start like they did in Skyrim from the "boss room." Bethesda, as always, does an excellent job of leaving an implied history of each location, with notes and terminals behind telling you the fate of your predecessors. Going back to the stuff about quests, I think a lot of people have had trouble with the apparent lack of quests, because rather than just being handed the quests at hubs, you have to actually go out and explore the world. Similarly, I would say they are dramatically discouraging fast travel, as I have encountered dynamic encounters on the road that would never have taken place if I just teleported from place to place. If you agree with the naysayers who claim that there's less to do here, go out and explore the world, I assure you there is more than meets the eye.
7. The Open World: I think I can safely say that there hasn't been a Fallout game with as open of a world since Fallout 2. Fallout New Vegas was an incredibly linear game, and while sequence breaking was possible, you were still restrained in what you could do on a small and limited world map. Fallout 3 was a marginally better open world, but when you get right down to it, the DC area was actually incredibly constrained and contained, with subways and blocked streets limiting zones in size and scope. No longer with Fallout 4! In New Vegas you would constantly hear the sounds of battle in the distance as random sound effects. In Fallout 4, if you hear the sounds of battle in the distance, there's a battle in the distance. You can run towards the sound of guns or run away. The battles themselves are surprisingly dynamic and can take place in a varying amount of locales and it's not uncommon to find the route you were planning on taking to be blocked by a battle between people you'd rather not tangle with. THis would in turn lead to finding another way around, and then maybe finding a new location or quest. There are far fewer (but not gone completely) loading screens than in past Bethesda games, and I find this to be a major improvement.
8. Graphics: They're all right I guess. I mean, obviously with an open world they can't invest in detailing individual strands of grass (assuming there was grass) or make every single brick a unique snowflake like they can in railroad FPSes. Personally I doubt I will be downloading any graphics mods any time soon. It all looks pretty to me.
9. Fighting: Gun battles are far more interesting and intense than they've ever been before. They've done that incredibly right. Enemy and Companion AIs are insanely better than they were in both Skyrim and New Vegas. I especially love how my companions would criticize me for doing things that companions would do in previous games, i.e. setting off obvious traps. Sneaking around is a bit tougher, unless you're lucky enough to get a suppressed weapon early. Melee combat is particularly awesome and it's clear that they actually had a self-defense instructor on board for motion capture. My particular favorite is when a companion will judo throw a guy down to the ground and then shoot their face.
10. Weapons: On weapons I have gone up and down from disappointment to elation, to disappointment and then back again to elation. Was a bit disappointed initially when I realized that pipe weapons were dominant rather than the vast arsenal of realistic guns present in New Vegas. Upon thought and reflection I realized that this actually makes a bit of sense, considering the far less organized society that exists on the East Coast. Factions that have an organized supply base, like the Brotherhood of Steel, use more sophisticated weaponry as suited for their position. I like that pre-war weapons are fairly rare in the game. I like that the modding helps keep original weapons like the 10mm Pistol relevant for longer than you would expect. Unfortunately modding weapons is a crapton of hard work, and involves the collection of all sorts of junk, and even with modding weapons, eventually you will start finding things better. Naming your weapons is a nice touch though.
11. Building Mechanics: So the town-building mechanics are clearly the weakest link in the game as a whole, mechanically speaking. Almost all of the bugs and errors in the game are in the town-building segments. Based on this and the existence of bloodbugs, I'm suspicious that Bethesda has been watching these forums and said, hey, let's do that after seeing botwawki. Still, once the towns have actually been built and construction is completed, they function surprisingly well, and I found it to be quite cathartic to see a new life spring to the wasteland, as caravans and supply convoys started traveling between towns. Seeing new population and people join my communities was fascinating, demonstrating a new change to the world and consequences beyond just the normal completion of quests. It falls under the whole dynamic and flexible open world that Bethesda created, leading to unscripted events that still are powerful in their own right. Story Time!
Built up the town of Sanctuary, which can only be accessed by a single bridge from the rest of the Commonwealth. It had turned into a thriving community of 15 people, and I had set up guard posts and turrets at the bridge. These were accompanied by a siren that would alert the town if an attack took place, causing the settlers to respond to any incursion. I had just gotten into night the town before with my good friend Cait, and had been planning on repairing and modifying my power armor and weapons for an excursion to the Glowing Sea. It was a foggy morning and I was at the workbench when I thought I heard the sound of gunfire. It was only a shot or two, so I initially put it down as just sound effects from the workbench. It was at that point the siren started sounded so I dropped the tools and began running towards the bridge. At this point a radiant quest "Defend Sanctuary" popped up.
The turrets were already firing into the fog, and I couldn't see across the bridge at what they were firing at. The settlers and Cait were shouting about how they couldn't find a target, when out of the fog erupted around twenty ghouls, just charging towards the turrets, the settlers, and me. The turrets cut down some of them, but they were in the town and a vicious fight erupted. I was chronically low on ammo and supplies, and it was a harrowing fight, leaving a few settlers dead, and me even lower on ammunition. Still, it was a moment that was not scripted and instead radiantly generated. It was also one of the most memorable moments of the game for me to date.
12. Power Armor: I suspected this would be the case when I saw the first announcement trailer, but power armor is no longer just gear, but more akin to a vehicle. It relies on fuel and I think that this is actually a dramatic improvement over New Vegas and Fallout 3. Rather than just being the gear that "heavy mooks" drop, power armor really is the special weapon that the lore makes it out to be. The stories of the Brotherhood of Steel clearing out the Pitt while only losing one guy are way more believable now. You no longer are able to clomp around anywhere in it due to the fuel restrictions, forcing you to make tactical decisions on its use. I will say there were moments when I regretted both bringing and not bringing power armor to various fights.
13. Bugs: It's a Bethesda game, so yeah there are bugs. As I am on PC, I can't really say whether or not these are universal, but they are present. I'm sure that both Bethesda and the modding community will be right on it. Surprisingly though, there are far fewer bugs than I would have expected at launch from Bethesda. A good sign.
14. Upcoming DLC: If we don't go to the moon, I'll be very disappointed. Just saying. What has me intrigued is a suspicion that Bethesda may not actually have plans for what the DLCs/FO5 will be. In Fallout 3 they dropped numerous hints about the Commonwealth and made it clear that the next game (or one of the DLC) would take place there. In Broken Steel, the Brotherhood outright says that they plan an expedition to the Commonwealth one day. Out of 100 hours in Fallout 4, I have yet to see a single reference to any location or region outside of either the Capital Wasteland or the Commonwealth. Not by any NPC, terminal, or even scrap of paper. The closest thing to it would be the banner talking about American soldiers in the Sea of Tranquility. New Vegas on the other hand had clearly laid the ground for their DLC from the start. This leads to two avenues of speculation: Either they are keeping the DLC plan really close to the vest, or they have multiple plans and ideas. I'm a little suspicious that this will include cosmetic DLCs, particularly for town building. I'm ok with that actually, but would rather see more substantial DLC content than just a bunch of hat packs.
Well, that's about all of my thoughts on Fallout 4. It's a really good game, and I'm sure I'll wind up matching my 1,000 hours into Skyrim with it.
