Just got through the current Bombcast, and found myself agreeing with the sentiment that despite not DISLIKING Fallout, there just hasn't been... The hook? I guess? Forget all the internet circle jerk on overhyped, overrated, etc. The proof for me is in the desire to jump in and play more. This time around, that draw just hasn't existed.

I'm reminded of Jeff's earlier quote: "Am I crazy for wanting this to be better?"

I finished the story, did a fair amount of base stuff, engaged with the collection and marking systems, played on harder difficulties, etc. I got my moneys worth, no question. But very rarely did I find myself enthralled. This stands out to me because I think the Fallout style might be my favorite in all of games.

After about 40 hours of Fallout, I finally got around to checking out the GOTY Edition of Dragon Age Inquisition and was struck by the stark contrast in quality. It was immediately refreshing to play a game that just worked smoothly. Even something as small as engaging NPCs in conversation. It just works. Obviously the design is less ambitious, but it begs the question: Is Bethesda's "ambition" really worth the poor design?

As I think back over my time in FO4, it was an experience marked more by clunkiness than wonder or fun. For every improvement, there was another element that fell flat or failed to move forward. Good gunplay? Still need to go to your inventory mid-fight and eat a feast of cooked scorpion and cola. Result? Improved mechanics don't matter much because the flow of combat is just as stilted as older games. There are a ton of examples big and small.

So after wasting many valuable work hours thinking about this, I've come to a personal conclusion: I don't think I like Bethesda RPGs much these days. The negatives outweigh the positives, and I'm not impressed by the "emergent" world enough to tolerate the rest of the mess. And it's a bummer, man.

TLDR: Usually I'm good to go for a Bethesda game, and I stay in the fun fog for a good long time before I realize what a mess they are. This time around, the fog lifted early. And I don't think I can go back.

I mean, you completed the game, started again on a harder mode, spent time doing extras, and you say that you are no longer a fan? That is more than I do in my favourite single player games!

I didn't restart on hard - just upped the difficulty as I played whenever it got too easy. But your point... Yeah. I thoroughly played it, digested the experience, and I've come away soured on any more Bethesda RPGs like this.

Started the game around 3 weeks agos and ever since I've played and beaten the bloodborne DLC, I've been completely uninterested in coming back to it. The world is fun to explore (although I do feel like it's lacking a few more interesting sights to see for its size) but the gameplay has become something of a chore to me.

Yet to play a good Bethesda game. Just broken messes that look like garbage.

Different strokes for different folks obviously, but we had the opposite experience. When I played Dragon Age Inquisition it felt like a step back and I struggled to reach the end, I don't see the difference really in firing down a nuka cola or firing down a limited pool of potions but like I said different strokes, the combat just didn't do it for me and the world felt lifeless except for the hubs, it pretty much put the nail in the coffin for my enjoyment of the Bioware system, but just my 2 cents. In my opinion Fallout felt like fallout and by extension Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind... etc. They are janky, they are buggy (at the start) but they have always felt more alive to me.

Sounds like Fallout 4 is for you as to what Skyrim was for me. I spent a lot of time in it, and the more I played, the less I liked. It's just not worth the hassle of bugs and poor performance and crashes to see the occasional fun quest. Even Skyrim, which has a much more cohesive world than Fallout seems to have, wasn't particularly engaging on that level.

Maybe I shouldn't have put that comparison in there. I don't think DAI is some masterpiece either - But it was like a splash of cold water to the face after having settled into the gameplay loop of Fallout 4. There was a "solid" quality to the game, in a way that Fallout 4 felt barely held together.

@hotspray: I agree there, for all of the faults I had with the game stability was not one of them. Except for the occasional floating companion it was a very stable game. I guess I have just gotten so used to throwing open the console in Bethesda games to fix a quest it doesn't bother me as much as it should. Have a Good one.

I agree that I don't feel like it grabbed me in the same way as FO3 or Skyrim... but then I still put over 100 hours into it. So it must have done something right.

I think it's a great game, but I know what you mean about something being missing. Maybe that something is just overall polish, which is why I can't put my finger on it.

I screwed around doing side stuff for 60 or so hours before really touching the main quest, and I think that's the way to play this, keeping the larger goals at bay, while interacting with the smaller stories. I haven't seen anyone in support of their dialogue system/skill check system/primary storyline. I was on board with exploring the world they built until I interacted with the main quest.

Aesthetically this game is absolutely on point and even moreso with graphical mods, but once I realized how hollow the core narrative was and encountered non-choices at every crucial plot point, I lost the drive to continue exploring. Not knowing what they had planned for the story made me want to explore and prepare, to find neat things in the world and become invested in it. Realizing that no matter what I did, my options would always be yes/no or resort to violence, made exploration lose its purpose.

It's sad, because this was undoubtedly their most gameplay-focused RPG, and it shows. It feels good to play, but unfortunately doesn't feel good to think about.

This game is pretty much more of the same from Bethesda, but despite that I've already completed over 200 hours worth and I'm fine with that. But I don't think I'll be kindly to the next Bethesda game if there isn't a drastic change in gameplay design and/or mechanics.

While 2015 was a good year for games I agree with Brad's sentiment in this weeks Bombcast that most of the major AAA games have been meh/duds (Arkham Knight, Halo 5 to name a few).

Absolutely. Skyrim was a step back for the Elder Scrolls at almost every turn. The worst of which was the writing and quest design. Comparing the Brotherhood quests in Skyrim vs Oblivion is a sad experience. I think Skyrim and Fallout 4 formed a 1-2 punch for me.

This happened to me too. The high point of the experience was discovering the Institute. That high lasted about 10 minutes, and it was back to the bad writing, nonsense quests, etc. The wrap up ended up being just as contrived and dumb as Fallout 3. Once I saw the writing on the wall, it just became an obligation to wrap up the story.

I started getting this exact same feeling since... Skyrim. Not getting Fallout 4 anytime soon, might wait for a GOTY version with all the extra content to go out on sale on Steam.

I hope Obsidian take a crack at a new Fallout game in between the major installments with their reputation and skills systems. Not likely to happen though.

I think that a big part of the problem is that Fallout 4 is a game that would have been fine in a pre-Witcher 3 and MGSV world. Now, however, it just feels old and dated:

MGSV showed it's possible to get a solid 60FPS out of these consoles, which Fallout 4 most certainly doesn't do (I'm finding it almost unplayable in certain areas around Boston).

Witcher 3 showed that just because a game has an open world doesn't mean it necessarily has to sacrifice characters, voice acting, or storytelling depth. In Fallout 4 I'm constantly cringing at the terrible voice acting and characters that are constantly making subjectively irrational choices in service of a non-sensical plot.

Even a lot of the standard Bethesda tropes feel old and tired. I mean, it was really cool coming out of the sewer in Oblivion the first time and being blinded by the sunlight. But then they did the same thing in Fallout 3 and Skyrim. By Fallout 4 it just isn't cool anymore.

I already wrote a thing about Fallout 4, so I'll leave that here if anyone cares about details. Even beyond the almost expected technical shortcomings, I can't help but be a little disappointed in the lack of progression from previous Bethesda games on both a mechanical and writing level.

Dragon Age Inquisition is sort of its own discussion, but the sins of that game are both similar to and radically different from the problems that Fallout has.

Dude. FANTASTIC write up! Thanks for linking that. It's always satisfying to read something I FEEL but can't properly put down in writing. I'm surprised to see this sentiment about FO4 being so common. I expected to be lynched by people loving it, but there does seem to be a general malaise surrounding the game right now.

Witcher 3 was a revelation for me story wise. The following will sound very "game jouro" circle jerky, but it's true: I experienced the storytelling in Witcher 3 like I was watching a great HBO show. I was surprised and amused by the writing, I was invested in the characters, and I cared about outcomes. I actually gave a shit that Geralt ended up with Triss. The scene on the docks was awesome. And generally speaking, I don't find myself enraptured by medieval fantasy love stories. It was all just so lavishly presented and painstakingly crafted.

Then you get Fallout 4...

I'm feeling a bit burnt out on fallout 4. Usually my formula for Bethesda games is to play it until i feel a bit burnt out and then wrap up the story. This time around i feel somewhat tricked by the mechanics. I spent way too much time establishing settlements early on until i realized, "Wait, these things don't serve any purpose other than generic mission dispensers". Mix that with the clunky interactions with the settlement crafting and mechanics i felt were obviously missing (for as many mannequins in the game i'm surprised you can built your own and have it wear the armor you collect) I just felt frustrated from all the time i felt i had wasted with settlement building, pushing the game way past the normal amount of time i usually spend playing Bethesda's RPGs (about 80 hours). I'm at 124 hours now and looking forward to putting the game down.

I like the game for the most part and i'm not willing to throw Bethesda's brand out just yet, but i do think they really need to find a refreshing start. Unfortunately, sales would probably suggest that change isn't needed. Better bet is for a company to come out and make RPGs like they do from a fresh perspective.

I just played some more and found Vault 75 and I thought everything about it was great. Reminded me why I like these games so much. I think they still have the potential to be amazing and this one often is. I've started playing without fast travelling too which seems to improve things, seeing a lot of really nice vistas that I would have missed and also coming across new areas.

I think the 'return to the quest giver' part of a lot of the repeatable quests actually encourages a detrimental gameplay loop. You fast travel to back and forward to the quest giver, often between the same few location, and instantly get given another quest. This is probably making the world feel smaller than it is. This could have served as a good way to get players to explore new locations but it's often the same ones. I must have cleared the BADTFL Regional Office for Tenpines Buff ten times already.

Having a fixed home (which is necessary without the shared inventory charisma perk) also keeps you fast travelling back and forward to unload junk and upgrade things. Which is great for the customization part, but again may be shrinking the world slightly because of fast traveling to and from. Hmm.

I've enjoyed my time with Fallout 4 but I definitely don't feel the "drive" like I had with Fallout 3 and New Vegas to keep playing the game. Maybe it's a case of open-world game play fatigue and Fallout 4 just happened to fall victim to it in my case. There have been so many open world games that I played/am playing this year (GTA V, MGS5, Witcher 3, Tales of Zestiria, AC: Syndicate) that the most enjoyable part of Fallout 4 for me has been the base building. Probably not the reaction that Bestheda intended from a die-hard Fallout fan.

I played 15-20 hours of this and didn't totally dislike it, but yeah, I've had my fill. It doesn't even feel ambitious when up against The Witcher 3. Hell, it feels kinda small and quaint when compared to Dragon Age Inquisition.

Yes.

For me that's the end of the story.

You say you like Bioware's worlds better despite that they do a fraction of what Bethesda does? Great. Awesome. Go play those games. There are many. There are only going to be more due to The Witcher's success.

And if you really want an ULTRA streamlined version of it, Zelda will be your game next year. But Bethesda games are Bethesda games. They fill a void that nobody is filling and they do it fantastically. The stuff people are whining about in Fallout just really do not matter to fans of what they are providing.

What is Bethesda doing with the "sandboxes" that warrant that design ethic?

Is it the radiant AI?

I think we're just getting older, guys.

It is time for a shake up.

Bethesda games haven't really evolved since Morrowwind. It's kinda natural that people are starting to get tired of the same games in the same big, boring and broken worlds. Its almost been 10 years since Oblivion came out and since then open world games have evolved and become far better then that design blueprint.

Oblivion was amazing for the 30 hours I spent, but then I was done with Bethesda RPG's.

It's been nice to see these sorts of games do so well, but I never quite understood why they were considered so incredible for so many years.

@boboblaw said:

I'm kind of struggling to maintain interest with Fallout 4, and I think this is the main reason why. Bethesda's games aren't the only big open worlds in town anymore; the vast majority of "AAA" games are open world now, and in many ways they've raised the bar over Bethesda. I put up with clunky combat, terrible dialogue, dull stories, and all the bugs in previous Bethesda games because it still felt like they were doing something bigger and more ambitious than anything else. Fallout 4 feels like they've stopped improving, while everyone else around them has passed them by.

Still having a ball with Fallout 4, but goddamn do I wish Bethesda could let Fallout be its own thing away from the design sensibilities of Skyrim. Not even Elder Scrolls, just Skyrim specifically. Not a fan of the perk tree. Not a fan of stripping out Skills. Not a fan of the voiced protagonist despite the fact that his voice work is really good. I love the way Bethesda builds game spaces, and I love the way that they approach exploration, but the landmark to quest ratio in this game is pitiful. Replacing good, honest content with radiant quests is just bad. Not good at all.

Think of it; there's no real equivalent to Big Trouble in Big Town, or THOSE! or The Superhuman Gambit. Quests that you stumble across and lead you on an odyssey, doing weird shit for weirder people. A lot of quests boil down to go there, shoot that thing, come back. That's all fine as the occasional palate cleanser, but the majority of Fallout 4 seems to be made up of radiant quests, and that bugs me.

I don't know, these games are weird where I just have to be in the mood for them ya know? Like I just wanna dip my toes in a ton of Bethesda-style quests right now. I bet I could go back to Morrowind or Oblivion and run through a handful of questlines if suddenly I couldn't play Fallout 4 for a couple weeks.

But sometimes I want to just sight down and play a DAMN VIDYA GAME...so I will fire up something like Mario World, PES 2k16, or Street Fighter as well for a more quick satisfaction type of gameplay loop in between sessions of talking to people and walking around killing stuff.

Awww, thanks!

In general, I've noticed more discontent surrounding Fallout 4 than I have with previous Bethesda games. There's always that crowd that dislikes those games, and they have valid concerns. But a lot of the criticisms I've seen come that game's way have also been from professed fans of Fallout 3 and Skyrim.

Once I realized that Fallout 4 is a game that hates people that like to roleplay (what with the pre-determined background, the lack of actual dialog options changing based on skills/stats to name a few) I tried to approach it from a different angle but eventually I realized that having a lot of procedural quests doesn't mean fuck if it's all the same thing in the end.

It's a game where walking around is the point since it's a bad roleplaying game and that's unfortunate because Bethesda should be better than this.

I'm guessing when you say "poor design" in that original quote you're talking about the lack of polish, rather than actual game design that your talking about when you mention ambition.

I don't think it's the radiant AI that makes people accept that things are going to break now and again. At least that isn't the case for me. It's the part where it's closer to an actual sandbox RPG than others that helps me move past the relatively unrefined presentation compared to something like Inquisition. One big clockwork world with a whole bunch of questlines and systems for you to engage with at your leisure. Leisure being the operative word there.

I never got the feeling in Inquisition that I was in a living world. Narratively I understood that it was, and that big things were popping off throughout the story, but it all still very much felt like progressing through levels (i.e. stages; not character progression), contrasted with doing whatever questline I feel like at any given moment in a Bethesda game.

You certainly lose some narrative hooks, like any sense of urgency for instance (or at least the player has a greater role in mainting that sense of urgency themselves), but you get a sense of scale from it that isn't just measuring square footage. It straight up just feels like you're in a big dynamic world, even when you can break down the game logic by noticing all of the conspicuous seams.

It's why a lot of the jank can be easy to look past, because what it's going for and often manages to do is really exciting. Less of an apologistic "they're making something really big so cut em some slack" thing, and more of a "what it is besides the jank is really awesome" thing. But that's also why it's frustrating to see, because if it was more generally refined it would be fucking AMAZING, and the fact that they've been making these games for so long now you'd think something would give on that front (giving in this case meaning breaking the streak of... being broken).

The thing that troubles me most about the "sandbox" defense of Bethesda's design is that I don't think Fallout 4 is much of a sandbox. I hear about it. I read it. But when it comes down to doing things my way in the game world, Bethesda just hasn't provided the options this time around.

Fallout 4 has less player agency than Oblivion, Skyrim, Morrowind, Daggerfall, Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

The voiced protagonist is a turn at a poor mans Bioware - It doesn't succeed in enhancing Bethesda's poor writing, and it guts the more interesting role playing elements of prior games.

You can kill things. But not everyone. You can sneak, but you'll still need to kill things. You can craft, but you still need to kill things. You can build stuff, but the tools aren't great, and there's better games out there for that.

For MOST of my time in Fallout 4, I was playing a badly paced corridor shooter. I just don't see that many different ways to approach the game.

I don't think it's necessarily poor design, but rather poor execution. Admittedly, I don't see how they're ever going to make a game the size and scope that Bethesda games are that is anything other than a janky mess, but it's what they need to work on. I haven't played Fallout 4, but I have recently finished my time with Skyrim, and your post is somewhat reminiscent of my final thoughts on that game.

Perhaps Bethesda needs to step back from open-world game design and make something a bit smaller. Not necessarily a wholly linear experience, but something dramatically less enormous and messy as a major ES or Fallout game. Let the rest of the industry continue to evolve or iterate upon the open-world "template". Maybe some time away from this type of game would give them some new ideas about how to improve.

I've been playing FO4 for about 6/7 hours and I keep switching to other games. I loved FO3 back in the day, but this game feels so outdated now. Has the shooting part really been improved, because it's just as I remember Fallout 3 was. I hate the combat in these games, it feels like you can die from anything any second without it making any sense.

The enemies all move way to fast, they close the gap between you in a couple of seconds (frames) and when they are on your case it's chaos, not even VATS can fix that most of the time. I guess what I want from this game is that every time you enter combat it goes to slow motion and you can take your time aiming and eating stuff. Or command your buddy to attack a certain target. This game needs some RPG combat system.

I have a feeling all western RPG developers put 99,5% of their team on creating a huge world with it's assets and characters. And the other guys (might even be the interns) can design and code the actual gameplay. Good gameplay doesn't sell games, son, it's not a number we can put on the box. 50 square miles to explore, 100's of quests to do, 2000 different weapons and 200 hours of gameplay awaits you! But it plays like shit.

There are legitimate criticisms, definitely.

But, a lot of the criticism for the game is coming because the game over-sold it's real audience. You see this from time to time, where people buy game just because of the hype and then making lists of complaints basically saying that they wish it was a completely different game in a completely different genre.

I don't think I'm bored with the Bethesda formula just yet but nevertheless to me, Fallout 4's world seems small and the quests aren't as dynamic or designed well enough to hook me.

Fallout 4 doesn't meet the expectations of a next gen Bethesda game at all.

Well, for one thing, I wouldn't call Bethesda's games "sandboxes". They are role playing games. I feel like that is a big differentiator.

For another, I think Bioware and their chasing of the "cinematic RPG" has somehow convinced/tricked people into thinking they are playing RPGS where they aren't. It's just a label, but Bioware's games have been becoming less and less of RPGs ever since Jade Empire. Bioware knows that they can make more money selling action-story-movie-games than they can RPGs and they have been doing it successfully for years.

It's not unlike when a punk rock band, metal band, or hardcore rapper suddenly becomes the artist of the year. Is it because the world suddenly fell in love with punk/metal or hardcore rap? Or is it because that artist started producing standard pop-music with a little bit of genre flavor ala Green Day or Nickelback and people gravitate toward that? Mass Effect 2 proved to Bioware that there is way more money to be made making the lightest of RPGs with lots of cinematic flair for the mass appeal than there is making actual role playing games.

I'm not saying that Bethesda games are the hardest core RPGs you will ever find, but in many ways they are. And part of role playing games is "jank" as has been irritatingly coined over the past few months. Even tabletop RPGs have it. No glutting of code, obviously, but silly stuff happens all the time. It's part of the appeal.

@bananasfoster: I talked about it a little bit in that blog I linked to, but the tricky thing when talking about Bethesda games is that no one really makes open-world RPGs like they do. Other games like The Witcher 3 and DA:I might take certain aspects of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout and run with them in a different direction, but if you want giant worlds with that level of crazy simulation, the only company that does that is Bethesda Softworks. That level of ambition also means they can get away with a lot more than a different developer might.

I think where that started to break down for me was that Fallout 4 felt overly-familiar in a way that previous games from that team haven't, and I think it's both a product of the passage of time and simply that I think Fallout 4 is in some ways a less interesting RPG than Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim were at the time (and maybe still are).

Totally. The thing is, what a lot of the detractors can't or refuse to understand is that a lot of the things they call "unacceptable" are things that I just really don't care one wit about. "A character walked right in front of me while I was having a conversation! My immersion is broken!!!" Like, really? I can't even begin to find a place inside myself that cares about that.

Again, don't get me wrong, I have a laundry list of complaints about Fallout 4 and most of them have to do with the voiced protagonist decisions that completely broke a huge chunk of the design of the game. But I feel like most people aren't given Bethesda credit for what the game actually DOES and instead whine about why it's not like some other game that basically a completely separate genre.

For instance, as I've said elsewhere before, the fact that the game uses, what is up until the point, the best character creator of all time to create faces for it's characters. The fact that I can go on dungeon run after dungeon run and keep encountering people with reasonably unique faces is a big deal for me. That matters more to me than if a character is "pretty" or not. And in the hands of modders, it will matter even more.

I haven't played Fallout 4 but a lot of these complaints sounds like my thoughts in the back end of my Skyrim playthrough. The RPG mechanics are shallow, the writing is bad, poor voice acting, bugs and jankiness all over the place. And I'm supposed to excuse these faults because of the extremely ambitious sandbox world? Is it really THAT sandboxy even?

I don't want to talk dismissive about a game I haven't put that many hours into, yet, but the fact that I haven't also partially speaks for itself. I feel like I went into Fallout 4 with level-headed expectations of "more Fallout", but even then I found myself kind of bored and underwhelmed by the game in my relatively short time. I'll probably main-line it to the end and then never play it again, because as Brad said it, the Bethesda formula has kind of plateaued at this point, and boy, does the game feel outdated.

To each their own, I still like it, and personally found DA:I to be extremely boring. That being said I really hope that, some day, Bethesda can make this kind of game with quality animation, lip sync, and just fix up all the little bumps that make it a janky experience. I know some people like the bugs, and although they can be funny sometimes, all the fun gets drained out when you can't progress a quest.

I think if Witcher 3 would not be a thing, If I played Fallout 4 in vacuum I would be less harsh on it.

The game is fine , when I play I really enjoy it, the atmosphere and just wandering is nice. The leveling up and loot/crafting metagame is so much fun. But the second Fallout 4 starts a cutscene or a dialogue I just feel underwhelmed . I just do not care what anyone is saying, the facial animations and models are very bad for a 2015 game, the overall line delivery just feels flat/ one note. There is no subtlety , no depth in characters.

But my biggest gripe is my own character. It is not me, like in previous Bethesda games, where every dialogue was in first person and without voice over. It felt personal for what it was and immersive. But now I play a husband who lost his wife and child and is unfazed by anything that is happening. It feels so disconnected , I am not playing myself like in Fallout 3/NV Skyrim/Oblivion and I am not playing someone else like In Mass Effect/Witcher/Dragon Age. So what am I playing?

Maybe I outgrown Bethesda games, or maybe the direction to cater for more mainstream/general crowd forgot the personality of these games.

Unfortunate that people have decided to compare games that hardly play the same way or operate in the same manner as other games. I guess it happens when expectations are so high. Oh well I guess I'll play the Witcher as a evil Villain and rob and murder everyone. Afterwards I will play some more Metal Gear and have dialogue chosen conversations with characters to determine what kind of character I am and maybe tease out what other characters are thinking. Then I will get around to finishing Dragon Age: Inquisition and decide to leave the Inquisition because its not the faction I want to be associated. I am sure the game has plenty of options for me to choose from.