The Obligatory Fallout 4 Thread

[1137]

Eh, I just picked up Skyrim again. Should keep me occupied for 50 hours at least.

 

[freethinker44]

For the vast majority of games I wait for a good deal. Sometimes I'll wait years before picking up a game. The Fallout and Elder Scrolls series (if we exclude Elder Scrolls online) are the exceptions to that rule.

For me, Fallout and Elder Scrolls embody that rule. I will wait for the game of the year edition to buy it. That way I get all the expansions and the inevitable bugs have already been worked out.

 

[Quintessence]

The bugs are part of the fun. My inventor character is half crazy anyway. I just chalk it up to him having delusions.

 

[Erebus]

OK, not going to spoil anything here, but encountered something pretty impressive. The game has actual moral choices. Usually a moral choice is "would you like to cuddle all the orphans or eat their brains?" whereas in this case there's a genuine decision to be made between groups that have some good ideas and some bad ideas. It's actually made me stop and question who I agree with more.

 

[Quintessence]

I did pick up the console bundle last weekend. Haven't gotten to play much for two reasons:

• I could spend hours just playing with the face-sculpting during character creation
• I got severely distracted by being able to make buildings and stuff

First time I figured out how to rig up an electric trap I was like "OMFGs AAAAWEEEEESOOOOOME!" But then it went away. And I was sad. WHY CANTZ YOU BE ON FOREVARZ!!!! (because there's nothing that says "grieving and madly eccentric engineer lives here" like a bunch of electricity randomly flying all over the place.)

You get so few SPECIAL points at character creation. Wasn't anticipating that at all. Usually I make my adorable engineer rather charismatic, but I had to dump stat that. From what I understand, to make proper settlements I'm going to have to tank that up.

OK, not going to spoil anything here, but encountered something pretty impressive. The game has actual moral choices. Usually a moral choice is "would you like to cuddle all the orphans or eat their brains?" whereas in this case there's a genuine decision to be made between groups that have some good ideas and some bad ideas. It's actually made me stop and question who I agree with more.

I don't have that issue. It's not about who I agree with. I do what the character would do. I role play in my RPGs.

 

[Erebus]

I don't have that issue. It's not about who I agree with. I do what the character would do. I role play in my RPGs.

This is an interesting one. Thinking about which decision my character would make is tough due to conflicting loyalties. From my own perspective, the philosophies at play are a tough call due to both sides having definite positives and negatives.

Really can't say much more about it since I refuse to spoil it for you

 

[Quintessence]

@Erebus, I appreciate the no-spoilers.

Whatever faction is "for Science!" will be what he aligns with, more than likely. Meh heh.

 

[vaguelyhumanoid]

Not very far in, I've played like 8 hours - my character is kind of a Pulp Fiction Uma Thurman type with a cool scar. I love this game but I kinda suck at it. My terrible sense of direction dooms me in a lot of the dark dingy interiors - I'm supposed to kill X bandits at this factory and I can't even find it. I prefer wandering the open wasteland or kicking it with the NPC survivors.

The soundtrack is incredible; one of the best I've heard in a game. It's this lethal combination of variety and consistent quality that never leaves my head. My favorite is "The End Of The World", it just feels so beautiful and profound. But the zanier numbers are brilliant too. "When you hear me call out, baby, kick a wall out, and crawl out thru the fallout back to me!"

 

[ManleyPJSalt]

Fallout 4. It's coming.

When the next generation consoles came out, I didn't care because. I said "meh, until Bethesda comes out with the nest Elder Scrolls or Fallout game, not going to buy." I don't usually have a worshipful attitude towards corporations, but I do with Bethesda. Not only do they not use sleazy DLC schemes like everyone and their dog seems to nowadays, but they develop the sorts of game that a true role-player and bard just loves. And while I'm annoyed and disappointed about the voice-over on the main character, I think I can overlook that fault given what else this title is supposed to bring to the table.

Eleven days. After which time, I will quit my job and not leave my house for a month.

(okay, not really... but if I could... )

What are you looking forward to with this game? What are you concerned about? Any news you've heard that you want to share (please use spoiler tags where necessary, especially after it comes out)?

ELEVEN DAYS IS TOO LONG TO WAIT, BLAST IT! (and it'll be longer than that for me, because I need to order the console first, and I can't quite justify paying for super fast shipping)

At lest this game didnt keep me in the house as long as New Vegas did.

40h of gameplay and I'm just about done with this one.

But i guess that will change when mods and addons are available -.-

 

[Quintessence]

I'm now on playthrough 2.

Not sure how to review this game. Of course I love any of Bethesda's open world games on the whole, but there are a few major beefs I have with some changes they made (all of which should be spoiler-free):

• Dialogue options. Maybe I'm old school, but I strongly prefer my RPGs to allow me to select from a text-based list of dialogue options to develop the personality of my character and use my imagination. The dialogue system in this game is just... bad. On multiple levels. The voiced protagonist alone was very nearly a deal breaker for me, but the simplistic implementation is just... bad. Your character's abilities also seem to have no impact on dialogue choices like they used to. This makes me super sad. *frownie face*
• Forced character backstory. As should be apparent, I like story writing my character as I play these games. I think the main quest line of F4 would be oodles better if they let me be a blank slate. Just let me be a sole survivor of a vault... there's more than enough narrative potential with that idea. That, and for personal reasons, I really really dislike the backstory they force. Blech.
• The main quest line. A few major problems. One, the baggage-ridden backstory takes away from the main quest line, and dropping that alone would vastly improve the main story IMHO. But second and more importantly, the ways in which the player can resolve the main quest really ground my gears. For the first time in a Bethesda game, I feel a compulsion to avoid completing the main quest line. Those of you who have played through probably know what I'm talking about. In fairness, this was probably deliberate and by design. But still. Third, the execution of one faction in particular just bothered me. I have to wonder if they had any actual scientists look at the storyline for this faction, because I look at it as a scientist and go "what the... ?" The main quest lines in F3 and NV are preferable to me over this one by quite a lot. Oh well.
• Game mechanics transparency. There are some game mechanics that I wish were explicitly spelled out to the player instead of being left mystical and unexplained. At a minimum, please show us DPS as well as DAM, and what AP costs are especially when we're crafting weapons.
• Robotics Expert. I admit that my super duper annoyance about this perk largely comes from my default character concept being a mad engineer who has a robot fetish. This perk should work exactly the same as the charisma-based control perks (e.g., wasteland whisperer), with the character shouting RobCo command protocols at them or something. The way it is currently implemented makes it almost worthless. I used it maybe ten times in first playthrough. Blech!

Other than those things, though, my gripes are minor and the rest is golden as usual. Though maybe the most scathing criticism of all should be "Dear Bethesda... how dare you make such an awesome game that has monopolized nearly ever hour of my free time!" LULZ.

 

[Erebus]

One thing that kind of bugged me about the dialogue is that there's no option to remain silent. I can work with the backstory, my character started out as a pre-war nice guy, but over time adapted to the wastes by becoming cold and detached. By the end, I pictured him as being more machine than the synths. Half the time, I just didn't see why he'd respond at all to the conversation at hand.

That said, I still loved the game. The crafting in particular surprised me as I honestly dismissed it as a gimmick at first glance. I definitely hope we see something similar brought into the next elder scrolls game. Enchanting is all well and good, but I want my daggers to be serrated too!

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I'm still barely into the game (the last thing I did was escort the one group back to Santuary, or whatever the starting town is called). But my friend's brother has poured a ton of hours into it, and he's posted quite a few pictures and videos on Facebook, such as a few invisible elevator platforms, a random floating teddy bear out in the air, followers constantly being in the way, and a few other things.
One thing I don't like about Fallout 4 though is how everything looks like it's made out of plastic or porcelain, and the PIPboy interface is abit difficult to read (though I've noticed I'm having a problem with small and difficult to read text on the ps4, kinda like how it was when I was playing my ps3 on a SD TV).

 

[Quintessence]

One thing that kind of bugged me about the dialogue is that there's no option to remain silent.

Pfft... that's because this game doesn't have the Dark Brotherhood from Elder Scrolls.

I have the reverse problem with the character I'm roleplaying - he should be talking way more than they're letting me. Including rapid streams of technological gibberish that makes other people's eyes glaze over.

All of this should remind us that as awesome as Bethesda's games are, no game will ever replace the joys of tabletop roleplaying with a game master and some friends.

That said, I still loved the game. The crafting in particular surprised me as I honestly dismissed it as a gimmick at first glance. I definitely hope we see something similar brought into the next elder scrolls game. Enchanting is all well and good, but I want my daggers to be serrated too!

I'm sure the next Elder Scrolls will be at least a year or two out. If you get your serrated daggers, I get my better spell system. Spell customization needs to come back. I miss my "reverse gravity" spell from Morrowind where I'd cast levitate on an enemy and have them slow to a crawl. It was broken as all hells, but it was bloody hilarious.

I'm still barely into the game (the last thing I did was escort the one group back to Santuary, or whatever the starting town is called). But my friend's brother has poured a ton of hours into it, and he's posted quite a few pictures and videos on Facebook, such as a few invisible elevator platforms, a random floating teddy bear out in the air, followers constantly being in the way, and a few other things.
One thing I don't like about Fallout 4 though is how everything looks like it's made out of plastic or porcelain, and the PIPboy interface is abit difficult to read (though I've noticed I'm having a problem with small and difficult to read text on the ps4, kinda like how it was when I was playing my ps3 on a SD TV).

Stuff doesn't look like plastic/porcelain to me. There's way too much world texturing for that... far more than in any previous game. Maybe there's a platform/TV difference? For the PIP boy, there's a button you can push to zoom in on it. Don't know what that button would be on PS4. Maybe the readability a platform/TV difference too. I have no idea.

If I could post a video, I'd post an epic fail judgement call of taking a vertibird out of the sky with a rocket launcher... and then it proceeding to crash on top of me and take my health down low enough to kick off Nerd Rage.

Or maybe that video that I didn't make of some idiot with a fat man shooting me point blank with the thing. I figured... hey... he won't be dumb enough to suicide himself, right? Nope. He totally fired off a fat man point blank. XD

 

[Erebus]

Pfft... that's because this game doesn't have the Dark Brotherhood from Elder Scrolls.

I have the reverse problem with the character I'm roleplaying - he should be talking way more than they're letting me. Including rapid streams of technological gibberish that makes other people's eyes glaze over.

All of this should remind us that as awesome as Bethesda's games are, no game will ever replace the joys of tabletop roleplaying with a game master and some friends.



I'm sure the next Elder Scrolls will be at least a year or two out. If you get your serrated daggers, I get my better spell system. Spell customization needs to come back. I miss my "reverse gravity" spell from Morrowind where I'd cast levitate on an enemy and have them slow to a crawl. It was broken as all hells, but it was bloody hilarious.

I guess I've sort of given away my usual play-style here My usual motto is "I've done my job right if nobody gets the chance to attack me."

Ahh yes, spell creation is something else that badly needs to return. Ideally, I'd like to see custom graphics too. For example, a necromancer character might use destruction spells with a green tint to them. I'm kind of veering off topic there though.

I'm definitely interested in seeing what DLC gets added to Fallout 4. For the most part, Bethesda has tended to do DLC pretty well. Old World Blues and Dead Money were fantastic.

Edit:
Saying that, New Vegas was Obsidian wasn't it? Not sure how much influence Bethesda had in its DLC. Even so, they still put out some generally good content (horse armour aside).

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I read there is a Fatman that shoots 12 mini nukes. Why you would need to shoot that many all at once I don't know, because it's overkill even on a super mutant behemoth.

 

[Erebus]

I read there is a Fatman that shoots 12 mini nukes. Why you would need to shoot that many all at once I don't know, because it's overkill even on a super mutant behemoth.

It's for when you don't just want something dead, you want to be especially vindictive about it.

 

[TurkeyOnRye]

The game's pretty awesome, I must say. And very addicting. She's running at 60 frames on ultra settings on my computer. It looks absolutely gorgeous. I'm using an Xbox One controller, so I feel like I have the best of both worlds.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

If I could just pry myself away from ESO I'm going to get around to Fallout 4. I don't have too much more left to do with my Aldmeri Dominion sorcerer, so probably within a few months I'll be moving away from that to Fallout 4. Which I'll probably start fresh since I haven't played but a couple of hours anyways.

 

[vaguelyhumanoid]

I'm on my backup computer now so now Fallout 4 for me. I wanted to revisit New Vegas in the meantime but there's not enough disk space. :-/

 

[TurkeyOnRye]

I'm on my backup computer now so now Fallout 4 for me. I wanted to revisit New Vegas in the meantime but there's not enough disk space. :-/

I have a pathetic amount of disk space: 120Gb total. It's a lone solid state drive. It's great for load times, but I had to delete the Fallout 3 installation on my computer just to install FO4. My cousin gave me a used 500Gb HD, which I intended to use as a main storage drive, but it was DOA...thanks, cuz.